Hacker News Reader

Comment by nvarsj | Hacker News Reader

The ERL family is pretty bad as a router, in my experience. There is a longstanding firmware issue that introduces packet loss for routed packets (it doesn't multiplex across the dual cores correctly, which leads to out of order packets). If you really want to use Ubiquiti, I would suggest using an ER-X which is cheaper, doesn't have this problem, and is quadcore.

The best option in my opinion is something Intel based running a well known Linux distro with automated security updates that is fully in your control. Shorewall can do everything needed for a home router. This option is a lot more expensive though.

View on HN

Interesting that the more expensive router has this problem. I've been really happy with my ER-X, it works great with my internet service (500Mbs up/500Mbs down). I had some speed issues at first but this was solved by upgrading to the latest firmware and making sure hardware offloading was enabled.

I was a bit annoyed that hardware routing is not automatically enabled for setups that can use it. It is not hard, but you have to stumble upon the fact that that setting exists (only on the command line).

My recollection is that it's not enabled by default because there were (are?) some features that don't work once you enable it. I assume it's the Deep Packet Inspection and advanced routing type stuff.

(Sadly my home internet connection is too slow to make hardware offloading on the edge router matter...)

I think this is batch based. Ubiquiti has had prod line issues intermittently, especially in the earlier batches. I would suggest trying to contact them for a replacement if you are getting packet loss.

> There is a longstanding firmware issue that introduces packet loss for routed packets

Interesting, do you have any more about this?

Got an ER-PoE that intermittently loses packets and have never got to the bottom of why (I gave up and bought a non-Ubnt router, just haven’t got around to configuring it yet).

https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeRouter/UDP-packet-loss-on-...

I was one of the people involved in some of the measurements on there.

I avoid ubnt networking gear in general after that experience (although ER-X seems good and I use one at home as a smart switch). Their specialty is in APs, which work really great.

The last update of the first post says that this was fixed in v1.10.0, and the release notes concur: https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMAX-Updates-Blog/EdgeMAX-E...

I knew I should have checked the release notes before commenting. No idea if it works but that would be a great improvement.

Open to the idea I’ve got a different issue, but I’m still seeing an issue with 1.10.5.

Thanks, and agreed. It was my first Ubnt gear, and I suspect it will be my last. It was so much cheaper than some of the alternatives though (that should probably have been a red flag…) but firmware that’s at best in continuous beta really isn’t good enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com