| Step one is not to buy TP-Link routers. I know people have limited budgets, but having seen the code that sits on these devices and how poor quality and easily exploited it is, time and time again, I'll never buy TP-Link (amongst others) again. For a while I collected a graveyard of routers that had been abandoned by the manufacturers (and contained serious vulnerabilities), with the intention of writing them all up one day; next thing you know I have two children rapidly reaching double-digit ages, and much better things to do with my life than write about how shitty the code is on actual products we buy every day. I switched, about 7-8 years ago to a Protectli box running Coreboot and OPNSense and haven't looked back; I use Ubiquiti APs and switches. I'm not saying they're the best, but anything used in corporate/enterprise is going to have better support (if not better code quality). The great thing about Ubiquiti APs for me is that each new WiFi generation (or two) I can just buy a few more, snap the existing APs off of the various ceilings they're attached to, snap on the new ones, adopt them, and away we go. |
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| ▲ | emilburzo 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Or, buy a TP-Link router and flash it with OpenWrt. Best of both worlds. | | |
| ▲ | alias_neo 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I did that once or twice, but I got fed up of finding the correct hardware revision of a particular router that supports OpenWRT, and I much prefer OPNSense anyway, and it runs on commodity hardware that you have full control over. | |
| ▲ | xattt 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Then every upgrade flash becomes an ass-clenching experience. I’ve been down this path. It’s a lifestyle choice… until you’re up at 3 AM rebuilding everything because you bricked your AP by flashing openwrt-24.10.0-ath79-generic-tplink_archer-c7-v2-squashfs-factory-FOR-C7-V5-EU-NOT-V2-US.bin and not openwrt-24.10.0-ath79-generic-tplink_archer-c7-v2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin. | | |
| ▲ | ac29 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There is a one click update in the WebUI now, no need to flash random bins | |
| ▲ | emilburzo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I mean, these days you can just let Claude do it if you don't care for such minutiae... I was skeptical, but it got it done perfectly. It also discovered my fast roaming settings were incompletely setup and that I was using a 5GHz channel that needed 60s to turn on due to regulations (DFS channels). | | |
| ▲ | smallerize 15 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I'm at a loss why you would put a random number generator in front of such a sensitive operation. It's literally a matter of time before the output sampler chooses a somewhat-less-probable string like the one xatt posted. Or just deletes your stuff. | | |
| ▲ | emilburzo 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Because I've done it a million times and wanted to see what the "random number generator" is capable of? Because I have config backups/know how to unbrick? You should try it, you might be surprised how thorough it is. It certainly checked more things pre/during/post-upgrade than I did to make sure everything goes smoothly. And definitely more than xattt, apparently ;) |
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| ▲ | VladVladikoff 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Mikrotik routers are cheap, very stable and highly configurable. Admittedly the learning curve is a bit rough, but in today’s age of agentic assistance, you can just have your LLM help you configure it. | | |
| ▲ | ciupicri 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | ... and kind of slow. I've recently looked at Mikrotik hAP be lite (A42G-HbeP
) [1] and noticed only 2315.1 Mbps for 25 bridge filter rules or 1430.3 Mbps for 25 ip filter rules. I also heard a horror story about RouterOS coming with an insecure configuration by default, lots of open ports and services running which were recently affected by a vulnerability. Speaking of RouterOS do I have to also buy a license along with the hardware? How about updates? [1]: https://mikrotik.com/product/hap_be_lite |
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| ▲ | 0xdeafbeef 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not a router, it's an AP, so in my mind it's just a LAN to wifi bridge, a wrapper around the chip :) People were recommending them, it has PoE, roaming works etc. I thought I could buy a consumer product and stop tinkering lol. I'll check Ubiquiti, but I somehow thought that they are overpriced af and never looked into them | | |
| ▲ | alias_neo 19 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Your experience seems to indicate that even their APs are a mess; while I applaud your effort to solve this, "I'm too old for this shit" is where I'm at now when it come to my home network, I (and my wife and kids) just want it to work so I've spent a fair chunk of change on it. Uniquiti APs are fine, they've been reliable for me; I have one AP that's nearly a decade old and still going strong, and I just swap them out or extend coverage when a new generation comes along, and move the older ones to where stronger/newer wifi isn't needed. If I wasn't in the Unifi ecosystem which keeps my life simple, I'd probably look at Ruckus or maybe see whether Mikrotik have anything compelling yet. As it stands; the Unifi Server I'm self-hosting keeps them up-to-date and optimised, so I just plug in an AP, adopt it and forget about it, it gets configured automatically and away we go; that's about the amount of involvement I want these days. Coincidentally, I need an extra AP for my Steam Frame to use it away from the dongle in an area where I currently don't have good WiFi coverage, so I'm going to pick one (probably a 7-Pro or 7-Pro-XG) up and just plug it in to an ethernet port in the room in question, wait a couple of minutes and be ready to roll. |
