Teach me about routers

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I want to access stuff over wifi on a hard drive.

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USB hard drive? 2.0 or 3.0?

Best way to accomplish network access to a USB hard drive is to use a router with USB ports and connect it. You don't need any sort of amazing router because you will be severely bottlenecked by the hard drive's transfer and access speeds. You'd see no benefit from wireless AC in that regard, other than additional power to the antennae to increase reception -- and even that is not going to be significant on the cheaper AC routers. However, it's getting to the point where AC routers are replacing the good N900s in terms of price, so it's probably worth it to just grab one of the ACs if the price is right. If range is important, you want 3x3 MIMO at least, and the router should have external antennae:

This
rather than this


You'll get the best range on the 2.4 GHz band, but with one of the cheaper bargain 802.11AC routers, it's going to operate like a sort-of-crappy-or-mediocre N600 router unless you actually have AC clients -- and then, you're limited by the shorter range of 5GHz, which sucks even worse with 2x2 MIMO. However, this only matters if range is an issue in your house in the first place -- or you want range to extend beyond your walls, like the garage, by the pool, out in the yard, etc.

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Why have a AC router over N if my down speed is only 50Mbps?

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I want to access stuff over wifi on a hard drive

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This is where b/G/N/AC makes this difference..You will want to access this information as quickly as possible...You will only get the 50Mbps internet from Cox, but you will get transfer speed to this HD data at +/- wired speeds

So if it has a USB drive 2.0 and 3.0 and guest network it has almost anything I need?

I was looking at the Netgear R6300 LINK

and Asus RT-AC56U LINK

I could step up from either if they offer any other options that might come in handy.

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I was looking at the Netgear R6300 LINK

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This is my router and I love it. However the firmware got corrupted once and I had to pay to get it fixed. When working it is awesome. Great range and awesome speed. I stream music over the signal while cutting the grass. My yard is almost two acres.

:cracks knuckles:

ok routers are wonderful tools if you get one that has a few features. without getting too brand specific (although i will point out asus in a couple of places) the capabilities of routers can make or break your residential broadband experience. here's a few terms and why you care:

AC or N?
tough call and ilike knows the nitty gritty of the AC standard and why he feels 'the best is yet to come' still for that standard if you just wait a little longer. having said that, i am very pleased with the AC56U i bought for $75 or so. i think at sub $100 you can't go wrong and it appears most of the cellphones we are using (and my new work laptop) actually have AC built in so bonus.

AC speed?
tough call, but i can tell you in the '5Ghz' sweet spot (downstairs mostly) youtube and everything else is smoking fast with no hiccups ever. 2.4 still hiccups occasionally on HD youtube videos. NOTE: Chromecast only supports 2.4 and "N" so don't buy an AC to speed up chromecast.

Range?
i'm definitely happy with the range of my network with the 56U but nothing takes the place of a 3 or 4 antenna getup on a $100+ N or AC router. if you really REALLY want a rock solid signal, get a router with external antennas.

2.4ghz or 5?
well i'd say about 30% of my devices support the 5ghz network so keep that in mind. 2.4 has a longer range and it can be annoying to have to switch networks (my phone will sometimes jump to the 2.4) and when youtube is stuttering i realize whats going on and switch networks. CHROMECAST: also be aware chromecast will 'see' your phone on the 5ghz network but will require you to switch your phone to the 2.4 to connect (at least for now)

Ok, so lets jump off the range/speed and talk about some of the cool things built into today's routers. i still don't QUITE understand all these and i have to get ready for work so i'll fill these in later this AM.

"secondary WAN"
cool concept that allows you to attached a tether phone or something to serve as a backup internet connection should att or comcast be down.

DDNS aka dynamic domain system
FREE use dnsomatic: name your IP address so you can always get to it from any web browser. you want your own named domain and you want it to be free.

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DNS-O-Matic provides you a free and easy way to announce your dynamic IP changes to multiple services with a single update. Using DNS-O-Matic allows you to pick and choose what Dynamic DNS services you want to notify, all from one easy to use interface.

