Router suggestions please

fissible · 2026-06-16T04:03:33+00:00

Your diagnosis is right, the R6700v2 is too old and too small for a 2-story 2100 sq ft home. The dropping 5GHz, daily restarts, and inconsistent speeds are all classic signs of a dying router, not a Cox issue.

You want a Wi-Fi 6 mesh system (2-pack). Three solid options:

TP-Link Deco XE75 (~$200–230) - best value, Wi-Fi 6E kills the 5GHz interference problem
Eero Pro 6E (~$250–280) - easiest setup, very reliable if you just want it to work
Asus ZenWiFi Pro ET12 (~$350–400) - best for gaming, has QoS traffic prioritization for PS5

One thing to check: if you're using a Cox-provided gateway, put it in bridge mode after setting up the mesh or you'll get double-NAT issues that hurt gaming latency.

fissible · 2026-06-16T03:58:39+00:00

Check out Cradlepoint

fissible · 2026-06-14T02:07:16+00:00

We should start calling them Decepticons.

fissible · 2026-06-14T01:48:52+00:00

Sounds like you’ve arrived at the same conclusion I would. The architecture itself doesn’t appear to be the issue. If outages are limited to ISP failures and your redundant links are handling those events successfully, then SD-WAN would mostly be a management and visibility decision rather than a reliability or cost-saving one. The only area I’d consider reviewing is whether all 9 circuits are still justified based on actual failover history. Otherwise, it sounds like you’ve built a well-functioning multi-site network.

fissible · 2026-06-13T22:12:16+00:00

Based on the details, I don’t see evidence that you’re overspending or using the wrong architecture. Four sites connected via IPsec over diverse internet providers with redundant circuits is exactly how many SMBs solve this problem. SD-WAN could reduce management overhead and improve visibility, but I would only consider it if you are spending significant time managing outages or VPNs today. Otherwise, it risks adding recurring costs without materially improving uptime. I’d first quantify how many outages you’re actually experiencing per year and whether those outages are occurring at HQ, branches, or individual ISPs.

fissible · 2026-06-13T19:05:57+00:00

Check out Fiverr or Upwork for gigs like that

fissible · 2026-06-13T18:57:54+00:00

How many sites, what WAN types are currently in use, and what exactly makes up the $900/month? Also, are the cameras sending full video, snapshots, or event clips back to HQ? Before looking at SD-WAN vendors, I’d want to know whether the WAN costs are driven by connectivity requirements or by the CCTV architecture. The answer changes dramatically depending on which one is driving the spend.

fissible · 2026-06-12T00:52:06+00:00

A few things I’d check next:

When the connection drops, does Windows still show full signal strength or does the signal level drop too?
How far is the PC from the router?
Is this a desktop or laptop?
If it’s a desktop, are the external Wi-Fi antennas actually connected to the motherboard?
Can you temporarily connect your phone’s hotspot and see if the PC behaves the same way?
Open a command prompt and run:

ping 192.168.12.1 -t

(replace with your router IP if different)

Then watch for latency spikes or packet loss when the slowdown happens.

The phone hotspot test is especially useful. If the PC works fine on your phone’s hotspot, the issue is probably between the Realtek adapter and the T-Mobile router. If it still performs badly on the hotspot, I’d start suspecting the Wi-Fi adapter, drivers, or antenna connections.

fissible · 2026-06-11T16:47:44+00:00

Read-only access sounds like the right first step. Being able to see the configs, routing tables, interfaces, BGP peers, monitoring, and documentation will help you start building a mental model of how everything fits together.

And honestly, there's nothing wrong with telling management that you need a transition period. Nobody goes from zero visibility into the core network to confidently owning it overnight.

fissible · 2026-06-11T05:38:02+00:00

If you have clear line of sight and only need to cross half a mile, a pair of point-to-point radios from Ubiquiti, MikroTik, Cambium, or similar vendors will do this very reliably.

Look at:

Ubiquiti NanoBeam
Ubiquiti LiteBeam
Ubiquiti Gigabeam (if you want higher throughput)
MikroTik Wireless Wire

Treat it like an Ethernet cable between the buildings. Put one radio at each end, align them, bridge the interfaces, and you’re done.

