I need dual bank recommendation

Chuckle.

Thank you!

I see two offerings at Amazon:

Both are a bit expensive. Do you have a favorite?

Sorry, mistook an asus as one. There is only one for ~200 U$D

not that well even when it was new. hopefully they're *really* cheap.

no single router (or any product) is going to be ideal for all customers or situations.

no issues here or anyone i know who uses them. rock solid.

there was an issue a few years ago with the flash memory in some units, but that's long been resolved.

they are definitely harder to configure than typical consumer stuff, with the real power via the cli, not the web ui.

in general, i've found contacting tech support to mostly be a waste of time no matter what company it is. the front line people know nothing and read from a script, and that's if they even understand the problem.

it's usually a *lot* more productive to do a search for whatever the problem is, and chances are someone else also had the same or similar problem, along with assorted solutions. a lot of companies have their own forums, which can also be useful.

in some cases, minor hardware repairs can even be done via what can be found online.

major hardware repairs will require contacting the company, but that can usually be done online.

pitch them this way. edgerouters are great. they're inexpensive and

*very* capable.

however, they're not consumer products and not easy to set up for those who aren't network gurus. the true power is via the cli.

as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

synology has three models, the 1900, 2600 and their newest, the 2200, although it looks like the 1900 has been discontinued:

i've used the 1900 and 2600 and they work exceptionally well. the issues i have with them are relatively minor.

the 2200 is designed for mesh systems, but can be used standalone, and can be found for about $140ish.

ui example:

I was changing out my friends and customers Linksys EA2700 style routers with Asus RT-AC66u. The problem was that the Linksys EA2700 could not handle 100 to 150Mbits/sec throughput required by the current crop of DOCSIS 3.0 routers. That's on the gigabit ethernet ports. The EA2700 worked just fine at DSL speeds, but does badly above about 50 Mbits/sec. (No, it's not jumbo packets).

I was using AsusWRT-Merlin firmware because I wanted the latest bug fixes and some better monitoring features on the assumption that Asus would not update their older models.

Wrong. The recent discovery of some serious exploits resulted in the release of security upgrades for some of the low end routers, including the RT-AC66U. So, now I'm swinging back to the stock Asus firmware. Indecision is the key to flexibility.

Last year, the author of AsusWRT-Merlin decided to no longer support the lower end of the Asus router series. The RT-N66U, RT-AC66U, and some others that I'm too lazy to lookup. So, I've switched to the RT-AC68U.

The problem here is the large number of used T-mobile TM-AC1900 routers on eBay. It is possible to install Linksys or Merlin firmware on these, but it's tricky. I managed to brick one last week while trying to be creative with the instructions. So, if you avoid the TM-AC1900 model and get the real RT-AC68U, you should be ok. The bad news is that they're about $150 new. The good news is that they're quite reliable, will easily route at Comcast cable modem 150MBit/sec download speeds, are quite fast to laptops and desktops that can do 802.11AC (5GHz only), and seem to be quite reliable. I'm still playing with the built in mesh networking (AiMesh) which seems to be useful.

Currently, I have only one business and three residential installations using Asus wireless routers. Also, my next door neighbor and myself which is where I run my tests and experiments. That's not really enough history to make a proper recommendation, but if you're not sure what you, these would be a good start.

Ubiquiti appeared in this discussion. I have 5 point to point wireless bridges build with various Ubiquiti radios. These are a mix of LocoM2, BulletM2 and M5, and Litebeam M5 models. Other than some performance optimization and some firmware updates, I haven't had to touch these after installation. The bad news here is that much of the used Ubiquiti hardware sold on eBay are early version hardware that cannot be updated to the latest firmware. It still works, but not very well. I got stuck with a pair of Bullet M5 radios with this problem. Since then, I've been buying new radios.

While setting up an Asus router is fairly easy using their built in setup walk through, Ubiquiti is not easy. The settings are all there, but often scattered on different pages, or well hidden. For example, the wireless password is a tiny "?" icon next to the SSID box. Fortunately, there are a fair number of walk through videos and web pages that will help. Nifty built in features, like a spectrum analyzer to find empty channels and interference.

That is why I am looking for a replacement. They are cheap. My customers balk at price of the really good stuff, such as Watchguard's Firewalls, which include routers

Okay, one crapped out two hours into operations. It took the customer over three weeks to respond and over three months to get a replacement from Ubiquiti.

The replacement was sent with the first firmware and refused to update. It also had a dead PoE port, even though it was configured to be on.

Ubiquiti's service SUCKS. The customer has been fighting with them for over a month now trying to get a refund.

No s***!

I am and they are still obnoxious to set up.

I support Linux and love the cli but still find edge routers obnoxious.

Oh they supposedly have a nice "Wizard" to set them up. But they do not ship them with the firmware that has the wizard. And they won't update. And there are no direction on line to do it manually. They way to use the "Wizard".

It should only take me five minutes to set up a router. Lan network: network, mask, IP address, DHCP server, DNS. Wireless: security, SSID, key. Reboot. Ubiquiti ain't it.

Best place to store an edge router is in a trash can.

I concur, especially with East India based support.

me. may I describe the problem? them. no, i have to ask you some questions first me. do ahead them. it your computer turned on? me. yes. may I describe the problem? them. no, is your monitor on? you get the picture

Took me over 45 minutes constantly trying to ask my question at a customer's site once before I got to ask my question, which was the unit under warranty. It was not.

By the way, Watchguard has American (not H1b visa) support. They are incredible. The scheduling operator for support often know the answer without having to create a ticket or put you through to support. Love the guys, but no one wants to pay $300+ for a router/firewall.

Thank you!

I find a lot of the more expensive ones are packed full of un-needed features

Thank you! I will give ASUS a look!

the wizards are included in the stock firmware, plus there's plenty of how-tos online, from ubiquiti and others.

that takes less than 5 minutes, and most routers don't need a reboot to take effect.

Not when they ship you out of date firmware that the wizard does not exist in and the firmware won't update.

The wizards are nice, if you can get access to them and can figure out their weird/cumbersome way of doing things

[nip]

True. I have seldom contacted tech support unless it was for a service, and the problem is likely to be on their end. Some (the last one was Karma,

but many have been unhelpful.

[snip]

[snip]

That's the kind of thing I got when I called support for one hotspot I had (company name starting with "V" and not Verizon). The person ignored

90-95% of what I was saying (and, as expected, assumed "Lubuntu" was some kind of Windows).

BTW, I do get good tech support occasionally, like from Karma (as I mentioned in a previous post), where the technician solved my problem in a few minutes.