Random thought's

[lilstone87]

I will say when I first heard about Netduma, and there router. It was probably a little more then a month ago, I was rather excited, and couldn't wait for launch. When launch was finally here, and router specs were announced. I was a bit disappointed, and then pricing was announced. With it being the holiday season, and seeing the spec's posted. I just couldn't see myself being able to come up with the money at this point.

 

I will say this router is/will be worth it to a lot of people, but for me to make this work at my place. I would be a bit limited doing so. One thing is, I have a 150mbps down 20mbps up connection, and it seems this router is limited around the 100mbps mark right now. I know this can be improved down the road a bit. Another thing important to me is 5ghz wireless band, as I have other's to please in my house hold, and where I live 2.4ghz deals with good amount of interference. Plus the house I stay in is a older house, with wall's that hate wireless. So having 5ghz wireless is key, to pleasing everyone, and them being able to stream high quality content over wireless.

 

With all that said, I do currently have a Asus RT-AC87R router I spent $300 on a couple months back. Which it has many features, and works pretty well. However like most router's, and newer product's, it has bugs within the software. Some can be very annoying for such a high cost router. Anyway's I can easily use this current router as an AP to help with wireless side of thing's.

 

So with all that said, it is just hard to spend the money on this Netduma router currently. After the holidays, that may be a bit easier. As I was really thinking of being a day one buyer, until the spec's were announced. This however isn't a shot at the guy's behind Netduma, as I know they have been busting there asses developing this router for many years. Which I can very much appreciate, as I have been a call of duty online gamer since cod4 online on pc. So I know of the headaches behind playing via P2P connections, and it will drive anyone insane at times with frustration.

 

I also understand they had to gamble when it comes to the hardware side of things, as cost has to go somewhere, and it can be hard to balance for them, and still sell to there customers. Plus as customers we have to understand we are talking about a start up company, so cost is higher for them compare to other big company's making routers. I hope we gamer's can stand behind a company like this though, and help them build into something bigger. Because software is very key in routers, and that's something seriously lacking still with the latest routers available today.

 

I will continue to keep a eye on development of this router, even though it is a bit limited in it's offerings for me. I know some of it can be improved with software updates, and I still plan to purchase one of these routers at some point after the holidays. Over last couple days, I have exchanged many tweets with Lain, and he has been very open, and helpful in answering questions. So even in a small company, I can very much appreciate that kind of support. Anyways I know this post is a bit long, but I wanted to bring this stuff up, and if you made it this far, thanks for reading .

 

-Scott

[Guest Netduma_Iain]

Thanks Scott, we love the honest feedback.

 

Onto the bandwidth issue, I will be writing a quick patch this week that will take you up to about 150mbits/s. I believe its 145 but I need to double check and I'll announce the exact speeds for sure. If people need more speed we can use hardware NAT to increase the speed significantly(I need to do a test to figure out how much). So on the bandwidth front we will be faster soon!

 

Onto the Wifi issue, unfortunately we can't patch hardware, imagine a world where 3D printers could do that, now that would be cool! I'm going to be completely honest about the Wifi situation. We really didn't focus on Wifi too much because gamers should use wired if possible. Considering the primary goal of the product is gaming we didn't want to raise prices by supporting something that would NOT actually benefit gamers. Having said all of that, the Wifi strength on this particular router is amazing(this is nothing to do with us its just the hardware) if you Google around you'll see amazing reviews:

 

That being said the RB951G-2HnD has a 1000mw transmit power and it shows. The wifi coverage and signal quality goes farther than any router

 

A few things about 5Ghz as well, it will only benefit you in two scenarios:

1. You're in an overcrowded area and Wifis are interfering with each other. Still I urge you to try different channels on 2.4Ghz

2. You have greater than 300mbit/s broadband(that's the limit of our Wifi)

 

However 2.4Ghz has far better range and can penetrate walls easier. So I'd actually argue, for anyone who doesn't have gigabit speeds 2.4Ghz will be better for gaming UNLESS you live in an extremely densely populated area.

 

At Netduma we've tried our hardest to be authentic, and what we continually ask ourselves is "Will it make a difference?". So after this initial patch that takes us up to about 150mbit/s(and hopefully the next one will take us way beyond). I'll ask the following questions for gamers and residential users:

 

• If I had £10,000 commercial router or the R1 and my broadband speed is less than 150mbit/s, will it make a difference? No
  
• If I do NOT live in an excessively overcrowded area will 5Ghz make a difference? No
  
• If I buy a quad core computer with gigs of RAM and turn it into a router, will it make a difference? No
  

 

My last example is a bit of exaggeration to make my point. We looked at the issues people had and nearly all of them occurred at layers higher than the physical layer and needed software solutions. One very valid point is future proofing, and perhaps we went a little wrong there. But we did so to try keep the cost down. For example earlier in our development we were considering spending a significant amount to try get better casing and make the router look better which would invariably put the price up. But we asked ourselves "Will it make a difference?" The answer to that is certainly not.