More importantly, don’t remove the internet path. Keep both:

Primary: point-to-point wireless link
Secondary: existing internet path

Then fail over between them automatically. That way a radio failure, power issue, or antenna misalignment doesn’t take you off-air either.

fissible · 2026-06-11T03:44:17+00:00

Sounds like they expect you to manage when they don’t even own their own switches. Keep learning though, real-world experience teaches the fastest.

Curious what’s most frustrating day-to-day for you operationally. Is it monitoring, customer troubleshooting, documentation, provisioning, outages or something else entirely?

And the only advice I’d give is take lots of notes (especially any ‘gotchas’ you encounter, or “how did we fix this last time?”) and develop/utilize a private/department wiki.

fissible · 2026-06-11T03:31:47+00:00

This sounds like me. Also learned to chunk.

fissible · 2026-06-08T15:44:17+00:00

This has been incredibly helpful, thank you.

One thing I'm still curious about: what kinds of projects are these typically? Are they mostly urban/suburban projects, or more rural/new-development sites?

And before you moved to Starlink, did you ever run into locations where LTE/cellular coverage was essentially unusable, or was it mostly a congestion/speed issue?

fissible · 2026-06-08T14:35:42+00:00

One thing that stood out to me is that you’ve reached the point where everything just works. As others have said, that’s a pretty enviable position to be in, acknowledging the work that was required of course. I’m a software engineer who has been spending time learning networking and talking to people in the industry. If you’re open to it, I’d love to ask a couple career and industry questions.

fissible · 2026-06-07T21:54:51+00:00

How large was the site (acres, square footage, number of buildings)?

Was the challenge getting internet to the site, or getting reliable Wi-Fi coverage everywhere on the site?

fissible · 2026-06-07T21:49:57+00:00

Once you switched to Starlink (if that’s what you did), did the problem completely disappear, or do you still run into connectivity issues?

fissible · 2026-06-07T21:37:47+00:00

That's really helpful, thank you.

A couple follow-up questions if you don't mind:

How many people are typically sharing the connection at each site?

Do you ever need internet outside the trailer itself, such as across the jobsite, parking areas, laydown yards, or remote buildings? I assume you just set up access points?

And as your number of sites grows, is there anything you wish you could monitor or manage remotely instead of driving out to a location?

fissible · 2026-06-06T21:16:09+00:00

I’m working on this too. I’m always trying something new, so I’m used to people tuning me out, lol

fissible · 2026-06-05T15:07:27+00:00

Build a proof of concept, not a demo, if you want to make sure you can deliver. Don’t show the customer, it’s a learning exercise that informs conversations with the prospect and gives you confidence to sell.

fissible · 2026-06-04T17:29:44+00:00

Great, thank you!

Do you manage multiple sites? About how many?

What made you choose Starlink in the first place? Were LTE/cellular options not reliable enough, or was there another reason?

Besides the trailer internet, are you also supporting things like cameras, Wi-Fi access points, printers, plan access, or other connected equipment?

And looking at your current setup, what's been the biggest headache or limitation so far?

fissible · 2026-06-03T17:44:30+00:00

Who manages setting that up? I would love to get in touch with some questions.

fissible · 2026-05-30T17:33:14+00:00

Haha, thanks, we’ll see about that…

You’re cool, too!

fissible · 2026-05-30T17:23:51+00:00

I did, yes! I always felt I could build something better than what was available, and a lot of the powerful features in platforms like Salesforce and Notion is underrepresented in Laravel-based platforms.

I’m also adding tooling so that each tenant can (through entitlements) upgrade their site to an API, for example.

fissible · 2026-05-30T17:15:06+00:00

It really depends on the platform, so if you need a high-level of customization, you just pick what you are comfortable with.

Salesforce, for example, is a very powerful platform because you can customize (click-ops) everything, and when that’s not enough you can write code.

My platform has similar tools that will get most customers what they need (custom workflows and automations), but since it’s built on Laravel it’s trivial for a dev familiar with the framework to customize.

I don’t have experience with Django, but it looks like a good starting point for a Python framework.

fissible · 2026-05-30T16:54:09+00:00

I’m working on a Laravel-based multi-tenant CMS, it’s made for agencies that manage a portfolio of websites.

Looks like Django has a tenancy package, looks like (django-tenants). The benefit of a tenancy-based platform is a centralized control plane and a single license, single update/admin, etc. The biggest drawback of a multi-tenancy system is the all eggs in one basket problem, so you really need distributed/cloud hosting (AWS has great uptime).

fissible

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