Good Business Class Router?

[ohio_grad_06]

Good morning, going to start out with saying most of my experience is on the residential side of things, but my boss has asked me to research into a good router.

Currently on my day job, we've got a setup where we have our internal network with 50mb fiber.

We also run a secondary network through bonded T1's totaling about 6mb throughput, this is our public network that everyone can connect to for internet. Anyway, one of our executives lives in a house adjoining to the property. Traditionally, they've gotten internet through a setup whereby we have a wireless antennae on our building, and on the house there is a receiver antennae(as opposed to running a wire).

Anyway, the long and the short is that we have an older model Cisco business class router on our end that drops the connection. Not sure of the model, but this router is likely 6-7 years old or more anyway so it's time to replace it anyway, as we have to reboot it manually every so often to keep internet going to the house. As far as I know, all this router does in life is receieve an incoming connection, and pushes it out to the antennae.

Would something like this be sufficient?

http://www.microcenter.com/product/394673/R6200_Dual-Band_Wireless_Gigabit_Router

Or can anyone recommend something better, again I'm probably looking for/needing an entry level business router, does not have to be fancy, just dependable and not lock up, and be relatively simple to configure, something to basically set and forget.

On Microcenter's site I tried to sort as best for business, but that netgear looks like it may be more of a home grade router, which I like netgear ok, I use them in my home actually and 0 issues.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Scan through this thread....from last week.

http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55305

The one you linked is home grade, I'd avoid those for businesses.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Ok, so something like this

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...co-rv320-dual-gigabit-wan-vpn-router-reviewed

or this http://www.ubnt.com/edgemax#EdgeMAXhardware

?? I am thinking we might end up replacing 2 routers. Our setup is different. Thanks for the tips, I'm still learning, most of my experience is smaller shop/residential type stuff. I have worked here a few years, but some things were in place.

But our setup is as follows, as I said, we have our main corporate network, not even in play here.

We have a 3 story office building. The side of the network we are talking about is a seperate network where we run bonded T1's in. This is in what we call the phone room, things come in there, and a lot of wiring is in that area to the rest of our building. As it's set up now, our secondary T1's for our public network go into a network switch/hub, which then feeds into a dlink home grade router. Which in turn deals out wifi connections downstairs, has ethernet to other places so we can hang other routers off of it, one of which is this other router that goes into the wireless antennae. So as you can see, it works, but we could have a better setup certainly. We do need wireless capability on the first floor(where that dlink is at). VPN capability we don't need on this network. We have VPN on our main network that we have an application from Cisco we download, etc, so that's not needed on this network if we can save an expense there.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

What about something like this?

https://www.avantidataproducts.com/..._A_d_K9_d_NA&gclid=CLKw-tmu_rwCFRJo7AodkgYAJA

Or anyone have experience with these?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704182

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We've used the "RV" series from Linksys/Cisco for...well over 10 years now...at hundreds of clients. Many different models. IMO they've been a great, solid router.

I have not gotten a 325 in yet, we've slowed down on purchasing/deploying the RVs since we focus on UTM appliances now for businesses (IMO, plain NAT routers are sort of ...no longer adequate). But yeah...would be a good one, based on Tims review, and based on the other RV series.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Any thoughts on the rv 215 or that tplink? As I said the way we are running things the router is sitting on a separate physical network from our internal network. The network that this router services has no critical data to speak of. Someone could hack that network and they would not get to our internal network as the internal network is physically on a separate circuit and connectivity to that comes through a different provider even, plus it's fiber, vs the other network we are talking about is t1's.

I would agree though if it were not this way and a smaller office, a UTM would be a better way to go and put the router behind it. We mainly want something we can set, forget, and not see for a while.

 

[Markverhyden]

I second the RV series for small business. Been very reliable and their VPN client is free.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Ok. So the RV320? I only ask because all the reviews I'm seeing, alot of them anyway are saying bad things about the rv series, like on newegg and cdw, guys saying that they are rebooting them all the time, etc. That's the type of thing we don't want. I just honestly, I know a little about home grade routers, but I don't really know as much on business class. I am a newbie when it comes to that portion, even as to where to shop to kind of segregate them from the home router equipment. But I suppose that may be easier said than done since so many guys are probably modding the cheaper routers.

Gotta say I'm even tempted by this for the open source firmware.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122334

I like netgear, I've run them for residential stuff for years, but business environments are more demanding. When it comes to business class routers, I am like the young grasshopper in that area.

I will say I know my boss has not been really happy with the older routers, the routers are Cisco, but I guess the complaints have been their interface was a bit clunky, and just not as reliable as what they felt they should be. I'm not saying Cisco is out of the question, but just looking for something reasonable that will work.

