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Review on πŸš€ Enhance Your Network with the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter 6P: A Powerful 6-Port Gigabit Router with 1 SFP Port (ER-6P-US) by Dan Reggae

Revainrating 1 out of 5

On my way to the top-end prosumer routers

I bought my EdgeRouter 6P as an upgrade from the EdgeRouter POE so I could have two working routers and meanwhile didn't had to be offline a firmware update. I have previously tried the EdgeRouter X for this purpose and found it useless as the ER-X has very little memory. Just enable logging and ER-X will fill up the drive and stop working after two weeks. ER-6P is a whole different story. It has 4 GB Flash instead of 2 GB ER-POE, 1 GB RAM instead of 512 MB ER-POE and four 1 GHz MIPS64 cores instead of two 600 MHz POE cores. This is a MUCH more powerful router for not a lot of money. It arrived with the old firmware, but to update it to the latest version, just run a few commands. Also, unlike the ER-POE, the EdgeRouter 6P has an optional rack mount kit (which fits anything from ER-4 to ER-12). Some users are complaining about the admin GUI. I find this normal, but I don't use it for most configuration tasks, just traffic monitoring. I prefer to SSH into the router and use the command line. I also don't use the included firewall features, preferring to use Shorewall, which I find much more powerful and much easier to set up. (The rule chain interface used by netfilter is cryptic and pointlessly cryptic.) My ER-POE is now a surrogate; I will use it for testing new firmware versions and when updating 6P. If you have an older EdgeRouter and want a performance boost, this latest generation of routers is a good upgrade. If you're just starting out, they'll perform much better than anything Netgear or D-Link will sell you, but you MUST have at least a little knowledge of what you're doing. You still need a cable or DSL modem; These routers won't do it for you. If you want WiFi, EdgeRouter won't either; Try one of Ubiquiti's Unifi WiFi hotspots instead. The Unifi WAP gives you much better WiFi coverage than almost any WiFi router on the market for less money, and you can add additional APs when you need more coverage, much easier than adding additional consumer WiFi routers.

Pros
  • Great for outdoor activities
Cons
  • It's hard to remember but it was