help me pick a router

[ayryq]

I'm trying to improve my internet at home. My design goal is "better" and to that end I've replaced my consumer router with a TP-Link 6210 and a three-pack of ubiquiti APs. I bought a monoprice unmanaged gigabit switch and I'm in the process of pulling CAT-6 all over the place.

I'm not entirely happy with the TP-Link router. One problem is the complete lack of data provided--see my other post for my complaints on this--such as per-IP data use graphs, for example.

I just read somewhere that this router supports only 32 "virtual servers" which is what they call port forwarding. I just got it and I'm using over half of that already.

Finally, the only way the UniFi access points identify "guests" is by assigning them a VLAN tag. The TP-Link router doesn't know anything about VLAN tags, only port-based VLANs. On my old router, guests were on a separate subnet so I could graph that traffic separately. No way to do that now.

I guess what I want is a router with consumer features (pretty graphs) but enterprise speed and reliability. My budget is probably obvious from TP-Link (just above $200) but I'd spend up to $300 if necessary.

It's really hard to discover if routers support VLAN tags - many of the data sheets say "VLAN.... yes." but that may be port-based like the TP-Link.

The router I bought has gigabit ports, but I guess I don't need that? -- I've got a gigabit switch that handles in-network connections.
The router I bought has dual-WAN which I'm not using, but I thought "might be nice someday"
The router I bought has extensive VPN capabilities which I don't plan to use.
The router I bought is rack mounted which I like.

Sorry it's so long! I've got a few weeks during which I can return the TP-Link to Amazon. Should I?

Thanks!

 

[ayryq]

I should add that I need port forwarding with different internal- and external-port numbers. I think this eliminates the little Cisco routers.

Can anyone recommend the Zyxel USG 50?

 

[theonlyski]

My Linksys E2000 supported port forwarding (including different internal and external ports) and I've used it quite often. I don't recall hitting a limit, but I also flashed over the stock firmware with DD-WRT which made the router act remarkably better and more reliably.

Now I am running a virtual machine (though a physical box would do the job just fine) with 2 NIC's and pfSense as the OS (free download). You can get some pretty impressive performance and flexibility from going this route, it can even run off an old PC that you have laying around, at the expense of more electricity to run it. It's running on a pretty decent virtual server along with my NAS and a few other random testing VM's, so the power draw ends up being less than running several physical boxes.

I've never used the USG50, though I did just see someone here that was asking about it and I know there's a review on this site for them.

 

[stevech]

even the Linksys E1200 has port forwarding with from-to port numbers

 

[ayryq]

My old router and current router both support forwarding to a different port. It's just the Cisco small-business routers that (apparently) don't, according to the review here. I should have mentioned that I was looking for a wired-only router.

I ordered the ZyXel after playing with their demo interface and reading (ok, skimming) the users' manual.

I should be able to experiment for a couple weeks before I have to return either the TP-Link or the ZyXel.

My impression is that the ZyXel can do everything I want - it just won't be obvious how all the time. Whereas the TP-Link, if it isn't obvious how to do something, it's probably not supported. So long as the ZyXel is as robust as reviews and its price indicate, it should be fine.

(As an aside to TP-Link owners: I noticed a lot of really weird DNS hits at OpenDNS to chinese-language news- and search-sites. Like 20k DNS requests per day to each of qq.com, sina.com, sohu.com, and baidu.com These all went away when I disabled the "Online Detection" on the TP-Link.)

Thanks,
Eric