Synology RT2600ac

2020-11-26

My old Google WiFi router from TP-LINK ended up triggering some kind of kernel bug in Linux and tanking network performance by causing the NIC to constantly reassociate with the router every few seconds. After discussing with System 76 engineers, I decided to try a new router to perform a controlled test, and I didn't like that the Google router had no web interface. So I researched and picked up the RT2600ac from Synology. It not only resolved the problem, but provided better coverage to our back room than Google WiFi mesh did. It also had more advanced configuration, providing site filtering and safe search on a profile-specific basis. Profiles are essentially groups of devices. It worked well for us, but recently we started having debilitating outages where latencies would spike 400% and packet loss was close to 80%. I spent days troubleshooting, looking at Comcast outage maps, and talking with Comcast support. Their ultimate resolution was for me to buy a new cable modem, citing my current model's age (6 years) as past EOL. After I got off the phone with them, I decided to check the performance coming directly out of the cable modem. Sure enough, it was fantastic, which made the router the prime suspect. After some testing, it turns out that the safe search features incurred this performance penalty at times. I've since disabled them and performance is back to previous levels. Overall, the router is superb, but the safe search features don't seem to be totally nailed down.

Synology RT2600ac - AC2600 high-speed Wi-Fi router