Is this a special router or what.

[Lola]

I found this while looking on the Internet (Ubiquiti). It says these are routers, but no Wi Fi. Can someone explain? Do they connect to things like the TV, can they be used like a gateway to the internet and for downloading movies, just no wi fi ?

https://www.ubnt.com/products/

 

[System Error Message]

ubiquiti doesnt do all in ones like consumer routers. They are just one of the non consumer manufacturers.

http://routerboard.com/CCR1036-8G-2Splus This router is a lot more special and routerboards have some routers with mini PCIe so you can upgrade or have as many radios as there are PCIe slots. You could make a discount AC5300 but with 3 5Ghz radios instead.

While mikrotik has some all in ones the main strength of these routers are the hardware and firmware which are much better than even asus when it comes to being a router. Mikrotik does it as well as cisco for being a router. They lack features like printer sharing, torrent clients, etc.

Dont believe the throughputs on the websites, those throughputs apply if you use the router as a layer 3 switch. For NAT performance for mikrotik i usually take the lowest 1500byte performance.

 

[sfx2000]

The All-in-One Router/AP's - on the higher end, can reach some decent performance with a few clients on the back end - they do tend to use some, for lack of a better word, interesting methods to get there.

When you take a step up into the next tier of Routers (e.g. purpose specific), they have a different perspective, and many like the MicroTik's (some of them), the Ubiquity EdgeRouters, pfSense boxes (both Branded and DIY) - they can hit wire speeds even with NAT/SPI in place - and then it's down to resources on the compute and memory side with the number of users behind it.

They do tend to be very focused - routing and firewalls, and they don't do, like SEM mentions, file sharing, DLNA, torrents, print servers etc... and they generally don't include WiFi - They might have more business focused tools like proxy servers (e.g. Squid or similar), UTM's like Snort (or others), and VPN solutions that generally outperform and are more stable than consumer oriented all-in-one's (some do, some don't).

They tend to not be all touchy/feely with a user friendly UI, they assume that you are skilled in the arts of networking... they might have some wizards to guide a user, but there's quite a few knobs/levers that can get one into trouble if they are unaware of what those things do...

That being said - in the right hands, they're very useful tools - and surprisingly affordable sometimes...

 

[sirbrent]

When you buy a consumer router everything is integrated into one package (router, ethernet swtich, wireless access point, etc.). This makes it really straightforward for a consumer because its an all-in-one device for setups that don't need many frills.

There is a HUGE draw back to consumer routers where a minor glitch in any one of the components causes the entire device to have a melt-down. This can be seen with dropped wireless connections, dropped internet connectivity, connection slow-downs, etc.... all leading to the inevitable need to reboot of the router.

I became so sick and tired of this problem with consumer routers after having many high-end routers all give me problems. After some research I decided to invest in some enterprise-level equipment. I bought the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter-X and two Ubiquiti AC Access Points. They are super reliable and in reality entire cost was only a little bit more than todays high-end consumer routers (e.g. Netgear R7000 and Linksys WRT1900AC).

My new equipment is so much more reliable and solid. There is a learning curve though with initial configuration as it is far more involved then with a consumer router. Still, it was doable and I enjoyed learning and researching. Now that it is configured it is pretty much set it and forget it. I love the flexibility of the new hardware and it performs better than any consumer router I have ever had before.

 

[sfx2000]

When you buy a consumer router everything is integrated into one package (router, ethernet swtich, wireless access point, etc.). This makes it really straightforward for a consumer because its an all-in-one device for setups that don't need many frills.

Depends on what one considers "frills" - marketing has convinced the consumer realm that they "need" OpenVPN, Download Manager, USB File/Printer Sharing, and two 5GHz AP's inside a box full of antennas - and $120 dollars worth of parts* in a $400 bucket that looks like a teenager's ideal Republic of Gamers solution - hence bigger numbers are better, eh? More Antennas, bigger numbers... pay the cash... and hope/pray that a dedicated 3rd party developer actually delivers a working solution...

WTFast? yeah, right...

(* yes, I've done the breakdown on the bill-of-materials, and some would suggest that's not fair, but I'll counter with the software was basically baked in already)

So I'll stop here before I get into trouble again... but when one really looks at the numbers - there are some good solutions out there, and most of them are not related to really big numbers...

 

[sfx2000]

FWIW - I very much appreciate the contributions of dedicated people like @RMerlin, @john9527 - they've taken on the task of cleaning up the Augean stables that constitute a code base that is increasingly brittle and old - the DNA of that code goes all the way back to the WRT54G release of GPL code - and through many other hands as well... and dealing with recent issues - these guys rock, IMHO...

(now if we could get some better efforts/sharing from a certain other 3rd party - but we won't mention that person, but if he were to share, the entire community would benefit)

If it wasn't for their efforts - the AsusWRT community likely would not exist - so if one is looking for an all-in-one solution, consider their efforts with Asus, and make the appropriate choices...