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OpenVPN or hide my arse
ilike can talk about this..but it costs money and its basically to hide all your site traffic so nobody knows if you're browsing porn or surfing the deep web.

OpenDNS or alternate DNS
FREE, works in conjunction with dnsomatic - allows you to use a HOSTED SITE to selectively filter out porn, etc...the nice thing is there are literally checkboxes for sites like 'pinterest', 'instagram', 'facebook', etc. making this so much much MUCH better than bloating your local HOSTS file with eleventy-billion porn IP address exceptions.

at the moment i'm using google's DNS servers (instead of comcrap's) and its as easy as going into WAN and saying "manual DNS server" and typing
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

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OpenDNS is a free DNS (Domain Name Server) service which makes internet browsing safer and allegedly faster. By simply using their DNS servers instead of your ISP's you are automatically protected from their list of Phishing websites. However, in order to restrict a variety of adult website content you will need to create a free account with them, register your IP address and select the categories you want restricted (i.e. sexuality, nude, pornography, lingerie, grotesque, etc...). Since most of us have DHCP assigned WAN IP addresses that change periodically we need to instruct our router to tell OpenDNS what our new IP address is when it changes.

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ipV6! do i enable this in my router? will it do amazing things???
i'll let rmerlin (firmware creator for asus) speak to this:

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IPv6 deployment on the Internet is still something of a work-in-progress. At best, you will gain multiple IPs (assuming Comcast delegates a whole subnet to their customers). Right now (in 2014), IPv6 for home customers is mostly intended to provide them with a way to start experimenting and familiarizing themselves with IPv6. It's also an occasion to test things out, and find out which applications or devices don't work properly with IPv6, in preparation for the day where ISPs will run out of IPv4s, and will start allocating IPv6 to some of their customers. My personal recommendation is to stick with IPv4 for now unless you are willing to participate in this whole experiment.

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NAS
already discussed, just get a router with USB 3

Guest network aka "samba"
mine is OFF and staying off because there's apparently lots of problems. RMERLIN again:

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Samba will be an issue for the vast majority of routers or low-end devices. Newer versions of Samba are flat out unusable on those devices, because after version 3.3/3.4, it's become ridiculously large. Back when I was working with the wdlxtv project, I remember that Samba 3.5 was taking nearly 20 MB of flash space. It took quite some acrobatics for me to fit it in the current firmware partition.

Considering the higher-end Asus routers currently have a rootfs partition size of 32 MB, you can see how this ridiculous bloat is unusable, and Asus is forced to use a much older version.

Until the Samba team can cut down on the bloat and provide with a solution that's usable for small embedded devices, it will remain a problem. I doubt they will ever have any solution, so that means we'll just have to wait for manufacturers to start using larger NAND chips, and add more RAM.

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custom firmware
ability to flash MERLIN or ddwrt (or whatever) on your router means a more solid product and better UI and better features with less crashing.

i'll dig into these more later

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participate in this whole experiment.

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For what?! I have no clue what that is.

Do you find the custom firmware to be better than what's already on the ASUS router? I like the ASUS interface a lot.

I read it is just a ASUS base and can be updated within a few days since it is so close.

very cool.

keep in mind i'm a total hack here. i've learned all this stuff about the open DNS, etc. in the last month since i bought mine so i may not understand it all correctly, just going based off changes i've made in my router now that i got rid of my vtech router.

and yes, in case i didnt make it clear, rmerlin works very closely with asus and they share info and he simply updates his version each time asus releases an 'official' update so i think there's a very low probability you would run into trouble with his.

plus he's all over the smallnetbuilder forums and seems to answer any question about his firmware within minutes.


another topic I failed to mention is the idea of 'ad blocking' at the router level so none of your devices need to install custom browser extensions, etc.

i'm still not sure/sold on that concept but it seems to make sense that you'd want to block that stuff at the firewall.