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I'm looking to buy a wifi router and I am torn about what to do. There are a ton of good solid older 802.11n routers like the D-Link Dir-615 for like $15 with free shipping. I own no ac devices yet and I know this router is a workhorse and you can install DD-WRT on it painlessly. Or I could invest in a nice new AC router for $100 or more. Not sure which way to swing. I like that the older routers broadcast at 2.4 GHz for less attenuation, but in this neighborhood in a frame house it hardly matters.

Anyway I'm looking for some opinions. Any thoughts?

I just bought a Unifi router, and really like it. It's reasonably priced for what you get, and it's rock solid. My old routers kept choking under heavy load. This works great, and has tons of management features.

Do NOT buy a DLink. I've had nothing but problems with them for the last few years. Trendnet has served me acceptably well in a home environment for a while. At work we use Unifi access points, but they're not routers - just access points. Our Cisco router handles the DHCP stuff.

Any reason you wouldn't want to go home-brew?

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Any reason you wouldn't want to go home-brew?

--Patrick

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That's interesting but probably a bit more time than I want to invest right now.

I want to replace my ISP's crappy thing with something that can handle wifi from one device on the network to something else without killing the (extremely limited, crappy) connection to the outside world. I have a gigabit switch handling the wired stuff (cheap, but effective netgear) but I want to take the wifi off of the internet router too just to be 100% sure that the old piece of crap isn't limiting me.

Any suggestions? The Unifi link up there is broken for me.

Eriol said:

Any suggestions?

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Smallnetbuilder suggests that of the ones they've reviewed, your price/performance champion is going to be the TP-LINK Archer C7 V2 for US$70. The Archer C5 is a close second at US$75 (which is not too surprising, seeing as in reality it is just a detuned/rebadged Archer C7 V1 on the inside).
There may be others better suited depending on your location and intended use (coverage pattern, printer/storage options), but if your primary criterion is the ability to throw files back and forth between other machines on your LAN, the numbers say these should do it for you.

--Patrick

The thing about Unifi's WAPs is they require a computer on the network in question to be running their management software, which will let you manage and monitor the WAPs and devices connecting to them. It's acutally kinda nifty software in itself, and it installs as a service and you access its controls via browser, but it makes it so that the Ubiquiti Networks equipment (who make the UniFi stuff) isn't quite what you'd call plug and play, compared to most routers where you just plug it in, browse to 192.168.0.1, put in the IP information and go. Nothing you can't handle, I'm sure, just be advised there's an extra few steps involved. Also, the UniFi stuff is power-over-ethernet (and they come with adapters).

Another thing is, most SoHo routers that have wireless capabilities can be converted to WAPs just by turning off their DHCP server functions.

Just as a followup to my original question, I went with a used Netgear 802.11ac router from ebay, which I sniped for about 30 bucks. So I sort of split the difference.

GasBandit said:

most SoHo routers that have wireless capabilities can be converted to WAPs just by turning off their DHCP server functions.

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It sounds like his main bottleneck is actually routing performance. If he disables routing on whatever new equipment he gets, he's going to be back to having his ISP box do all the router processing, which would put him right back where he is now, no matter how much improvement he gets with his signal/link speed.

fade said:

Just as a followup to my original question, I went with a used Netgear 802.11ac router from ebay, which I sniped for about 30 bucks. So I sort of split the difference.

Click to expand...

Make sure you let us know how it works for you.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

It sounds like his main bottleneck is actually routing performance. If he disables routing on whatever new equipment he gets, he's going to be back to having his ISP box do all the router processing, which would put him right back where he is now, no matter how much improvement he gets with his signal/link speed.

--Patrick

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A lot of ISPs strongarm their customers into using their combination modem/routers, which is what I was assuming was the case here. They combine the modem/router/wireless into one box so they can more easily remotely administrate the whole shebang. That's what I was interpreting Eriol's situation to be. That being the case, any router behind that wouldn't really be doing any routing. But if that's not the case here, then yeah, best just to get the old router out entirely.

GasBandit said:

A lot of ISPs strongarm their customers into using their combination modem/routers, which is what I was assuming was the case here. They combine the modem/router/wireless into one box so they can more easily remotely administrate the whole shebang. That's what I was interpreting Eriol's situation to be. That being the case, any router behind that wouldn't really be doing any routing. But if that's not the case here, then yeah, best just to get the old router out entirely.

