Klueless
Very Senior Member
Buying a home router was a crap shoot until SNB came to the rescue. Performance? Wireless ranges? Check out the Tim Higgins Reviews! What is the "User Interface" like? Check out the “sticky” under the “Wireless Buying Advice” forum.
Router reliability is still a bit of a crap shoot. I’ve yet to see anything like the “Consumer Reports” reliability rankings for cars. You simply do the best you can with what you read and hear. One thing I have noticed is the router reviews under the “buy new” sites are much better than reviews for the same routers on the “refurbished” sites which – strongly suggests – buy new!
I’ve also noticed we spend a lot of time talking about fixing things after they break but not so much about fixing things before they break.
For example I love the Asus built-in "Traffic Monitor". It gives you a nice 24 hour area chart and a ten minute real-time chart. They display traffic by WAN and LAN (Ethernet and each radio band). You can quickly get an idea if 2.4 GHz is congested, if the WAN is congested, etc.
3rd party firmware for Asus (known as “Merlin”) takes traffic monitor a step further and displays traffic by device making it easier to identify a “bad actor”. (Towards that I rename devices to something that makes more sense. Rather than three “iPhones” we have Andys iPhone, Kellys iPhone, etc.)
If the Internet is “burpy” you’re likely to call your ISP (Internet Service Provider). As likely as not they might tell you the problem is on your end or that you need to buy more bandwidth. If your traffic monitor is showing very little traffic you might begin to second guess them. On the flip side your traffic monitor might offer some indication that there could be a problem on your end.
Another unique thing about Asus is all the SSIDs they offer – up to Eight SSIDs. Some devices can be kind of flighty when choosing and/or releasing a connection so I usually set up a SSID for each band (2.4 and 5 GHz) such that users have the option of forcing a “best fit”. I then set up a third SSID that covers both bands for family (at work I call it BYOD – Bring Your Own Device – for employees who bring their own equipment to work … for work). I then set up a fourth SSID for guests. When things go to hell and I don’t have time to troubleshoot I can simply shut off “Guest” (and then “BYOD”) hoping things get better without negatively impacting core services and users.
Using a combination of Asus and other sundry tools I can Plan for Failure before failure.
Happy networking everyone!
Router reliability is still a bit of a crap shoot. I’ve yet to see anything like the “Consumer Reports” reliability rankings for cars. You simply do the best you can with what you read and hear. One thing I have noticed is the router reviews under the “buy new” sites are much better than reviews for the same routers on the “refurbished” sites which – strongly suggests – buy new!
I’ve also noticed we spend a lot of time talking about fixing things after they break but not so much about fixing things before they break.
For example I love the Asus built-in "Traffic Monitor". It gives you a nice 24 hour area chart and a ten minute real-time chart. They display traffic by WAN and LAN (Ethernet and each radio band). You can quickly get an idea if 2.4 GHz is congested, if the WAN is congested, etc.
3rd party firmware for Asus (known as “Merlin”) takes traffic monitor a step further and displays traffic by device making it easier to identify a “bad actor”. (Towards that I rename devices to something that makes more sense. Rather than three “iPhones” we have Andys iPhone, Kellys iPhone, etc.)
If the Internet is “burpy” you’re likely to call your ISP (Internet Service Provider). As likely as not they might tell you the problem is on your end or that you need to buy more bandwidth. If your traffic monitor is showing very little traffic you might begin to second guess them. On the flip side your traffic monitor might offer some indication that there could be a problem on your end.
Another unique thing about Asus is all the SSIDs they offer – up to Eight SSIDs. Some devices can be kind of flighty when choosing and/or releasing a connection so I usually set up a SSID for each band (2.4 and 5 GHz) such that users have the option of forcing a “best fit”. I then set up a third SSID that covers both bands for family (at work I call it BYOD – Bring Your Own Device – for employees who bring their own equipment to work … for work). I then set up a fourth SSID for guests. When things go to hell and I don’t have time to troubleshoot I can simply shut off “Guest” (and then “BYOD”) hoping things get better without negatively impacting core services and users.
Using a combination of Asus and other sundry tools I can Plan for Failure before failure.
- WiFi Analyzers give me an idea where to place my equipment. They also help me choose the less contested channels to set my equipment to.
- The Asus Traffic Monitor gives me a “heads-up” on emerging traffic issues.
- Asus QoS (Quality of Service) allows you to prioritize your stuff over the kids' stuff or work over play. It's how I get to browse the Internet while everyone is streaming TV or playing games.
- "Bandwidth Limiters" are where you lie to your router and tell it its uplink and downlink are smaller than they really are. If someone or something is sucking up all the bandwidth then this gives your router a little "wiggle room" such that it can promote better sharing of resources. (Used in conjunction with QoS.)
- Internet Speed Tests give me an idea if I’m getting what I’m paying for. A sudden drop may call my attention to emerging problems. "Traffic Monitor" helps me verify that I'm running my Internet Speed Test over an otherwise quiescent network.
- “Ping Plotter” is an automated “Trace Route” charting package. It can alert me to failing devices (e.g., routers) both on my LAN and on the Internet.
- Local (LAN) Speed Tests show how well things are running on my local area network and how close I come to decent performance. By maintaining benchmarks I can quickly tell what’s beginning to fail.
Happy networking everyone!
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