How to configure soft routes?

Recently see forum send a lot of people are ready to group soft route, but most people are not much about soft route, there are a lot of doubts, but also some misunderstanding of soft route, so open a post to briefly introduce the soft route, but also eliminate some of you misunderstanding of soft route. Just say what you want to say.

1. Is soft routing too expensive? Is there no need for soft routing at home?

There is a point of view in the forum is that the soft route price is generally not cheap and needs to be matched with ap, investment is too high is not suitable for home use. However, in fact, this is not the case. In terms of price, for example, ac86u, which is very popular in the forum these days, has a daily price of 899, while a general soft route +ap (if used purely as a single ap, I recommend K3) also has a price of almost 1,000 yuan. The gap between the two is not large, but the performance and playability of the latter are more than a little higher than 86u. On cost performance can be said to be soft +ap exploded a lot of so-called high-end hard routing.

2, the home does not need much high performance is not necessary on soft routing?

Of course, some people just need a wifi to brush the circle of friends to brush Weibo, then on the soft route is definitely not appropriate. However, if your broadband is larger than 100m, and you have koolproxy and some undescribed requirements, then it is highly likely that your router will not be able to run your broadband after you open these two plug-ins, such as Asus and Netgear a large number of bcm470x (x=8 or 9) routing scheme, After kp is enabled, the throughput of these routes is about 100 m+ (and the price of this large number of routers is not very cheap). Another large number of MTK7621AT router performance is compared with bcm4708, which is weak. And a soft route of average performance such as using the j1900cpu, running full gigabit is not much pressure. In addition, if you need to mount a hard disk on the router as a simple NAS, hard routes are more difficult to play. Common hard routes include GT-AC5300, AC-86U, R9000, and 1200-3200 of WRT series. The speed of reading and writing after mounting the hard disk is not a few can see, and the soft route is still casually run full gigabit...... So, if you're an enabler, then soft might not be for you, but if you're a bit of a wannabe, then soft is probably your thing.

3. Soft routing is not specially designed for network devices, so it is unstable, inconvenient and has high power consumption.。
As for stability, I think the stability of a system is determined by both hardware and firmware. The advantage of hard routing lies in that the hardware and firmware are designed and customized by the manufacturer and have been verified for industrial reliability. Generally, there will be no major problems. However, soft routing may be built by adding a network card or switch to some old platforms in your hands. If you choose some new multi-port industrial computer or build a hardware platform with a brand new motherboard and other parts, I think the hardware stability is about the same. The official firmware of hard routing on the firmware has a relatively simple function, and the stability is generally higher, but many people will use the third-party firmware. For example, I believe that most of the friends who buy Asus and netparts have used the small Bao modified Merlin. Similarly, the LEDE firmware dedicated to soft routing in this forum is also the excellent firmware with the same stability and ease of use as the modified Merlin, even exceeding Merlin in some aspects. For example, Merlin's Software Center only has more than 20 plug-ins, while LEDEx64's software center already has more than 50 plug-ins. Strong performance of soft route + excellent firmware of this forum can ensure the stability and use of soft route as network equipment. Finally, don't worry about power consumption. The power consumption of an AC66U-B1 is about 10w, and the soft routing power consumption of a low-power platform is about 10w. Even if ap is added, the power consumption is doubled by 20w, and the electricity cost is about more than 50 yuan a year, which is roughly equal to two take-out meals or two packs of cigarettes.

4, soft routing threshold is high, not easy to get started?

This concern can be regarded as a hard injury of soft routing, indeed, whether it is the construction of hardware, or the installation of the system, or the setting of the system are more complex than the stupid hard routing. However, if you really start to do these things are not much depth, nor do you need much high knowledge, most of the operation is very simple, and the forum has a lot of very comprehensive tutorial posts, follow the step by step will certainly not go wrong. It is also a very satisfying thing to really set up the soft route and use it normally. The process is also a lot of fun.

5, which model of soft route to buy?

This is the most complicated problem among all the problems. Because everyone has different needs, different budgets, and even different aesthetics, there is no optimal solution to this problem. I can only explain it roughly. For most people, if you're new to soft routing, the cpu of choice is low-power Celeron and Pectin platforms (such as N3700, N3150, j1900, 3215U, J3455) multi-port industrial computer. Network adapter generally do not need to do more consideration, crab network adapter and intel network adapter in soft routing difference is not much, but the preferred intel network adapter (if you want to play esxi then try to choose intel network adapter, crab network adapter needs to get its own driver). Here I recommend the novice choose Taobao 3215u four network port quasi system, price 699, relative to the sales of higher j1900 four network port industrial computer, the 3215u first cpu performance is not bad, followed by 3215u support vtx and vtd, if you want to play virtualization 3215u better, In addition, the 3215u uses four i211 nics, which are likely to be more stable than most of the four-port j1900's Crab nics. If you are a high-end player, want to virtual black group Hui + soft routing +win+ on a machine... Then I suggest or buy their own motherboard and network adapter to build, there is a need for people I believe you do not need my advice.

Summary: The soft route explodes the hard route!