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My ISP gave a modem/router/wifi. 10/100. Right away just put a gigabit switch on it for local wired traffic. Want to replace its wifi now. Maybe even an extra layer of NAT just so that the ISP has no clue whatsoever of what's happening inside of my network. All I want it for is to go to the net and handle nothing more. New device to do everything inside of my house. MAYBE keep it as a DHCP server (so no extra NAT layer) or maybe not (probably simpler not to).[DOUBLEPOST=1459180577,1459180396][/DOUBLEPOST]

PatrThom said:

Smallnetbuilder suggests that of the ones they've reviewed, your price/performance champion is going to be the TP-LINK Archer C7 V2 for US$70. The Archer C5 is a close second at US$75 (which is not too surprising, seeing as in reality it is just a detuned/rebadged Archer C7 V1 on the inside).
There may be others better suited depending on your location and intended use (coverage pattern, printer/storage options), but if your primary criterion is the ability to throw files back and forth between other machines on your LAN, the numbers say these should do it for you.

--Patrick

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Nice suggestions. Will strongly consider. And I'll look at that website too.

Eriol said:

My ISP gave a modem/router/wifi. 10/100. Right away just put a gigabit switch on it for local wired traffic. Want to replace its wifi now. Maybe even an extra layer of NAT just so that the ISP has no clue whatsoever of what's happening inside of my network. All I want it for is to go to the net and handle nothing more. New device to do everything inside of my house. MAYBE keep it as a DHCP server (so no extra NAT layer) or maybe not (probably simpler not to).

Click to expand...

That's what I thought was the case. In that situation, then, yeah, I'd say pick up an inexpensive (not D-Link) wifi/router, plug one of its "internal" ethernet jacks into your switch and leave the "uplink" port unconnected. If you already have something in your network on its default IP, you might want to change it, if only temporarily, and then browse to the new router, go into its configuration, setup the wifi encryption/speed/pwd/internal IP etc, then turn off its DHCP. It is then a wireless access point - whatever devices connect to it will get on your internal network, and whatever is assigning addresses (right now, your ISP's router) will assign it addresses like any other device. Naturally you can change any of this later.

GasBandit said:

That's what I thought was the case. In that situation, then, yeah, I'd say pick up an inexpensive (not D-Link) wifi/router, plug one of its "internal" ethernet jacks into your switch and leave the "uplink" port unconnected. If you already have something in your network on its default IP, you might want to change it, if only temporarily, and then browse to the new router, go into its configuration, setup the wifi encryption/speed/pwd/internal IP etc, then turn off its DHCP. It is then a wireless access point - whatever devices connect to it will get on your internal network, and whatever is assigning addresses (right now, your ISP's router) will assign it addresses like any other device. Naturally you can change any of this later.

Click to expand...

That's one way of doing it definitely (and I've done related in the past. Remember to do that config disconnected from the rest of the network though, since if you have TWO DHCP servers on the same network, madness can result). The other way is to use the uplink and have that the ONLY thing connected to the ISPs router, and then the ISP can't read anything off of my network. Not because I worry about the ISP per-se, but more that the thing is ancient and probably riddled with security holes. Might be better to "quarantine" it as much as possible from the rest of my devices.

Eriol said:

That's one way of doing it definitely (and I've done related in the past. Remember to do that config disconnected from the rest of the network though, since if you have TWO DHCP servers on the same network, madness can result). The other way is to use the uplink and have that the ONLY thing connected to the ISPs router, and then the ISP can't read anything off of my network. Not because I worry about the ISP per-se, but more that the thing is ancient and probably riddled with security holes. Might be better to "quarantine" it as much as possible from the rest of my devices.

Click to expand...

My only caveat on that second one is that when I've tried it in the past, there were port-related oddities. Might have just been the particular router I was using at the time. Also, the more things that you put between your switch and your modem, the more things you have to check/troubleshoot when, at some point in the future, the internet "stops working."

GasBandit said:

My only caveat on that second one is that when I've tried it in the past, there were port-related oddities. Might have just been the particular router I was using at the time. Also, the more things that you put between your switch and your modem, the more things you have to check/troubleshoot when, at some point in the future, the internet "stops working."

Click to expand...

Fair point to make no doubt, but as I said, isolating from ISP is probably worth it in the bargain. Either way, I have options.

Thanks again @PatrThom for your help picking. It's a solid suggestion.

GasBandit said:

A lot of ISPs strongarm their customers into using their combination modem/routers, which is what I was assuming was the case here.
[...]
My only caveat on that second one is that when I've tried it in the past, there were port-related oddities.

Click to expand...

