I regret having to make this kind of post in a forum of specialists -- it's punching *way* above my weight -- but I'm at kind of an impasse. I'm one of those guys who has no formal training in computers but who knows more about them than his friends and who tries to help out from time to time. I'd say I'm an "okay-ish" amateur Windows administrator; I can usually figure out a solution to most problems, but I'm particularly ignorant about networking.
I have a friend with a small home Ethernet network. (He doesn't do wireless at all.) As the speeds of his Internet service and computers have increased, his old router (a 10/100Mbps NETGEAR FR114P Cable/DSL ProSafe Firewall) has become a severe bottleneck in WAN and LAN throughput. On Internet speed tests, he gets ~50Mbps when connected directly to the modem and only ~2Mbps when connected via the router. His FreeFileSync computer-to-computer file transfers via the router top out at around 6Mbps, with 7200rpm SATA3 drives. (Sorry; I didn't think to test FreeFileSync transfer speeds with a direct computer-to-computer Ethernet connection while I was at his place.) Throughput actually seems to have gotten worse in the past couple of months, and I wonder if his Netgear router might be failing or have gotten corrupted in some way...
Regardless, I'm thinking it's time for him to upgrade to a decent gigabit firewall/router and a gigabit switch, and the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite (ERLite-3) seems like a promising candidate for the router. To a networking newbie, however, the ERLite-3's setup looks pretty daunting, so I have some questions:
(1) Will I need a console (rollover) cable to do the setup, or will a regular Ethernet cable suffice?
(2) Would using a console cable make initial set-up or subsequent tweaking easier in any way?
(3) My friend's computers do not have DB9 ports. If I need a console cable, exactly what kind of DB9 adapter do I need? Male USB to Female DB9?
(4) Once it is set up, can the ERLite-3's configuration be exported and, in the event of a router hardware failure, easily restored to a replacement ERLite-3?
(5) Are the wizards that come with firmware 1.7 adequate to set up the ERLite-3 for a SOHO network with a decently performing SPI firewall?
(6) Will a beginner like me be able to set up the ERLite-3 using only the wizards (and, possibly, the GUI)?
(7) If setup is too difficult for a networking newbie, do you have any recommendations for a more consumer-friendly router with decent (and *reasonably* future-proof) throughput and good firewall features? The router must be wired-only or have a WiFi radio that can be fully disabled. My friend doesn't need the content-filtering, anti-spam, or even router-level anti-virus features found in most UTM packages (but he'd probably be happy to have intrusion prevention and detection).
Here's some background on my friend's network set-up, usage, and priorities:
* He has nominal 50Mbps downstream / 5Mbps upstream broadband Internet service, with a dynamically assigned IP address, but his cable modem can handle over 300Mbps downstream and his Internet service package may well increase in speed at some time over the coming few years.
* He doesn't use VPNs; he doesn't game; he doesn't run a server, WAN-accessible or otherwise; he Skypes; he will probably use streaming video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime in the near future; he doesn't currently have a smart TV but *conceivably* could in the future; he doesn't have any Internet of Things devices; he doesn't currently have any NAS devices and I don't see a clear need for one in the future, given his current setup.
* He has two recent, fairly powerful Windows 7 computers between which he syncs data and certain configuration and backup files in real time (using FreeFileSync); he may add a third computer in the future.
* He has three networked multifunction printers (with different features and capabilities) and he is likely to add a networked high-speed page scanner in the near future.
* He tends to keep his gear until it fails or becomes clearly inadequate, so he buys with an eye to future-proofing, which in this case would mean anticipating a possible doubling or tripling of his Internet service speeds, on the WAN side, and eventual replacement of mechanical drives with SSDs, on the LAN side. (He currently has 4TB drives that he maintains bootable clones of, and replacing them with SSDs is economically unfeasible for now.)
* Performance/throughput is important, but security, minimization of downtime, and ease of administration, maintenance, and recovery are even higher priorities. He's a music teacher, not a computer hobbyist, and I've tried to set up his system so that it requires minimal user intervention and tweaking.
* WiFi is out of the question.