 

[altrenda]

Do I read it right that your setup is T1>switch>wireless router >switch>second router?>

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Essentially.

Bonded T1>Switch>Wifi Router>2nd Wifi Router/Gateway.

Is my answer clear as mud? Basically T1 comes into a switch, which connects to wifi router, this router then connects out to another switch, as well as to misc connections such as a network gateway/router that feeds a point to point wireless connection to the house I mentioned earlier.

The first wifi router is a home grade dLink router, it needs replaced, what really needs changed is actually the network gateway/router feeding the connection to the house. Sorry if I was not clear on that. But I need something reliable that I don't have to keep checking. These connections don't need great security, as they are on a publicly shared network, so we don't keep any files on that network, and it's a physically seperate network from our regular network.

So basically we just need something entry level business class that is reliable that we can set and forget and not have to babysit constantly that can handle a decent amount of traffic.

 

[altrenda]

I was confused about 2 routers. Both handing out IP addresses? Or is the second in bridge mode acting as an access point?

If the second is routing as well you could have a double NAT problem.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I've used the RV180 and RV220 models quite a bit...they're stable, fast. My only complaint is the long reboot times they take when making changes. But once setup, they're solid, stable.
Haven't used the newer 320 models...so can't say. I know that newegg 'n other online sources for the common people are full of complaints because they're regular joes, and often don't know how to set up networks and equipment properly. Likely not on good clean power, likely the internet connection "appears" to go down..but they don't know if it's the line, or the modem/gateway, or maybe they don't know how to properly setup a router behind a business gateway (combo modem/router) that the ISP puts in their biz accounts...so there's a double NAT setup, not properly done...

 

[ohio_grad_06]

They actually all hand out their own IP's. As I'm thinking of it now, we have the T1's, but we have a block of IP's, so we traditionally give each router it's own IP address and it can hand out it's own addresses. Each router also gets a seperate set of IP's, so like one router is PUB 12, so it gets 10.12.12.1 as it's IP set, the next router might be PUB 33, so it gets 10.33.33.1 as it's set, and so on. I know in the cases of multiple routers on the same line though, I've either disabled dhcp, and I think there is one, we gave a static IP from another router, and again it got it's own set of IP's, so it just used the static from the other as it's fixed IP, could point back to the other router for DNS etc, but still give out it's own IP's. So haven't seen the NAT be an issue yet over a year or so.

 

[brandonkick]

So they are all on different subnets, which means that you'll have no NAT issues.

As I understand the connection setup, you have a T1 line go into a switch. The switch feeds a wireless router which is running DHCP. Then they are basically using another wireless router as an access point. So they are spanning the gap from your business location to this place attached to the side. Is there no way to run a wire, or is the distance too far?

 

[unclemarv]

Access Points?

I'll say I like the Cisco RV series routers. Used them for over 10 years for my smaller and cost conscious clients. I also use SonicWall TZ and NSA series for my larger clients.

Am I missing something about the multiple wifi routers? You have them daisy chained with both handing out DHCP addresses? Why not use VLAN with access points? That way your server or main router (Cisco RV320 or SonicWall TZ105) can manage DHCP for both scopes and your access points.

Or better yet... access points from Open-Mesh and manage everything from a web interface. Then you can have both access points broadcast both networks, get better coverage and keep them separate. Just started using them and love them!

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Ideally I can see what you are saying. Some of these also have just been added in over time. So you know, just kind of patching things to work as time went on. I've been here nearly 4 years now, when I first started, they considered outsourcing the tech department, so money was an issue for at least a little while. Ideally though you'd be right, allowing one router to hand out everything and using AP's for everything else would be ideal. One thing I will say that this setup helps us with though, I work for a Church organization, and sometimes we have meetings here where more than 100 people come in. So it does make it nice to have multiple routers handing out IP's so we don't clobber one of them, lol. It seems to actually help balance the load.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

One thing I will say that this setup helps us with though, I work for a Church organization, and sometimes we have meetings here where more than 100 people come in. So it does make it nice to have multiple routers handing out IP's so we don't clobber one of them, lol. It seems to actually help balance the load.

DHCP doesn't put a load on a device, it's a light quick service.

Business grade routers can handle high loads of many concurrent users. But if you're using home grade routers...a single one of those would likely bog down with many users.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Aha. Because I know in the one room we have a linksys home grade type router, it did ok, but you start getting 100+ people it dropped out after a while. Since we put another router toward the back of the building, just behind that room to extend the wireless network, things worked alot better. Now I know the difference though.