Is SmallNetBuilder site still active?

[sfx2000]

It's not an easy thing...

Two good sites that turned to, well, excrement...

https://techreport.com/

HardOCP

hardocp.com

One of the sites I follow - macintouch, Ric Ford was well respected in the Mac community - https://www.macintouch.com/

https://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ is another - they're also trying to reset these days..

 

[Tech9]

Young people want YouTube videos now. Very few will read review articles.

 

[RMerlin]

Too many bloggers fancying themselves "reviewers" or "journalists" these days, quite frankly. They generally lack the methodology and the expertise to do a proper performance analysis.

 

[follower]

Too many bloggers fancying themselves "reviewers" or "journalists" these days, quite frankly. They generally lack the methodology and the expertise to do a proper performance analysis.

Users don't care anymore. I don't care anymore either. It's bothering. Looking good, good enough, nice price OK. Everybody goes to Youtube like Tech9 says.
If users buy Routers most of users only check Download speed, WiFi speed, Brand, Price. Nobody cares what the professional say. They don't even understand and care professional analysis. They don't even care and don't want to know what the Terminology is. That's it.

 

[Tech9]

Most consumers buy routers based on appearance. Many and big antennas - must have more "power". Red accents or RGB - must be "gaming" model.

 

[RMerlin]

Most consumers buy routers based on appearance. Many and big antennas - must have more "power". Red accents or RGB - must be "gaming" model.

That's not true.

How frequently do we get a new user coming here on the forums, and asking us: "will this router have better coverage than that router?"

We had another one asking that question just yesterday.

 

[Tech9]

Sorry, but if Asus relies on customers asking tech questions on SNB Forums the company is going bankrupt in less than a year. External design elements are the major selling point on consumer market.

 

[eightiescalling]

External design elements are the major selling point on consumer market.

I'd like to argue this point on the basis that nobody buys a router looking like it was a Star Trek special effects model but unfortunately you're probably not wrong - knowing at least one person who bought a ASUS top end ROG router to fix wifi coverage problems purely because it was expensive and had a lot of antennas....

Certain ISPs going out of their way to make the provided modem/router "stylish" as a selling point (when it behaves like a crock of ****) probably re-enforces your point...

 

[Tech9]

Business Access Points have very similar external design from years old N-class all the way to latest AXE. External appearance is not that important when you expect customers actually looking at hardware specifications. On the consumer market you get this:

It has more plastic than electronics inside, but do you feel the Power of 8x antennas with red accents?

 

[thiggins]

Certain ISPs going out of their way to make the provided modem/router "stylish" as a selling point (when it behaves like a crock of ****) probably re-enforces your point...

It's not just styling. At least some of the major U.S. ISP's are spending serious $ working to improve performance and making their router offerings more attractive. Since they are under increasing pressure to lower their monthly service costs and increase offered bandwidth, they are looking for more recurring revenue sources. That's why you see them offering security service and pushing harder on getting customers to rent the modem/router from them.

Any of the retail router makers who want to stay in business have been increasing their OEM offerings.

And none of the service providers were excited about having their products reviewed. So another reason for me to find better things to do with my time and expertise.

 

[RMerlin]

ISP's are spending serious $ working to improve performance and making their router offerings more attractive.

At the time, the T-Mobile router that was an OEM'd RT-AC68U was a damn nice product, both in terms of cost and performance.

Here in Canada, ISPs put a good amount of marketing to advertise their Wifi solutions as part of their service, providing "house-wide coverage" with mesh solutions. While Bell Canada offered complete garbage up until only a few years ago (their HUB 2000 that they were still using last year would often take 30-60 seconds just to load any of the webui pages), their latest offering from this year now even provides Wifi 6e, and is included in their marketing material.

Vidéotron used (at least until recently) a Zyxel router. While not well known in North America, I was actually impressed by that device whenever I configured/managed one for some of my customers who had them.

 

[Tech9]

True. Some ISP provided gateways actually have faster hardware than high-end consumer routers on the market.

 

[eightiescalling]

At the time, the T-Mobile router that was an OEM'd RT-AC68U was a damn nice product, both in terms of cost and performance.

Here in Canada, ISPs put a good amount of marketing to advertise their Wifi solutions as part of their service, providing "house-wide coverage" with mesh solutions. While Bell Canada offered complete garbage up until only a few years ago (their HUB 2000 that they were still using last year would often take 30-60 seconds just to load any of the webui pages), their latest offering from this year now even provides Wifi 6e, and is included in their marketing material.

Vidéotron used (at least until recently) a Zyxel router. While not well known in North America, I was actually impressed by that device whenever I configured/managed one for some of my customers who had them.

Maybe I'm just too distrusting of ISPs (or mine at least!) after historical problems. Several generations of Virgin Media home hubs were renowned to be pretty ropey for various reasons. Given I'd rather the device do the job it needs to rather than be a talking point of home decor I wasn't sold on their Hub 4 despite its marketing. Too many years of solid reliable service from Asus devices running your firmware has set the bar very high for any ISP router!

