internet Is it overkill to buy a separate router? (Home Use)

[Tcrumpen]

I'll be placing an order for internet soon (after almost 3 months of no internet ... arrg) anyway i've been wondering whether it would be a good idea to buy a separate router and not use the ISPs provided router. Or is that simply overkill for home commercial use?

 

Internet will be a fibre line so i'm aware i'd have to get a fibre router

[RumSwift]

Yeah, as long as it's enabled for fibre that's fine. You may need to get a filter for the connection depending, but it's 100% possible. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Really depends on the router they provide and what you need to do. In terms of processing power, the vast majority of ISP provided routers are more than enough. 

 

There are other reasons to change it though. Most ISP routers will limit what settings you can change to some extent, such as not allowing port forwarding, so you may want a new one to get more control. If you need to improve WiFi coverage or speed but for whatever reason can't run APs (something like not being able to run cables), buying a router with a better access point built in may be a reason too. Some ISP routers are just unreliable, dropping connections and having buggy settings, but that's really a case by case basis. From my experience, most of them work okay.

[Tcrumpen]

12 minutes ago, jordzzzz95 said:

Perfectly logical move, I've got Virgin 200Mbps here in England, UK. They supplied me with a Hub 3.0 Their "All singing all dancing" router, its was terrible, even the router settings were laggy & unhelpful.

I'm also in the UK so snap my man

[Hiitchy]

11 minutes ago, jordzzzz95 said:

Perfectly logical move, I've got Virgin 200Mbps here in England, UK. They supplied me with a Hub 3.0 Their "All singing all dancing" router, its was terrible, even the router settings were laggy & unhelpful.

Virgin Mobile here provides internet. They call their sagemcom modem "Steve and Steve Can't do anything right.

/s

 

On topic though: Because aftermarket routers aren't tested or commissioned through your ISP, and they go to companies like Cisco, Hitron, or Sagemcom to do testing with... Any issues you face will be met with poor technical support IF they allow the Mac address of your aftermarket router on their network.

 

In Canada, Bell offers fiberop which is FTTH but says we have to use their hardware because the ONT won't recognize anything and bla bla bla. What they really mean is: we tested everything with our modem for months, of course we aren't going to let you use your own modem.

[Judgie97]

Yeah i use an Asus router instead of the BT one because the wireless on the BT one isnt strong enough to cover the whole house. I find there are other benefits too. The web console for ISP routers is normally really bad and hard to use, I remember struggling to enable port forwarding on my old sky router.

 

 

1 minute ago, Hiitchy said:

 IF they allow the Mac address of your aftermarket router on their network.

If this is a problem though you can use the ISP router to connect the 3rd party one to the internet and then use the new one for your LAN to get the features of the 3rd party one for your local devices.

[Hiitchy]

1 minute ago, Judgie97 said:

If this is a problem though you can use the ISP router to connect the 3rd party one to the internet and then use the new one for your LAN to get the features of the 3rd party one for your local devices.

Yep, this is the other part of it. I usually just bridge the connection over to my router from my ISP provided modem because It's absolute garbage sometimes.

[Sir Asvald]

On 21/08/2017 at 0:09 PM, jordzzzz95 said:

Perfectly logical move, I've got Virgin 200Mbps here in England, UK. They supplied me with a Hub 3.0 Their "All singing all dancing" router, its was terrible, even the router settings were laggy & unhelpful.

I despise Virgin Media. Worst ISP ever. Always had issues with their service. First we have the normal the so-called "SuperHub 2" had terrible WiFi .Then they sent us the SuperHub 3. Same issues. Never got our speeds. We were paying for 100/10. Never got close to 100. It was always 60/65 down. Then we decided to move to BT, never looked back. BT works fine for us.

 

I spoke to a friend of mine Who's a technician at BT. He told me that Virgin Media only run 1 fibre cable from the exchange to green box, that is why speeds are low, while BT uses 2 fibre cables to the green box.