Hi. Does any of the wise and wonderful people in this forum know of a router with an external throughput display? Several years ago, Belkin made one...
...but it's been discontinued for years. SO many clients have data going in/out from Cloud storage (or even from Windows 10's ''share updates with everyone in the world'' deal) and that's using up their internet speed and they are unaware of it.
So, we're looking for a way for them to know at a glance that they have a bunch of data flowing through their networks - and a router with an external display would be a good start.
Mikrotik/Routerboard RB2011 line offers LCD on some models, (like RB2011UiAS-2HnD-IN, with SFP, 5*gigabit, 5*10/100, 1000mW wifi, color lcd touchscreen) but they're about $100-$130. Nice routers, though - we use them at a few lower-demand towers, and most business customers that want/need us to provide a router.
OK, thanks everyone. I was ambigous - I actually meant a ''consumer level home wifi router'' with a LCD speed display. We'd love if our clients could have a router at home with an external speed display so they'd know when they are uploading / downloading. We're getting SO tired of customers calling and saying their intenet is 'slower than dialup' and when we look at their connections, they are actually streaming at 100% capacity.
So, it would be great if clients could see a display on their home routers that shows "7.6 Mbit / 1.3 Mbit" on it's display.
Wow - I've been searching for a while now, and I'm surprised that (as far as I can find) there aren't a bunch of simple solutions for a customer to look at an LCD Display showing the current throughput on the front of their home router. It would seem to me that LinkSys and DLink and these guys would be all over this idea.
So - thank you to everyone's suggestions. If any one has any other ideas, I'm all ears. I know there are some home routers that show that info once you log in, but we find that clients need a simple (idiot proof) kinda solution, and logging into their router opens a whole can of worms. I suppose that a piece of software running on their computer that's watching the router's throughput and displaying it in real time would also be OK(ish), but that's not quite the same as a big speedometer on the front of the router. I'm looking for a big and simple Down/Up Speedometer display.
That exactly what Mikrotik do with the're routers. The're no reason why a RB2011 couldn't be use as home router except if the customer want to be able to do a port forward himself. Maybe this option will also come eventually for their low cost router.