Here is another one for you. Routers! May or may not be on the roadmap for next year some time.
We would love to hear your feedback and answers to these questions:
Do you find having a handful of switch ports available to you a benefit? If so, how many?
Would you like to see the WAN, LAN or WAN/LAN ports on the router 2.5Gbps? Or higher?
Is the ability to rack or wall mount the router a must? Or would you rather it maintain a small form factor with an optional accessory for a rack mount?
Any preference on a metal or plastic enclosure for your routers?
How vital are PoE ports on a router? If they are vital, is PoE+ sufficient, and what should the total available PoE budget be?
Should SFP or SFP+ be a standard on all routers? Or is that something we should leave off?
Is there anything else we should consider as we finalize the design of our routers that you would like to share?
As always, thanks for taking the time to provide your input!
Yes I think it helps a lot of have the flexibility. Especially if they are proper discrete ports. I agree somewhere in the 4 - 8 range is great.
Yes, I would love all ports to be 2.5Gb.
I like the idea of “as small as possible, with the option for an accessory rack mount”
Metal please.
If you provided POE+, this would make so many people’s day. I see folks begging constantly for other brands to provide a good solid router with POE+. I would think 60 watts or so would be sufficient for most use cases. This one is so important for small home installs where you have a router and a couple of APs.
Always SFP. If you are going to do a few tiers of router, SFP+ would be great on the higher tier. For those keeping things at layer 2, it is nice to have SFP+ on the router for sure.
I personally would like power to be internal. External power bricks are just plain annoying. I am completely fine with a slightly larger device with internal power.
2.5Gbps or higher would be great on the WAN/LAN ports.
Rack mount is the way to go. Gives enough space to account for internal power.
Metal
PoE+ is nice to have at 60W. If my switch failed for any reason I could see myself moving APs or cameras over to it while I fixed my switch.
SFP+ should be standard.
It would be great to see something with a powerful quad-core cpu and lots of ram since I’m hoping it can act as the local controller with optional cloud connector tie in if the user wants to use the cloud. I also think IPS/IDS and other security services should be able to run without impacting performance, this would warrant higher specs.
It would also be neat if you could do something that had quick modular components that could be plugged in without opening the unit such as a cellular card to use as failover.
I fully agree with this ! 100%. also ALL ports should be assignable too, don’t lock the ports to a specific task.
Another note, if there is NO gui to log into on the unit ATLEAST PLEASE ! make some sort of webpage that is built into it that people can navigate to, that can tell stats and information, IE ports active on / off. Wan ip or wan up / down.
Mac address cloning / altering for the WAN port is a KEY feature because Canada we have ISPS that still use this MAC address binding ( i know it’s sad
Yes, this would be good to have. 4-8 ports is plenty.
Yes, this would be great to have at minimum 2.5Gbps on the router ports.
I think you shouldnt try to make a square peg for a round hole. You should have Rack mount devices, and you should have small form factor devices (Desk mount with option to rack) so they can fill their roles. I would love for there also to be a small form factor (Travel) with built in WiFi that is good enough to cover a hotel room.
Metal
PoE+ isn’t a bad idea, 60-100w at most should be plenty.
SFP+ should be the minimum (2-4 depending on Rack, Desk version) and would love SFP++ for the Rack.
As most of these are physical design questions, the above Rack, Desk, Travel options would cover it. Feature questions I would assume are a different discussion.
Anywhere up to 8 ports would be fine. If you want more, buy a switch
2.5Gbs should be fine for ethernet WAN. Higher should be provided by SFP+. Also having an option to configure ports to be WAN/LAN would be a win.
Inserts “why not both” meme.
Plastic is fine for desk mount, metal for rack mount.
It’d be a nice add-on but not vital. If it can power 2 AP6-Pro comfortably for smaller installs where a switch isn’t required.
Maybe a small/cheap model with no SFP and a premium option with SFP/SFP+. SFP+ should be able to negotiate at 1/2.5/5/10 as our fiber ONT are sometimes hard-limited to those standards.
LED screen! Rackstuds! VLAN-tagging support on the WAN (NZ VLAN-tags the WAN for some reason).
what would be useful is the flexibility to route or switch as we wish. Small places will need switching ,bigger places will need routing only …and core /isp will need routing.
Some countries have no issue providing 8Gbps FTTH, two 10Gbps ports wouldn’t be a luxury. SFP+ would allow one to convert it to copper should it be necessary
Small form factor with facultative ears to rackmount and convinientely placed + to allow wall mounting…
Depending on width, an accessory to rack two in 1U would be fantastic .
Not important unless you leverage the chassis for heat dissipation.
Not vital but if available, should be able to power one of your own AP and have enough headroom for one future generation.
