{"id":1157,"date":"2016-11-27T03:02:20","date_gmt":"2016-11-26T14:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/?p=1157"},"modified":"2016-12-09T15:45:46","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T02:45:46","slug":"even-more-router-reliability-reflections-4-years-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/even-more-router-reliability-reflections-4-years-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Even more router reliability reflections, 4 years on"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"8781ca4f97038dd0d58a1ad8af045721\" data-index=\"3\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-6411751809866006\";\r\n\/* BlogHorizontalSlim *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"6442664612\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 468;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 60;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>Wow so it&#8217;s been 4 years since my last &#8220;Router reliability&#8221; thoughts, and so much has changed in the landscape, yet so much has stayed the same too.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s still the problem of downright terrible routers being hocked off by ISP&#8217;s, left, right &amp; center for free under the guise of &#8220;valued at $299&#8221;, when in reality they&#8217;re paying ~$12-14 a router (Yes, I&#8217;m looking at you Spark).<\/p>\n<p>Where previously VDSL2 was the &#8220;new&#8221; tech, and ADSL2+ was commonplace, UFB is the &#8220;new kid on the block&#8221; with VDSL2 being even more popular than before. Gigabit Fibre has even arrived, so where almost everybody I knew on UFB was on a 100mbps down and 20mbps up plan, that&#8217;s quickly changing to 1000\/500, which presents a new set of challenges in it&#8217;s own right.<\/p>\n<p>Not to mention router interfaces are as abysmal as ever, ISP&#8217;s are competing to see who can ship out the cheapest and nastiest router for free, and even Geekzone tried (and abysmally failed like I told Mauricio it would) to ship a router out &#8220;to the masses&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So here&#8217;s my thoughts on where things stand at present, and where they&#8217;re going to go:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d first like to take the chance to say &#8220;I told you so&#8221;, you see back a short while ago, Geekzone ran a &#8220;Geek router contest&#8221;, where the geeks all submitted their ideas to Geekzone, who partnered with Spark, to &#8220;Come up with ideas for a cool router&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Basically every nerd on the site had a wet dream and came up with the most stupid ideas possible for a router, stuff that 99% of the population had never heard of, let alone cared about.<\/p>\n<p>So I came up with some ideas (Here: http:\/\/pressf1.pcworld.co.nz\/showthread.php?134210-Inspired-by-Geekzone-What-I-want-to-see-out-of-a-router ), and even began working on it myself, it actually came to fruition as a firmware that *worked* well on the Xiaomi Mi WiFi Mini router, so you had a router that you could drop off at your grandmas place to replace her cheapo one from her ISP for about NZD$30, and your grandma could even get it going, it was so simple!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/xiaomi-mi-wifi-router.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1158\" src=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/xiaomi-mi-wifi-router-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"xiaomi-mi-wifi-router\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/xiaomi-mi-wifi-router-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/xiaomi-mi-wifi-router-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/xiaomi-mi-wifi-router-110x110.jpg 110w, http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/xiaomi-mi-wifi-router.jpg 457w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The problem is it was only a 100mbps WAN port, which meant that on a 100\/20 connection you never quite got the 100mbps, whereas if you had a router with a Gigabit WAN port you&#8217;d get around 105mbps. That in itself isn&#8217;t a dealbreaker, but it immediately ruled out any 200mbps plans.<\/p>\n<p>Bring on late 2016 though, and Chorus announce Gigabit, which means there&#8217;s no way that a 100mbps port is going to cut the mustard.<\/p>\n<p>In my previous reflections, I&#8217;ve commented that the TP-Link TL-WR1043ND is a reliable router when flashing Gargoyle on it, and well-priced. To this day, that stands true, and I would take that over any ISP-supplied router. For $90 you get a router with a Gigabit WAN, 4x gigabit LAN ports, and some *solid* WiFi range! It&#8217;s missing 802.11ac and it&#8217;s also missing 5Ghz, but for something entry-level, it&#8217;s still a solid contender to this day, and I personally only stopped using mine around 2 months ago!