alt Hacker NewsStep one is not to buy TP-Link routers.
I know people have limited budgets, but having seen the code that sits on these devices and how poor quality and easily exploited it is, time and time again, I'll never buy TP-Link (amongst others) again.
For a while I collected a graveyard of routers that had been abandoned by the manufacturers (and contained serious vulnerabilities), with the intention of writing them all up one day; next thing you know I have two children rapidly reaching double-digit ages, and much better things to do with my life than write about how shitty the code is on actual products we buy every day.
I switched, about 7-8 years ago to a Protectli box running Coreboot and OPNSense and haven't looked back; I use Ubiquiti APs and switches. I'm not saying they're the best, but anything used in corporate/enterprise is going to have better support (if not better code quality).
The great thing about Ubiquiti APs for me is that each new WiFi generation (or two) I can just buy a few more, snap the existing APs off of the various ceilings they're attached to, snap on the new ones, adopt them, and away we go.
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It's not a router, it's an AP, so in my mind it's just a LAN to wifi bridge, a wrapper around the chip :) People were recommending them, it has PoE, roaming works etc. I thought I could buy a consumer product and stop tinkering lol. I'll check Ubiquiti, but I somehow thought that they are overpriced af and never looked into them
> The great thing about Ubiquiti APs for me is that each new WiFi generation (or two) I can just buy a few more, snap the existing APs off of the various ceilings they're attached to, snap on the new ones, adopt them, and away we go
Why is this exclusive to Ubiquiti? Can't you do it with any other company that has managed APs?
What router brands are producing quality?
TP Link's support is the worst, too.
I bought an Omada, thinking I was getting a quality product. It died in the first 2 weeks.
Support accused me of not using a surge protector (it was plugged into a UPS) and grudgingly sent me a replacement.
Even at home, I can't risk having to replace my router every 2 weeks, so I just stuffed it in a box. I did use it again later, but wasn't happy with it, and ended up with a Ubiquiti Unifi UCG-Ultra. It's better than the TP-Link Deco and Omada, Eero Pro, Google Wifi, and Asus routers I've had, though I'll admit some of the Asus were pretty decent.
Mikrotik routers are cheap, very stable and highly configurable. Admittedly the learning curve is a bit rough, but in today’s age of agentic assistance, you can just have your LLM help you configure it.
> I'll never buy TP-Link (amongst others)
Been wondering recently what the others might be. Can you give a few examples among popular brands?
> I'll never buy TP-Link (amongst others) again
I've got many dumb cheap ethernet switches and I'd say as long as they're really dumb/unmanaged/not advanced: you can't go very wrong. I've got probably two TP-Link ones and they're on 24/7 and just work: zero problem since years (and they followed me in four countries). Never had any issue with big .iso files or anything.
And I've got a little homelab: VMs and ZFS on a Xeon with ECC RAM, countless Raspberry Pi, two physical different LANs (not VLANs as all my switches are dumb) with a Pi doing the bridge/routing.
It's when things get complicated: configurable stuff, "advanced" capabilities, etc. that the cheap junk stops working properly and that you're better served with proper gear.
And of course there's the $200 or $500 vs $20 question too.
But people shouldn't underestimate how reliable good old dumb unmanaged Ethernet is for home usage.
Heck, I can go from 1 Gb/s to 100 Mbit/s to then a very old 10 Mbit/s (!) switch by daisy chaining them all switches and everything simply just works (I did that for I was thinking about playing with bounded-retrieval-model, hence physically limiting network speed on purpose).
No whether you should support or not a company selling shitty managed switches and shitty routers by buying the products that are okay from them is another question.
> Step one is not to buy TP-Link routers.
What about their switches? I'm looking at buying a small 10GB SFP switch and TP-Link was one option.
I've already got Ubiquiti kit, and frankly while I don't much like it I can't deny that it works well enough and is reasonably priced for what you get.
So, it looks like I'm going to lean towards the Ubiquiti switches.
Or, buy a TP-Link router and flash it with OpenWrt. Best of both worlds.