 

That was and is our thought process, hope it helps.

[lilstone87]

Well I want to add on to my original post, as I do want to list some features i would like to see. Some may be possible in future firmwares, and even some may already be within the current software. Also I will add couple features I would like in a future router from Netduma, and hopefully that day becomes possible in the future.

 

1. wan/lan possible of a 200mbps connection.

2. bandwidth monitoring per lan ip address

3. port forwarding(already in software?)

4. setting manual lan ip's per device(already in software?)

 

Future all in one router wishlist

 

1a. true gigabyte wan/lan support

1b. dual core cpu to support true gigabyte speeds

2. wireless dual band support 2.4/5ghz

3a. usb3 support with HDD support

3b. samba share

 

This is the kind of stuff that would make a perfect router for me, and I am sure would benefit needs of some others. That also has good software that supports, and benefits gamer's, that have to deal with P2P when gaming online.

[Guest Netduma_Iain]

Well I want to add on to my original post' date=' as I do want to list some features i would like to see. Some may be possible in future firmwares, and even some may already be within the current software. Also I will add couple features I would like in a future router from Netduma, and hopefully that day becomes possible in the future.

 

1. wan/lan possible of a 200mbps connection.

2. bandwidth monitoring per lan ip address

3. port forwarding(already in software?)

4. setting manual lan ip's per device(already in software?)

 

Future all in one router wishlist

 

1a. true gigabyte wan/lan support

1b. dual core cpu to support true gigabyte speeds

2. wireless dual band support 2.4/5ghz

3a. usb3 support with HDD support

3b. samba share

 

This is the kind of stuff that would make a perfect router for me, and I am sure would benefit needs of some others. That also has good software that supports, and benefits gamer's, that have to deal with P2P when gaming online.

[/quote']

 

1. We definitely intend on getting that sorted. Within the week we should be up to 150mbits/s. The patch to get beyond 200mbits/s is quite a significant amount of work. So I think we should start a thread and see what broadband speeds people have and are likely to have in the next 6 months. So I can prioritise this task.
   
2. The network monitor already allows you to do that
   
3. Yes we have port forwarding. We also have UPnP for auto port forwarding and have the ablity to not only open the NAT on our router but upstream routers as well if they're not in modem mode.
   
4. You can do that as well already
   

 

• 1a. Ok, the aforementioned thread will help us there as well
  
• 1b. I'd argue that it doesn't really matter how it acheives it, but I understand what your goal is, gigabit speed. Hopefully the aforementioned thread will also help us make the descision
  
• 2. Ok good to know.
  
• 3a. We actually have USB on the current router but it doesn't do anything at the moment. We will definitely consider adding HDD support.
  
• 3b. See above point, very good suggestion
  

 

 

 

 

Thanks Scott, hope that helps. Look forward to your response,

Iain

[abc123]

@lilstone87 agreed...in the future i'd love to see

 

* Dual core CPU

* Either WiFi removed or N and AC supported over two bands

* 256MB ram or 512GB

 

Challenges for this are that the hardware for the above currently don't have open source drivers which means that OpenWRT doesn't support it, meaning neither does NetDuma...

 

This would be a real challenge for their team, but would earn them a huge crowd from router enthusiasts by stealing them from the OpenWRT/DD-WRT hacks that have been happening lately.

[Guest Netduma_Iain]

@lilstone87 agreed...in the future i'd love to see

 

* Dual core CPU

* Either WiFi removed or N and AC supported over two bands

* 256MB ram or 512GB

 

Challenges for this are that the hardware for the above currently don't have open source drivers which means that OpenWRT doesn't support it' date=' meaning neither does NetDuma...

 

This would be a real challenge for their team, but would earn them a huge crowd from router enthusiasts by stealing them from the OpenWRT/DD-WRT hacks that have been happening lately.

[/quote']

 

Hi Abc,

 

Honestly I didn't know that OpenWRT didn't support it. That was not the reasoning at all. I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to port but we're focusing on the R1 fully right now. Thanks for the feedback though its duly noted.