I once bought a router to use for my internet when I moved into my new house just to find out that it “wasn’t compatible” with Verizon’s service. I still have it (because I’m terrible about returning things). Is there any point in keeping it? Is there anything fun or interesting that I could do with it?
“Not Compatible” usually just means “We’re extracting a monthly fee from you to use out provided router”. Most likely, if you were to poke around, you could turn your ISP router/modem into a dumb modem and disable the inbuilt router, then connect your (better) wifi router to that.
Official guidance from Verizon is you can use your own router as a router, by setting your Verizon router as a modem only, then connecting it to the WAN port on your router. See e.g. https://kb.netgear.com/31100/How-do-I-set-up-my-Orbi-system-to-work-with-Fios
Unofficially, it’s fine. You can just use your router. The modem is in the white box on the wall (the ONT) with fibre on one end and ethernet on the other. I’ve been running my router directly to the ONT for 3 years without issue. It just works fine.
You could probably turn it into an extended access point or something like that. You could also set it up to be used in like let’s say a lab or something like that. If possible, check what router it is and see if you can put OpenWrt or something like that on it.
If not, collecting dust in a box isn’t a bad idea either, just if you decide to take it out again to clean it thoroughly.
It probably is compatible with your service. If you buy your own modem then you can use that router. You’ll avoid the monthly fee.
You could look into flashing a different firmware like DD-Wrt or Fresh Tomato. I use my second router to connect everything at my desk
I’ve never heard of these before. I’ll have to check them out. Thanks for the suggestion.
When I upgraded to a mesh system a while back, I turned my old router into a dedicated access point just for playing VR games wirelessly on my PC. Performance improved noticably once it didn’t have to compete with the regular house WiFi traffic.
I assume you had a hardline from the VR router to the central router? Otherwise wouldn’t the wireless communication between the VR router and the central router be in the same competition as the VR headset was before?
Most/all of the data transfer in their case wouldn’t be hitting the regular router; the spare router would only be acting as a go-between from the PC to the VR headset
Oh, so you have a main router for internet traffic (wifi access for extended router and other devices) and another router extended from it that both your VR headset and PC connect to for VR-type data communication, still providing internet to the PC with about half the bandwidth?
That’s how I’d set it up, yeah. Most VR games are gonna be local, not needing a ton of internet bandwidth
is it a wireless router? You could turn it into an access point and extend your wifi.
make it a separate, unconnected and open router to troll your neighbors/wardrivers
Trolling people sounds interesting. Is there any way to have them auto-navigate to a rickroll upon connecting?
Captive portal?
If you’re not going to hook it up to the internet (bridging, access point, etc.), name it something funny or provocative for the neighbors.
For example, I live in a college student neighborhood with a lot of Chinese students. I have an old router that I’m going to use the network name 六四屠殺 which is Chinese for the June Fourth Massacre (the Tiananmen Square Massacre). It’s a term banned on the Chinese internet.
Why? seems unnecessarily rude.
Seems pretty based to spread freedom of knowledge and history in spite of an oppressive, authoritarian regime.
If you have anywhere in your home with poor Wi-Fi signal, you could set up the router in bridge mode to effectively act as a range extender. Just make sure to disable DHCP on the 2nd router or it will wreak havoc!
A wifi extender would be awesome! Thanks for the suggestion.
Best is actually to connect the two with a cable, otherwise you lose a lot of bandwidth.
I hope it’s not too terrible, purely over wifi. Maybe when my son gets older and wants to play games on his own computer, I’ll pipe a line over to the other side of the house for him. I don’t think his sister is going to care enough about computers to want a direct line to the internet, but if she does then I’ll do it for her too.
It effectively cuts it by half.
That makes sense. I just hope that it’s good enough for YouTube.
Youtube 4k is only 20mbps - any pair of routers with better than 802.11n will do just fine. n is technically 300mbps, but try to push that through a wall or three and it drops to nothing real quick.
I did this with my old router and as others have said it effectively cuts throughput in half. Depending on your usage though it might not be a big deal. I only connected mine so I could get a signal in the front yard. It’s fine for surfing the web or watching YouTube
