Product-review: Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite

[leeishom]

Hey Mighty-ant; maybe a review on Ubiquitis' new Carrier-class L3 unit for SOHO?

 

[thiggins]

Got a link?

It appears that Ubiquiti is out of the consumer business. They also don't respond to any inquiries. I purchased the Power APN to review it.

 

[leeishom]

Got a link?

It appears that Ubiquiti is out of the consumer business. They also don't respond to any inquiries. I purchased the Power APN to review it.

http://www.ubnt.com/edgemax#edge-router

$99. Can't beat that price for Performance. BTW, watch their Promo-videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2QSHLdJ-s8&list=FLccmrXqDJIfBx_I2gaLo2TA&index=4&feature=plpp_video

 

[thiggins]

And what would you be using this for?

 

[leeishom]

And what would you be using this for?

If had the chance, an Edge Router.
Also, plan to deploy a set of Unifis; have you had much time with that unit?

 

[thiggins]

I've only reviewed one Ubiquiti. So, no, I have not looked at the Unifi.

 

[zsero]

Any update on the EdgeRouter Lite? This is the biggest thing what has appeared in the recent years, this little guy can eat the routers on the leaderboard for breakfast, for a crazy $99 price. Its a pity that the stock is still a problem, but it might get resolved soon (at least I hope).

 

[targetnovember]

I got mine about a week ago, and ordered it two weeks ago. It shipped the same day I ordered it. I've read on their forums that some people are still waiting, but it seems some resellers are getting stock and orders are being filled.

 

[thiggins]

So who has Gigabit Internet service here in the US?

Ubiquiti does not provide review product and has not responded to review queries in the past. So I need to buy one for review. Who has them?

 

[targetnovember]

I don't have gigabit service. My router that it replaced was 6 or 7 years old, and I had purchased a wireless access point to get n already. It was cheap enough and interesting enough to buy for $99, and an open enough platform to do interesting things with later, maybe. I wish gigabit service was my reason

I ordered it from http://www.microcom.us/erlite3.html. The web page said the availability was March when I ordered it, but it still shipped immediately. Either single unit orders get filled while larger orders have to wait for suitable stock levels or the web site is out of date.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the tip on Microcom. So is it blowing your socks off with its wondrous performance and features?

 

[targetnovember]

As an enthusiast and just a programmer, not a networking person, it was interesting compared to my other experiences with consumer routers. Every ethernet port is equal, and setting up DHCP, DNS, and NAT are all explicit steps. Seeing all the decisions to make in my home environment made me consider environments where it's not needed, and gave me an idea of how more complicated networks can be setup. The software has a CPU and memory usage graph, so it's interesting to see how the management web page stresses the CPU so much more than routing packets.

As far as features, I haven't had time to do much fancy stuff with it. I might look into dynamic DNS and OpenVPN to facilitate online gaming with decade plus friends. The game's internet server was turned off, but LAN play is still working. I'd consider offsite backup with the OpenVPN and an old computer I have, but I need to figure out what I'd want to do, and think about my storage needs and whether it'd be worth it to use a cloud based option instead.

So . . . not really stressing it at the moment, but I might get around to it later. As far as performance . . . it's working fine, but for quality, objective analysis and worthwhile thoughts, that's why I read this site. I can say performance is sufficient, but anything really meaningful will have to be written by better qualified people.

 

[thiggins]

Don't discount the value of your thoughts from a user's perspective. You live with the products you buy. We just provide a brief glimpse into products.

This is not a consumer product by any stretch.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[zsero]

Thiggins, the reason why I'd consider buying such a device and why I decided to use Mikrotik devices (I'm in Europe) over say Tp-Link 1043ND or something similar with OpenWRT is not that it can work with a fast connection, but that it can share a normal connection (say 50 Mbit) with 10-20 computers reliably. Just try what happens when you try to connect more than 5 active (let's say torrenting) PC's to a normal < $200 wireless home router. They instantly became unstable. Sometimes their wireless connection drops in quality, sometimes they hang, sometimes they freeze, sometimes they start dropping packets, etc.

The incredible part is that (I'm only talking about the Mikrotik part again), a Mikrotik RB750GL is $60 (in a case with adapter, not just a board) and it's totally resistant to the above mentioned ways of abuse. I think it might be the operating system and not just the hardware but it's simple impossible to freeze/lag/packet-drop these routers with a normal home/office/SOHO scenario.