This is the situation I was assuming as well. Most ISP-provided routers will at a minimum allow some kind of DMZ or "default host" passthrough setting even if it insists on being in control of all the DHCP. If that's the case, you just set your router to be the DMZ/default host of your ISP's router and set your internal network to be on a different subnet than the one the ISP router wants you to be.
So:
-If the ISP router is configured to give your equipment a public IP address, you just plug the WAN port from your router of choice into the ISP router and set your router up however you want.
-If the ISP router is configured to give your equipment a private IP address (192.168.x.x/10.x.x.x/172.16.xx.xx thru 172.31.xx.xx) then you still plug the WAN port of your router into the ISP router but then you have to configure your new router to also give the equipment behind it a private range, just not the same private range as the one your ISP router is giving you.

Once the proper one of the above two is done, you will need to set up any port forwarding you need to do whatever else you want to do. I've had to do both of these at one time or another so I've had experience with both. Both methods will successfully isolate your internal network from the ISP.

--Patrick

This is good FYI for others guys, but my day job... I know (somewhat beyond basic) network stuff. Nothing new here. I actually use an extra router to isolate my work PC from the rest of my network, and have a route set up for a specific service from that machine through the NAT, even while the VPN from that machine is up with the corporate network. So I can appreciate doing the hand-holding for others here, but I'm not one who "needs" it. But a good reference nonetheless.


On the port forwarding thing, I remember doing that back in the 90s for various things in my parents' house for SSHing and such in from high school (and later university) so I could grab stuff from my home PCs. Fun times.

Yeah, most things we were saying I think were for the "studio audience" and in case some desperate googler ends up here trying to find help with the same issue.

GasBandit said:

Yeah, most things we were saying I think were for the "studio audience" and in case some desperate googler ends up here trying to find help with the same issue.

Click to expand...

If they end up here rather than StackOverflow (or Superuser, or whatever on that network) for network advice, then God Go With Them.


On that note, I saw a comment the other day that being an administrator for StackOverflow would really suck, because if it goes down, they can't google for the answer on StackOverflow. Which I thought was a really great point!

GasBandit said:

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Oh man, this. Especially with scientific code. Because most of the people doing that (a) work in an arena populated by scientists who kind of know how to code, but not really (b) create coding problems that "real" coders don't run into because of point a (c) ask in forums when no "real" coder dares tread.

fade said:

Oh man, this. Especially with scientific code. Because most of the people doing that (a) work in an arena populated by scientists who kind of know how to code, but not really (b) create coding problems that "real" coders don't run into because of point a (c) ask in forums when no "real" coder dares tread.

Click to expand...

You're stretching the definition. I've seen code by masters students in CS who have NO idea how to code. And that was when I was an undergrad in engineering. And I look at my undergrad code now and (most of the time) go "wtf was I THINKING???"

So no, not "kind of" at all. They just don't know. Like, anything.

From the things I hear my husband say, I swear he spends 50% of his day at work wondering wtf people are doing. And these are definitely CS/CE people.

The same with our friend who works at SpaceX.

Eriol said:

You're stretching the definition. I've seen code by masters students in CS who have NO idea how to code. And that was when I was an undergrad in engineering. And I look at my undergrad code now and (most of the time) go "wtf was I THINKING???"

So no, not "kind of" at all. They just don't know. Like, anything.

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If I read you correctly, I meant scientist as in not computer scientist. Like physicists.

On the other hand, I've known some people who are really good coders who have never taken formal classes. In fact, there's a whole job title called "scientific programmer" for them. They usually have Ph.D.s or Masters in the subject matter, but for whatever reason have also become coding experts. Not to tell you anything you probably already know...

Eriol said:

I can appreciate doing the hand-holding for others here, but I'm not one who "needs" it. But a good reference nonetheless.

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The trouble with trying to keep track of everyone on the forum is that there are so many. Without external aids (or constant updates to the Halforum wiki), it is almost impossible to know what people are "good" at (especially people with a total post count only 1/20th that of our most prolific posters), and therefore difficult to tailor a technical post wide enough for ALL audiences.
That said, do you have anything to add? Any info about whether the ISP treats the machines on your LAN like second-class Netizens?

Eriol said:

being an administrator for StackOverflow would really suck, because if it goes down, they can't google for the answer on StackOverflow. Which I thought was a really great point!

Click to expand...

GasBandit said:

Click to expand...

--Patrick

This is why when I asked on the Dwarf Fortress forums about a snippet of code I'd need to mod my game, and a bunch of other forumites worked it out for me, I made sure to edit my original post to include the finalized code segment, just in case anyone searched for this particular mod in the future.

If anyone's curious, it was a mod to make my magma smelters generate honey.

fade said:

If I read you correctly, I meant scientist as in not computer scientist. Like physicists.

