Re: [AFMUG] Testing used customer wifi routers
We give a consumer grade router (current Cambium R190W) to every customer. We consider them write off consumables like Mounts and cable ends. they cheap enough to not cost alot, and guarantee us a standard level of connectivity. We chuck damaged.defective ones that come back. But if it comes back from a customer getting their own and returning ours or a deinstall, if its not dirty we default and redeploy. We see alot of them from deinstalls when a customer moves, theres been an odd amount of churn here over the last year or so, mostly young people moving to the country and realizing theres no services just there like gas, water, sewer, trash hauling, etc so they move back to town after the first winter of getting the snow plow bill for their quarter mile lane. We are strict on the routers, we have a specified DMZ IP, we dont do any port forwards, they have to set their device to that IP on their own. We set the ESSID/Key based on a standard and we dont change it. We dont give them access to the device at all. little to no support required. This gives us a good tool for troubleshooting without rooling a truck too, we have them come pick up a replacement router if an issue is down to wondering if its a router issue or not. if it turns out that was it, we toss the router (occasionally billing them for the replacement) if it doesnt rule it out, we default and redeploy it. buying a case of cheap routers at a time gets a decent enough price to justify the consumable expense. On Sat, Aug 3, 2019 at 10:09 AM Mark - Myakka Technologies wrote: > TJ, > > I set my returns up in house as a guest network. Anyone that visits or > employees using their phones will sign into that test router. I also have > a small computer that I connect to it that runs some non-critical > monitoring software. I try to let the test run for at least a month. > > > -- > Best regards, > Markmailto:m...@mailmt.com > > Myakka Technologies, Inc. > www.Myakka.com > > -- > > Friday, August 2, 2019, 11:50:49 PM, you wrote: > > > Does anyone have a testing regiment for Wi-Fi routers that have been > returned from the field that are still serviceable? > > I have a huge pile and I'm scared to deploy them as the cost of an > additional truck roll outweighs biting the bullet and giving each new > subscriber a brand new router but the cheap ass in me can't throw these > away so I was thinking that if I could somehow automate a testing setup and > run them for a week or two I would feel more comfortable putting them back > in the field... I'm talking about Netgear Linksys D-Link etc > > Or am I crazy > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com > -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
Re: [AFMUG] Testing used customer wifi routers
Title: Re: [AFMUG] Testing used customer wifi routers TJ, I set my returns up in house as a guest network. Anyone that visits or employees using their phones will sign into that test router. I also have a small computer that I connect to it that runs some non-critical monitoring software. I try to let the test run for at least a month. -- Best regards, Mark mailto:m...@mailmt.com Myakka Technologies, Inc. www.Myakka.com -- Friday, August 2, 2019, 11:50:49 PM, you wrote: Does anyone have a testing regiment for Wi-Fi routers that have been returned from the field that are still serviceable? I have a huge pile and I'm scared to deploy them as the cost of an additional truck roll outweighs biting the bullet and giving each new subscriber a brand new router but the cheap ass in me can't throw these away so I was thinking that if I could somehow automate a testing setup and run them for a week or two I would feel more comfortable putting them back in the field... I'm talking about Netgear Linksys D-Link etc Or am I crazy -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
Re: [AFMUG] Testing used customer wifi routers
DLink is dead to me. First we deployed some of the 2310 series on the recommendation of an IT consultant that many of our customers used. Those models had a 100% field failure rate and worse, many died a long lingering death where they made the Internet seem extremely slow, and you can guess who got blamed for that. Then they had the DIR-601/615 which had a defective “QoS Engine feature” that had to be disabled or theupstream would be extremely slow, and a security bug which left UPnP exposed on the WAN side which they refused to fix in any but the final hardware version. DLink has a long history of security bugs and got such a bad reputation that you rarely see their products for sale anymore. A quick Google search for DLink security vulnerability comes up with this: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/10/19/serious-d-link-router-security-flaws-may-never-be-patched/ Over the years I have seen many similar articles. All home router manufacturers have a poor record for security vulnerabilities, but DLink just doesn’t seem to care. From: AF On Behalf Of Daniel White Sent: Saturday, August 3, 2019 9:09 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group ; TJ Trout Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Testing used customer wifi routers Why are they returned from the field? If it's a disconnect... then default and redeploy and should be okay. Your installer should verify functionality before they leave. Granted this is apples and oranges... but back in my WISP days using D-Link 802.11G routers it wasn't an issue. If you replaced a router onsite for whatever reason... immediately put it in the garbage bin. Jacking around too much with a testing regimen is going to probably cost as much as the truck roll long term :-) I would question though why do you have consumer grade routers being returned from the field? Make them a part of the install the customer keeps, or better yet move on to a managed Wi-Fi system and get some extra revenue. My 2 cents <https://atheral.co/wp-content/uploads/Atheral-Logo-Vertical-Grad-150px-x-86px.png> Daniel White Co-Founder - Business Development & Operations phone: +1 (702) 470-2766 direct: +1 (702) 470-2770 TJ Trout wrote on 8/2/19 21:50: Does anyone have a testing regiment for Wi-Fi routers that have been returned from the field that are still serviceable? I have a huge pile and I'm scared to deploy them as the cost of an additional truck roll outweighs biting the bullet and giving each new subscriber a brand new router but the cheap ass in me can't throw these away so I was thinking that if I could somehow automate a testing setup and run them for a week or two I would feel more comfortable putting them back in the field... I'm talking about Netgear Linksys D-Link etc Or am I crazy -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
