Local install · enterprise hardware · lifetime sovereignty

Stop losing to your own Wi-Fi. Fix your home network permanently.

Download a 100 GB game update, stream 4K in the living room, and hop on a crystal-clear work call — all at once, with zero lag.

Retail routers choke the moment the whole house gets online — ping spikes mid-match, calls that stutter, packets quietly dropped. We deploy a dedicated, enterprise-grade network engine that runs real traffic-shaping code and unlocks 100% of the speed you already pay your ISP for.

latency monitor · 60s · under full download STABLE
retail router apex net
jitter0.4 ms
bufferbloat gradeA+
cpu under load15%

The honest version

Your router was never built for this.

The hardware your ISP handed you, and most of what's on the shelf, is designed to hit a price point — not to survive a full house hammering it at once. Here's where it breaks.

01 · silicon

A phone chip doing a server's job

Consumer routers run tiny, underpowered mobile-class processors. Pile on a game, two 4K streams, and a video call, and the chip saturates — so it starts dropping packets. We install a real quad-core x86 CPU that doesn't blink.

02 · coverage

Mesh that halves itself

Off-the-shelf mesh nodes talk to each other over the same airwaves your devices use, so every hop quietly cuts your speed. We run a dedicated backhaul — over coax or a separate radio — so the far room is as fast as the first.

03 · control

You stop renting your own network

Premium router features increasingly hide behind a monthly app subscription, with telemetry and forced updates baked in. Yours runs open-source OpenWrt: no paywalls, no phone-home, no expiry. You own it outright.

What we actually install

Infrastructure, not appliances.

the dedicated compute engine

An Intel N100 mini-PC, built to route and nothing else.

This is the heart of the install: a fanless x86 appliance with a quad-core Intel N100 and Intel i226-V 2.5-gigabit ports. It shapes thousands of concurrent packet flows in real time and still sits around 15% utilization while your whole house is online. Headroom is the point — nothing throttles when life gets busy.

cpu
N100 · 4-core
nics
i226-V 2.5G
load
~15%
fans
0 · silent
jitter under load
0.4ms

Flat under a saturated download. That's the difference between a clean shot and a teleporting opponent.

openwrt sovereignty
root@apex-net:~# uci show sqm
sqm.wan.qdisc='cake'
sqm.wan.script='layer_cake'
sqm.wan.enabled='1'
# no telemetry · no forced updates
# your data stays your data
wireless backhaul & moca

Wire-fast speed through walls you already have.

Most homes are already laced with coax behind the TV jacks. We turn those into a 2.5 Gbps MoCA backbone — wire-equivalent speed to the far end of the house with zero drywall cut. No coax? We configure a dedicated wireless backhaul instead, so distant rooms never pay the usual mesh tax.

N100
router
coax · 2.5 Gbps
AP
far room

60-second self-check

Would Apex actually help your home?

Answer a few quick questions and we'll tell you straight — how much you'd gain, what we'd target, and which build fits. No email required.

apex://self-check step 1 / 5

A quick self-assessment — your real line gets measured during the free on-site audit.

Deep diagnostic · in-browser & on-site

Measure it both ways. Then we go deeper on-site.

The deep scan runs right in your browser — nothing to install, nothing to trust. It saturates your line in both directions and watches how far latency jumps under a full download and a full upload, where the worst bufferbloat usually hides.

A browser can only see the path to the internet. Your in-wall wiring, Wi-Fi spectrum and interference, switch and AP behavior, per-device load — that’s what we map in person during the free on-site audit, with the same Linux tooling we build your network on.

Private by design. The scan runs in your browser against our own test endpoints — it measures throughput and latency only, keeps nothing about your traffic, and asks for your email solely if you want the full report sent over.

apex · deep scan

sample report

Idle latency
9 ms
Saturated latency
52 ms
Queue delay Δ
+43 ms
012 ms35 ms+
RED · Critical bottleneck — x86 gateway upgrade recommended

How the audit works

Core engine

Multi-threaded by design

Built natively in Python 3 with a Tkinter interface. Every heavy networking routine runs on isolated background worker threads, so the UI never freezes or stutters mid-test — even at full saturation.

Phase 1 · Baseline

Idle latency profiling

Fires 10 rapid ICMP cycles to the 1.1.1.1 anycast DNS backbone to calculate your connection's true, unburdened base latency before any load is applied.

Phase 2 · Load

Link saturation sprint

Saturates your line in both directions against our own first-party test endpoints — a full download, then a full upload — while a high-frequency loop samples latency under load to see how hard your router's queue buckles each way.

Phase 3 · Verdict

Bufferbloat queue delay

Computes the queue delay Δ = loaded − idle for download and upload, then grades the worse of the two:

  • Green · < 12 ms — infrastructure stable; routing lines are highly optimal.
  • Orange · 12–35 ms — moderate congestion; real-time traffic degrades under parallel use.
  • Red · > 35 ms — critical bottleneck; the consumer chip is choking on data and an x86 gateway upgrade is warranted.

