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Ask HN: What's a solid, non-mesh/-repeater/-cloud WiFi-GbE bridge ~100 USD?

19 points by hexbinencoded ↗ HN
I'm looking for a compact, reliable 5 GHz WiFi-bridge that either has 1 Gigabit port that can bridge multiple Ethernet MAC addresses or 4x 1 GbE ports that can do the same. So far, I've tried numerous products from TP-Link, Linksys, and Netgear but I don't want to have to deal with a used Cisco IOS AP or anything cloud/mesh with $$ licensing, backdoored/never updated firmware, analytics, added complexity, or corporate kill-switches. I'm ambivalent to F(L/B)OSS, while open to any stable platform.

I also have an occasional need for a solid single Ethernet client WiFi bridge, but all the ones I've found so far (purpose-built and travel routers) suffer from unusable, unstable pathologies.

C'mon HN, these can't be unique use-cases.

13 comments

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hengheng
Powerline a possibility?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
chrismeller
My go-to is always Mikrotik, they have devices that fit just about every possible niche.

1: https://mikrotik.com/

eps
Don't know about their hardware, but we had more than enough run-ins with bugs in their firmware to strongly advise all our users against using anything Mikrotik. The issues were so bizarre that the only possible explanation was a blatant incompetence on the software developers' part. Something that would normally require a fire-emergency patching, only to be reluctantly patched weeks if not months later. This was several years ago, so perhaps things changed. I will try and dig up the details.
chrismeller
Ive never had any problems with any of their basic stuff, just a couple of things related to VPNs, so I still highly recommend them.
scifi
Pick up a pre owned Aruba MST200. Yes, it supports mesh but otherwise it’s a plain old bridge.
xchaotic
I’m happy to hear what’s on the market currently. I’m still using older Apple hardware which works flawlessly. I wish they’d kept the network products in production.
dementik
Check out Engenius, for example their EWS330AP is nicely priced well-performing locally managed bridge.

I have used that for multiple outdoor and indoor wifi bridge needs.

magixx
I've been using a Netgear AC2600 without any issue so far. The AP is about 8 feet away and has line of sight however.
mindcrash
If you're not afraid of DIY:

- Get a PC Engines 4x 1gbit APU (like this one: https://www.pcengines.ch/apu4d2.htm)

- Get a PC Engines case (like this one for the board above: https://www.pcengines.ch/case1d4blku.htm, also available in red or blue if that is more your thing)

- And a SD Card which you can use to install Linux or BSD

Then configure the thing however you want.

Will cost you a little bit more than ~100 USD but full freedom (from firmware onwards) is priceless :)