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Luxul Router (products) - thoughts?
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Gulf Coast, USModerator Posts: 792
I recently got a great deal on a Luxul XWR-3150 and was wondering if anyone has any experience with their devices.
https://www.luxul.com/routers/wireless-routers/xwr-3150.aspx
Specs wise it seems like it will be a good unit, plus it has Domotz built in which is awesome. I'm currently using a Linksys ea7500 (ac1900) which is not bad but is quite lacking in the department of configurability and statistical reporting. Although wireless speeds are great at normal distance, I can pull about 560 mbps with my iPad which is fine, speeds drop off quite a bit through walls though.
There isn't a whole lot of good information on Luxul because they are generally used by AV integrators in the high-end sector.
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Best Answer
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teletechnics
Member Posts: 1✭
Luxul routers have impressive specs, and the advertised options are also quite interesting. That said, as indicated above, it is not up to par with the high end. Yes it is used in the high-end market, and one of my clients has just spent a fair amount of cash in replacing the units with cisco as they were simply not performing. In the case of the client it were switches vice APs that were the route of the problem.
As to the Domotz integration, as it is a "intergrated" service, vice a stand alone setup, the domotz has limitation on network scaning across vlan/subnets. This conversation can be found in the domotz forum.Bottom line, I am not a fan of Luxul products at this stage, as the UI is limited, and I have had severe performance issues, which have taken up too much of my time to try and resolve.
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I'm not impressed with this unit, I'm glad I got such a good deal on it or I would be very disappointed.
Once I enabled Domotz and Router Limits the RAM usage skyrocketed to 75% with only a few devices connected, WiFi is very limited in configurability as I could only use two channels on AC wireless, 40 or 149 I believe it is.
AC on my Linksys I can use channels 36, 40, 44, 48, 149, 153, 157, or 161.
The device has no realtime monitoring besides Domotz or Router Limits which both have a monthly fee, and Domotz has a $36 activation fee for some reason. I'm guessing it's to pay for licensing by Luxul. Like they aren't getting enough in the price of the device, it's a $400+ router according to them. I have no problem paying a monthly fee but that activation I don't get. I tested Domotz and it worked fine as did Router Limits which cost too much ($10/month).
It does have VLAN (my Linksys does also), VPN which is great and one of the deciding factors of my purchase, awesome range, and 4x4 MU-MIMO (wave 2) wireless but what good is that if I can't pick an uncongested channel. It doesn't even have bridge mode, why? Such amazing hardware limited by mediocre software, seems to be the norm these days.
I have a Pfsense device that I haven't put into service and perhaps I will use it as a really expensive AP for it in the future, I'm sticking with the Linksys for now.
-Warden Anastasia Luccio, Captain
Thank you for your thoughts on my question, it really is too bad they don't just allow running OpenWRT on their routers directly as I'm almost positive it's the OS they are using behind the lacking interface.
I did a lot of work trying to unpack their firmware which is in modified trx format, the first 64 bytes include the md5sum of the firmware with the name of the device. I was able to split the boot and root images out but can't unpack them. They are LZMA CPIO but must be protected in some way.
Maybe I will get bold and build stock OpenWRT for it, I'm relatively sure I can get it working.
Beyond that, it's done it's job quite well even when I've pushed some ridiculous traffic through it.
Beyond that, it's done it's job quite well even when I've pushed some ridiculous traffic through it.
They have updated the firmware of the router I purchased about 6 times, the most recent being this month. I glad they support the device but don't understand the heavy limitations they have imposed through the lacking user interface. Especially having only two channels on 5ghz to select from, this makes no sense.
It also has SSH running that I can't access since I don't know the username/password, I also can't shut it off.