Time for a new wireless router: share your suggestions and experience here

[Too Tall]

Eero was purchased by Amazon, and the voices in my head tell me that's scary from a privacy standpoint. They also dated for Wi-Fi standards, but I think even the stuff on the bleeding edge is going to be outdated fairly quickly. I personally would rather go with one of the WiFi 6 routers if I want to keep it long term.

Looks slick. Sold out as well ;) Their latest and greatest is the Alien which is incompatible with their other devices in case anyone was asking.

[rec head]

Anyone using the eero subscription services? They didn't exist when I got my eero. Then they gave me a few months for free. Now I don't have it. I haven't noticed anything different having or not.

I have been using eeros for 4 years and there have been no hiccups that I can remember. Maybe I had to reboot it a couple times. They definitely aren't cutting edge but we have the garage to the basement to the 4th floor covered. Gig internet and about a million devices connected. Multiple 4K streams often. It just works.

[VertigoCycles]

Anyone using the eero subscription services? They didn't exist when I got my eero. Then they gave me a few months for free. Now I don't have it. I haven't noticed anything different having or not.

I have been using eeros for 4 years and there have been no hiccups that I can remember. Maybe I had to reboot it a couple times. They definitely aren't cutting edge but we have the garage to the basement to the 4th floor covered. Gig internet and about a million devices connected. Multiple 4K streams often. It just works.

I was in on the initial eero pre-order and have been using them since. No big complaints here...except my iPad drops the connection fairly often but I can usually just toggle the wifi connection and all it good again.

We've had the subscription for the past six months or so. IMO, the big bonus to the bundle is the 1Password family account that comes with it. I was already in the 1Password ecosystem, but they took away family access a few years ago when they started pushing the subscription service rather than standalone app. I'm already a Private Internet Access VPN customer and haven't bothered to switch to the Encrypt.me service but I might when my PIA subscription expires. We've installed Malwarebytes on all the computers but I don't really have anything to say about it as I don't think anyone in my family accesses high risk sites so I can't say it's doing much for us. The router level ad blocking definitely works as do the "safe filters" Eero offers weekly reports for the "Advanced Security" feature, but the numbers are so startling that they have to be inflated and they don't give any origin information. So it looks like your computers are constantly under attack, but there isn't any data as to which sites are problematic. For example, my iPad has 72 hits for spyware this week according to Eero, but I've mostly used it for Instagram, Sudoku and Gmail, so it seems unlikely.

[Too Tall]

Success! I got three EERO Pros. Had the network up and done inside 30 mins.

I'll update this with more later today when I have time. Nice stuff :)

[j44ke]

I ordered one of the Amplifi Aliens. When we get it hooked up at the new house in about a month or so, I'll post something here. My guess based on the descriptive info, is that we'll be able to do our entire house with some reach out into the surrounding yard with the one unit. They have a companion mesh point, currently available (though out of stock) only as a set with the base, but they are supposed to be available separately later.

AmpliFi | Faster, Whole-Home Wi-Fi

[Too Tall]

Interesting Mr. Jorn. Will follow that.

EERO download speeds are in the high 240Mbps and Upload 6.xx No too shabby considering that is faster than what I'm paying for.

Next up (topic drift) is a NAS which is Apple Time Capsule friendly. This is looking like a contender: Buffalo - LinkStation 220 4TB 2-Bay External Network Storage (NAS)
Four TB is more than I need.

[rec head]

Been happy with Synology. Currently using a 5 bay but started off with a single. Time Capsule only requires that you set up a folder on the NAS. I think it is what my wife does.

DiskStation Manager - Knowledge Base | Synology Inc.

[Too Tall]

Been happy with Synology. Currently using a 5 bay but started off with a single. Time Capsule only requires that you set up a folder on the NAS. I think it is what my wife does.

DiskStation Manager - Knowledge Base | Synology Inc.

Appreciated. Reading the process reminded me that I used to enjoy Unix ;)

[rec head]

Just to be clear are we talking Time Capsule (the device) or Time Machine (the sw on the mac)? The tutorial I linked to might look harder than it is. Basically find the drive with the mac then point Time Machine at it.

Windows is super easy. Find the drive, map the drive and now the PC uses it as a normal drive.

[sk_tle]

Next up (topic drift) is a NAS which is Apple Time Capsule friendly. This is looking like a contender: Buffalo - LinkStation 220 4TB 2-Bay External Network Storage (NAS)
Four TB is more than I need.

Is this 4TB with redundancy or raw ?

