nanog mailing list archives
Re: Broadband Router Comparisons
From: Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike () swm pp se>
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2015 08:37:25 +0100 (CET)
On Sat, 26 Dec 2015, Mike wrote:
As a service provider with largely residential/small business customers, I certainly have some thoughts on broadband routers. Sorry if this is overly long.Firstly, they are all junk.
Yes, that's correct. We get what we pay for. If the ISP buys the CPE, their procurement department will get bonus for shaving off every cent off of the price possible, meaning the device manufacturer also pressures all their people to come up a way to checkbox all the features requested.
For the low price CPEs bought in the electronics store, mostly by people with no technical expertise, we have a similar situation. Shiny box, list of some checkbox features, sell it for 8-12 months until there is a new SOC which is slightly more cost reduced, release a new hardware revision (completely incompatible with the old one but from a black box of view does the same), start selling that rev instead.
Margins in this business are super tight and most of the vendors aren't making any money, just like the mobile phone business. Providing security updates is just a cost, there is no upside, because these boxes sit in a closet, unloved until they stop working, and they're thrown out and replaced by a new unloved box that goes into the closet until it stops working again.
So the ecosystem is completely broken, and I have no idea how to fix it.If someone like Consumer Reports or similar agency started testing and rating devices on these things like long-time support, automatic updates, software quality etc, and not just testing wifi speed as a factor of distance, we might get somewhere.
-- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike () swm pp se
Current thread:
- Re: de-peering for security sake, (continued)
- Re: de-peering for security sake James Downs (Dec 27)
- Re: de-peering for security sake Jared Mauch (Dec 26)
- Re: de-peering for security sake Mike Hammett (Dec 26)
- Re: de-peering for security sake Owen DeLong (Dec 26)
- Re: de-peering for security sake Mark Tinka (Dec 25)
- Re: de-peering for security sake Joel Jaeggli (Dec 24)
- Re: de-peering for security sake Max Tulyev (Dec 25)
- RE: Broadband Router Comparisons Keith Medcalf (Dec 24)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Joly MacFie (Dec 23)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Mike (Dec 26)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Mikael Abrahamsson (Dec 26)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Valdis . Kletnieks (Dec 27)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Mikael Abrahamsson (Dec 27)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Larry Sheldon (Dec 27)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Stephen Satchell (Dec 27)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Michael Thomas (Dec 27)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Hugo Slabbert (Dec 27)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Michael Thomas (Dec 27)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Hugo Slabbert (Dec 27)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Mikael Abrahamsson (Dec 26)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons James Downs (Dec 27)
- Re: Broadband Router Comparisons Josh Reynolds (Dec 27)