About consumer grade routers..

[I love you]

   Skip down to bold text to skip my rant.

I feel so annoyed at this, it feels like no matter how much you pay for a consumer grade router, it will die soon.

I opened up my old router I had to replace 2-3 days ago. (Dlink-dir655) The insides look horrifying. It looks like a 5 year old soldered it. The problem I had with it was that it kept loosing wifi connection. Devices lost connection without a reason. This is a recent problem, and couldnt be helped downgrading, resetting, upgrading firmware etc. Yeah.. lets not even talk about tech support
This isnt the only router I've seen have these kind of problems, I've personally seen Thomson, Asus, Dlink, Technicolor and I've also seen this on switches. But I'll keep it to routers.
They degrade so much quicker than any of my computers. Still its still all electronics. I've thought for a long time about buying a high end router. But at the moment I dont have a job, and no income, and no school.

I needed something new, so I bought a Linksys1900acs. In hope that it is better than all of the other things I've used. The reason I chose this was because of opensource, I've so far not seen the electrical board of one. Praying its better.

Atleast it doesnt look like a toy..

Whats your experience with routers degrading, is there anything you've done to perserve them?
 

[21rkosta]

I always just keep a spare cheap router (i think it costed 20 bucks) to use if my main router breaks, after my main router breaks i plug in the cheap spare one i have lying around and go on amazon and order a new router 

[Dark]

For just a little more than what you paid for the linksys you could've picked up a Ubiquiti USG and UAP-PRO AC.  Far better, entry level enterprise hardware.

 

Consumer grade routers are just that, consumer grade.

[mrchow19910319]

Linksys1900acs is a great router.

It has a lot of praise.

 

I used to own 2 routers, one is a cheap D link router. The other one is TP-Link.

I am now using Apple's airport extreme. 

If you worried about customer service, you can always try that. 

But right now I think there is no need. Cos that 1900AC you are having is/was one of the best routers on the market.

[Stefan1024]

The low noise RF stuff is just way more sensitive to degradation compared to a simple series of switches (like your CPU).

That said, with proper cooling, good engineering and not cheaping out on components, whey can run for 10+ years without a problem.

 

I suggest you don't buy a very high bandwith router. They have multiple radios and therefor need to cheap out on the components to keep the BOM cost down. So it won^t last very long. And you don't need such high bandwith anyway.

[Guest]

I've had several MODEMS with and without wifi. With my single-last router, the Wifi also broke. Plugged in my LAN cable, and worked fine for years.

 

Currently, my paranoia gets keeping worse and worse, so I have disabled all kinds of wifi and even removed the antennas. Me internet is really stable this way, with ISP supplyed hardware modem.

[mrchow19910319]

36 minutes ago, Stefan1024 said:

The low noise RF stuff is just way more sensitive to degradation compared to a simple series of switches (like your CPU).

That said, with proper cooling, good engineering and not cheaping out on components, whey can run for 10+ years without a problem.

 

I suggest you don't buy a very high bandwith router. They have multiple radios and therefor need to cheap out on the components to keep the BOM cost down. So it won^t last very long. And you don't need such high bandwith anyway.

Could you recommend some models???

[Stefan1024]

2 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Could you recommend some models???

I used the router provided by the ISP and a D-Link DAP-2695 as access point as I needed a fast 3x3 link to my NAS. It has been running fine the last 12 month, but that's not long enougth so really test it. But PoE is a nice feature (it even shipps with the power injector).

As I moved, I switched to Huawei B315 (only in operation the last 2 weeks).

 

[JefferyD90]

1 hour ago, I love you said:

   Skip down to bold text to skip my rant.

I feel so annoyed at this, it feels like no matter how much you pay for a consumer grade router, it will die soon.

I opened up my old router I had to replace 2-3 days ago. (Dlink-dir655) The insides look horrifying. It looks like a 5 year old soldered it. The problem I had with it was that it kept loosing wifi connection. Devices lost connection without a reason. This is a recent problem, and couldnt be helped downgrading, resetting, upgrading firmware etc. Yeah.. lets not even talk about tech support
This isnt the only router I've seen have these kind of problems, I've personally seen Thomson, Asus, Dlink, Technicolor and I've also seen this on switches. But I'll keep it to routers.
They degrade so much quicker than any of my computers. Still its still all electronics. I've thought for a long time about buying a high end router. But at the moment I dont have a job, and no income, and no school.

I needed something new, so I bought a Linksys1900acs. In hope that it is better than all of the other things I've used. The reason I chose this was because of opensource, I've so far not seen the electrical board of one. Praying its better.