Re: [AFMUG] Testing used customer wifi routers
Why are they returned from the field? If it's a disconnect... then default and redeploy and should be okay. Your installer should verify functionality before they leave. Granted this is apples and oranges... but back in my WISP days using D-Link 802.11G routers it wasn't an issue. If you replaced a router onsite for whatever reason... immediately put it in the garbage bin. Jacking around too much with a testing regimen is going to probably cost as much as the truck roll long term :-) I would question though why do you have consumer grade routers being returned from the field? Make them a part of the install the customer keeps, or better yet move on to a managed Wi-Fi system and get some extra revenue. My 2 cents photograph Daniel White Co-Founder - Business Development & Operations phone: +1 (702) 470-2766 direct:+1 (702) 470-2770 TJ Trout wrote on 8/2/19 21:50: Does anyone have a testing regiment for Wi-Fi routers that have been returned from the field that are still serviceable? I have a huge pile and I'm scared to deploy them as the cost of an additional truck roll outweighs biting the bullet and giving each new subscriber a brand new router but the cheap ass in me can't throw these away so I was thinking that if I could somehow automate a testing setup and run them for a week or two I would feel more comfortable putting them back in the field... I'm talking about Netgear Linksys D-Link etc Or am I crazy -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
Re: [AFMUG] Testing used customer wifi routers
Not really, because we only use Mikrotik for our leased/managed routers. Some WISPs only use Calex or Readynet. Or TP-Link or Cambium or Ubiquiti. But I would only want to be responsible for a small number of brands/models out there. If customer buys their own Belkin or Asus or Google Wifi or Eero or Orbi or whatever, it’s on them to maintain and manage them. Oh, and any managed CPE router, I would want to be remotely upgrading the firmware unless it can be set to auto update, because … security patches and bug fixes. Of course updates sometimes break stuff too. Even if the hardware is still good, I consider most store-bought residential routers to have a useful life of 3-5 years, after that they are obsolete. Sorry, a perfectly functioning WRT54G is still e-waste. 10 years ago we didn’t have Facebook or video streaming or smartphones or IoT. Or web pages that open 100 TCP connections. Some old routers have small TCP connection tables causing strange problems that customers will interpret as sucky Internet. The other thing you’d need to track is certain brands/models are lemons. DLink EBR2310/WBR2310, DLink DIR-615, actually anything from DLink. Netgear WNR1000/2000 had high failure rate. They should not be redeployed. Up until 6-8 years ago we used to stock inexpensive “starter” routers in the install trucks and give them away to customers who hadn’t bought their own router. It was nothing but trouble. Customers didn’t say “cool, a free router”. They blamed us for every problem they ever had with that router for years and years, and they expected to get free replacement routers and upgrades. With 20/20 hindsight, I would only do that with a leased/managed router, and it would have to be more of a commercial or service provider router that is robust and has a long lifetime via firmware upgrades. So that leads me to Mikrotik or Calix or something along those lines. The problem of course with Mikrotik is they’re not very competitive with WiFi for FCC regions, plus many of their home routers are too expensive for the features and specs. If we had the volume, we would probably be going with Calix. The big carriers know to put their money into CAPEX and avoid OPEX. Of course they also have the volume to get really good prices on things like routers and modems. From: AF On Behalf Of Lewis Bergman Sent: Saturday, August 3, 2019 6:53 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Testing used customer wifi routers I think the cheap ass in you should take over and realize your right... It is cheaper to throw them away. Having said that, if you can't, resetting then to factory goes a long way to "fixing" a lot of those. In the long run it just seems those consumer level devices just don't last that long. If you are looking for a recycling project then default them and sell them on eBay. It will still cost you more than throwing them away but at least you won't feel bad about it. On Fri, Aug 2, 2019, 10:51 PM TJ Trout mailto:t...@voltbb.com> > wrote: Does anyone have a testing regiment for Wi-Fi routers that have been returned from the field that are still serviceable? I have a huge pile and I'm scared to deploy them as the cost of an additional truck roll outweighs biting the bullet and giving each new subscriber a brand new router but the cheap ass in me can't throw these away so I was thinking that if I could somehow automate a testing setup and run them for a week or two I would feel more comfortable putting them back in the field... I'm talking about Netgear Linksys D-Link etc Or am I crazy -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
Re: [AFMUG] Testing used customer wifi routers
I think the cheap ass in you should take over and realize your right... It is cheaper to throw them away. Having said that, if you can't, resetting then to factory goes a long way to "fixing" a lot of those. In the long run it just seems those consumer level devices just don't last that long. If you are looking for a recycling project then default them and sell them on eBay. It will still cost you more than throwing them away but at least you won't feel bad about it. On Fri, Aug 2, 2019, 10:51 PM TJ Trout wrote: > Does anyone have a testing regiment for Wi-Fi routers that have been > returned from the field that are still serviceable? > > I have a huge pile and I'm scared to deploy them as the cost of an > additional truck roll outweighs biting the bullet and giving each new > subscriber a brand new router but the cheap ass in me can't throw these > away so I was thinking that if I could somehow automate a testing setup and > run them for a week or two I would feel more comfortable putting them back > in the field... I'm talking about Netgear Linksys D-Link etc > > Or am I crazy > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com > -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
