I've had the Netgear 3700 series completely blow out the 2.4GHz band for 60
seconds every 5 minutes, two different ones. Not sure of the exact model, been
a little while since I fooled with one.
MT assured us on the forum that they are seeking UNII certifications. I'm not
banking on it and buying a ton of their hardware based on a promise, but I'm
keeping a few on hand for specific shots.
----- Original Message -----
From: Ken Hohhof
To: af@afmug.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2015 12:49 PM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Consumer routers?
If a customer insists on a recommendation, I say every router you can buy in
the store has problems, but the least problematic seems to be Netgear as long
as you get at least a 3000 series. I have seen a high field failure rate on
the WNR2000, and they can die a slow lingering flakey death rather than just
falling over dead. Probably a WNDR3700 if you want gigabit and 3400 if you
don’t. Some customers get to the store and get a 4500 because it’s on sale or
$10 more. I like having gigabit ports but many customers these days don’t have
a single wired device. The Netgear routers come with the WiFi already secured,
they can be set to wireless access point mode, and they have a lifetime
warranty (but who is going to go through the trouble). On the downside some
laptops with Intel 802.11ac WiFi refuse to play nice with the Netgears, and the
PPPoE default has to be changed from dial on demand.
I will no longer sell routers to customers, many years of bad experiences.
But I will lease a managed Mikrotik (a nice one – typically a RB951G-2HnD or
RB2011) for $5/month including free replacement. I won’t sell a Mikrotik to a
customer for them to manage unless the customer is an IT professional.
This does mean I don’t have a dual band (much less 802.11ac) managed router
solution. Given our rural customer base, the 2.4 only WiFi usually works out
better than dual band. Occasionally I wish for dual band so we could segregate
some weak WiFi clients (like Dropcams) onto their own band. Mikrotik doesn’t
seem to want to deal with getting equipment FCC approved in 5 GHz.
Some of the routers customers have bought that have been problematic:
Cradlepoint, Securifi, Amped Wireless (at least the range extenders).
From: Brett A Mansfield
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2015 11:30 AM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Consumer routers?
I've had very bad luck with Belkin, D-Link, Asus (the worst), linksys, and
low end netgear. I've had great success with the higher end netgear and the 3rd
through 5th gen Apple AirPort Extreme. Prior to the 3rd gen and the 6th gen
(latest) airports are junk. So I'm with you, pretty much every consumer grade
router is trash now.
Thank you,
Brett A Mansfield
On Oct 7, 2015, at 9:58 AM, Glen Waldrop <gwl...@cngwireless.net> wrote:
Are there any consumer routers that don't suck these days?
I used to recommend Linksys/Cisco, but since the Belkin buyout quality
seems to be going down. They jink with teh firewall and I can't block specific
outgoing traffic, can't remote admin anymore, etc...