Yes, configuring a Mikrotik is an absolute b*tch. I'm not joking, 2 days lost of my life. The only way to do it properly is from command line, and for that you'll have to learn a totally unique command line experience. But once you've done it, you can export a script and just edit/run it on any other router you'll ever need to configure. So first 2 days, later on 5 minutes.

At least the good side of the Mikrotik 750GL is that it's configured out of the box for the common DHCP WAN -> NAT -> DHCP LAN scenario. So if you are OK with that as well as some strange subnet (I don't like using 10....) then it works out of the box.

Also if you'd do an article for the 750GL, you can export your final configuration to a simple pastebin and people could take it as a starting point for configuring the router.

I have no experience with this Ubiqity but people say it's a true giant-killer, leaving 6k boxes in the dust.

I think a detailed article about affordable SOHO routers (<$100 Mikrotik, Ubiqity, etc.) compared with high-end (<$250) consumer routers would be an amazing article. It might be problematic how to simulate a realistic SOHO environment. You can try say 5 torrenting PC or 25 virtual machines doing regular internet browsing, Youtube, etc. simulating an office).

 

[thiggins]

Microcom is shipping

I ordered one yesterday an it is on its way today. $22 for shipping UPS ground. Yeesh!

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for your comments zsero. I am not surprised that any wireless router would choke with 5 wireless clients trying to Torrent. Did your Mikrotik fix that? What AP did you use it with?

Yes, it is difficult trying to break routers repeatably, especially when trying to break them with Torrents, given the random nature of Torrents. You also can't rule out ISP related problems because you can't simulate Torrents on a private LAN, at least there isn't any way that I have found.

I have been working in the background on a router torture test article. But so far, haven't come up with a good way to repeatably stress routers.

 

[zsero]

Thanks for your comments zsero. I am not surprised that any wireless router would choke with 5 wireless clients trying to Torrent. Did your Mikrotik fix that? What AP did you use it with?

Yes, it is difficult trying to break routers repeatably, especially when trying to break them with Torrents, given the random nature of Torrents. You also can't rule out ISP related problems because you can't simulate Torrents on a private LAN, at least there isn't any way that I have found.

I have been working in the background on a router torture test article. But so far, haven't come up with a good way to repeatably stress routers.

I never know what would a Mikrotik do with wireless, since I never tried them as wireless router or AP, just as wired. With wired I cannot break down a simple 750GL.

For wireless, I think the best idea is to buy the best budget router you can afford and put it in AP only mode. So in my opinion, the most reliable, affordable solution is the 2-box way:
1. Use a super-stable wired-only router with a professional OS, from Mikrotik or Ubiqity
2. Buy one or more from the best budgets router for APs. For example the cheapest TP-Link model with 3 detachable antennas (941ND/1043ND) + OpenWRT or Gargoyle is a good idea but even the stock firmware is OK for AP-only mode.

As a bonus it's super easy to split the networks, for example to make one port on the wired router not part of the wireless network, etc.

Just my solution to the problem. I found it to be much much cheaper this way. Professional wired router for routing/VPN/etc. and budget wireless router for AP only functions.

 

[Andrew911tt]

Thanks for your comments zsero. I am not surprised that any wireless router would choke with 5 wireless clients trying to Torrent. Did your Mikrotik fix that? What AP did you use it with?

Yes, it is difficult trying to break routers repeatably, especially when trying to break them with Torrents, given the random nature of Torrents. You also can't rule out ISP related problems because you can't simulate Torrents on a private LAN, at least there isn't any way that I have found.

I have been working in the background on a router torture test article. But so far, haven't come up with a good way to repeatably stress routers.

I don't know if this would help but maybe you can join forces with Anandtech and use their NAS torture Machine. I think that would be able to put out a lot or traffic and be repeatable.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6485/updating-the-2012-anandtech-smb-soho-nas-testbed

 

[zsero]

I don't know if this would help but maybe you can join forces with Anandtech and use their NAS torture Machine. I think that would be able to put out a lot or traffic and be repeatable.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6485/updating-the-2012-anandtech-smb-soho-nas-testbed

I was thinking about the exact same machine! If you happen to be in the same city as Anand's machine, I'd gladly recommend the same! Maybe you can write shared articles and publish it in both websites?

 

[targetnovember]

The Ubiquiti forums are getting more active as people get their routers. I happened to see there to see how to enable UPnP, since there isn't a GUI option for it yet. There were easy options for all the other basic stuff.