<\/p>\n<p>Even with the advent of 802.11ac since my last reflection, it was still an incredibly strong contender, but when moving house of late I decided it was time to check out the Archer C7, and due to some stupid decision by previous tenants to put the Fibre ONT in a bedroom wardrobe (To hide it from the Landlord?), it meant the TL-WR1043ND was relegated to the role of &#8220;PPPoE \/ NAT device&#8221;, no WiFi.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/archer-c7.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1159\" src=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/archer-c7-300x300.jpeg\" alt=\"archer-c7\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/archer-c7-300x300.jpeg 300w, http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/archer-c7-150x150.jpeg 150w, http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/archer-c7-110x110.jpeg 110w, http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/archer-c7.jpeg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Before settling on the Archer C7, I made the mistake of trying the Archer C2 and the Archer C5, none of which supported Gargoyle which presented a reliability problem. After 3 reboots in 10 days, I decided the C5 was simply not good enough, and off to get the C7 and flash Gargoyle I went. It, like the TL-WR1043ND, has ticked along with 100% reliability ever since. I have no complaints about the hardware, but software-wise the TP-Link routers are almost as bad as every other one out there. Thankfully Gargoyle resolves that side of things, and everything is right in the world again, I&#8217;ve not had to restart the Archer C7 since I got it (Due to running Gargoyle immediately, not wasting time on the factory standard firmware).<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a great step up from the TL-WR1043ND, it has 802.11ac, it has 5Ghz, WiFi goes up to 1750mbps (I can get ~250mbps from my Cellphone testing to fast.com so it&#8217;s not too shabby), and if you find yourself wanting &#8220;the next model up&#8221;, this is the one to go for. The range on them is still fantastic, especially when compared with most &#8220;bundled&#8221; routers your ISP will throw in with your plan. Mine will still work a good 50m down the street from my property.<\/p>\n<p>For VDSL2 connections, they work fantastically as well when paired with a modem. The DrayTek DV120 is no longer around, but the DrayTek DV130 which does VDSL2 as well as ADSL is (Though significantly higher priced, around $190 from PBTech), is a perfect match. If you have ADSL2+ or VDSL2, you simply *cannot* beat a DV130 and a TP-Link Gargoyle router.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve tried the Netcomm NF4V, the Innbox V50-U (Almost identical to the NF4V), the V51, those nasty Energy Imports routers from Callplus \/ Slingshot, the latest Huawei routers that Spark are giving away, they&#8217;re all just as bad as things were 5-odd years ago when I first wrote about this. THINGS HAVEN&#8217;T IMPROVED AT ALL!<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s actually really sad, when you think about it, that every single router vendor pushes the same junk&#8230; It&#8217;s all about making the sale, not about making something reliable, or fixing the mistakes from the previous model, just peddle the next box out the door to make a few more bucks and carry on with their life with no regard to what they&#8217;re actually offering.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I would have happily stuck with my TL-WR1043ND and the Archer C7, but then &#8220;The Gig&#8221; came along, and unfortunately both devices max out around 160mbps of NAT throughput. The gigabit plans basically mean I not only need to sustain 1000mbps down, but up to 500mbps upload at the same time. I *could* dedicate a PC to the job, which would be fine, but not when I have friends and family looking at Gigabit asking &#8220;Soo&#8230;. what do we do?&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>And then along comes the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter-X!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/er-x.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1160\" src=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/er-x.png\" alt=\"er-x\" width=\"600\" height=\"343\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/er-x.png 600w, http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/er-x-300x172.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This unit is *nice*, it&#8217;s tiny (About 1\/3 the side of the Archer C7), in terms of performance it will do ~920mbps down and around 800mbps up, so it&#8217;s basically more than the &#8220;Gig&#8221; plans in New Zealand will be able to push through it. The interface is the standard Ubiquiti web interface, which I really quite like myself (Though it&#8217;s a little confusing at first it&#8217;s not like the other ISP-supplied junk which requires a PHD and 5 years of prior experience to operate).