My home router, a Linksys E1000 or something like that, is no longer responding to input. The admin interface won’t come up. But it mostly does what it is supposed to be doing, so far as I can tell, so long as I don’t want it to ever do anything else.
Rebooting did not help. I’m reluctant to reset it entirely, but that’s probably the next step. What should I buy if that doesn’t do the trick?
I would ignore the problem, but my Pine64-based Minecraft server is no longer responding over the net. I’d reset the server to test, but you know. Uptime.
We’re rocking a Linksys EA6900. It has the usual specs and runs around $180. The way the house is setup, we use it as a partial switch besides the wireless. Overall, meh. It works and I haven’t had to screw with it lately which is good. It’s locked down and I’ve forgotten the admin password. Their ‘smart app’ is for normals but I could see some people using it. I don’t think I’m getting the wireless speeds I should be all the time though. I need to reset it back to factory and set it back up again only for the fact that I need to put my DSL router into bridge mode so that I’m no longer double NAT’d.
I’ve always used Linksys but I might jump ship with the next router.
I jumped ship, sorta…
I used to always use Linksys, too, but after the last two, no more. The cheesy cloud setup pissed me off. The older recent one had an option to revert to a manual mode, which looked just like my old WRT-54Gs. (I think it had 6100 in the model name? Don’t recall, but it had gigabit ports.) Before that one died for no apparent reason, I had picked up a slightly smaller, more entry level model - no gigabit, still dual band N but with less advertised theoretical speed. It works OK, but there is less granular control in the settings and I’m pretty sure either the overall or wireless performance is slightly worse.
Over Black Friday weekend last year, I picked up a Netgear Nighthawk series with the three external antennae, intending to replace the little Linksys. Unfortunately, the times where I have been motivated to swap it out (when I’m streaming and get a hiccup) have not yet coincided with when I have had time to rearrange the spot with my network stuff and do the configuring on the new router. I installed a Netgear for my dad a year or two ago and it has not had any issues at all, which was on my mind when I picked up the Nighthawk.
Edited to add - one of the guys at my office uses an Asus at home… he’s had it for several years now. He likes that it has good performance, good configuration graularity and the ability to load open source firmwares.
I bought a Netgear WNDR4300 about 3 months ago to deal with the spotty coverage and inconsistent connection that was coming from my Comcast router. Apart from a somewhat odd configuration method, it has solved all of the problems and provided a secondary bonus of a 5GHz connection for devices that can use it.
Is it me, or am I getting killed paying $10 a month in modem rental? Can’t I just buy a cable modem myself and go from there? What am I getting for my $10?
Yes. We’ve been using the same cable modem for over a decade. The technology doesn’t change THAT fast, especially if you aren’t paying for higher (hier?) tier service.
True. I almost did the changeover this weekend, but then something else came up.
Depends on the service whether they’ll let you use your own. Personally, I think it is BS to charge rental for the modem and not give you the option of using one you’ve bought. I have Charter and they’ve gone back & forth on that issue. Thankfully, they have a storefront near my house, with actual human people at the counter!! (as opposed to the zombie drone assholes at Comcast), so I’ve been able to go talk to them and get a better deal that I could by calling the customer service phone number. Also, when I went in last year, the lady was able to tell me that I should bring in my modem and swap it for a newer one because the newer ones had better reliability and speed capabilities. She was right - I haven’t had to manually reset my modem since and the speed is improved.
Sure it does!
DOCSIS 1.0 - March 1997
DOCSIS 1.1 - April 1999
DOCSIS 2.0 - December 2001
DOCSIS 3.0 - August 2006
DOCSIS 3.1 - October 2013
Meanwhile, I’m paying around $45 / month for 35Mbps. =/ New modem ain’t gonna help that.
But along with the new router, I did add a new modem because the old one has become temperamental and I want to iron out issues before I leave for a year. We shall see.
I also have an ASUS RT-AC66U. Replaced an old Linksys WRT54g
I highly recommend this unit. 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands. Bought mainly to increase
bandwidth to my son’s bedroom. Before: 30Mbs After: 150-170Mbs
I did have to buy an 802.11ac capable USB network adapter for his PC but what a
difference! Easy to navigate GUI, port forwarding, external USB hard drive capability.
Just my 2 cts
JT
Not that bad really, we pay £35/mo (US$47 … christ our economy died…) for 72 Mbit/s and we’re on probably the cheapest home fibre plan in the UK… my parents are locked into a BT contract (they’re the only provider in their postcode) and pay the same £35/mo for - I shit you not - 256 Kbit/s and a 50GiB cap.
Admittedly the 256 Kbit/s is because their phone line is 50 years old and the cabinet is 4 miles away, but even if they were right next to the cabinet they’d only get 2 Mbit/s because that’s the contract they’re paying for. US$47/mo for 2 Mbit/s. I cringe every time I have to fix one of their computers without being able to bring it back here because even something as simple as downloading new printer drivers is an exercise in 90s style download patience.
Returning to the OP, I’d also recommend Netgear. Our cable switch is Netgear and it is a dream, it’s not broken down at all in five years. Admittedly that’s just a switch, not a modem, but you’d assume the build quality carries across.
Also, avoid everything made by Technicolor. They’re a shell for selling Thompson modems after Thompson got such a bad name for selling outright shit modems.
Serisouly, it was a Thompson modem that caused the Great Modem Explosion of 2003 which killed the network card in my PowerMac 6200 and cost my parents about £40 in frozen groceries - we’d gone out on a hot, hot summer day to the coast and came back to a defrosted freezer and literal scorchmarks on the good study table!
Check out the stuff from Mikrotik. I was exposed to them through my last job at a WISP and I’m hooked. Currently own three for various purposes (RB750 formerly ran the network for my colocated servers, RB1200, now running my colocated servers, and a RB2011-UAS-2HnD which runs my home network.
The RB2011 is pretty awesome for a home network - 5 gigabit, 5 100 mbit, plus N wireless. I’m using that coupled with a Unifi AC Lite access point from Ubiquiti to cover my whole house thoroughly. (In fact, the wireless on that router is currently connected to my cell phone’s hotspot so that I can get online while I wait for a replacement cable modem thanks to a thunderstorm…). If that’s overkill you can look at something smaller like these. The hAP Lite is something I’d probably buy for my mom next time I replace her router - low volume, but gives me the ability to remotely manage easily.
They used to make a device called an AirRouter - it had potential, but there was a really nasty problem with it. If the WAN ethernet cable was over 20’ long or so, PPPoE wouldn’t remain stable. Why? I have no friggin’ idea, but it was probably the biggest embarassment I had at my previous job after I ran them through basic testing, then after I approved, we started selling them to customers… and had 30% need to be replaced with Linksys routers because they wouldn’t work properly.
