Simple Wired Router?

[jcwillia1]

Does such a thing exist anymore?

I have all of my network connections terminating in my basement and then everything runs to switches and / or wireless access points from there. I have far too many devices (and far too much house) to rely on one wireless router to work for everything.

So is there a a simple wired router on the market today for low cost that performs well? Seems like the current wireless routers perform better than the pure wired versions? Do I just buy one of those and turn the wifi radio off?

I have two ASUS Black Diamonds pushing WiFi in my house (only our iPhones support AC so don't really care about that) - one upstairs and one downstairs. I really just need a wired router to push internet to those AP's and all the wired switches of course.

The lowest cost, best performing WAN to LAN wireless routers are $70-ish according to the chart - can I beat that with anything that is just wired?

LOWEST COST MATTERS. I won't buy something that costs more than $100. Criticize me if you like but with the speed at which technology is evolving it makes no sense to me to spend a ton of money on any one device when it will be obsolete before it wears out.

 

[L&LD]

Buy the RT-AC56U and turn off the radios.

Buying a low end wired only router today makes no sense, regardless of how fast you think it may become obsolete.

Any quality GbE capable router will only become obsolete when you say so and not a minute sooner.

 

[coxhaus]

How complicated of a network do you have? Do you use ACLs, access control lists? ASUS does not support ACLs.

 

[Trip]

[...]is there a a simple wired router on the market today for low cost that performs well?

Of course there are. The real question is, what specific features do you require beyond it being a"simple wired router", and how easy/supported does it have to be?

Case-in-point: I could rattle off whatever Ubiquiti or Mikrotik as probably the best bang for the buck, but they're very technical to use (especially MikroTik) and there's no support. NONE. On the flip side, in plug 'n play land there's the TP-Link TL-R470 if your WAN is <80Mb/s or R600 for 120Mb/s of WAN (it says "gigabit" but that's only for switching, if that -- definitely can't NAT anywhere close). There are other options still, but if you're hell-bent on staying at or below $100, your pickings are pretty slim. Perhaps a used UTM/pfSense box on eBay?

As other's have mentioned, you may just want to suck it up and buy an all-in-one and turn wifi off. Lots to be had in the $75-100 category. Probably just the easiest move all the way around, if you can make the paradigm shift.

 

[System Error Message]

You wont find many simple wired router because everyone in the consumer market uses wifi. Manufacturers prefer to clog the market with wifi products knowing it would be bad for wifi performance but they do it because from the consumer's perspective if they were to have 1 router they would want it to do all tasks and if they bought devices like smart tvs, laptops and portables, even printers they would want wifi and not wire where they have to plug everything about and people like to be lazy which is why WPS and similar came out too because people didnt like configuring things.

Trip basically offered the same advice i would. There is no longer a "simple" wired router. All proper wired routers now are not simple and require skill and knowledge to configure which is something i find easy to gain such as if you bought a car you would want to know how to drive it properly (features such as cruise control and other buttons in the car). These complicated routers have been around for a long time and they do well even now because unlike a simple router that you find in the consumer space they perform lots of tasks better. Some non consumer models do offer enterprise features at a low price but it mainly depends on how much performance you need.

From what i've seen of pfsense it is actually easier to configure than ubiquiti or mikrotik so consider dedicated a standard desktop for a router which you could also use to do other features that consumer routers can do but even more. Some linux OSes have the commonly used printer and scanner daemons that allow them to be print and scan servers on the network but without even needing drivers to be installed on clients although the client would either need to type the right path and options or do a network search. Sure you would have to do some research but a router is actually an important part of your house since it not only is the center of your network but it also handles the security of your network as well and many consumer routers now do have a network antivirus as well like enterprise routers did have in the past. The benefit that a good router provides would make things easier for you while a bad router will just make things very difficult for you. Its the same with owning other things like cars or even choosing your kitchen setup where you would want to research first to get the right stuff or end up with a lot of pain later.

Using a desktop as a router you can just reuse an old desktop even a core2duo and just add a used intel server NIC to it. Avoid using realtek NICs as they use a lot more CPU. The only reason not to use x86 solutions is the power use but there are low power x86 chips and recent x86 chips offer a lot lower idle power than consumer routers so if you have a recent intel CPU with a small board that only has what the chipset has with no additions and only using what you need you can have a really fast and robust router that uses the same amount of power as an embedded consumer router but have better idle power and do more with it at the same time. USB3 performance would be much better too and you could just use SATA to attach more drives or use as much RAM as you like. Even the small motherboards would have at least 4 USB3 ports with 2 USB ports and also additional slots for front usb compared to a high end consumer routers that only offer up to 2 usb3 ports but cant fully use them.

 

[jcwillia1]

bought an EA6400 for $40 - That was one of the best rated for WAN to LAN throughput. Hoping U-Verse will turn on gigabit for my subdivision soon.

 

[Lee Sharp]

For a simple wired router, try SmallWall. www.smallwall.org It is a fork of m0n0wall when Manual Kasper decided to close it. It is VERY simple, but has good feature support. And the documentation is better then it ever was with m0n0wall. And yes, it is easier to set up then pfSense. (Especially the traffic shaping)

As to price, you can buy full gigabit hardware with SmallWall preinstalled for prices starting at $250. Or you can stick a nic in a Wyse terminal server, and have a 50 meg firewall at $25 easily.

 

[jcwillia1]

Ok so router installed. All is well but now I have three distinct wireless signals in my house. The EA 6400 in the northwest corner of the basement, the Black Diamond centrally located in my Pantry and another Black Diamond located towards the northwest side of the house in my sons closet. All of the signals have separate SSIDs - 5 GHz and 2.4 so there are 6 separate SSIDs.

Trouble is my phone likes to hang on to the last one it was connected to for dear life even when it's not in effective range anymore. So I end up having to manually flip between signals a lot. Is there any way to dial back the broadcast strength of the signal? My iPhone had no preference settings for wifi so there's nothing I can do on that side of the equation.

 

[System Error Message]

change roaming aggressiveness. Its too bad the iphone is less hackable than android since if there isnt an option to adjust how aggressive it switches between APs depending on signal strength than you have to manually change the settings in some file somewhere.

 

[jcwillia1]

change roaming aggressiveness. Its too bad the iphone is less hackable than android since if there isnt an option to adjust how aggressive it switches between APs depending on signal strength than you have to manually change the settings in some file somewhere.

that doesn't exist on iphone?