<\/p>\n<p>It also just ticks along happily, no fuss, not a single reboot in the couple of months since I put it in.<\/p>\n<p>Best part is: They&#8217;re only ~$125!<\/p>\n<p>So this will work with your current WiFi, or &#8220;do the right thing&#8221; and get yourself an Archer C7 running Gargoyle and pop it in to an &#8220;Access-point only&#8221; mode by changing the WAN to be disabled and bridge to LAN, and you&#8217;ve got yourself the best possible combo you can get for UFB.<\/p>\n<p>There are other routers out there which will do Gigabit, but most of them are going to set you back somewhere around ~$600 for the cheapest ones. Things like the Nighthawk R8000 aren&#8217;t cheap, around $500, and even then, they&#8217;ll still only do 500mbps (So you&#8217;re potentially missing out on HALF your connection capability). On top of that, they&#8217;re flaky routers too and semi regularly die under load.<\/p>\n<p>The only thing you&#8217;ve got to worry about then is that your ISP won&#8217;t actually be giving you those higher speeds internationally, and if you&#8217;ve got the EdgeRouter-X then you can be sure the issue is *not* your router! The only thing worth checking is that you&#8217;ve got yourself a decent Cat6 cable (Coz although Cat5e is supposed to be able to do gigabit, in my experience the cables I had, although they were getting a little long in the tooth, actually became a bottleneck for me).<\/p>\n<p>Now let me be very clear here: It&#8217;s 2016, soon to be 2017!<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s no good reason why you can&#8217;t get several hundred megabits to Sydney, Australia.<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s no good reason why you can&#8217;t get similar speeds to San Francisco, California.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re doing a speedtest on speedtest.net and choose, say Telstra in Sydney, Australia, I currently get anywhere from 400 -&gt; 600mbps, even during peak time.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.speedtest.net\/my-result\/5829237781\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.speedtest.net\/result\/5829237781.png\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re doing a speedtest on speedtest.net and choose, say Monkey Brains in San Francisco, California, I currently get anywhere between 150 -&gt; 300mbps, even during peak time. Likewise, testing at fast.com gives similar speeds.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re one of those unfortunate souls who is with a provider and you&#8217;re only getting, say 4mbps to California (Yes, sadly, I&#8217;ve seen that on a &#8220;Gigabit&#8221; UFB connection), it&#8217;s time to look at another ISP, because you&#8217;re able to get faster speeds over ADSL.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not suggesting it&#8217;ll be flawless speeds all day, every day, but if you&#8217;re spending ~$150 a month on an internet connection, your ISP shouldn&#8217;t be over subscribing their international circuits like they would have 10 years ago. International data is *not* that expensive these days and you should most certainly be voting with your wallet.<\/p>\n<p>It definitely pays to ensure your setup is as high quality as you can though, it ensures the &#8220;finger pointing&#8221; from your ISP can&#8217;t come your way. As of October 2016, Chorus said they weren&#8217;t hitting congestion anywhere on their UFB \/ VDSL2 network anywhere. This means if you&#8217;re having problems, and you&#8217;ve got yourself one of the routers I&#8217;ve recommended, the problem IS your ISP.<\/p>\n<p>So do yourself a favor, if you&#8217;re on ADSL2+ or VDSL2, get yourself a DrayTek DV130 for the modem. If you&#8217;re on UFB, get a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter-X to act as your router. Then, in both cases, get either a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND if you&#8217;re on a budget, or if you want to splash out, pick up a TP-Link Archer C7, and run the Gargoyle Firmware on them for reliability.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow so it&#8217;s been 4 years since my last &#8220;Router reliability&#8221; thoughts, and so much has changed in the landscape, yet so much has stayed the same too. There&#8217;s still the problem of downright terrible routers being hocked off by ISP&#8217;s, left, right &amp; center for free under the guise of &#8220;valued at $299&#8221;, when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-tos-guides-tech-info","category-personal-rantings","category-product-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWi3e-iF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}