You're right on the mesh solutions - when it comes to ISP provided offerings though several of those seem to come with some form of ISP lock-in as well as monthly fees.

 

[RMerlin]

Maybe I'm just too distrusting of ISPs (or mine at least!) after historical problems. Several generations of Virgin Media home hubs were renowned to be pretty ropey for various reasons. Given I'd rather the device do the job it needs to rather than be a talking point of home decor I wasn't sold on their Hub 4 despite its marketing. Too many years of solid reliable service from Asus devices running your firmware has set the bar very high for any ISP router!

You're right on the mesh solutions - when it comes to ISP provided offerings though several of those seem to come with some form of ISP lock-in as well as monthly fees.

While the hardware provided by ISPs has improved, I still believe the software remains a weak point. They don't seem to be doing much in terms of keeping the software stack up to date in general, which is counter-intuitive since a compromised customer router means that ISP will suffer from blacklisting and increased data usage from that customer.

Again, looking at the TM-AC1900 as an example. The original RT-AC68U still receives updates as of today (2022), but T-Mobile stopped providing software updates years ago. I don't have any insider info as to the details, but my personal guess is, they struck a deal with Asus to buy a large quantity of these devices at a discount, and to keep the costs low, they didn't want to pay Asus for long-term software support. They probably paid for something like 18 months of software development, and after that they basically dropped the product, despite the hardware platform still very able to get recent security and feature updates.

I guess this is what generally happens with others as well. ISP buys a certain amount of devices, and paid the manufacturer for limited software support, in addition to the original rebranded UI.

Years ago, I did receive offers myself from at least one ISP who wanted to hire me to provide a rebranded firmware for their service. Based on their offering, I don't think they expected that this rebranded firmware would require continued work to provide security updates after the initial development, so discussions never went far.

 

[Tech9]

I never had hacked ISP device in my entire Internet use history. I run all current ISP devices in modem/router mode. They've got few firmware updates. In bridge mode the ISP can't push any updates. Locked down firmware with simple configuration options makes them secure enough.

 

[eightiescalling]

They probably paid for something like 18 months of software development, and after that they basically dropped the product, despite the hardware platform still very able to get recent security and feature updates.

Not sure what Canada is like but given the typical ISP contract here in the UK, before it turns to a rolling monthly contract, that ties rather well to "marketed product we care about" rather than "stuff still kicking around on our network because people don't want/need/can't afford new product that comes with new hardware". The irony being that rolling contract is where they have the higher profit margin (new customer discounts have expired, cost of customer retention/new customer etc) so more incentive to keep that in place.

While certain reviews and consumer recommendations are starting to consider availability of security updates (mobile phones for example) I've yet to see one using the same metric for ISP modems/routers.

 

[follower]

While the hardware provided by ISPs has improved, I still believe the software remains a weak point. They don't seem to be doing much in terms of keeping the software stack up to date in general, which is counter-intuitive since a compromised customer router means that ISP will suffer from blacklisting and increased data usage from that customer.

Again, looking at the TM-AC1900 as an example. The original RT-AC68U still receives updates as of today (2022), but T-Mobile stopped providing software updates years ago. I don't have any insider info as to the details, but my personal guess is, they struck a deal with Asus to buy a large quantity of these devices at a discount, and to keep the costs low, they didn't want to pay Asus for long-term software support. They probably paid for something like 18 months of software development, and after that they basically dropped the product, despite the hardware platform still very able to get recent security and feature updates.

I guess this is what generally happens with others as well. ISP buys a certain amount of devices, and paid the manufacturer for limited software support, in addition to the original rebranded UI.

Years ago, I did receive offers myself from at least one ISP who wanted to hire me to provide a rebranded firmware for their service. Based on their offering, I don't think they expected that this rebranded firmware would require continued work to provide security updates after the initial development, so discussions never went far.

Nobody cares any routers from ISP. They don't even know how to connect Router Admin mode. They don't want to know. Internet is fine. WiFi is fine. That's it. Modded firmware for TM-AC1900 is only for certain users. Rest of users don't even know what the firmware is. Stopped firmware from T-Mobile doesn't matter. Certain users can modify firmwares anytime.

 

[coxhaus]

The other problem is at least one ISP is releasing 5 gig internet speeds. Find a consumer router that will do that. Your choice becomes a PC, ISP modem router or business class router$$$. Business class needs to update their hardware to handle the new high speeds and then we may see a trickle down.

It is hard to run an L3 switch with an ISP router when they don't support routing.

It does make sense to use an ISP modem router as it is their network which they are responsible for. We are just a user on their network. Hopefully the ISPs will add features and keep their firmware up to date in the future

 

[BreakingDad]

It's not that easy @BreakingDad. Access to new products is needed and access to professional testing equipment. I can get access to new products through my contacts, but most likely someone's advertisement will creep in. Nothing comes for free in today's World. Articles written by non-professionals in this area will turn SmallNetBuilder into Don'tKnows. I can generate similar reviews every day and I don't even need the product.

It was meant to be a little tongue in cheek, however I maintain there is enough smart people on here to write interesting articles.