I would personnally go with something freenas based. You can build it yourself out of commodity hardware (that can be a fun project) or buy the turn key Freenas Mini appliance. One issue with many nas appliances is that if the company goes bankrupt or simply decide the product is old they can stop supporting it anytime and your stuck with a device without security updates. This one is FreeBSD + zfs based and run on commodity hardware so even if the company disappear you will still be able to update it like any normal freebsd machine (didn't you mentionned you liked unix ?). If freenas/truenas died you could also reinstall it with any linux based OS (be it NAS oriented or not) and reimport your data as the same openzfs code runs on linux too.

The UI is as good as any other NAS appliance, performance is top, it supports nice things such as replication or deduplication, you own and keep control on your data and you are not reliant on support from the upstream company. There are plugins such as synchronisation or backup softwares, media servers and you can even run your own "private cloud" on it with netcloud.

The only downside I can see it is not an arm based very low consumption hardware. But honestly more often than not those all have crappy performance in comparison. If you have a basement, go for it.

[Too Tall]

Rechead > I was joking. The tutorial is easy peezey.

Thanks Thomas. Good thinking.

[rec head]

Gotcha. I didn't really even look at the Mac instructions because it means nothing to me.

[Scott G.]

Gotcha. I didn't really even look at the Mac instructions because it means nothing to me.

Anytime you feel lost on the mac, open Terminal, presto welcome to 1983.
Everything is still in etc/inittab, just where you left it all those years ago.

[snotrockets]

Eero was purchased by Amazon, and the voices in my head tell me that's scary from a privacy standpoint.

I haven't looked deep into their privacy policy before and after the sell (let's face it: nobody reads those, we just click "I agree",) but as far as I know they were collecting usage analytics even before the sell. I don't think it was just for fun; there was a business plan behind that colleciton.

They also dated for Wi-Fi standards, but I think even the stuff on the bleeding edge is going to be outdated fairly quickly. I personally would rather go with one of the WiFi 6 routers if I want to keep it long term.

I'd take a close look at the extra cost for a wifi 6 router: by the time you'd have enough wifi 6 capable devices (you can't utilize the extra bandwidth otherwise,) the router you bought would be absolute.

[snotrockets]

We've had the subscription for the past six months or so. IMO, the big bonus to the bundle is the 1Password family account that comes with it. I was already in the 1Password ecosystem, but they took away family access a few years ago when they started pushing the subscription service rather than standalone app.

I've looked into this subscription, and the providers are best in class, but it doesn't seem to be worth it, when you consider the costs.

* 1password has family subscriptions for $5/month (I'm more afraid of the recent injection of VC money would make them horrible like their competitors, but ��)
* Block/allow list for hosts is useful, but Eero's one doesn't give you a lot of control over it. It is easiest to setup. But if you can spare a few more minutes, then Nextdns is highly rated, better featured, has better analytics and logging, and would also work for your devices on other networks. Once shelter-in-place is over, cellular blocking would be useful again. A yearly all-you-can-eat plan is $20.

That comes up $20 less than Eero's offer. The other parts of the offer aren't useless or dangerous, at least according to credible advice I have received from some security researchers:

* VPNs are useless: they might provide encryption in transit to the VPN endpoint, but not beyond. And provide an easy point to tap into, if the bad guys are after you. But it is a very good business for the VPN providers, arbitrage over network traffic. It might be useful if you travel to China, UAE, or other countries employing censorship, but you'd find the common VPN providers are already blocked there. And anyway, you don't want to carry across the border to such country any accounts you'd use the other side of that border.

* All of the anti virus software are awful, and all cause way more security problems that it solve. To be effective, the AV software needs to inspect anything that happens on the computer; usually, that job is distributed between many pieces of software, so a malicious entity would need to hack each and every one of those software. An AV is a single doorway, and apparently, one that isn't too hard to crack open.
On Windows, the built in Windows Defender (or whatever it was renamed to) is OK.

Why does most employer IT departments require you to install an AV then? For compliance. It allows them to checkmark a box that they did enough, and if there are faults, they are with the AV vendor. Some certifications required by customers may also require it.

[snotrockets]

Anytime you feel lost on the mac, open Terminal, presto welcome to 1983.
Everything is still in etc/inittab, just where you left it all those years ago.

I wish. They're now using launchd, which is just as fun as systemd, only difference.

[VertigoCycles]

Appreciated. Reading the process reminded me that I used to enjoy Unix ;)

We've been using Synology in my house for about a decade. First had a 2-bay unit and currently the 5-bay (1515+) setup as RAID10. I'm sure there are many others that provide the same or similar services but there are a few that we utilize daily.

