Review Suggestion and Standing Topics

[hedly]

I consider SNB to be THEE place to go for networking help. Every so often when I do a search for help I come across other sites, but nothing is quite as comprehensive at SNB. @thiggins, I've been reading your articles since you were a writer at Tom's and gladly followed you over.

Anyway, here are my 2 suggestions
1) More wired router reviewed. Recently I was considering upgrading my router (which has wifi built in) and was looking at the microtik and edgerouters. There are some articles out there (including some here), but I found that extensive information about their performance is lacking (compared to wifi routers). There's some here, but I think most people go right to the manufacturer's forums for specific info (especially setup). But there's not much about their performance; and Ubiquiti just released some new hardware and there's even less info/reviews about them.
- Aside from those two, what about other wired routers? Folks here recommend other brands but there's little about them here.
- Additionally, the microtik and edgerouters are kind of niche hardware...focused on folks that are pros or have the time on their hands to program them to do what they want/need (this is similar to pfsense, etc.). But what about those of us who know the basics but don't have the time or desire to roll their own router. Those of us who have some wired computers, maybe a NAS or windows file server, with some tablets/phones, and then share media throughout the house. And they've got a setup that precludes them from putting the router at the center of the house, so they don't want to spend the money on a high-end wifi router where the wifi portion is useless. So more wired router review would be helpful; especially those that work out of the box like all those consumer wifi routers you review.

2) How about some rudimentary networking basics articles. They could be based on the device

• How does a router work?
  
• How does a switch work and how do they interact with routers?
  
• Why use VLANs?
• What are the different switch management Levels and when should you use them?
  
• When do you need to upgrade components on your network (due to the number of devices on the network and/or upgrading network speed)?
• Common security settings and best practices for setting up your wifi system.
• VPN stuff (there's always questions here about setting up VPN's)
• Network setup and analysis tools (both software and hardware)
  
• etc.

or based on skill level

• Networking 101
  
• Networking 202
• etc

For instance, when I was trying to figure out an issue with my network, I was wondering how a router works. I know the basics, but I couldn't figure out why videos were hanging when I changed my network configuration. I began to wonder if all traffic on the network had to go through the router or if once IP addresses are assigned by the router if the various computers ever talk to the router again (i.e. assuming that there's a switch behind the router). I never ended up asking the question here because I ended up just changing the network configuration. but it made me realize that a library of some sort on this site would be helpful. Kind of a wiki-network-apedia (ohhh, can that be trademarked?). I'm sure there's plenty of users here that could provide topics and could even help write the articles. And I think there's plenty of novices/semi-skilled folks that would find it useful.

Anyway, thanks for your time and all your hard work. Sorry for the long winded article.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for your suggestions, hedly and for being a long time reader. Unfortunately, I’m going to disappoint you. I simply don’t have the time or resources to review products that don’t have wide appeal beyond the hard-core networking readers that make up only a part of the SNB audience. More readers are interested in draft 802.11ax routers, which are requiring a major revamp of my test process. This is taking up a majority of my time.

As for networking primers, there are many sites and YouTube channels that already cover that ground. A DuckDuckGo search will take you to them.

The other factor is the sharp reduction in advertising revenue. This has caused me to take on other work, which has reduced my time available for SmallNetBuilder.

Again, sorry that I don’t have better news for you.

 

[hedly]

Tim, thank you for taking the time to reply. It was only a suggestion. I understand the need for high ROI and time and such and there's absolutely no hard feelings.

All the best,