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Router/Firewall Recommendations?


Leamas.5803

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What I'm after is a hardware utensil that will allow me to set hard Internet speed limits on particular devices. For example:

a limit of 2Mbps on the kids' iPadsa limit of 3Mbps on the Roku devicesa limit of 5Mbps on the kids' computeretc.

Wireless is easy, and can be done cheaply with most Ubiquiti access points, but it's the wired devices that are proving more difficult to find a device for. Contrary to popular belief, for custom router firmwares, DD-WRT won't do it, nor will Tomato, though they both have great monitoring capabilities. The Gargoyle firmware will do it, but it only works on a limited range of routers, mostly older ones lacking modern wireless standards. I was also looking at Ubiquiti and Sonicwall firewalls, but neither really do what I'm after.

Now, I could set up a PFSense or Sophos firewall (Both of which will do it) on my NAS, which has full VM support, but I'd really rather keep the network layer fully hardware, if possible, and I'd rather not down my entire network if I have to restart the NAS. I'm not afraid to spend a but of money to achieve what I'm after, but I'm thinking I might be better off with the Ubiquiti access point and installing a bandwidth limiter, such as NetLimiter, on the kids' desktop since most of the devices I want to throttle are wireless.

Thoughts? Recommendations?

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Opted to go with an Ubiquiti Unifi HD (https://unifi-hd.ubnt.com/). It offers among the fastest wireless performance on the market (Quad band 1.7Gbps) while giving many options for controlling bandwidth usage and QoS. At 400ft, compared to 150ft, it also has almost 3x the operational range of my router. So it gives me the option to get rid of my existing behemoth of a wireless router (Linksys AE9500), it really is THAT big, and get something much smaller and ultimately better performing, like a dedicated non-wireless gateway router, and a small switch.

I would never recommend the Linksys AE9500 router to anyone and totally regret buying it (My ASUS Dark Knight, which died, was WAY better). It has perhaps the most limited firmware I've ever seen on a router, with pretty much no QoS options and absolutely no monitoring tools. It's as basic and as dumbed down a router as they could possible make it and still be a router. Not much more advanced than a switch. :P It works until you get a bandwidth hog like, iPads, Youtube or Roblox, then no matter what you do, you're screwed...and you can't even monitor the traffic to confirm the hog. You can't even put a custom firmware on the damn thing to make it more useful.

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