Looking for a good network router

[johnspack]

I need something with firewall capabilities, to serve a small multiple server network, and some workstation clients as well. This about the best I can find in Canada at a reasonable price: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=30973&vpn=RV016&manufacture=CISCO I need programability and lots of ports. Any other suggestions? Anything for a little less that will do most of what this router does? I've got a lot of cheap, and even medium(linksys, which I've killed) network eqipment, but it keeps failing when I push it!

 

[mrhuggles]

the only reasonably priced thing i ever found was a router running openWRT + X-Wrt, i used to run dd-wrt but i well, dd-wrt vs openWRT whiterussian is like compareing dos 6.22 and XP

my router is pretty nice, never any lag or crashes or buggyness of any kind literly it can go untouched for a year plus

edit: oh yeah i forgot, i run openWRT on my linksys WRT54G v2.0

 

[Tau]

Nice and Router used in the same sentence? lol.

I havent used a router yet that doesent give me bullshit, die, or just plain not work.

IMO if your willing to put $400 into a router, put an old computer (Pentium2, 256MB ram would be LOTS) and run pfsense on it, then plug that into a gigabit switch and away you go.

Costs less, runs better, doesent bullshit you around, and you get he bonus of a hardware firewall that performs onpar with sonicwalls.

It will give you every little bit of customizability you could ever dream of, has its own nice webUI, and can even setup IPsec shunnels to other sites (I run pfsense in a VM on my laptop and have ti shunneled into my home system when i am on the road.) IMO its the best product on the market for routing/firewall period, and its free

 

[mrhuggles]

what?

Tau: ever seen OpenWRT + X-Wrt whiterussian in action?

 

[Tau]

We had OpenWRT running at my old shop, its a decent piece of firmware i will give it that, its the hardware mostly that pisses me off. And we still had issues with OpenWRT, And i see "X-Wrt whiterussian" is a custom webui for it? (just googling it now as im not familiar with it)

I just dont see how it could be my luck but i have literally played with ~25 diffrent routers, of diffrent makes and models and have liked NONE of them. all of them gave me some kind of issue at some point, and alot of them wouldent even do alot of things.

/end router rant (i hate them, and nat)

 

[mrhuggles]

well you'll be hard pressed to find something openWRT whiterussian + X-Wrt cant do, you can even get through PPPOE to your dsl modems with this little script some guy [wish i could give proper credit but i don't know who] made, far as hardware problems go, my wifi has some really good range at 24mw thanks to a couple cheapy but much better than the default antennas, it doesn't heat up at all at 24mw.

yeah X-Wrt is a good interface, i would be useing kamekazi but it seemed to be better for whiterussian the million times ive tried it out and moving from whiterussian to kamekazi is a bit of a pitb so i dont do it very often, the interface is good tho, you almost never have to ssh in

 

[newtekie1]

I recommend a WRT54GL + Tomato Firmware.

I've been running this combo for a while now, and I love the Tomato Firmware, rock solid, even under high load.

However, the trick with combo, or really any reasonably priced router setup, is not plugging any of the computers directly into the router. Buy a decent 16-24 Port Switch, you don't need anything overly expensive or even managed, but nothing super cheap either. Plug all the computers into that, then just run a single cable from the router to the Switch. This way the only network traffic that hits the router is internet traffic, all the other network traffic stays on the switch. I've found that the standard network traffic between computers, usually the file transfers and having multiple files open from the server, are what really bogs routers down. They just don't seem to handle that kind of traffic as well as a dedicated switch.

 

[mrhuggles]

ive never heard anything bad about tomato, it has like 1% of the features of openWRT but everybody says its just as stable and thats all that matters to 99% of people anyways

 

[johnspack]

Thanks guys, getting some good info here! I can get both of those routers from ncix for about 70can, so much cheaper! I'm also dling the pfsense iso to have a look at that as well. I forgot about openwrt, and didn't realize the routers that could use it were decently priced.

 

[lemonadesoda]

I've been very happy with 2x Netgear ProSafe FVL328's connecting VPN between two countries. No downtime (On latest firmware NOT original fm).

They are quite cheap off ebay. But...

1./ What Tau says about pfsense, is very interesting. Never used it, but what a great idea for a simple Atom-in-a-box system
2./ What newteckie says about using a decent switch, with just one link to the router, is good advice. This is what I do also... and seem to have 99.9% uptime. The 0.1% fail is due to local contention as I bring new PCs or printers or FTP servers on and off line and there is DHCP conflict.

 

[mrhuggles]

X-Wrt has images that come with it preinstalled, i would do it that way and you should never have to mess with anything too difficult, imho you should run whiterussian, even tho its no longer being updated its hmm, more complete, and if you need any help figuring things out just let me know there are alot of things you can do/fix that are not so obvious

especially like how to get to DSL modem through PPPOE or getting uPnP working flawlessly

ALSO: you need one with a minimum of 4mb of flash space, and if you have a choice 32mb of ram is preferable

 

[johnspack]

I use a switch anyways from the modem, I like separate external ips for each of my networks. So if I wanted better performance, I should use a switch after the main switch to go to each router? Edit: oops realized my error, the new router is just for my server network, will be coming from another switch, so then I'll want to goto another switch from the server router, to service the server network? Think I got it uggg.....

 

[Tau]

Thanks guys, getting some good info here! I can get both of those routers from ncix for about 70can, so much cheaper! I'm also dling the pfsense iso to have a look at that as well. I forgot about openwrt, and didn't realize the routers that could use it were decently priced.

If you are running relativly low load, without critical uptime needed then really any router would probobly work, though im my experiance with them i havent found them very savvy/reliable.

I've been very happy with 2x Netgear ProSafe FVL328's connecting VPN between two countries. No downtime (On latest firmware NOT original fm).

They are quite cheap off ebay. But...

1./ What Tau says about pfsense, is very interesting. Never used it, but what a great idea for a simple Atom-in-a-box system
2./ What newteckie says about using a decent switch, with just one link to the router, is good advice. This is what I do also... and seem to have 99.9% uptime. The 0.1% fail is due to local contention as I bring new PCs or printers or FTP servers on and off line and there is DHCP conflict.

Thats basically what i use my PFsense boxes for, hell if you wanted you could even run it in a VM on another box.... though its reccomemebd to have the router/firewall in its own box.

This actually makes me want to try out OpenWRT... now i just need to see if i have a router that will take it

 

[mrhuggles]

yeah just make sure its whiterussian + X-Wrt, kamekazi might give you the wrong idea sincethe X-Wrt for it isnt as mature

 

[johnspack]

Yep, time for that wrt linksys, my linksys befsr41 and dlink wbr-2310 just got taken out by a power outtage. That dam dlink was a 120can router too! I hate living in the boondocks. We get a lot of power outs here, but that one was bad. Time for a UPS too I guess.