If the PSU is external or slotted in, could there be a world where PoE availability depends on which PSU you use with the router ?
Does it cost you ? If not it should always be there. If the WAN SFP+ can support weirdo 2,5Gbps ONU required by some ISP it would be fantastic. (Some MikroTik accepts them )
Example GPON Stick LEOX LXT-010S-H
Please allow any dhcp option to be used in the client for both ipv4 and ipv6 to allow maximum compatibility. Some ISP require tagging DHCP requests with an arbitrary DSCP, we should be able to do that ,either by allowing the creation of this marking with rules or by having the dhcp client create the request with the DSCP already tagged.
This is possible with RouterOS (traffic tagging rule ), OpenWRT (nftables rule), EdgeRouters (DHCP client patching which doesn’t survive system upgrades). VLAN support, PPPoE are mandatory. Traffic shaping and load balancing would be nice. High availability would be exceptional .
Do you find having a handful of switch ports available to you a benefit? If so, how many?
Yes, that would be useful, between 4-8
Would you like to see the WAN, LAN or WAN/LAN ports on the router 2.5Gbps? Or higher?
If possible 2.5gb and/or 10gb for UTP/WAN (10gb should be through SFP+), 2.5gb/10gb (SFP+) for LAN
Is the ability to rack or wall mount the router a must? Or would you rather it maintain a small form factor with an optional accessory for a rack mount?
I think both factors would make a lot of sense for different cases
Any preference on a metal or plastic enclosure for your routers?
No preference
How vital are PoE ports on a router? If they are vital, is PoE+ sufficient, and what should the total available PoE budget be?
POE+ is pretty important to power up devices, cameras etc, should imo only be a few ports on a router device, a switch should handle most.
Should SFP or SFP+ be a standard on all routers? Or is that something we should leave off?
SFP+ imo since that is what connections are gonna need more and more.
Is there anything else we should consider as we finalize the design of our routers that you would like to share?
If possible different versions but all should be able to do above 1gb/s connections since the next 2 years in most countries Fiber will be gaining ground.
IPV6 DHCP/SLAAC and being able to see which clients have which IPV6 address (with pppoe and dhcpv6 support)
Support for DNS over https, routing rules, ad blocking (with white/black lists)
Do you find having a handful of switch ports available to you a benefit? Minimum 4 but 8 is nice. POE on at least.
Would you like to see the WAN, LAN or WAN/LAN ports on the router 2.5Gbps? Or higher? Would love dual lan SFP+ / Copper . See comments at bottom of reply.
Is the ability to rack or wall mount the router a must? Or would you rather it maintain a small form factor with an optional accessory for a rack mount? Small form factor with ears is ok… would love internal power supply with secondary dc jack available if desired.
Any preference on a metal or plastic enclosure for your routers? Metal please
How vital are PoE ports on a router? If they are vital, is PoE+ sufficient, and what should the total available PoE budget be? Highly recommend poe+ and 2.5G
Should SFP or SFP+ be a standard on all routers? Or is that something we should leave off? SFP+ included
Is there anything else we should consider as we finalize the design of our routers that you would like to share? I looked at this from a few different needs as an isp business and secondly as consultant for small companies and residents.
As an ISP deploying both wireless and FTTH I have yet to find a complete solution geared to my needs.
On the wireless side we require 24V passive on wan to eliminate the external poe brick. Which I have a mess of Ubiquiti Aircube AC’s in the field that more or less work ok for basic customers with smaller homes. They support mesh via additional Aircube devices however I have had mediocre results. The customer has no access to change ssid or wifi passwords nor port forwarding. This requires a call to our office. The lack of any Poe on lan ports makes adding additional ap’s in the house clunky.
On the FTTH side we typically place the onu on the outside of dwelling with cat6 to the poe. We have on occasion run fiber inside and placed an UF-Instant in an ER-X-SFP router and again managed the router for the customer. As for home wifi we used older Unifi ap’s that supported 24V passive but again requires either setting up an Ubiquiti cloud account for customer they will forget to manage the ap’s.
I would like to see a vendor release a complete solution for the home or small company with an interface geared for the provider. Allowing us to sell or lease our customers a real complete and easy to use solution. On the ISP side all wan side configuration and device health of ap’s. Then analytics of connected devices quality of service such as wifi signal and data rates “used for customer trouble calls like tv buffers etc”. Then a customer portal with same analytics and then port forwarding and wifi configuration access. Also include such features as content blocking / parental controller from Web account and especially from android / apple app.
I was thinking down the isp side in previous reply but really the question is whete does alta see this possible offering geared towards small biz or consumer? For bizz definitely metal with ears however consumer either would be fine. Are we thinking routers may have wireless aswell?
Sometime, depends on the deployment or purpose of the network. For a small business or restaurant, yes. For a more structured network, no.
