There was an article that compared linux based DIY routers with off the shelf home routers and the numbers were pretty conclusive. A basic x86 processor from Intel or AMD is much more powerful than most of the low cost MIPs processors shipped in consumer routers. Why is something more powerful needed? Because the low cost MIPs processors cannot more than a few tens of megabits per second. Here is the article https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/numbers-dont-lie-its-time-to-build-your-own-router/ .
The ISP in my area installs an ONT on the side of your home, it is basically a powered fiber optic to ethernet transceiver and a couple of things, and your home router can be plugged directly into this optical transceiver via CAT6.
You can run the basic services necessary on the DIY router to run your home network, for very basic home network just DHCP & DNS server, and that can be accomplished using the service dnsmasq. If you need wifi you can plug a port from your DIY router into a LAN port of the wifi router (first disable the DHCP service on the wifi router) and use it as a wifi bridge to your DIY router.
This architecture has some other benefits, the main benefit being flexibility. Since the DIY router is running your favorite linux distro you can host other services. An key additional service I have tossed on the DIY router is VPN to provide connectivity back to my home network to provide better privacy and security when using public/untrusted wifi networks using Wireguard (could also use Openvpn or IPSec). Though I agree there are some security implications and running these sevices on an internet connected device is not suitable for a corporate environment, but for your home usage can even attach some storage and the DIY router can also act as a CIFS/NFS server or can run services like OwnCloud/NextCloud.
I've used three APU2* devices from http://pcengines.ch for different projects and they have worked well. They are low power, I believe they run at 12 watts max, have 4 core AMD processors (supposed to be powerful enough to NAT at 1Gb/sec), 4GB ram, a couple of gigabit ports, PCMCIA, USB, and possibly eSATA. There is no fan or moving parts, I have dropped one or two APU2s on hard surfaces and they have not shown any failure (just a dead AC/DC adapter after a severe electrical storm), they are pretty much rock solid.
Regards,
-Jamie
On Mon, Dec 27, 2021 at 9:16 PM Tim via users <users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 2021-12-27 at 17:35 -0600, Roger Heflin wrote:
> I have always ran my own router behind the ISP's firewall/modem. I
> usually DMZ my personal router's ip address and then rely on the
> security of my own newer router that I have full control of.
>
> I also forward ports to my server so that it can provide my public ip
> services via the router I have supplied. I also always turn off the
> wifi on the vendor's device (or if possible don't get wifi on the
> vendor's device at all if that is an option).
I had tried that, but performance was dire. That could just be the
combination of those particular devices. If my old modem/router packs
it in, I'll just buy a decent one directly from someone other than my
ISP.
> George:
> switches will forward just about any underlying packets at the layer
> 2 level, they don't care about protocols at all, and generally it
> takes an expensive switch to even look at protocols. But it is
> possible that the new switch does not support 10base-t and the set
> top boxes may need something ancient like that.
I was thinking it's more likely to be something like UPnP. Though it
could be at the remote end.
All the smart devices I have run at 100 mb/s ethernet, none run at 10
mb/s or 1 gb/s.
All of which went dumb a while ago, for several days, when something at
Sony stopped working, and they go into stupid-mode when they can't
authenticate with their mummy. I have a sony TV, and several Sony
bluray/smart set-top boxes for various TVs. The TV deleted all the
channels associated with the ABC, no streaming playing from any
services on any devices, the devices wouldn't store their settings,
even playing DVDs required mucking around, unplugging the power to be
able to eject a disc. A few days later on, they all went good again.
You might just want to try switching your network around, now, for the
set-top boxes, and see if it behaves any differently.
--
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