Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2021
It is a mini server, not just a router
WARNING! This review has been written over several weeks, it will be long and comprehensive as it might be.
By no mean, I'm to be called a networking expert, although i know something or two around Linux and software development.
My review is based on one year of extensive usage and i have not used all the features available in the router, so your experience might be different.
1- Target audience of this router
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Ubiquity may say that this is a professional level routers line, after one year of owning and running this router, I can confirm that this router can be installed and configured by any person who ever dealt with any router before.
The user web interface is as simple as it gets, add that to a wizard based configurations, it makes it even easier to fire and forget.
2- Why a wired router and not the all-in-one router?
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basically, every wireless/all-in-one routers consist of:
- router
- switch
- access point (usually bridged with the switch)
and in regard to software, at minimum:
- NAT (for routing traffic)
- DHCP (for automatically assigning IP addresses to devices)
- DNS (for translating domain names into IP addresses)
- VLAN (packet tagging)
- access point software (to configure your SSID, encryption, passphrase, etc.)
Now, we must understand that one device to do all that perfectly is nearly impossible.
Not to mention updating hardware is impossible, for example, to support WIFI6.
Separating these roles and responsibilities will ensure upgrade-ability and stability
exactly like HI-FI equipments, separates is always the best way to go.
3- a brief on my internet connection(s)
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I have two internet connection:
- VDSL maxing @ 30Mbps up and 5Mbps down
- 4G maxing @ 50Mbps up and 20Mbps down
my VDSL connection is not stable at all (that is the reason I have a 4G connection).
Knowing little about networking, I had an all-on-one router that I would physically go and change its WAN connection to either VDSL or 4G :)
that started my search for dual LAN router and thus, I knew about Ubiquity, in particular, the EdgeRouter X.
For my situation, the EdgeRouter X was enough for where i wanted to load balance two internet connection, yet, has a decent switching chip that is capable of Gigabit routing when hardware offloading is activated and it runs the same firmware as its big brothers.
The only thing EdgeRouter X falls short is hardware capacity it is nearly impossible to run additional programs/software due to this limitation, if all you want is routing, load-balancing, and simple switch, you are good to go with EdgeRouter X.
4- Why the EdgeRouter 4(or 6P):
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in comparison to ERX, ER4 specifications clearly says that it is not just a router but a full single board computer.
With 1 GHz 4 core CPU, 1 Gbyte Ram, and 4Gbyte of storage, the ER4 is able to crunch billions of packets with ease.
Unlike ERX, the ER4 (or ER6P) doesn't have a switching chip, although you can still bridge ethernet ports, but it will be done by the CPU not a dedicated chip, so it should be avoided.
Worth mentioning that the ER4 has an SFP port as well and doesn't have/provide any Power-Over-Ethernet capabilities.
So, the ER4 is a dedicated router only machine that its functionalities can be extended due to very good hardware specifications.
Coupled with ES8-150W POE switch, both can give a very robust and pleasant experience.
Stability of the hardware and software is phenomenal, i don't remember ever restarting the router, only restarts due to software updates or power outages.
5- Initial setup and software installation
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using the wizards, you should be able to get going, i used load-balancing wizard which was really easy to get the router going and all i can say is WOW! i don't have to physically switch the WAN link.
but this is just scratching the surface, the software is good enough for day to day activities, backups, restore, monitor devices usages using DPI (Deep Packet Inspection, which is not and will not be %100 accurate).
because the software is based on older version of Debian Linux, the sky is the limit, you can install software from Debian repo, or, like i did, install python pip and then install python packages to fit your need.
also, i externalized the DHCP and DNS services off the router to a server running on the LAN to offload the router and let it only focus on the one thing it should be focusing on, routing and load balancing.
the grayscale interface reflects the seriousness this line of routers represents, however, it can control 20% of the router configurations, the other 80% can be configured using the command line interface (logging in via SSH or Telnet).
6- Network Automation
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being obsessed with IOT and Automation, i always wanted to control the router remotely, for example, to allow or deny devices using a mobile app.
as said in point 5, i installed pip on the router, then installed python flask package which allowed my to create my own python HTTP server to control the router behavior using MQTT and Node-Red.
also, i was able to receive mobile notifications once the VDSL or the 4G line goes down or up, also collecting usage statistics to graph it on Grafana.
by the end of the day i would know how much internet was consumed (per ISP) and which devices consumed the most.
the statistics are stored in a database for later usage.
7- Things that i love
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- excellent hardware specification
- reasonably priced
- great routing capabilities
- advanced load balancing and monitoring options
- function extensibility via Debian software repo
- robust and stable no matter how many users
8- Things that i would like to be improved
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- Dedicated screen for monitoring the Load balancing feature (for now it can be only tracked via CLI)
- although it lacks dedicated switching chip, it would be nice to have port mirroring feature which can ease usage monitoring, currently i have a Netgear 5 port smart switch dedicated only for WAN to LAN port mirroring.
- more frequent updates
9- Conclusion
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no matter you are experienced network engineer or a (wo)man that just wants things to work, you can't go wrong with ER4.
Highly recommended!
