EnGenius 9850 Firmware & Thoughts

[dalben]

Finally found a store selling the 9850 yesterday so I grabbed one and set it up.

First question, the 2.0 Firmware is only available on the US site. Other than disabling the ability to use Channel 12 & 13, is there anything else that would prevent me from installing it on a SE Asia based device ?

After coming from a DIR-655, it was a bit of a shock to see the spartan Web Gui. The Log function is next to useless. It shows no firewall activity.

The DHCP section is a real pain if you want to reserve IPs. Everything needs to be manually entered and you can't copy and paste a MAC address if it has the : in between every 2 characters. There is no option to reserve an IP from the current DHCP leases. The worst bit, there is only room for 10 reservations in the DHCP Table.

Other than that, haven't seen much performance improvement mainly because I haven't put it through it's paces.

 

[tipstir]

Finally found a store selling the 9850 yesterday so I grabbed one and set it up.

First question, the 2.0 Firmware is only available on the US site. Other than disabling the ability to use Channel 12 & 13, is there anything else that would prevent me from installing it on a SE Asia based device ?

After coming from a DIR-655, it was a bit of a shock to see the spartan Web Gui. The Log function is next to useless. It shows no firewall activity.

The DHCP section is a real pain if you want to reserve IPs. Everything needs to be manually entered and you can't copy and paste a MAC address if it has the : in between every 2 characters. There is no option to reserve an IP from the current DHCP leases. The worst bit, there is only room for 10 reservations in the DHCP Table.

Other than that, haven't seen much performance improvement mainly because I haven't put it through it's paces.

I've asked why but this is aim for users who don't want complex setup features. It's really quick. I just finished doing a network refresh here swapping out old power hungry switches for larger buffers, and low energy ones. This router is also uses low energy. Whatever you do don't use Power Saver on the Wireless.

 

[stevech]

... Other than disabling the ability to use Channel 12 & 13, is there anything else that would prevent me from installing it on a SE Asia based device ?

In addition to some countries permitting channels 12, 13, some countries have different radiated power limitations than under the US FCC, and some have more stringent emissions mask (unintentional power in the adjacent channel/out-of-band) regulations. Japan and France are examples of overly onerous regulations.

 

[dalben]

In addition to some countries permitting channels 12, 13, some countries have different radiated power limitations than under the US FCC, and some have more stringent emissions mask (unintentional power in the adjacent channel/out-of-band) regulations. Japan and France are examples of overly onerous regulations.

OK, I'll keep away from them.

I installed the update and it fixed quite a few issues I had (WAN get dropping out). It's now stable and seeing I don't use it's wireless capabilities (I have 9550s scattered around the house) I'm not fussed about the extra channels.

Really would prefer the ability to reserve more than 10 IP addresses though, even if I have to manually enter them. With over 20 devices that conect up, it's hard to memorise what their IP is.

 

[stevech]

I use DHCP reservations or more usually, static LAN IP addresses, for my server PC which has port forwards set in the router, so it has to be unchanging, my NAS, my web cams that are also in the port-forward list, and my IP to video converters (media player) box.

Other generic PCs, I just use DHCP - don't care. So I don't come close to needing 10 DHCP reservations. Not that hard either to manage a few things with static LAN IP addresses, outside the range used by DHCP in my router.

 

[dalben]

I tend to group my devices in ranges. i.e.

Dektop PCs 100-109
Laptops 110-119
Mobile Phones 120-129
NAS devices & Priters 130-139
Home AV Equipment 140-149
etc etc

Going static for all of them would be a pain but we'll see what happens.

My 9550 are Static LAN IPs though.

 

[permarco]

I just found another bug/limitation of the 2.0 firmware (don't know if it was still present in 1.x.x), if you set your WAN port to "Dynamic/Static IP" you'll get an unchangeable MTU of 1454.
I really am in need to have this bug sorted out, Tipstir, can you please talk to Engenius about that? Thanks !

Marco

 

[stevech]

are you saying that jumbo frames should be supported on the WAN port as the default?

 

[permarco]

are you saying that jumbo frames should be supported on the WAN port as the default?

No, I'm just suggesting a box to control MTU size in "Dynamic/Static IP" WAN configuration (the same one that is present in PPPoE, PPTP and L2TP WAN configuration, not to mention every other router that I owned ).

Bye, Marco.