Time Machine backups - you can limit the size so they don't grow out of control. Over the years it's been mostly OK, but from time to time it has trouble clearing sparsebundles when it's reached the size limit and tries to overwrite
PLEX - it's a free add-on. I've ripped and sold all of our DVD's. Plex offers a decent interface on an AppleTV (or other) and a decent server setup for you to stream your own movies anywhere in your house. Super useful for our kids. Supposedly, with a proper PLEX account, you can stream your own movies over the web while you're traveling, but we've disabled that feature and closed that port on our switch.
iTunes server - we've put all of our music on it and can connect it to most of our devices to Airplay over our stereo

I did have a power supply failure once, which they sorted out quickly under warranty even though it was officially out of warranty, and more recently we had a hard drive failure that was very easily dealt with, with the hot swappable drive. It took a few hours to rebuild but we didn't lose any data. Plopped a new drive in the hot swap bay the next day and all was well again. To be fair, it had been warning me that the drive was failing and I was too busy to want to deal with it for a few weeks.

[VertigoCycles]

I've looked into this subscription, and the providers are best in class, but it doesn't seem to be worth it, when you consider the costs.

* 1password has family subscriptions for $5/month (I'm more afraid of the recent injection of VC money would make them horrible like their competitors, but ��)
* Block/allow list for hosts is useful, but Eero's one doesn't give you a lot of control over it. It is easiest to setup. But if you can spare a few more minutes, then Nextdns is highly rated, better featured, has better analytics and logging, and would also work for your devices on other networks. Once shelter-in-place is over, cellular blocking would be useful again. A yearly all-you-can-eat plan is $20.

That comes up $20 less than Eero's offer. The other parts of the offer aren't useless or dangerous, at least according to credible advice I have received from some security researchers:

* VPNs are useless: they might provide encryption in transit to the VPN endpoint, but not beyond. And provide an easy point to tap into, if the bad guys are after you. But it is a very good business for the VPN providers, arbitrage over network traffic. It might be useful if you travel to China, UAE, or other countries employing censorship, but you'd find the common VPN providers are already blocked there. And anyway, you don't want to carry across the border to such country any accounts you'd use the other side of that border.

* All of the anti virus software are awful, and all cause way more security problems that it solve. To be effective, the AV software needs to inspect anything that happens on the computer; usually, that job is distributed between many pieces of software, so a malicious entity would need to hack each and every one of those software. An AV is a single doorway, and apparently, one that isn't too hard to crack open.
On Windows, the built in Windows Defender (or whatever it was renamed to) is OK.

Why does most employer IT departments require you to install an AV then? For compliance. It allows them to checkmark a box that they did enough, and if there are faults, they are with the AV vendor. Some certifications required by customers may also require it.

thanks for that. At the time I purchased the Eero plan, 1Pass was $79.99/yr for the family plan, so the Eero bundle was a fair price. I like the app, but feel like they boned me a while back as they switched to a subscription service. I had spent countless hours cataloging hundreds of logins for my M.I.L when her husband passed, set her up on our family (which was a standalone feature at the time) so I could help her manage the logins as she needed them and when they switched to a sub service, they hobbled the stand alone app that I paid for and I lost access to that information.

[snotrockets]

thanks for that. At the time I purchased the Eero plan, 1Pass was $79.99/yr for the family plan, so the Eero bundle was a fair price. I like the app, but feel like they boned me a while back as they switched to a subscription service. I had spent countless hours cataloging hundreds of logins for my M.I.L when her husband passed, set her up on our family (which was a standalone feature at the time) so I could help her manage the logins as she needed them and when they switched to a sub service, they hobbled the stand alone app that I paid for and I lost access to that information.

I don't remember the details, but the migration was quite easy for me. I wasn't on a family plan at the time of the switch, though.

From a business standpoint, I totally get their move to subscription model (their software doesn't make much sense without sync; the less costly way to add one is by building their own service instead of matching other moving targets. Especially considering the requirements for tiered access, that most personal file sharing services don't provide). I consider the $60 fair price for a bundle of sync + the software.

What I worry about is that last November, 1Password raised a VC round. Considering VC goals rarely align with consumers', I fear that this will end in a downwards spiral (Strava is a perfect example of this: they gave up on their paying userbase for future growth, and ended without both)

[dashDustin]

oh hey, whatdoyouknow

Got Eero Pro + 2 Beacons for mi casa Sunday. Set up was a cinch. But then I had to reconnect my Alexa devices which was a pain in the ass.

ATT Gigabit whatever service....

Down and up throughout the house is better as a whole than it was via UVerse router/ modem that I have to use. What's not as good is down and up in the living room close to the router. So...not sure how I feel about that. Still, it's been good for 3 days, so I'll likely stick with it.