Working on that with a vendor guys, stay tuned. (And no, its probably not who you think it is.) On Jan 1, 2016 12:02 PM, "Sterling Jacobson" <sterl...@avative.net> wrote:
> I hear you. > > My new year's goal is to find a better solution for my customers. > > Unfortunately, at 100-1000Mbps, the pickings are still slim. > > I would like to use MikroTik and manage the routing, but I'm finding that > it's still best to get a really nice $100-$300+ single Wireless AC router > and place it in the center of the house. > > What I would really like is a good split solution with routing in the > head/basement, and wireless AC in bridge mode in one or two places in the > house. > > But that doesn't seem to exist. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof > Sent: Friday, January 1, 2016 10:30 AM > To: af@afmug.com > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT - bad dream > > I'm seeing a gradual increase in customers leasing a managed Mikrotik from > us, we charge $5/mo for a RB951G-2HnD which has been very trouble free for > us once we tweak a couple WiFi parameters. I think they look at the pile > of discarded routers in their closet and decide to let someone else deal > with it. Most still fall into either the "I can buy one at Walmart for > $50" camp or the "I like going to Best Buy and letting the sales guy talk > me into the > $250 router because I like shopping for expensive toys" camp. And people > still look at the humble little white Mikrotik in its plain brown box and > think it can't possibly match their big black AC1900 router that looks like > a weapon from Star Wars. > > The question I guess is whether to join the cable/telco crowd and supply > the WiFi router and manage it for no additional revenue, and then what to > do about the people who still want to put their own Star Wars router behind > it. > > It is very disappointing that since Belkin bought Linksys they are now > designing their own Linksys branded routers that are far worse than the > Linksys designed E series which certainly had their own problems. I > replaced a customer's Belksys AC1900 router with a Mikrotik this week and > they went from having total dead spots in parts of their house on both 2.4 > and 5 GHz to having full bars and great performance everywhere including > the basement. Their minds were boggled at this little white box with no > external antennas blowing away the big black monster. > > Of the household brands, Netgear doesn't seem all that bad, except their > low end WNR2000 has a really high failure rate. I see people starting to > trend toward less known brands like Asus and TP-Link. But too many of my > customers think the electronics store is "Walmart" and they seem to come > back with these Belkin pieces of crap, I particularly hate the model that > only has 1 LED on the whole router and you have to interpret the color and > number of flashes, it's like figuring out what R2D2 is saying. What's that > R2? No link on port 3? > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Simon Westlake > Sent: Friday, January 01, 2016 11:04 AM > To: af@afmug.com > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT - bad dream > > I've honestly given up completely on all residential routers, they seem to > be slowly converging on a common denominator which is that none of them > work properly and only last a few months. I had to replace my router > recently, and just got a Mikrotik instead. One of the guys I work with just > replaced his old Linksys with a Mikrotik, and all of his minor problems > went away. > > I used to think that it was a bad idea to provide managed routers to end > users, but I'm slowly changing my mind after realizing how many issues are > caused by them. There's also a lot you could do to provide better service > to an end user, hypothetically.. let's say you put in a DD-WRT or Mikrotik > router and setup some shaping on the client side with SFQ. > They'd probably see a lot less issues with their Netflix buffering when > their Xbox was downloading a game, or their VoIP cutting out when they're > watching Daredevil in 4K. > > On 1/1/2016 10:05 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote: > > I had a bad dream where all my customers go to Walmart and buy Belkin > > routers. I tried to wake up but I wasn't dreaming. > Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! > > > > -- > Simon Westlake > Skype: Simon_Sonar > Email: simon@sonar.software > Phone: (702) 447-1247 > --------------------------- > Sonar Software Inc > The next generation of ISP billing and OSS https://sonar.software > > >