Replacement sky router/modem

[gavdee]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for taking a look at this post.

I'm looking to replace the sky router we have at home and I don't want to use what sky provide. Basically, I'm moving in a couple of months and won't be using Sky again, they're not worth the money.

In the meantime, I'm looking to replace the router for a dual band so that I can run my laptop of 5ghz while leaving the rest of the fam on 2.4ghz. They don't need the speeds for Clash of clans or Farmville lol.

Does anyone have any advice/experience on which to go for? I have a budget of around £100-120.

Also, not too sure about MAC addresses etc., so any advice in retrieving the relevant info would also be appreciated.

Thanks for ya help

 

[SpyderTracks]

I would hugely recommend the Asus family of routers. I've got the n66u and its superb, does automatic config for sky connections and bt infinity. Plus if you have any issues, you can log a call from the router and Asus respond within minutes (have used 24/7 even weekends!)

 

[gavdee]

Hi Spyder,

Thanks for the recommendation. The fact it has auto config is a good selling point for me, I'll take a look, cheers

 

[Tony1044]

One piece of advice - whichever you go for, put the 5GHz on a different SSID. Many will slow down to the slowest speeds where they use the same SSID

 

[gavdee]

Cheers for the advice Tony, will look back over this thread once I decide on a router to use this pool of knowledge.

Thanks

 

[SpyderTracks]

Do note, the n66u is an old router now, only does wireless n speeds. You'll be able to get an ac dual band for your budget. The Asus ones are amazing though, have vpn connections, and countless other features.

 

[Tony1044]

Spyder - I recently moved from using the BT Business HUB 3 with an Apple Airport Extreme to do the BT Infinity and Wireless connections respectively. I had to keep the BT BH3 as it was the only one at the time that could handle the way BT do their multiple static IP's.

But I recently ditched both to put in a Sophos UTM as it can handle the PPoE dialing with the static IP's along with an AP30. I've never had such rock solid performance.

Now I wouldn't recommend this for your average every day user as it's somewhat technical to setup, but it's a lovely setup.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Spyder - I recently moved from using the BT Business HUB 3 with an Apple Airport Extreme to do the BT Infinity and Wireless connections respectively. I had to keep the BT BH3 as it was the only one at the time that could handle the way BT do their multiple static IP's.

But I recently ditched both to put in a Sophos UTM as it can handle the PPoE dialing with the static IP's along with an AP30. I've never had such rock solid performance.

Now I wouldn't recommend this for your average every day user as it's somewhat technical to setup, but it's a lovely setup.

I'm jealous! I'm a huge fan of sophos and Cisco. If I had the werewithal and funds I would look into doing something like that.

For now, I've got quite a basic setup with my Asus router and a network of homeplugs to spread and separate the networks around the house, it's not perfect but I don't really do any file transfer over the network, it's really just for Internet access.

The other thing I need to sort out is a NAS drive, still looking into makes and options.

 

[Tony1044]

Well...Sophos UTM Home is free for up to 50 devices (it treats anything with an IP that includes a default gateway as one).

I bought an HP Microserver Gen8 from Serversplus.com for £85 after cashback and dropped a spare SATA disk into it as it doesn't come with one.

The AP cost me about £55 off eBay.

The Gen8's have an iLO built in which means it runs headless and it's totally silent.

UTM Home also comes with things like 10 AV licenses (means I can also get reports from the old man's laptop even when he's at home and the ability to manager the machines too.

I've also got it set up as a SSL VPN and a site-to-site VPN and the kids' friends can use the guest WiFi which is running on there. The password changes daily for it and it emails myself and my lad.

When I took the junk that was the BT BH3 out, I saw a 30%-40% increase in throughput.

Sophos UTM Home Free

HP Microserver Gen8

The Gen8's are currently at £149.95 ex VAT with a £55 cash back offer bringing them down to £94.95+VAT

Edit: It'll also work with your own wireless kit but won't manage them the say way they do their own AP's

 

[Tony1044]

Oh in terms of NAS's I picked up a brand new, unopened 16TB Seagate Business NAS off of eBay. Turns out it's basically a rebadged BlackArmor.

It runs my private Dropbox (check out Seafile - free for 10 users and runs on Windows), streams to Plex, holds my backups and scans etc and so far hasn't missed a beat. It also supports iSCSI.

But if it's raw grunt you want, then QNAP are probably the beasts to look at.

Or another HP Microserver with a RAID controller and disks and FreeNAS or OpenFiler on.