Tired of Consumer Gear, but where do I start?

[SickOfResetting]

Basically I'm sick of consumer-grade gear, and want to move to something else. looking at pfsense, ubnt edgerouter, etc. but I don't have any idea where to begin. Can anyone help steer me in the right direction? Thanks.

 

[abailey]

What all do you need your router to do? Are you technical in nature? How much time are you willing to put into learning a router interface?

 

[System Error Message]

im surprised you said ubnt edgerouter, its a worse deal speed to feature wise as their speed rating only applies to consumer related features. mikrotik is the better alternative.

Take a look at x86, stuff like pfsense or a linux server as a gateway
mikrotik
pro cisco
juniper
fully, not semi managed switches

 

[abailey]

im surprised you said ubnt edgerouter, its a worse deal speed to feature wise as their speed rating only applies to consumer related features. mikrotik is the better alternative.

How can you say Mikrotik is the better alternative when you don't even know what the OP wants out of a router or what speed internet connection he has? To be honest, out of all of the pro and prosumer routers I have worked with over the years, Mikrotik would be one of my last choices. It is not easy to set up correctly and documentation is horrible. For some people Mikrotik might be great, but to suggest a piece of equipment before you know the requirements and the environment is , well...........

 

[Mokers]

Yes it would be helpful to know what about consumer gear is frustrating. Plus your budget of course

 

[Deepcuts]

How can you say Mikrotik is the better alternative when you don't even know what the OP wants out of a router or what speed internet connection he has? To be honest, out of all of the pro and prosumer routers I have worked with over the years, Mikrotik would be one of my last choices. It is not easy to set up correctly and documentation is horrible. For some people Mikrotik might be great, but to suggest a piece of equipment before you know the requirements and the environment is , well...........

I take it you are a ubnt fan?
And yes, System Error Message is on point. mikrotik is the better alternative given that Basically I'm sick of consumer-grade gear

 

[System Error Message]

How can you say Mikrotik is the better alternative when you don't even know what the OP wants out of a router or what speed internet connection he has? To be honest, out of all of the pro and prosumer routers I have worked with over the years, Mikrotik would be one of my last choices. It is not easy to set up correctly and documentation is horrible. For some people Mikrotik might be great, but to suggest a piece of equipment before you know the requirements and the environment is , well...........

who buys a router for the speed and features when you find out you can only have one or the other?

Besides mikrotik is cheaper both for speed and features.

 

[Klueless]

Basically I'm sick of consumer-grade gear, and want to move to something else. looking at pfsense, ubnt edgerouter, etc. but I don't have any idea where to begin.

I'd start with a list of what you need, want and where consumer grade routers come up short. In a nutshell everything that frustrates you with consumer grade.

Where I work part time we were having more than a couple of problems. Met with a couple of consultants. They used big words, ridiculed consumer grade and threw around the names of a few professional grade products. What I heard was a lifetime dependency (money) on these guys and their skills.

So I designed a methodology, made a list of my needs, wants and started matching them against a series of consumer grades. One popped, bought it and implemented my strategy. Immediately surfaced a couple local problems, which we fixed, but more importantly we surfaced a problem with our ISP. Collected and presented our evidence to our ISP, even told them which router to look at. They promptly fixed it and we've been problem free for over two years now.

Not saying professional grade isn't the solution for you, just make sure whatever you pick fixes what's broke.

 

[MichaelCG]

How can you say Mikrotik is the better alternative when you don't even know what the OP wants out of a router or what speed internet connection he has? To be honest, out of all of the pro and prosumer routers I have worked with over the years, Mikrotik would be one of my last choices. It is not easy to set up correctly and documentation is horrible. For some people Mikrotik might be great, but to suggest a piece of equipment before you know the requirements and the environment is , well...........

Guess you missed the part where he listed multiple other vendors besides just Mikrotik?

I'm with the others here...you need to define what issue you are really trying to solve and what features you feel you need. There are trade-offs to every single vendor/solution out there be it price, performance, and/or complexity. Each of us probably has their preferred vendor for one reason or another, but without having more background on your needs, skills, and budgets....we will just all be pushing random crap.

My vote? Well if you don't like consumer stuff, then go big. I'm sure some Checkpoint or Cisco gear will be non-consumer grade....as will the price tag for the device along with support/maintenance costs...and still may not meet your needs.

