FYI advanced WiFi Router Description

[stevech]

Note:I have no vested interest in or financial ties the vendors mentioned here.

Reason for this posting:
There are affordable WiFi routers products have many advanced features that often asked-for here. However, the forum responses to such treat only consumer products.
This post summarizes one such: Cradlepoint's products.

Pepwave is another vendor with advanced products, some of which are affordable to consumers.
Point is to help people know there are really good and affordable products other than what you see mass marketed.

Cradlepoint sells to SOHO, SMBs, machine-to-machine unattended, etc. Thus, they don't have a high profile in consumer sales. But on this forum, people often ask about features that are uncommon in commodity WiFi products.

Here's a list of most but not all features in Cradlepoint's common to all products firmware - even in the smallest/travel WiFi routers. Again, the common firmware baseline yields stability in small to large products. I've used these on the job and personally. They don't crash/hang. You use what features you need - nice GUI for that.

The smaller routers may not be cost prohibitive for private individuals on the high end, wanting more than consumer gear and DD-WRT offer. I don't have their latest products; I have an MBR900 and a CBR400; many others at work sites.

Pepwave, like Cradlepoint, has advanced features and not sky-high Cisco-like prices. Pepwave is not as cellular-supportive though. Both have products from about $175 to several hundred or more. I found like-new on eBay for well below list prices.

• Dashboard - comprehensive one page overview
• Reboot- option to reboot per schedule
• Status-statistics displays: many kinds: clinets connected, their data stats as tables and as nice graphical time plots
• Graphical plots of wifi and WAN data usage vs. time; also failover stats graphics on which WAN gets how much traffic
• Log display - all events, reconnects, client come/go, firewall exceptions, etc. Log can also go to remote host via SNMP and Syslog RFC protocols

• Common firmware for most all models, long term. Yields stability.
• Usual port forwarding, triggering, etc.
• Ban WAN hosts by IP range, protocol, port
• Dual-WAN - usually ethernet + USB Cellular modem, 2G,3G,LTE
• Failover/fail back on dual WAN (e.g., fail-over to cellular)
• USB Cellular modem can connect via USB hub(s) and be located where signal strength is best
• Can run as cellular-only, no ethernet
• WiFi as WAN - also known as WiFi client bridge + WiFi Access simultaneously
• Fail-over using WiFi as WAN as the backup
• Load balancing on dual WANs with affinity rules (which IP goes on which WAN)
• DHCP server with all details displayed, e.g., lease time
• DNS dynamic or static, In-router list of known hosts' IP (local DNS)
• Status displays include client connection data rate, incoming ]signal strength (rare in routers)
• Ability to kick/ban client by MAC address
• Dual WAN choices: round-robin, limits on total GB per WAN port, others
• VPN pass through, managed
• GRE tunneling
• Client MAC filtering (ACL) and logging of attempts
• Static routes (e.g., inter-LAN)

• VLANs
• Firewall option: extensive: IP pass/reject list, port/portocol pass/reject
• Application Gateway
• DMZ
• Guest WiFi SSID/access controls
• WiFi hotspot, management and redirect, with built-in access Terms/Conditions language (user written)

• QoS and traffic shaping- comprehensive, see: http://knowledgebase.cradlepoint.co...e-WiPipe-QoS-for-Cradlepoint-Series-3-routers

• SYSLOG reporting to distant server
• SNMP reporting
• eMail for reports
• 
  Option for enterprise based management (one place to mange many deployed routers)

• GPS - Cell modems w/GPS- NMEA data is pulled and available via TCP connection and/or pushed to a specific host address/port
• Serial RS232 server: USB-to-serial dongle on USB port or hub connected to router- can be passed to a given host IP. Such as for sensor or M2M device data or some such.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
I wonder typical consumers are able to use them like consumer oriented ones?
They are quite bit more than a PnP device like say ASUS RT-AC68U which can be plugged in out of box, in a few minutes it can go on the air. I wonder how many general consumers have a desire to tackle necessary learning curve to get it's full worth.

 

[stevech]

true. The posting here is for users asking for advanced features that are not usually found in consumer products.
Or for those that often ask for better stability.

 

[Dreamslacker]

By any chance, do they do Access points (or are their routers able to act as one?) since their product pages don't seem to indicate so.

 

[stevech]

By any chance, do they do Access points (or are their routers able to act as one?) since their product pages don't seem to indicate so.

I don't think so.

 

[coxhaus]

By any chance, do they do Access points (or are their routers able to act as one?) since their product pages don't seem to indicate so.

Having multiple AP devices with the smarts to force clients to the strongest signal device would be an excellent feature which I would buy.

 

[canuckle]

Steve, how's the wireless range on the higher end boxes like the MBR1400? Throughput at distance?

 

[Dreamslacker]

Having multiple AP devices with the smarts to force clients to the strongest signal device would be an excellent feature which I would buy.

Yup.. It does look like I'd have to pony up for the UBNT devices to get that.

I was initially considering going for the fruit company but their newer Extreme stations do seem a little weak in the signal strength area. They do come the closest to actually performing seamless roaming in the consumer/ prosumer market though.

 

[tipstir]

I know you like Cradlepoint stuff, but my experience with them wasn't that great and sent back.

Like I said everyone going to have there favorite. I have no ties with TP-LINK nor their Enterprise SMB line-up. I just recommend what I use and have purchased. If I test a company router I will say it. But right now I rather spend the money on something that has 0% issues and can work without fussing with it. Both TL-ER6120 and TL-SG3216 are at 0% issues for 1 year now. Let's see what 2014 brings me.

ESR600H 20% issues so far, not 0% issues but I only use this as main AP. Looking at newer SMB with the same features for a replacement for 2014. I have tested about 20 Android tablets though it plus the other WiFi nodes here.

WiFi degrades, I am more looking for SMB type. SO/HO just can't handle my needs.

You have some very good points Stevech.