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| ▲ | wccrawford 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | TP Link's support is the worst, too. I bought an Omada, thinking I was getting a quality product. It died in the first 2 weeks. Support accused me of not using a surge protector (it was plugged into a UPS) and grudgingly sent me a replacement. Even at home, I can't risk having to replace my router every 2 weeks, so I just stuffed it in a box. I did use it again later, but wasn't happy with it, and ended up with a Ubiquiti Unifi UCG-Ultra. It's better than the TP-Link Deco and Omada, Eero Pro, Google Wifi, and Asus routers I've had, though I'll admit some of the Asus were pretty decent. | |
| ▲ | n4bz0r 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I'll never buy TP-Link (amongst others) Been wondering recently what the others might be. Can you give a few examples among popular brands? | | |
| ▲ | alias_neo 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | As in the others that I _won't_ buy (which is what I meant)? I wouldn't buy Netgear, Asus, D-Link again. My ISP gave me Eero and I've never connected it, far too much Amazon crap going on there (but I have to keep it if I want the ISP to provide support). Gl.iNet has been OK for the price but re-flash it with vanilla OpenWRT because their OS has some dubious phone home stuff (or did last time I looked at it). Honestly, in terms of routers, I'm never likely to use something off-the-shelf again a decent box with Intel NICs that can run OPNSense and preferably run Coreboot (or similar). If I did go with something COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf), I'd look at Mikrotik. I'm not a massive fan of Ubiquiti but I have their APs and I've had a bunch of their EdgeMAX switches (sadly discontinued when some of their best devs left), and their APs have been solid for me for the best part of a decade. The advantage of using dedicated components is that each can be chosen according to your requirements. | |
| ▲ | BoppreH 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | On the other end I can recommend FritzBox. Rock solid and has a lot more bells and whistles than I expected, like wireguard support, NAS-like access by attaching USB storage, and more graphs than I know what to do with. It's the happiest I've been with an electronic purchase in a long time. | | |
| ▲ | n4bz0r 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Oh, I rather meant the brands to avoid. But it's still interesting to discover new ones, thanks. | | |
| ▲ | BoppreH 15 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Ops, bad comprehension skills on my part. I've amended the post to make the difference clearer. |
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| ▲ | TacticalCoder 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I'll never buy TP-Link (amongst others) again I've got many dumb cheap ethernet switches and I'd say as long as they're really dumb/unmanaged/not advanced: you can't go very wrong. I've got probably two TP-Link ones and they're on 24/7 and just work: zero problem since years (and they followed me in four countries). Never had any issue with big .iso files or anything. And I've got a little homelab: VMs and ZFS on a Xeon with ECC RAM, countless Raspberry Pi, two physical different LANs (not VLANs as all my switches are dumb) with a Pi doing the bridge/routing. It's when things get complicated: configurable stuff, "advanced" capabilities, etc. that the cheap junk stops working properly and that you're better served with proper gear. And of course there's the $200 or $500 vs $20 question too. But people shouldn't underestimate how reliable good old dumb unmanaged Ethernet is for home usage. Heck, I can go from 1 Gb/s to 100 Mbit/s to then a very old 10 Mbit/s (!) switch by daisy chaining them all switches and everything simply just works (I did that for I was thinking about playing with bounded-retrieval-model, hence physically limiting network speed on purpose). No whether you should support or not a company selling shitty managed switches and shitty routers by buying the products that are okay from them is another question. | |
| ▲ | ErroneousBosh 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Step one is not to buy TP-Link routers. What about their switches? I'm looking at buying a small 10GB SFP switch and TP-Link was one option. I've already got Ubiquiti kit, and frankly while I don't much like it I can't deny that it works well enough and is reasonably priced for what you get. So, it looks like I'm going to lean towards the Ubiquiti switches. | | |
| ▲ | alias_neo 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It really depends on what you need from it; a cheap L2 switch will do the job, but frankly, you can get a Ubiquti Flex Mini with 5x1Gb ports for £35, I have a bunch of them around the house, and they're semi-managed so I can do VLANs on them and power them over PoE; since I'm already running Unifi, don't see the point cheaping out on switches. I also have a bunch of EdgeMAX because I use the L3 features, they were more expensive, and that range is sadly now discontinued, but the Unifi equipment have all been workhorses, and the only think I've ever had fail in the past decade was an EdgeRouter Lite, the power circuitry failed after some dodgy mains voltage issues in my previous home. |
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