Click to expand...

Initially I meant "given that CS should be better than everybody else, and since CS students are horrific, the regular scientists are probably even worse when they try, thus you have my sympathy having to deal with it."

fade said:

On the other hand, I've known some people who are really good coders who have never taken formal classes. In fact, there's a whole job title called "scientific programmer" for them. They usually have Ph.D.s or Masters in the subject matter, but for whatever reason have also become coding experts. Not to tell you anything you probably already know...

Click to expand...

This is my experience. Most people who've worked with code (nearly) every day for years are OK at the least. Maybe not the most forward-thinking, but usually don't epically screw up. Not always of course (just look at www.thedailywtf.com for examples), but usually experience gets you to an OK level. But the really talented ones are just good regardless of formal training. They "get" it on a level most others don't.

Eriol said:

the really talented ones are just good regardless of formal training. They "get" it on a level most others don't.

Click to expand...

Well that's a relief.

--Patrick

My personal thing to look out for a good programmer in a large meeting: (s)he's the one googling the answer to the discussion the "important" people are having, and when somebody wants an idea from, already has a prototype in mind.

My personal measure of an epically bad situation: in almost all cases, (s)he's the one who thinks they can do better than the well-tested and well-known library. It's always a disaster from that point on if they have influence.

I find it phenomenally difficult to convince the other scientists here to use libraries. Especially in linux. There is some justification to their fears in that you have to rely on the end user to install the library, but for better or worse, that's a POSIX environment for you. I also find it tough to convince them that the Fortran code they wrote by directly transcribing their equations into fortran works (and indeed works the way Fortran was intended to work), but it sucks from an efficiency point of view. There's a reason, doctor, that your code needs 96 GB of RAM, and it's not because you're a god of numerical modeling. It's because your memory handling is extremely naive. Not to mention no one but you knows what "d" means here because you have one letter variable names with no comments, all in the global namespace.

Woo sorry. I could rant about this for a long time. I'm a research scientist, but I'm also a good programmer. I'll be damned if I let some crap out the door with either a bad implementation of the science from the pure devs or a bad implementation of the program from the scientists.

fade said:

I find it phenomenally difficult to convince the other scientists here to use libraries. Especially in linux. There is some justification to their fears in that you have to rely on the end user to install the library, but for better or worse, that's a POSIX environment for you. I also find it tough to convince them that the Fortran code they wrote by directly transcribing their equations into fortran works (and indeed works the way Fortran was intended to work), but it sucks from an efficiency point of view. There's a reason, doctor, that your code needs 96 GB of RAM, and it's not because you're a god of numerical modeling. It's because your memory handling is extremely naive. Not to mention no one but you knows what "d" means here because you have one letter variable names with no comments, all in the global namespace.

Woo sorry. I could rant about this for a long time. I'm a research scientist, but I'm also a good programmer. I'll be damned if I let some crap out the door with either a bad implementation of the science from the pure devs or a bad implementation of the program from the scientists.

Click to expand...

You might want to learn some basic packaging, so that you can use apt (or yum, whatever) to install their programs on destination machines, and automatically get dependencies. Might be worth the time from the sounds of it.

As for the rest, I can only imagine working WITH them to do this kind of thing, as opposed to being handed the stuff so I can change as I wish (that one-letter variable thing is common). Did that years ago and that was bad enough. I can only imagine what you go through daily.

I only wish the "large company" one was similar to where I work. You forgot the copious number of log messages that are out-of-date for what's actually happening, and the single corner case that for no conceivable reason the function just doesn't work.

I liked the comments from the start-up one though. REALLY liked it.

Eriol said:

You might want to learn some basic packaging, so that you can use apt (or yum, whatever) to install their programs on destination machines, and automatically get dependencies. Might be worth the time from the sounds of it.

As for the rest, I can only imagine working WITH them to do this kind of thing, as opposed to being handed the stuff so I can change as I wish (that one-letter variable thing is common). Did that years ago and that was bad enough. I can only imagine what you go through daily.

Click to expand...

We do use packaging for what we can, but that requires the dependencies to be in the repositories. A lot of the repos don't have current enough versions of libs. I have custom scripts that will test for and install dependencies, but they're not foolproof. I also can't yum everything, because it's high performance stuff, and the user might have an architecture specific MPI libs or math libraries, which could be dozens of times faster than anything in the repos.

I've had little-to-no formal training in programming, which means that people who have tend to roll their eyes at my structure (since I don't know all the caseConventions). Also I get criticized for my comments, but usually that there are too many.

