What router for small home office?

[Georgios Petasis]

Hi all,

I want to replace my wireless router, and any advice would have been helpful. I have a small office at home, and in general there are many devices (~20). I have been using for many years draytek routers. They are great, but they have a tendency to break after 4 years (two out of two).
Then I tried a tplink one, it didn't work as expected (I was not able to access home servers from home by using the dyndns address).

Now I am using an asus BRT828. The firmware is not good (the router becomes dead after a reboot).

I am thinking of a tplink AX6000. I like the software (they have a demo in their site), but its 350+ euros.
Features that I need:
1) Stability
2) High wired speed in my wired network.
3) Control in connected devices (mac address filtering) - draytek had this also for wired connections.
4) Many places for "static ips" based on mac.
5) I would like 8 Gigabit ports (or even better, above 1Gbit).
6) VPN (both client & server) (not many)
7) Dyndns
8) Nice looking UI, with many features.

And of course, warranty. This means no ASUS...

 

[degrub]

Is Cisco Small Business available ?
RV340 or newer might be a reasonable fit.
You can also get around the port issue ( and offload the router somewhat ) by using an 8 port switch.
Look at Coxhaus's threads under /Lan and Wan subforum

 

[coxhaus]

A small home office sounds like 2 networks. One network is the office and the other is the home network. If you want to separate the 2 networks then use my example for a guest network on a Cisco L3 switch and call it a office network. If you need a guest network then add another guest network. It should be simple.

 

[Trip]

I'd run discrete components for this; at the very least, a wired router and a controller-based access point (Omada, UniFi, Cisco WAP, etc.). Run as much Cat6 as possible, and if you end up with more ports than the router can support, add in a layer 2 or 3 switch. If you need more wireless coverage, add APs.

Gateway/Router - If you need point-and-click, you might consider a Cisco RV340 or a DrayTek. For a more open-standards approach, a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter 4 is a decent value. If you want to route even faster, I'd recommend a whatever distro you like on top of an Intel x86 embedded appliance or small PC with a NIC card.

Switching - If the router's integrated L2 ports are enough, no switch needed. If you need more ports, or just want the extra control over your access layer and L2 is enough, run Ubiquiti UniFi switches if you choose UniFi for wireless. Otherwise, Cisco SG250 for L2 or SG350 for L3.

Wireless - TP-Link Omada is the cheapest way to get decent wifi that's scalable. Otherwise, UniFi is excellent if you're thinking of using their switches. Else, there's also Cisco WAP which integrates fairly well with SG switches and the RV gateways. And entry-level enterprise products like Aruba Instant On.

 

[Georgios Petasis]

Is Cisco Small Business available ?
RV340 or newer might be a reasonable fit.
You can also get around the port issue ( and offload the router somewhat ) by using an 8 port switch.
Look at Coxhaus's threads under /Lan and Wan subforum

It is available, but from small shops (were warranty is in danger). To say the truth, I am in favour of a single device doing it all (wifi + routing), as it is easier to be supported when there is a power failure. Ok, not a very frequent scenario, but it happens once every two months for various reasons.

Also I am not using two LANs, both office machines + home machines on the same LAN.

 

[Georgios Petasis]

A small home office sounds like 2 networks. One network is the office and the other is the home network. If you want to separate the 2 networks then use my example for a guest network on a Cisco L3 switch and call it a office network. If you need a guest network then add another guest network. It should be simple.

For the time being everything is on a single LAN. Not a big office, I am a free-lancer mainly.

 

[Georgios Petasis]

Hi all,

Finally I bought RT-AX88U (well the old router stopped working completely, and I bought the best I could find in the shops nearby...).
I am having it for a month now, but there is something I don't like: I observe low speeds with the wired connection.
The RT-AX88U connects to the modem, and in ports 1 & 2 I have connected two switches (cheap ones from dlink). One these switches I have various pcs. When I transfer files between pcs on the same switch, everything is fine (with transfer rates ~104 MB/s). But when transferring trough the router (from a pc in switch A to a pc in switch B) everything is very slow (like below 1 MB/s). Once (only once) I have seen something like ~94MB/s, just after I replaced switch B with a brand new one. What can be the problem, and how to detect it?

Searching in the forums I found an answer for activating NAT acceleration, but I don't see such an option in the router.

 

[Georgios Petasis]

I think I have found the problem: In "Advanced Settings" -> "LAN", there is a tab named "IPTV". There the last option says "IGMP default version", which defaults to "3". Changing this to 2 (applying the setting AND rebooting the router) seems to fix the problem. Now transfers are above 110 MB/s.