PS4 / Internet (Charter) / Cisco router troubleshooting

And I'm not a Unix guy at all. I use Mac OS and Win7, but I'm no IT dude.. just reading and experimenting.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Anyone know of a good router brand? (Meaning EASY configuration)

With the OpenWRT stuff you really don't need to go into the terminal/shell (aside from geeky stuff and in depth diagnostics), it sets up through a web interface.

OHSCrifle wrote: And I'm not a Unix guy at all. I use Mac OS and Win7, but I'm no IT dude.. just reading and experimenting. Thanks for the suggestions. Anyone know of a good router brand? (Meaning EASY configuration)

I just bought a new Asus RT-AC66 last week from Target for $150. It's dual band, and supports 802.11AC. Security is the day job, and I like that many of the defaults were about where I'd have put them for my simple home network.

My suggested steps:

• Change the admin username and set a decent password.
• Turn off the WPS, set WPA2/PSK.
• Set a strong wireless password that won't hurt too much to put into devices.
• Select a non-default SSID that doesn't indicate which house is yours. (Consider adding _optout and/or _nomap to the SSID if you don't want Microsoft Wi-Fi Sense sharing your password, or Google Streetview cars recording your SSID.)
• Put the same SSID and password on both frequencies so devices that can talk to both can switch between 5GHz and 2.4GHz as needed.
• It's five o'clock somewhere.

About the only tweak I did was to disable the b/n protection on the 2.4GHz network, since I don't own any of that, and set Google DNS.

I like the native feature set too. It has a VPN server. It can perform print services, file services, or pull a download on its own. It can connect to a second network and fail over. It can plug into a USB dongle or Android phone for backup connectivity. It can sync its own file shares with Asus' own cloud storage. It has a fairly simple QoS feature.

Picked up a Netgear R6200 router/wireless access point tonight for $99 at Wallyworld.

Plugged it in, only changed router login and SSID name/wifi passwords...

Fired up the Playstation, did the "easy" configuration (connecting via Wifi first).... and it connected to the Internet and to PSN on the first try. Sonofagun?!.. so that's nice.

I guess the true test will be to see if it continues to connect for a few days.

This hasn't been fun at all, rather it's been like punching myself in the face.

Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions. Sincerely.

Mike - thanks for all that in your last post. I had never heard the opt out stuff related to SSID.