--Patrick

Yeah, no offense, but I don't like too many comments either. In my opinion, the code should be self-documenting through structure and variable naming, with comments bringing up the slack. Except at the head, where I do write comments in Doxygen format so that I can pull out API documentation as needed straight from the code. As for conventions, well, everybody has an opinion on that. I like camel case for variable names and underscores for methods and functions, and capitalized camel case for objects. That way I can tell them all apart at a glance.

I've seen bad too many, and bad too few, but more of the latter. "Self-documenting" to me doesn't apply to function/method definitions. I have no faith anymore that anybody obeys any kind of contract, so unless it says it in your comments at the top of the function, I assume it's a bug. But unfortunately I have to deal with a metric fuckton of legacy code all the time, so the definition at the top rarely encompasses even a fraction of what it's supposed to do, and thus in-function comments are essential.

Eriol said:

I have to deal with a metric fuckton of legacy code all the time, so the definition at the top rarely encompasses even a fraction of what it's supposed to do, and thus in-function comments are essential.

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They probably encompass everything the function originally was supposed to do, but not all the additions that got crammed in over time.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

They probably encompass everything the function originally was supposed to do, but not all the additions that got crammed in over time.

Click to expand...

How I wish that were true. What I've found usually happens:

• Function created along with 10-15 others as part of when the file was originally written. Perhaps some commentary at the top of the file telling what it's supposed to do overall. Maybe not.
• Later others are asked to write new features in it. They add comments to their own functions, and sometimes alter what's at the top of the file too.
• Still later others make tweaks to existing functions, and since they touched them, they are now responsible (under a new policy 10+ years after the file was created) to ensure all functions HAVE comments. And since they're the last one who touched the FILE, they put short and incomplete (because the functions are HUGE) comments at the top of ones they may or may not have touched.
• Repeat 3, with some "emergencies" not updating comments at the top of functions.

Result: the insanity I usually deal with.

Remember, there are parts of this code more than 30 years old. And 20+ year old parts that SHOULD be touched/ripped out, but aren't. For example, we don't fix compiler warnings. We're mandated to not create new ones without HEAVY approval process (which is fine IMO, and what you do is then #pragma the warning away for the file (though it should only be for a section of it) ) but you don't fix any of the existing warnings unless you're re-writing the line anyways. Because there's 10s of THOUSANDS of them.

Eriol said:

you don't fix any of the existing warnings unless you're re-writing the line anyways. Because there's 10s of THOUSANDS of them.

Click to expand...

Well, now I know why you married a priest.

--Patrick

Back when I was first learning to code, my comments occupied two to three times more lines than my code did. I basically wrote out detailed descriptions of what every line of code was supposed to do.

My professor once took a look at my code, and just shook his head and said, "I think that's a bit much."

bhamv3 said:

Back when I was first learning to code, my comments occupied two to three times more lines than my code did. I basically wrote out detailed descriptions of what every line of code was supposed to do.

My professor once took a look at my code, and just shook his head and said, "I think that's a bit much."

Click to expand...

I would actually endorse that approach for a beginner, though I think I'd also agree with your prof. It CAN go too far.

Well. I bought the Netgear R6250 and I'm really unhappy with it. This is the worst wifi range I've ever had. I've tried all the obvious things. I've repositioned, I've scanned for optimal channels. I've tried 2.4 and 5 GHz. I can walk 15' away in open line of sight with the router and even though my bars are high, I drop from about 88 Mbps to 18 Mbps. The router is upstairs, and downstairs is all but unusable. I wish this wasn't an eBay purchase or I'd return it.

PatrThom said:

Make sure you let us know how it works for you.

Click to expand...

fade said:

Well. I bought the Netgear R6250 and I'm really unhappy with it.

Click to expand...

Thank you for following up.
Here are the charts for that router from the review:

I checked to see if it supports DD-WRT, but support looks sketchy at this time.

--Patrick

I went with the TP-Link Archer C7 and have been really happy with it. Though almost ANYTHING would have been an improvement over the ancient POS that the ISP had us on. Wifi transfers to internal network stuff no longer kills the internet! Yay!

PatrThom said:

Any reason you wouldn't want to go home-brew?

Click to expand...

For anyone else who thought this looked interesting, they decided to go into a little more detail and actually show how they built it.
So if anyone wants an advanced-level DIY, there you go.

--Patrick

No idea how expensive it's going to be (long-term), but if you are one of those folks who likes the open source builds for WRT, Linksys has announced a newer, faster model that supports it. Probably a good idea for people who want to tinker or want to expand their router's features BUT don't want to mess around with choosing hardware.

--Patrick