router recommendation?

[Steve]

PODCAST MORNING: I was holding my breath when I settled into my workspace this morning wondering how its little SG-1100 router had fared since I left it yesterday afternoon....................... not a single reboot. Yay! So it sure is looking good and it appears that, indeed, the router's previous power supply was the fault of those previous reboots.

 

[a viewer]

thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

Michael's post basically eliminated most of the possible choices lol However not sure about the peplink units. My concern would be that the brand stops supporting a units and thus no further updates. If there isn't an opensource alternative, I try to stay away from those routers. I have an edgerouter myself, and they have builtin UISP (cloud management) option (but have it disabled). Not sure if it works sending info if you don't use it. However, for remote sites it can be very useful.

You need to enable their device analytics ( Help us improve our EdgeRouter experience and stability by sharing anonymous crash reports and usage statistics. All data is fully anonymized and does not contain any sensitive information). So not sure if they would send any info behind your back

Also not sure about Steve's option for a a non tech person. I have considered pfsens or opnsense for myself, but the edgerouter just keeps going. Had it already more than 10 years, and they are about to release version 3. Even with all the issues that Steve has pointed about routers, the edgerouter usually has been ok. Though they are slow at fixing some of the flaws, since they use vyatta as the os

In general I'm dubious about most commercial options though most people will end up getting one, or even worse their isp's modem (which are hardly ever updated). So still don't know what to recommend them. The only option would be to set it up for them and hope they never need to go into it

 

[a viewer]

just found a cheap alternative to use as a recommendation. It isn't as hardened as pfsense device, but uses openwrt, and you can add some tools to make it a little better. The router is a banana pi

https://www.banana-pi.org/

 

[himemsys]

I'd like to add that I have used both PFSense and IPFire and both are excellent and full featured, but IPFire is *WAY* easier to use with a shorter learning curve. It is very similar in functionality, but Linux-based, rather than BSD-based. It is also in active support with roughly 8-12 updates per year for security vulnerability patching and package updates.

Welcome To IPFire! - More Than A Firewall

The Open Source Linux-based Firewall Operating System with a Comprehensive Feature Set

www.ipfire.org