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Comment by notyourday | Hacker News Reader

I know I'm a strange fellow, but I am having a hard time to understand why consumer grade routers are such garbage.

I have been using 2x wall-mounted industrial mini PCs running Debian to cover 2400 sq two story house. They just work. They have no software that is tricky or unknown. Hell, the one that has a cross connect to the cable modem even run a firewall. Speeds blow consumer routers out of the water. I even have a guest network so the visitors can access internet and not see anything else they are not supposed to have access to. Cost? $300 for both.

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You can buy these things for $15. How much rigorous design, care, and quality testing do you think they get? To these companies, “software” is just a line on the BOM, like a screw or plastic piece. It’s something you source as cheaply as possible and pour into the product as the last step in the assembly line.

It’s amazing that these devices even work.

True.

But you can get Mikrotik routers for about $50, which are great. Also you can choose to have a dedicated router with no wireless, and have a dumb access point dealing with the wireless part. However, ordinary consumers won't bother.

> I know I'm a strange fellow, but I am having a hard time to understand why consumer grade routers are such garbage.

i work at a contract engineering firm which employs a lot of folks who've stuffed linux into embedded products (frequently ones expensive enough that if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it), though not afaik any routers.

in general:

this kind of work is done by firmware engineers who were hired because they had "linux" on their resume. they have no networking experience, and know less about security. to the extent that the project manager is aware that security is a thing, they assume any "technical" person is as good as any other on the subject. how the devices will be kept up to date is not discussed until right before the software is delivered (if ever).

>I have been using 2x wall-mounted industrial mini PCs

Can you share the manufacturer/model # of the devices you are using?

My current favorite is ZCY (X30 and X32). They are basically Intel BayTrails. You just need to remember that BayTrails have this funny feature where they would not boot off the GPT partition, so you need to make sure your boot devices are MBRs.

Just got another X32 for a different project. I replace broadcoms with Atheros and use little VESA mounts mounts from Ebay that I drill into a dry wall by the ceiling. After that mounting them on a wall is no different than attaching them to the backs of the monitors.

I recommend AliExpress as the source for the systems themselves ( blows ebay out of the water ). Strangely, mounts are cheaper on Ebay.

You don't happen to have a writeup about your hardware selection and how you configured these do you? I've been thinking of going this way in a new house.

I followed the Ars guide to building a linux router from scratch and adjusted to fit my network needs:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/the-ars-guide-to-bui...

I have a pile of notes that I was planning on organizing and publishing over next week or so. I will get back to this thread or submit it when it is done.

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