
Ask HN: What router do you recommend? (UniFi/AmpliFi/OpenWrt/other?) - joshstrange
I&#x27;m in the market for a new home network setup and I thought I&#x27;d ask here. My house can be covered by a single base station but the speeds fall off in parts so I&#x27;d like to be able to expand to a mesh in the future (for either this house or the next).<p>I&#x27;ve looked at UniFi (Cloud Key, Security Gateway, PoE Switch, nano AP = ~$700), UniFi Dream Machine [0] ($300), and AmpliFi Alien [1] ($380).<p>I&#x27;m leaning towards the full UniFi setup so I can extend it in the future. The UDM is neat but if you want more coverage you have to buy another $300 node. The Alien is cool as well and the only Ubiquiti product with WiFi 6 however going down to the AmpliFi line loses a number of things I want (vlans, extendable, etc).<p>All that said I&#x27;ve heard some concerning things about UniFi recently so I&#x27;m wondering if someone has a better suggestion. I&#x27;m looking for minimal maintenance work but the power to be there if I need it (multiple vlans to hide IoTs from rest of network, block internet access by MAC, some minor QoS, support gigabit WAN all full speeds, etc). I&#x27;ll also admit that some of this will be for fun and to play with some more powerful networking equipment.<p>For reference I currently have this [2] router running OpenWRT but I am unable to hit my full gigabit WAN speeds (I can if I&#x27;m plugged directly into the modem) which is part of my reason I want to upgrade (along with iffy wifi in places).<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.ui.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;unifi-dream-machine<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amplifi.com&#x2F;alien<p>[2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smile.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;B00UVN21DK
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knacky
I have a UniFi EdgeRouter-X and two UniFi APs. I'm happy with the APs
satisfied with the ER-X. Once nice feature on the ER-X is their Smart QoS; you
specify your broadband UL/DL rate and the router does a good job of preventing
single devices from monopolizing your pipe.

I've been looking into replacing my router with something that can host a VPN
that I can connect to on the go. I don't think the ER-X can fully utilize my
broadband with L2TP/IPsec or OpenVPN so I'm looking for something that can run
Wireguard.

Right now I'm eyeing a PC Engine APU2 [0] running OpenWRT. I think it's
powerful enough to meet my needs and would also function as a pi-hole. This
setup will require more setup than the ER-X but it also is more customizable.

My UniFi APs are upstairs and downstairs. Since my place isn't wired I am
using some MoCA devices [1] over coax to get everything connected.

[0] [https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2d4.htm](https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2d4.htm)

[1]
[https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B013J7O3X0](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B013J7O3X0)

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bradknowles
IPSec is lower CPU and higher throughput on the ER-X compared to OpenVPN, but
the device is also capable of running wireguard, with the right firmware. And
WG will beat IPSec hands-down, at least in the benchmarks I’ve seen.

For me, the bigger concern is that the configurations for WG on the ER-X are
still pretty beta, as is connecting to any WG server on the other side that
you didn’t build yourself. Service provider support for WG is limited and the
configuration management there is still quite clunky.

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taf2
For my home router I use a UniFi gateway pro - probably overkill but it’s nice
and works. For my office we initially used a UniFi gateway but while testing
voip phones I found it was not adequate for voip traffic so I bought a $1k
dell server configured it with linux and iptables for failover from our
primary fios to our backup Comcast .... I think I would roll my own if you
have time otherwise UniFi is great

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yellowapple
My home router is a Linksys WRT3200ACM running the latest OpenWRT. I only set
it up this week when I moved into my new apartment, so I haven't quite put the
wireless through its paces yet, but over ethernet it keeps up with my near-
gigabit (900-ish Mbps) WAN just fine.

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BOOSTERHIDROGEN
I have edgerouter X with cake

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Nextgrid
For a router, anything will do. I personally use an entry-level Mikrotik
RouterBoard and it works great with a gigabit symmetric connection.

The hard part is wireless, and the answer will depend on a few factors:

1) Are you able to run Ethernet to each AP?

2) If not, are you able to use powerline adapters to bring network access to
the APs (and get decent speeds there, test that with iperf3 - you usually get
1/4 of the advertised speed on powerline adapters)?

3) If not, is there good enough wireless performance between every place
you're going to have an AP if you were to go with a mesh-based system? Mesh
will only work if you can get wireless to the APs in the first place and a lot
of consumer-grade mesh-based system completely overlook that fact in their
marketing.

For 1) Unifi is good enough, otherwise check out other enterprise-grade
wireless access point systems. Don't bother with consumer-grade stuff, it's
all garbage for the most part. It's up to you if you want to use a Unifi
Security Gateway as your main router as well, but it's not required if you
just want the APs.

For 2), find good powerline adapters, test them with iperf3, and if good
enough then connect enterprise-grade APs to them. Alternatively, if you want
an all-in-one unit (powerline adapter with AP) I can personally recommend the
Devolo DLAN 1200 WiFi AC, with real-world Wi-Fi performance of around 150Mbps
in an interference-heavy area. This might not be much but it's absolutely
consistent and latency is always low so it's more than enough for mobile
devices IMO. Put one of those in every room. One caveat: you WILL need to
build & install OpenWrt on them as the default firmware is garbage and doesn't
support 802.11k nor Fast Transition, which is the difference between devices
roaming seamlessly and not roaming at all. This is also why enterprise-grade
Wi-Fi systems are key and consumer-grade is a waste of time.

For 3) I would personally look into solving 1 or 2 first. Mesh systems seem
like a huge hack; wireless spectrum is precious and should be used for AP to
mobile device communication, using it for backhaul seems extremely wasteful.
It might work in a no-interference area but in a crowded apartment block there
might not be enough unused spectrum to make it work, and you'll get
inconsistent performance with random moments of packet loss, etc which is much
more disruptive than slow but otherwise consistent performance (I'll take
10Mbps with zero packet loss over 100Mbps that craps out randomly at
unpredictable times).

Finally, one key piece of advice: measure. Wi-Fi and networking is not some
magic spirit-based system that acts on its own, it works according to a
specification and mostly common sense. If it doesn't work there's a reason.
Measure wired connectivity to the APs (a good tool for that is iperf3), then
measure the wireless interference around you (put your laptop's Wi-Fi
interface in monitor mode, capture some traffic, you can use airodump-ng to
hop between channels and create a CSV of all the APs nearby so you can select
the best channel for each zone), etc. The reason enterprise Wi-Fi usually
works well despite dozens of devices around is because people who install them
do what I just said, while consumers just buy a 500$ set of magic boxes at
their local store (recommended by the low-wage employee who just needs to sell
them) and expect it to work.

