Just another thought. I use PFsense (which uses FreeBSD) on a small micro-atx board, a 4 port 1GB pcie NIC card, an msata ssd (160GB) and 8GB RAM. Why because I had them after an upgrade to a gaming rig from one of my sons machines. I can already hear the comments "That's overkill", and "You're using too much power" comments. But my needs where simple, I needed a fast, reliable, isolated connection for business use, while allowing for 2 separate gamers (with VR) to game while, 3 people to independently stream Netflix, Hulu, etc, youtube, while allowing for secure wifi.

I chose to wire my house with CAT6 to all of the major streaming devices and to my office and separate cabled connections into 3 separate networks (1st socket in NIC is WAN) with one of the cabled networks connecting my older Cisco/Linksys AC router set in ad-hoc mode. All big streaming devices and gaming rigs are on CAT6, which leaves laptops, smartphones, and tablets on the Wifi. everything is firewalled by mac address, including wifi which is on WPA2 enterprise.

I have estimated that I could build this system again with purchased components for the same price as a high end consumer AC router, or an extended mesh system. I also don't broadcast my SSID.

After 3 months of solid uptime we started have intermittent outages, with severe packet loss. After arguing with Cox for a few days they finally sent out an engineer to review their connections and look at the modem. While checking the modem he asked when I had started having issues. I simply went to the Pfsense web portal went to system monitoring set the duration to 3 months and asked him which Graphana graph he wanted to look at. We pulled up the packet loss and quality graphs. By looking at the graphs he could tell that this was a line connectivity problem. Sure enough one of their connectors outside had worn through the outer jacket because of a faulty crimp job by their techs. exposure to the air was finally taking its toll on the line. I was sold on PFsense the second he put is line monitor in his pocket and want to diagnose from the PFsense graphs. I also like that with a click I can install Squid or Wire Shark as plugins to PFsense.

At work we have been replacing our older Cisco router/firewall units with NetGate units running PFSense.

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 11:12 AM Michael Butash <michael@butash.net> wrote:

Granted, hardware goes bad, but it's "working yesterday, dead like a brick now" bad usually. Hardware almost never degrades in just performance, save some Cisco devices using non-ecc memory over the years (why they don't sell load-balancers anymore).

Software may leak resources, kids/roommates might overconsume sessions torrenting to abuse router cpu, but hardware alone won't diminish performance over time. I still say audit your traffic patterns with some network tools, but having a better router too never hurts.

Oddly I've found decent (netgear, cisco) wifi routers at my local Goodwill in Peoria, I just verify they can use dd-wrt images while there, how much memory/cpu they have (if they can use full or limited images). For a while was hooking up friends and family with decent units for less than $7 each. Ebay you can probably find better options, but as long as it's flashable with dd-wrt, you're likely not going to get one gone "bad" if it works at all.

-mb

On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 5:20 PM Stephen Partington <cryptworks@gmail.com> wrote:
I have had a router go bad. The rom failed.

On Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 4:13 PM Michael Butash <michael@butash.net> wrote:
I really don't find routers "go bad" as they outlive their usefulness. Most people find their routers can't handle their usage when providers offer 100mbps+ connections, but sometimes something is simply abusing your network, and your router isn't good at showing it to you.

Coming from the enterprise space, when something stops working, I see what is wrong, as something is always wrong if it's broken. In a consumer router, what is usually the matter is something creating too many sessions, or simply exceeding bandwidth capabilities. Ahem, Bittorrent, or some other uncontrolled vermin. Some people it's 5 people watching netflix at the same time, or heavy gaming.

I can usually feel when my network is broken at home, and almost always find a reason for it. Only time I upgrade is when I want to test a new piece of kit I got from ebay.

I've run cisco asa, netgear/dd-wrt routers, fortigate firewall currently, considering getting a palo alto. My netgear flashed with dd-wrt was great for years, a R710 nighthawk, and only reason I upgraded to my fortigate was just to dogfood features for customers of mine using fortigate. I got lucky buying a fortigate on ebay, 2 years later some large defense contractor company keeps paying for my enterprise support on the unit for full filter and threat feeds on it, so at least my tax dollars go for something good finally.

-mb

On Sat, Oct 26, 2019 at 12:17 PM <techlists@phpcoderusa.com> wrote:

Hi,

It appears I am having Internet router problems. Occasionally I will not be able to access the Internet for a few seconds to a minute or so. This morning I was not able to access the Internet at all.

I am with Cox and have a home office business account. I called Cox and they suggested bypassing my router and connect directly to their modem. That worked. Based on that I think my router is going bad.

I had turned off the modem and the router for a maybe an hour or so while I did other things. I now have access.

I would like a secure router. Cox says almost any modern router will be secure. Security is a big issue. When I look at all the WiFi that is available in my neighborhood I see maybe 10 routers. That is scary!

Since I have a business account that allows servers I have been using port forwarding. I am a programmer and occasionally I fire up my laptop turned server for testing.

I also have set up my WiFi to only accept those devices that I have configured by MAC address.

Any toughs on my pending router purchase?

Thank you so much for all your feedback!!

Keith

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