Just curious to know what routers users are using. I currently use an Asus RT-AX86U but I’m in the market for an updated router. Currently the Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Router 7 (UDR7) has my full attention but I wanted to check what others had to say before making the purchase.
By the way, the reason I’m looking at the UDR7 router is because you’re able to create VLANs, the Zone firewall and the new object oriented networking. This will be a router replacement for me with no other purchase to expand, meaning no additional equipment will be added to the router such as more switches, wifi extender to create a mesh network, etc.. Just looking for a good, quality, reliable router that’s got some great security features built in.
I personally would buy the Banana Pi Open WRT router if I were in the market for one. Its FOSS and highly customizable. But seems like you know what you want and why but do check this one out as it may serve your purposes too.
that thing has a weird port choice: it has 10g sfp+ but the rest are 2.5g?
like what consumer ISP offers sfp+ (without an ont mod) or why would you want a nas via 10g but clients at 2.5g?
Personally i wouldn’t go all in on ubiquiti unless you like really want to be tied to their ecosystem. Some of their products used to be better in the past.
You could also consider opnsense. I have one of their appliances and it’s rock solid with the features I need. It also works on any platform, if i wanted to use some old server I could do that too.
Would also be checking whatever you choose has enough features to do ip policy matching on the firewall, like say you want a VPN running on your router and want to direct one of your VLANs to tunnel traffic into it.
@ JG Johnny Gossamer - Interesting, but for me that would make for an interesting future project going the Banana route.
@ SkewedZeppelin - You’re right. The router is more for a small business but I’m looking to use it as a home router. The SFP+ can be converted with a SFP+ to RJ45 10GbE adapter but anything above 2.5gbe would be capped to due to the other 4 ports being 2.5gbe. I’m aware of this but the security features is what really has my attention.
Forgot to mention that my budget is around $500. The router is for a small apartment. I’m also looking at a two mesh system (TP-Link Deco BE63) which would probably be overkill for a small apartment but the security features may not be comparable to the UDR7. I guess I would be willing to sacrafice as long as there’s VLAN capability to seperate devices from each other along with some decent rules to go a little further.
@ dngray - quoted “Would also be checking whatever you choose has enough features to do ip policy matching on the firewall, like say you want a VPN running on your router and want to direct one of your VLANs to tunnel traffic into it.”
I would avoid anything made by Ubiquiti, and second the suggestion of an OpenWrt One for an affordable home router that respects your privacy and freedom out of the box. Also consider various GL.inet routers as a second best option.
As for what I personally use: a retired gaming PC with a dual SFP28 NIC and a Mediatek WiFi card used in AP mode, running Linux.
I’m a little shocked at the answers I’ve gotten. I didn’t expect to see the OpenWRT One, the Banana version and the Fritzbox to be so popular. I’ve taken another deeper look at these products and they are interesting. Are they really that good? How’s the UI when using these, are the settings easy to navigate around or does it use terminal commands to set up? Any cons?
I’m still looking at some other commercial routers and researching more. Seems like I always find a con as in wifi range, buggy software, the hardware itself is way too big and spider-like. I do like the TP-Link BE550 and the Asus RT-BE92U but still keep coming back to the Unifi Dream Router 7 (UDR7). Is it really that bad of a router? Reviews are good for a stand alone router. Like I said, I’m not looking to expand beyond the router itself since it’s for a small house. I also don’t plan to go beyond a 2gb internet connection anytime soon.
i bought an off-lease lenovo sff intel desktop with a four port Fujitsu intel NIC. It uses very little energy and runs smoothly with my gigabit connection you really want to make sure you get a legit NIC because ebay is flooded with weird knockoffs. the manufacturer branded ones like HP, or Fujitsu are not faked as far as I can tell
With a little network knowledge, the Unifi equipment is easy to set up and maintain, they are slightly more expensive than most of the other suggestions here, but the UDM options are really geared towards enterprise/SOHO, so you pay a premium for that.
They don’t have a bad reputation for privacy, but your management pane is cloud based and while the company doesn’t have direct access to it, through their tools they can gain access, so it has the potential to not be as private as building your own with opnsense or openwrt.
I’ve been running two UDMPs for the last 4-5 years with zero issues and no downtime on either one, the second one has been a life saver a few times as it’s at a family members house and I can remote manage it for them the few times their ISP went out, or the PiHole stopped worked for some reason.
Well if you use opnsense you can use any x86 or generic arm, or even a VM. Be mindful that if you actually intend to flash a openwrt on a device its probably easier to use something like the turris etc. I wouldn’t bother buying hardware not designed to run open firmware on it, seems more effort than it is worth.
Also consider bandwidth and whether a banana pi will meet your needs, if you have fast internet this may not be sufficient, especially if you want it to do vpn routing as well.
power at the wall for an optiplex like that would be 30-40w and the icx7250 draws about 50w
you can get the 24 port non-poe variant of the 7250 and that supposedly only draws 30w
but the gain is you can basically get 10g on everything you’d need in a home environment along with an excellent management interface and support for advanced features/acls
otherwise there are fairly cheap 8 and 16 port 2.5g switches these days that’ll draw <15w
I have a Netgear XR500 flashed with OpenWRT but it is failing too frequently, so Fritz is my main device.