Notes for August 11-17

Most of the week was spent rummaging through storage to get rid of obsolete hardware and troubleshooting ISP and Wi‑Fi issues, so there isn’t a lot of interesting stuff to report.

I’ve decided to get rid of the proprietary ‘mesh’ system our new ISP persuaded me to try, and temporarily go back to the AirPort Extremes we’ve been using for the past few years while I research suitable replacements.

The reasons are simple:

• Band steering is useless and causes constant problems.
• When the home gateway goes down, the Wi‑Fi extenders go down with it.

In my book, that’s an instant disqualifier–the two should be completely independent.

So I’m resuming my search for new Wi‑Fi gear, but the vast majority of off‑the‑shelf hardware has at least five problems:

• They all have some degree of cloud-based management (which I don’t want at all).
• They require an app for setup (which I want even less).
• They are usually combo router/AP devices with far too many features (all I want is basic radio and VLAN management for multiple SSIDs).
• Everything I can find is designed to use mesh protocols (which I definitely don’t want, given I now have 2.5GbE everywhere).
• They are usually ugly as sin. There are very few consumer APs that look at least as nice as AirPort Extremes.

And, of course, they’re built to a very low budget.

My requirements are fairly trivial:

• 2.5GbE for backhaul.
• 1GbE port for pass-through (typically for a set-top box).
• At least 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios, preferably Wi‑Fi 6 or better.
• Multiple SSIDs, ideally mappable to VLANs.
• Not an eyesore.

Right now, the most intriguing alternative is the Cudy AX3000–not because I plan to use it out of the box, but because it seems to have good OpenWRT support (v2).

Running OpenWRT seems like the perfect solution, as it would let me strip out the features I don’t want and have fully secure, local-only management via any web browser, as things were meant to be.

Any suggestions are appreciated, as long as they don’t look like props from a tech horror movie and can be managed completely offline.

And yes, I wish Apple hadn’t discontinued the AirPort line. I get it isn’t a high margins business, but given the mess that is the current consumer networking market, they could easily re-enter it with a solid product.

On a high note, I’ve just gotten a Chuwi AuBox 8745HS and I’m running it through its paces, which is going quite nicely so far.

Expect a review soon, although I am still recovering from COVID and really need to try to enjoy Summer a bit.