WAN/LAN and 1/2.5/10 Gbps or SFP+ for LAN.
Only interested in rack mount or surface placing (like placing on a rack shelf).
Metal for a “premium” model and plastic for a “budget” model.
I don’t really care about PoE+ in a router, but if you were to include it I think PoE+ is sufficient.
SFP+ on “Premium” and SFP on “Budget”.
I would love to see three models. A Budget model which is 1Gbps and SFP in a plastic enclosure with only surface mounting, like on a rack shelf. An AIO (all in one) model that has 1/2.5Gbps, built-in 4-8 port PoE+ switch, and SFP. Finally, a Premium version which is metal, rack mount only, 4-8x 10Gbps RJ45 and 1-2 SFP+.
The budget model would be good to get people into structured networking without a huge cost. The AIO will be great for small businesses and restaurants. The Premium would be great for everyone else.
I don’t really care about “security” in the aspect of IPS/IDS, I think there are better things that can be added to a network that can take care of that. If you were to include those features, I think geolocation blocking would be the best or most used in my instance. I would need native VPN clients, monthly reporting for bandwidth or other statistics, etc.
For my deployments, it is often needed to have the ability to use a LAN port as a separate interface.
A few other things I’d like to see out of a router is the ability to enable adblocking. A few routers now have this feature like Firewalla, Gl.iNet, and Unifi recently added adblocking. But I’d like to be able to pick from Adlist, ect.
I’d also like a wiregaurd VPN client and server, so I can use my surfshark VPN. It’d be nice to have the ability to set what devices can connect to the VPN. That way I can have my Chromecast not on the VPN (Google doesn’t like VPN’s) lol My firewalla also had this feature.
Security is also a must. Anything that can block possible threats and scan for malicious websites.
Basically just go look at the firewalla features and take some ideas from them
Most modern internet should now come over XG-Pon / GPON so 1xWAN SFP+ and 1x2.5GB Ethernet would be splendid.
Wall Mount is a must but if the form factor is small, I don’t think rack mounting is necessary. I would rather sit it on a rack tray inside the cabinet.
Metal please if it better for heat transfer. A hot unit will kill performance, sometimes freezes the device.
PoE+ is more than sufficient on a broad range of devices and is good to have in a small network environment where 1 router and a couple of AP’s is needed.
SFP is definitely needed if the target device is for SMB / enterprise
*Failover between WAN1 / WAN2
*VPN Server & Client (Supporting IPSec, OpenVPN, Wireguard)
*Configuration Backup to file
*Multi LAN Subnets
*Static Routing
*Notifications Email / Push (loss of internet, VPN tunnel down)
*Threat detection (good to have but not necessary on launch)
*Bandwidth / Traffic Statistics
*MAC Cloning on WAN port
*Scheduling (auto reboot, web access)
It depends I would say make 2, one rack mount and one desktop/wall
Metal FTW
4 out of the 8 ports of poe+ would be nice but not a big deal honestly
SFP+ would be wicked.
Would like the power to be IEC based so internal. DPI and IPS/IDS, Filtering, DDNS such as CloudFlare or duckdns, VPN (Wireguard prefered), Multi Networks (VLANs).
I’m talking from a home / prosumer’s point of view and appreciate business has differing needs.
At least 4 ports are useful. Ideally two of them would be POE+ and capable of powering the AP6.
2.5gbps ports will be useful as wifi speeds already surpass the 1gb ports. I guess home users wouldn’t need speeds higher than 2.5.
Wall mounting for home use would be perfect. Maybe something modern looking. Most homes don’t have racks but often have a comms cabinet where the fibre terminates with an ONT.
Plastic would be acceptable if metal increases the price.
I think the POE+ ports should be sufficient enough to handle two of Alta’s highest powered APs - currently 25w so 50w would be good enough.
SFP ports are not an important feature for me, but essential for some.
I would love a router that has SQM type QOS. This keeps everyone happy in a home environment where gaming and business have to work alongside. I would like either wall mountable, or with a wall mount available if needed. It would be great if you could produce a router that looked more like your 8 port switch than a 1U rack mount beast that needs its own cabinet.
Yes. With 2 WAPs and a NAS, 4 ports would be nice.
WAN/LAN at 2.5 Gbps would be fantastic.
SFF w/ optional rack mount.
No preference.
PoE+ … min of 2.
SFP/SFP+ is not necessary for me, but obviously a nice-to-have.
Internal power supply would be nice. Ultimately, it might be nice to see 2 router options…one catered to Prosumer and another catered to larger business/enterprise. My ideal situation would be ONT → Router-and-Switch → Multiple-PoE-WAPS…plus extra ports for my NAS and one more device.
( i know it’s sad 