* Budget is an issue. He's not going to drop $800 on a router and $250 a year on UTM subscriptions.
* His current download speeds and streaming media performance are driving him nuts!
Any answers, tips, or feedback at all would be much appreciated!
I have a friend with a small home Ethernet network. (He doesn't do wireless at all.) As the speeds of his Internet service and computers have increased, his old router (a 10/100Mbps NETGEAR FR114P Cable/DSL ProSafe Firewall) has become a severe bottleneck in WAN and LAN throughput. On Internet speed tests, he gets ~50Mbps when connected directly to the modem and only ~2Mbps when connected via the router. His FreeFileSync computer-to-computer file transfers via the router top out at around 6Mbps, with 7200rpm SATA3 drives. (Sorry; I didn't think to test FreeFileSync transfer speeds with a direct computer-to-computer Ethernet connection while I was at his place.) Throughput actually seems to have gotten worse in the past couple of months, and I wonder if his Netgear router might be failing or have gotten corrupted in some way...
Regardless, I'm thinking it's time for him to upgrade to a decent gigabit firewall/router and a gigabit switch, and the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite (ERLite-3) seems like a promising candidate for the router. To a networking newbie, however, the ERLite-3's setup looks pretty daunting, so I have some questions:
(1) Will I need a console (rollover) cable to do the setup, or will a regular Ethernet cable suffice?
(2) Would using a console cable make initial set-up or subsequent tweaking easier in any way?
(3) My friend's computers do not have DB9 ports. If I need a console cable, exactly what kind of DB9 adapter do I need? Male USB to Female DB9?
(4) Once it is set up, can the ERLite-3's configuration be exported and, in the event of a router hardware failure, easily restored to a replacement ERLite-3?
(5) Are the wizards that come with firmware 1.7 adequate to set up the ERLite-3 for a SOHO network with a decently performing SPI firewall?
(6) Will a beginner like me be able to set up the ERLite-3 using only the wizards (and, possibly, the GUI)?
(7) If setup is too difficult for a networking newbie, do you have any recommendations for a more consumer-friendly router with decent (and *reasonably* future-proof) throughput and good firewall features? The router must be wired-only or have a WiFi radio that can be fully disabled. My friend doesn't need the content-filtering, anti-spam, or even router-level anti-virus features found in most UTM packages (but he'd probably be happy to have intrusion prevention and detection).
Here's some background on my friend's network set-up, usage, and priorities:
* He has nominal 50Mbps downstream / 5Mbps upstream broadband Internet service, with a dynamically assigned IP address, but his cable modem can handle over 300Mbps downstream and his Internet service package may well increase in speed at some time over the coming few years.
* He doesn't use VPNs; he doesn't game; he doesn't run a server, WAN-accessible or otherwise; he Skypes; he will probably use streaming video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime in the near future; he doesn't currently have a smart TV but *conceivably* could in the future; he doesn't have any Internet of Things devices; he doesn't currently have any NAS devices and I don't see a clear need for one in the future, given his current setup.
* He has two recent, fairly powerful Windows 7 computers between which he syncs data and certain configuration and backup files in real time (using FreeFileSync); he may add a third computer in the future.
* He has three networked multifunction printers (with different features and capabilities) and he is likely to add a networked high-speed page scanner in the near future.
* He tends to keep his gear until it fails or becomes clearly inadequate, so he buys with an eye to future-proofing, which in this case would mean anticipating a possible doubling or tripling of his Internet service speeds, on the WAN side, and eventual replacement of mechanical drives with SSDs, on the LAN side. (He currently has 4TB drives that he maintains bootable clones of, and replacing them with SSDs is economically unfeasible for now.)
* Performance/throughput is important, but security, minimization of downtime, and ease of administration, maintenance, and recovery are even higher priorities. He's a music teacher, not a computer hobbyist, and I've tried to set up his system so that it requires minimal user intervention and tweaking.
* WiFi is out of the question.
* Budget is an issue. He's not going to drop $800 on a router and $250 a year on UTM subscriptions.
* His current download speeds and streaming media performance are driving him nuts!
Any answers, tips, or feedback at all would be much appreciated!