When friends ask me what they should use for their house, this is where I start:
1.) Why are you asking?
- Do you have a current issue?
- Is there a performance problem?
- Or are you starting from scratch?

2.) What is your budget?

3.) What are you trying to accomplish?

4.) What is your technical/skill level to maintain the device?
- low - Push to Asus gear (I just know what it looks like and how to maintain it over the phone if needed)
- high - Push to x86 pfSense (I also know what it looks like and can maintain over phone if needed)

My non-technical family members....they all have Asus routers if they expect me to assist them in any manner. Those that don't want to spend, just keep using the ISP provided routers and I tell them to call the 800 number for support. Even my in-laws who I generally handle all IT duties for are using a hand me down RT-N66U for their router since it is generally rock solid for their basic use case. RT-N66U for routing duties and UBNT UAP-AC-LR for WiFi...both of which I can easily remotely support when needed.

 

[abailey]

Wow, I'm surprised by some of the responses here. I guess I have been doing it all wrong. Personally I don't recommend anything until after I hear what the user requirements are. I'm not sure how you would know what to recommend.

As far as Mikrotik goes I'm not saying it is not more capable or even cheaper than UBNT. But that is not the whole story. If you don't have the technical ability to configure it, then it does you no good. This is one of the major reasons Mikrotik is not much bigger than it is. Personally I am not a fan of UBNT or Mikrotik but I would recommend them to some people depending on a persons needs and technical ability.

 

[System Error Message]

personally i'd recommend pfsense for beginners.

 

[desperado836]

personally i'd recommend pfsense for beginners.

works for me, and I am a total gooberhead to begin with until I can figure out where to go from there if need be...

 

[RMerlin]

Configure a VM, and start by experimenting with the open source solutions.

 

[Cake]

Qotom-Q190G4-S01 plus a AP of your choosing. Put OpnSense on it, and spend a week learning it. Then configure and you will not need to tinker with it again until OpnSense has a major update. I only mention OpnSense because they include stuff that pfsense doesn't. Plus pfsense wants everyone to have a cpu with AES helpers. Rant: There is no mandatory trend micro with either pfsense or opnsense.

 

[coxhaus]

To me a consumer router is something programed for people to use to have an instant network. Pretty much it works and is not very flexible. It has features. It is built at a low price point.

As you move up the scale and out of the consumer line the devices add more abilities but more programing or setup. This makes them more flexible and more capable.

Another thing which is going on is the quality of the equipment and the capabilities. Reliability goes up as you move into higher level gear. The price goes up with these features.

What I am seeing which is pushing people out of consumer gear is once you want distributed WIFI across multiple devices and multiple VLANs you are getting out of consumer gear. The are many people finding where 1 WIFI spot will not cover your house or application. People are becoming more network savvy and are requiring more networking over just a plain single class C network.

Just remember there is no one right way for networking. Everybody has the favorite equipment. I like the small business Cisco gear since I worked on the Pro Cisco gear for many years. My most important requirement for a network is to be reliable. I do not want to have any problems unless power is out. So I don't use any equipment unless it will run nonstop without problems otherwise the equipment is gone.

 

[System Error Message]

To me a consumer router is something programed for people to use to have an instant network. Pretty much it works and is not very flexible. It has features. It is built at a low price point.

As you move up the scale and out of the consumer line the devices add more abilities but more programing or setup. This makes them more flexible and more capable.

Another thing which is going on is the quality of the equipment and the capabilities. Reliability goes up as you move into higher level gear. The price goes up with these features.

What I am seeing which is pushing people out of consumer gear is once you want distributed WIFI across multiple devices and multiple VLANs you are getting out of consumer gear. The are many people finding where 1 WIFI spot will not cover your house or application. People are becoming more network savvy and are requiring more networking over just a plain single class C network.

Just remember there is no one right way for networking. Everybody has the favorite equipment. I like the small business Cisco gear since I worked on the Pro Cisco gear for many years. My most important requirement for a network is to be reliable. I do not want to have any problems unless power is out. So I don't use any equipment unless it will run nonstop without problems otherwise the equipment is gone.

both ubiquiti and mikrotik have very very cheap routers that are even cheaper than consumer yet more reliable with the same features as the high end. Even more, you could recycle any PC to use as a router and have a good router totally free. So i dont think price is the defining factor. The hardware and software are the defining factor. ASUS spends money to style their routers and charge you more, netgear charges more than asus for no reason. non consumer dont care about looks, just a simple box with stuff in it that runs their software.