Hacker News Reader

Comment by matthewmacleod | Hacker News Reader

That's annoying. Airport routers have been the only ones I've bought that don't randomly quit working or require periodic restarts.

Time to look at something like Ubiquiti I guess.

View on HN

I also highly recommend the ASUS routers. They cost more but if you need stronger signal these things are rock solid. I haven't had to restart it in over 3 years.

Consider Asus + tomato[1].

I setup one years ago with the Asus RT-N16 and haven't looked back since. Makes things like QoS a breeze. Yes, it's somewhat of a pain to setup, but once that's done you have a superb, reliable hardware+ software combination that will perform reliably for years. You can dig into more advanced customisations quite easily afterwards if you like, such as VPN client at the router level.

[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-everyone-still-needs-a...

Ubiquiti routers are really great. I highly recommend them; I've never had to restart one.

I agree 100%, but they don't have an AP + CloudKey + Security Gateway in one unit. That is what many people effectively want for home use.

Well, it's not at all equivalent to an AP, Cloudkey and SG, but they DO have a consumer product: https://amplifi.com/

Unfortunately details are sparse on their incredibly annoying, scroll-hijacking marketing site. But it seems to be a simple enough, plug-and-play mesh network setup, and the industrial design is quite nice. I think Ubnt just doesn't have the marketing machine needed to really push it in the consumer space.

I bought an Amplifi with high expectations, and my expectations were exceeded. The router is great, but my favorite part is the included smartphone app. It makes diagnosing network problems, enabling guest networks, figuring out who's using all the bandwidth a cinch.

As I write this, I realize it sounds like an ad, so for clarity: I'm in no way affiliated with Ubiquiti - just a satisfied customer.

Super happy to hear that. I've been thinking of getting one for my parents since their house is quite large. What kind of sqft are you covering?

FWIW, I believe in the newer versions of the firmware and mobile apps, you can provision and configure the APs directly from your phone. The need for a controller was a major limitation in recommending the gear to other people, but the new iOS/Android apps can basically manage a small fleet of APs with nothing else than a few clicks in an app.

Of course, this requires a recent enough firmware version on the AP itself to support that feature, which, when I first tried it, I conveniently did not have, meaning I had to install the controller to upgrade everything anyway...

My lesson for that one is, uh, don't buy the older gear from resellers. Buy the new models from Unifi or Amazon directly.

Asus makes really good routers. You don't even need to root them to get the most out of them, as most come with Telnet/SSH support out of the box.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com