Before you click “buy” on a mesh kit

Why not just buy a $500 Eero or Orbi?

Because a premium mesh kit adds more Wi-Fi to paper over a problem that lives in the router. We replace the engine instead of stacking radios on top of it.

A $500 retail mesh kit

Masks the symptom
  • Adds more radios fighting for the same air — coverage “works,” but speed drops at every hop.
  • Routing still runs on a phone-class chip that saturates once the whole house is online.
  • Bufferbloat is left untouched, so the lag returns the moment the line fills up.
  • The genuinely useful features sit behind a monthly app subscription.
  • You unbox it, configure it, and troubleshoot it yourself.

An Apex Networks build

Fixes the cause
  • A real x86 routing engine with the CPU headroom to never choke under load.
  • Dedicated wired or coax backhaul — full coverage without flooding the air with more Wi-Fi.
  • Hand-tuned SQM kills bufferbloat at the source, so the lag stays gone for good.
  • Open-source OpenWrt: no subscriptions, no telemetry, no expiry date.
  • Professionally installed, measured, and tuned to your exact line.

Local & accountable

The person who quotes you does the install.

Apex Networks is Luke Graham, a Linux and open-source networking connoisseur based in Thousand Oaks who got tired of watching fast internet plans wasted by weak hardware. Every audit, install, and tune is done by me personally — not a rotating crew — so the person who measures your line is the same person who fixes it and stands behind it.

  • Flat, upfront pricing
  • Locally owned & operated
  • No subcontractors
  • 30-day latency guarantee

Pick your layout

One install. Priced by your floor plan.*

Flat pricing, hardware included, installed and tuned on-site. Not sure which fits? The free audit tells us — and you — exactly what your home needs.

Apex Networks is not a licensed contractor. We take on smaller installations only — larger projects will follow once we’re licensed.

Standard Kit

Apartments & single-story homes.

$ 549

One-time install · $0/mo

Best for one floor, one strong signal.

  • Intel N100 router appliance running OpenWrt
  • 1 central enterprise Wi-Fi 6 access point
  • Hand-tuned SQM (CAKE) for your exact line speed
  • Full on-site install & 30-day latency guarantee
Start with this kit
Most popular

Coax-Turbo Kit

Multi-story homes with cable jacks.

$ 699

One-time install · $0/mo

Most homes built after 1990 already have the wiring.

  • Everything in the Standard Kit
  • Pair of 2.5 Gbps MoCA adapters
  • Wire-equivalent backhaul over in-wall coax
  • Zero drywall cuts, zero new cable runs
Start with this kit

Smart-Mesh Kit

Large layouts with no spare wiring.

$ 749

One-time install · $0/mo

Best when there's no coax to ride on.

  • Everything in the Standard Kit
  • Second enterprise AP for the far end of the house
  • High-performance dedicated wireless backhaul
  • Roaming tuned so devices hand off without a hiccup
Start with this kit
Flagship · Elite tier
Elite Tier

Apex Estate Suite

Enterprise-grade backbone for multi-gigabit smart homes and sprawling estates.

$ 1,599

One-time install · $0 monthly fees

Luxury homes with 60+ devices, 4,000+ sq. ft., and 2 Gbps+ fiber loops.

  • Custom Intel N100 core engine — dedicated x86 routing architecture
  • 5-port 2.5 Gbps PoE+ distribution switch — high-speed hardware backbone
  • 3× ultra-performance enterprise APs — coordinated fast-roaming coverage
  • Containerized local shield via Docker — network-wide AdGuard Home blocking
  • Encrypted home-backlink — private WireGuard VPN for secure remote access
  • Pro-tier zero-lag SQM CAKE — parallel gaming, 4K streams, and work calls
Unavailable*
Elite Tier

Apex Commercial Suite

Zero-downtime, compliant network architecture for local businesses, retail, and modern offices.

$ 1,999

Upfront · + $49/mo optional remote management

SLA · 12-hr priority remote triage · next-business-day on-site hardware replacement.

  • Full Tier 4 hardware base — N100 core + 2.5G PoE switch + 3× APs
  • PCI-DSS compliance isolation — dedicated VLANs for POS and card registers
  • Custom branded guest captive portal — sleek splash page for customer Wi-Fi
  • Aggressive content filtering — network-wide block of malware, phishing & restricted domains
  • Automated self-healing scripts — Linux watchdogs that auto-recover dropped ISP links
Unavailable*

* Pending — licensing & insurance in progress.

Free, no obligation

Book your bufferbloat audit.

We test your line under real load, measure your actual latency and jitter, and show you exactly where it's leaking. You get the numbers either way — whether you hire us or not.

  • Same-week scheduling for local installs
  • A written before/after latency report
  • 30-day latency guarantee on every install

No spam, no telemetry — same policy as the routers we install.