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I read where the government is concerned about the Chinese undermining our cyber infrastructure with "sleeper agent" circuitry in the various doodads we buy from them.

And the TP-Link line of router/modems is particularly suspect.

My question is what non-Chinese wifi router (has both wifi and ethernet ports) is good to buy?

Right now my devices support 802.11n (5 GHz) and 802.11g( 2.4 GHz), so I want a router that supports those versions plus newer, faster versions (e.g., 802.11ax) that I might need in the future. The newer versions are only important if they don't add much to the cost. Otherwise, I'll just buy new a few years down the road if and when I have a device that can use the faster data transfer.

I'm not looking for a mesh wi-fi, although I could be talked into it if it is a great thing.
 
FAR from any kind of expert at this but also tend to pay little attention to this kind of stuff. We have LONG allowed the stuff like this to be made in China. Is there even one commonly available that's not make there?
 
I gave up on wifi routers many years ago. I am running a pfSense (free) firewall on an old workstation and turn off the router portion of my wifi routers so they only handle wifi. PfSense is a corporate level firewall and updated frequently. WiFi routers with OEM firmware are just toys in comparison.

The pfBlockerNG service alone makes this worth it. I could not go back to not having pfBlockerNG.

An alternative is to dump the tplink firmware and replace it with DD-Wrt or OpenWRT which are much more secure than the OEM firmware and much more useful. If your router is compatible with one of these firmwares and you upgrade to them your router will essentially no longer be a Chinese router (i.e. MUCH more secure). If your wifi router isn't supported then buy a used one off ebay that is supported by one of these firmwares.

 
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I read where the government is concerned about the Chinese undermining our cyber infrastructure with "sleeper agent" circuitry in the various doodads we buy from them.

And the TP-Link line of router/modems is particularly suspect.

My question is what non-Chinese wifi router (has both wifi and ethernet ports) is good to buy?

Right now my devices support 802.11n (5 GHz) and 802.11g( 2.4 GHz), so I want a router that supports those versions plus newer, faster versions (e.g., 802.11ax) that I might need in the future. The newer versions are only important if they don't add much to the cost. Otherwise, I'll just buy new a few years down the road if and when I have a device that can use the faster data transfer.

I'm not looking for a mesh wi-fi, although I could be talked into it if it is a great thing.
Probably do a search on cnet.. most secure router yada
 
And is this so general purpose that it will load into any brand of Router?
No, not any brand and model of router. The routers it supports can be found here:
and there are a lot of them. For all the different WiFi routers there is a relatively low number of processors that the routers are built on. Porting OPEN-WRT to a particular processor/router makes it very easy to port it to the same processor in a different brand/model of router.

If you are going to run OPEN-WRT on your router you really need to also run the adblocker plug-in also.
But here is not a good place to discuss this plugin.
 
I've been lazily using a TP-Link for my wif-fi side as well. Been meaning to get rid of it for a long time, these latest discoveries have pushed me into action.

I'm going to replace everything with a GL.inet MT6000 since it runs OpenWRT and supports a variety of VPN and DNS ad-blocking services natively.

I'm not the smartest man when it comes to this stuff, so bear with me.....where is the cable jack to connect that router to your wall jack cable? My current Xfinity router has that, and I use an Ethernet cable to my desktop.
 
I'm using a Netgear AC1900. Installed it in 2019, has never glitched on me or caused problems.
I also connected a Synology NAS with 20TB of Western Digital Red drives.
The first system I've ever owned that has truly been set and forget.

I do use some TP-Link repeaters though, and they've been good too, but I need to evaluate them to see if the repeaters are a risk.

I used to work in China in the fabs that make chips for this kind of gear. It's possible for the Chinese engineers to add back door access to Western designed processors that software can't see. It's a very valid risk, and I am surprised and happy that our government is finally doing something about it
 
Ubiquity is what I use and it is great hardware. A little more advanced to set up than a Best Buy special, but it is an American company and yes some routers are made in china, but some are also made in Vietnam and Taiwan. The "Dream Router" is an all-in-one like people are used to with consumer routers and built much better. This is "Pro-sumer" stuff for the most part. Really geared for small to medium business, but they have a few offerings for home users too.

 
I'm not the smartest man when it comes to this stuff, so bear with me.....where is the cable jack to connect that router to your wall jack cable? My current Xfinity router has that, and I use an Ethernet cable to my desktop.
Sounds like you have an all-in-one cable modem/gateway provided by your ISP. The products we're talking about are only the gateway portion.
 
I'm (currently) running a Linksys mesh network with seven nodes at home to cover the entire property, including my outbuilding workshop.

All of this makes me wonder if Linksys kits have security holes in them too.
If you're actually concerned about it and inclined to do something, you have a couple options:

1. Putting a proper firewall (such as pfSense) in front of your Linksys stuff.
2. Replacing the firmware on your Linksys with DD-WRT or OpenWRT firmware.

This way you'd be able to filter and drop any traffic going places you don't want it to go (ie: China).
 
Sounds like you have an all-in-one cable modem/gateway provided by your ISP. The products we're talking about are only the gateway portion.
I was going to ask about this. I use concast and the modem and WiFi are all in one. Since its in the back of the house we often got poor service out on the front porch. So I added a plug in TP Link to give extra boost and now when we are out front all kinds of signal. So looked at the GL.iNet GL-MT6000 you mentioned and set one aside in Amazon. Was waiting to ask if its going to "help" any if I use it like the TP LInk. Just plug it into the concast one to boost power. When people start talking about doing anything other than plug and play it goes right over my head. The thing is only $150 on Amazon so if its actually better? Would have no problem buying one. As long as its just plug it in and change the devices we use.
 
I was going to ask about this. I use concast and the modem and WiFi are all in one. Since its in the back of the house we often got poor service out on the front porch. So I added a plug in TP Link to give extra boost and now when we are out front all kinds of signal. So looked at the GL.iNet GL-MT6000 you mentioned and set one aside in Amazon. Was waiting to ask if its going to "help" any if I use it like the TP LInk. Just plug it into the concast one to boost power. When people start talking about doing anything other than plug and play it goes right over my head. The thing is only $150 on Amazon so if its actually better? Would have no problem buying one. As long as its just plug it in and change the devices we use.
You'd have to be able to shutoff the router and Wi-Fi functions on your Comcast XFi modem/router/Wi-Fi device first as the GL.iNet GL-MT6000 replaces those features entirely. And you'd likely have to continue the use of the TP-Link Wi-Fi extender to get coverage at your front porch.
 
I was going to ask about this. I use concast and the modem and WiFi are all in one. Since its in the back of the house we often got poor service out on the front porch. So I added a plug in TP Link to give extra boost and now when we are out front all kinds of signal. So looked at the GL.iNet GL-MT6000 you mentioned and set one aside in Amazon. Was waiting to ask if its going to "help" any if I use it like the TP LInk. Just plug it into the concast one to boost power. When people start talking about doing anything other than plug and play it goes right over my head. The thing is only $150 on Amazon so if its actually better? Would have no problem buying one. As long as its just plug it in and change the devices we use.
Is this similar to what you're using? https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Exte...fos.9fe8cbfa-bf43-43d1-a707-3f4e65a4b666&th=1

If so, there are quite a few non-TP-Link range extenders of similar design that will replace it's function without having to re-engineer your whole setup, such as this one from Netgear: https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Wi-F...876&sprefix=gli+range+extender,aps,160&sr=8-8

I'm not endorsing it as I have never used it, just an example. There may be better ones available.
 

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