@voltagex I wouldn’t purchase a new router for extra ports to connect all your ethernet devices. Instead, I would buy an Asus router combo and purchase a level 2 switch with either 2.5-gigabit ports or 10-gigabit ports (the 10-gigabit port switch is probably cheaper than 2.5-gigabit.)Then connect that switch to your router. You never said if you live in an apartment or house. I might be able to suggest an Access Point if I knew where you live in an apartment or a house.
Apartment, but there’s a couple of metal frames (archway) that completely mess up most wifi, plus as more people move in around me all the bands become more crowded
The five megahertz band should be ok; five megahertz band usually doesn’t penetrate between walls. However, the 2.4 MH band might be a problem.
What exactly don’t you like about Unfi management software? Most devices will require you to ssh into its command line to set up its advanced features.
Setting up PXE boot (the config-in-JSON I needed to do for Pi PXE was janky), having to run a separate controller, any changes you make in SSH can be overridden by the controller, if you get anything wrong in config it’ll throw errors when the controller tries to apply the configuration instead of checking beforehand, mongoDB…
I had clients still running the AP AC Pro until the beginning of this year without a single issue. Plus a large majority of my clients have dang near full UniFi stacks other than a few with Netgate hardware for the firewall.
I always here people having issues but MSP’s like myself and hundreds of others also deploy dang near full UniFi stacks without a single issue. I also run a UniFi + pfsense stack at home and it’s worked flawlessly.
Of course there have been a few DOA products over the years but that is with almost everyone.
I first ran the Unifi controller software on a Raspberry PI 4, then replaced it with a Wave 2 Cloud Key. I purchased the Cloud Key because I kept having issues with Raspberry PI dropping its connection to my Wave 2 L2 Unifi switch every two weeks, which required a reset of both my switch and the Raspberry PI. Since I replaced the RassBerry PI with the Cloud Key, I haven’t had any problems. I only log in to the Cloud Key to do updates. That is how stable it is for me.
There you have everything you need in one simple device. For example, I have the Asus RT-AX88U; when we placed the IPS-provided device with it, our WIFI access improved by 200 percent.
I’m still on the UDM boat. It has the pretty UI and it does things but most important at all you can SSH into it and put stuff there. Scripts, programs, docker images you name it. Like adding wireguard kernel modules and using iproute2 and iptables to create a sophisticated configuration where say, some computers use vpn while others don’t, or road warrior setups etc etc.
IMO having a bash-like shell is the single most important killer app a router can have.
I have the trash can version and I’m pretty happy with it.
What kind of custom arm64 router do you have? I need specs of the custom router before I can suggest running anything other than OpenWRT. Are you familiar with Linux? Would you be open to the idea of an open source routing firewall that has a web interface to configure? Living in an apartment building, I assume your ISP is using CGNAT. I need to know if they are. All these questions need to be answered before I can make another recommendation.
It is finally coming… No clue how long it’ll take before these get released and arrive over in Australia though. It doesn’t have a product page yet either.
Though a product sheet is available already: https://mt.lv/hap_ax2
What do you mean by upstream builds? Also, does the Traverse Ten 64 allow replacing OpenWRT Software with another Router software as long as it’s based on Linux? I will suggest a company offering two different products for you to research to see if you can replace OpenWRT with one. That company is Netgate. The two products are called Pfsense (which is based on FreeBSD) and TSNR (which is based on Linux). Pfsense is the routing firewall software I was talking about before, and TSNR (which I don’t have any experience with because I am unfamiliar with Linux.) TSNR, from what I understand, Netgate has taken Linux and turned it into a custom router operating system. You can get a limited free trial if you meet all their qualifications. You have to email them and inquire about the free trial. Here is a link to each product’s main page. Pfsense Community Edition TNSR High-performance Software Router
If you’re interested I can try to dig a bit more on how well FreeBSD runs on the Ten64, even if you’re on -CURRENT for now it’s going to be little maintenance overall.
I have no idea how to administer FreeBSD - I did run it for a bit on my NAS a few years ago. I’d be worried about power management and wifi card compatibility.
You’ll need a separate AP (ath9k works fairly well afaik), administration is actually very easy and the pf (you can also use ipfw if you prefer that) syntax is much more (imho) logical than iptables.
“mimic’s generic SOHO router”. Except for DHCP, UPnP, viewing what’s connected to your router, viewing current connections, setting up DNS resolving and so on.