Atleast it doesnt look like a toy..

Whats your experience with routers degrading, is there anything you've done to perserve them?
 

I've been using ASUS routers for the better part of 10 years now.  I've only had 2, and I only upgraded because of features.

[JefferyD90]

1 hour ago, I love you said:

   Skip down to bold text to skip my rant.

I feel so annoyed at this, it feels like no matter how much you pay for a consumer grade router, it will die soon.

I opened up my old router I had to replace 2-3 days ago. (Dlink-dir655) The insides look horrifying. It looks like a 5 year old soldered it. The problem I had with it was that it kept loosing wifi connection. Devices lost connection without a reason. This is a recent problem, and couldnt be helped downgrading, resetting, upgrading firmware etc. Yeah.. lets not even talk about tech support
This isnt the only router I've seen have these kind of problems, I've personally seen Thomson, Asus, Dlink, Technicolor and I've also seen this on switches. But I'll keep it to routers.
They degrade so much quicker than any of my computers. Still its still all electronics. I've thought for a long time about buying a high end router. But at the moment I dont have a job, and no income, and no school.

I needed something new, so I bought a Linksys1900acs. In hope that it is better than all of the other things I've used. The reason I chose this was because of opensource, I've so far not seen the electrical board of one. Praying its better.

Atleast it doesnt look like a toy..

Whats your experience with routers degrading, is there anything you've done to perserve them?
 

The question isn't what brand or "grade" your networking equipment, but rather what CLASS is your networking equipment.  Take these two products for example:

 

Router #1: http://www.tp-link.us/products/details/cat-5506_Archer-C7.html

Router #2: http://www.tp-link.us/products/details/cat-5506_Archer-C8.html

 

These are both made by the same manufacture.  They are both "consumer grade".  They're both current models being manufactured and supported equally.  And they both offer, almost, the exact same feature set.

 

So what is the difference between the two?  To the naked eye: color, price, ... ... and that's really it.

 

So surly the white color doesn't justify a $20 price difference?  No, it doesn't.  If you scroll down the #2 page, you'll see where they show a picture of the insides of the router, touting a better build quality.

 

The point I'm trying to make here is that the attitude you see of the normal "enthusiast" of "Just buy the cheapest one that performs at 'xxx' level", is a awful attitude to have, because there is SO much more to it.  Just like how we're starting to view power supplies, where we look at all of the things that aren't on the stat sheet, the numbers aren't good indicator of build quality.

 

Now, I'm not trying to say "spend more money" I'm just saying "buy a product that fits your needs".  Router #1 above, would be amazing for a mom, dad, and a child where the most intensive thing they do is browse facebook.  But, it wouldn't be a great router for a high end gamer.  You'd be better off getting a higher end router, even if its not Wireless AC and gigabit, simply because it will do a better job.

[I love you]

1 hour ago, JefferyD90 said:

The question isn't what brand or "grade" your networking equipment, but rather what CLASS is your networking equipment.  Take these two products for example:

 

Router #1: http://www.tp-link.us/products/details/cat-5506_Archer-C7.html

Router #2: http://www.tp-link.us/products/details/cat-5506_Archer-C8.html

 

These are both made by the same manufacture.  They are both "consumer grade".  They're both current models being manufactured and supported equally.  And they both offer, almost, the exact same feature set.

 

So what is the difference between the two?  To the naked eye: color, price, ... ... and that's really it.

 

So surly the white color doesn't justify a $20 price difference?  No, it doesn't.  If you scroll down the #2 page, you'll see where they show a picture of the insides of the router, touting a better build quality.

 

The point I'm trying to make here is that the attitude you see of the normal "enthusiast" of "Just buy the cheapest one that performs at 'xxx' level", is a awful attitude to have, because there is SO much more to it.  Just like how we're starting to view power supplies, where we look at all of the things that aren't on the stat sheet, the numbers aren't good indicator of build quality.

 

Now, I'm not trying to say "spend more money" I'm just saying "buy a product that fits your needs".  Router #1 above, would be amazing for a mom, dad, and a child where the most intensive thing they do is browse facebook.  But, it wouldn't be a great router for a high end gamer.  You'd be better off getting a higher end router, even if its not Wireless AC and gigabit, simply because it will do a better job.

Thanks for giving me more insight on the topic. Never thought of it like this.

[ultimatemythbuster]

If only Cisco enterprise grade equipment wasn't so expensive.  Of course, how many people would know how to use IOS?