Routers for 1Gbps internet?

[wayner]

Soon I should have the option to get 1Gbps/50Mbps internet service from my cable company - Rogers Cable. My phone company, Bell Canada, will also be offering Gbps service - but I will likely stick with cable.

The cable company gives out a Hitron gateway which acts as a cable modem and router, but the router capability sucks for many reasons. So I always put these devices in Bridge mode (which causes the gateway to act only as a modem) and use my own router.

The problem is getting a router fast enough to support a download speed of 1Gbps. My current router is an Asus RT-N66u with Merlin firmware and it maxes out at 250 Mbps down without HW acceleration and for some reason HW acceleration won't work for me (which is a long story but isn't unique to me).

So then what is the best router to get for Gbps internet service. Should I build my own using pfSense or should I get one of the best home routers on the market. Even then, none of the routers listed list on the Small Net Builders forum LAN-WAN throughput page can handle 1Gbps, although some get close.

Anyone have any experience with this?

[Skirge01]

Very timely Ars article for you. In a nutshell... build your own. I run pfSense in a VM and love it, primarily for the flexibility (there's no fiber in our area). I wish my wireless AP was as reliable as my router.

[Fuzzy]

I have a 7 year old Atom330 micro-ITX motherboard with an SSD, dual NIC, and a power supply in a cut up newegg cardboard box (yeah, I'm crafty) running pfsense. Has never had a hiccup.

[wayner]

Thanks guys.

One thing suspicious about that article is that he doesn't seem to care about the NICs used or the CPU speed. From what I have read about pfSense if you want the best performance you should try to use Intel NICs.

And on the pfSense hardware page it says the following under 501Mbps+ "Multiple cores at > 2.0GHz are required. Server class hardware with PCI-e network adapters.".

So I was thinking that I need something pretty fast to handle the WAN speed. I have an older PC with an E8400 CPU that I could repurpose for this - the only issue is that it may be a bit high on the power consumption side - not to mention that it is a full size PC mobo and case.

[bcjenkins]

Make sure to check out OpnSense too. Also both pfSemse and OpnSense sell devices.

[wayner]

I haven't seen the OpnSense hardware but the pfSense hardware isn't that cheap. They have a SG-2220 that is $300 but it is not clear that this will support the speeds that I want. The SG-2440 is listed as Gigabit throughput but it is $500.

I have all of the hardware to build my own on an old PC that has a much more powerful CPU although one of the NICs is not Intel so it is possible that I will have to buy a second NIC. But that is a lot less than $500.

But the homebrew solution will be much bigger and less power efficient.

[bcjenkins]

The Ubiquiti ERL is reported to work at line speeds:

https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMA...ne/td-p/510215

They Run ~$100 http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-EdgeM.../dp/B00CPRVF5K

[wayner]

Thanks - I will look into that. I have Ubiquiti WAPs through my house and I like them - which also means that I have no need for Wifi on my firewall/router.

The only advanced feature that I really use is to run OpenVPN server on the router, and port forwarding, of course, for stuff like Placeshifter, Plex, IPcams, etc. when you can't be running VPN.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Make sure to check out OpnSense too. Also both pfSemse and OpnSense sell devices.

Any reason to prefer OpnSense? I see that it is a fork of pfSense. It looks like there is more info on the web regarding pfSense and I hadn't even heard of OpnSense before your post so I am wondering if it makes more sense to stay with pfSense.

[bcjenkins]

I have used both. I find the community much friendlier and they are using a rapid update cycle. Also, there are some differences in overall philosophy and direction. When Free BSD 11 goes stable, they will be moving to the Hardened BSD version.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by wayner

The problem is getting a router fast enough to support a download speed of 1Gbps. My current router is an Asus RT-N66u with Merlin firmware and it maxes out at 250 Mbps down without HW acceleration and for some reason HW acceleration won't work for me (which is a long story but isn't unique to me).

SmallNetBuilder benchmarked the AC66U and got much higher routing throughput. Maybe consider going back to the stock firmware?

I know the Merlin firmware includes some features that won't work with hardware acceleration. Presumably you already saw this, but this thread goes into more details.

I doubt the Ubiquiti ERL does particularly better than the other routers (running stock firmware). Based on the SmallNetBuilder benchmarks, it looks like it would perform similarly to the AC66U. The ArsTechnica test was pretty brutal- probably more brutal than the SmallNetBuilder tests.

Originally Posted by wayner

So then what is the best router to get for Gbps internet service. Should I build my own using pfSense or should I get one of the best home routers on the market. Even then, none of the routers listed list on the Small Net Builders forum LAN-WAN throughput page can handle 1Gbps, although some get close.

I put together a pfSense box just using a Celeron-powered Shuttle DS57. I picked it because it was small, efficient, relatively cheap, and had NICs that seemed to work. It works fine for me, but I only need 75mbps. The box performs better than I expected. Even running Snort on both the WAN and LAN interfaces (different rules) doesn't seem to max it out.

In hindsight, it really would have been nice to have more than 2 NICs (I have a separate VLAN for my guest wifi network). The SG-2440 would have looked tempting, if it existed at the time. But, once you get to the $500 price, I could have put together something better. It's too bad there aren't cheaper Rangeley-powered motherboards available. The only Rangeley board I can find has the 8-core C2758, massively overpowered for most use cases.

But, if you wanted to go big, you could certainly build something roughly equivalent to one of the higher-end pfSense boxes for much, much less than its $1400 USD cost.

[wayner]

You are right about SNB getting faster throughput but that is with HW acceleration active. Without HW acceleration the best that you get is around 240. And for some reason HW acceleration is not engaging. See this thread on SNB for a bit more info and links that I provide to several other people who have the same issue: http://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-...1/#post-216396

One of the issues in troubleshooting this is that not many people have internet speeds above 250 Mbps so they wouldn't notice this. Definitely a "first world problem"

I personally don't know that I need more than 2 NICs since I have a 24 port switch. I don't care about wifi since I have the Ubiquiti WAPs which I really like, except that they only run at N speed.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by wayner

You are right about SNB getting faster throughput but that is with HW acceleration active. Without HW acceleration the best that you get is around 240. And for some reason HW acceleration is not engaging. See this thread on SNB for a bit more info and links that I provide to several other people who have the same issue: http://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-...1/#post-216396

Interesting. I didn't see that thread there. I'm running the Merlin firmware (for no particular reason) on my AC66Us, but I'm just using them as glorified APs and wifi bridges.

Originally Posted by wayner

I personally don't know that I need more than 2 NICs since I have a 24 port switch. I don't care about wifi since I have the Ubiquiti WAPs which I really like, except that they only run at N speed.

To clarify, I wanted more NICs to make it easier to separate my main network at home from my guest Wifi network. The guest network also includes my wife's computer, which I don't want on my main network (she sometimes makes poor choices on her computer).

As a workaround, I have a smart switch behind my pfsense box, set up two tagged VLANs, and configured virtual interfaces on the pfsense box. One VLAN is the guest wifi network, the other is the main network. It works fine, but it would have been easier just to have two ports available on the pfsense box itself.

[farscapesg1]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

The Ubiquiti ERL is reported to work at line speeds:

https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMA...ne/td-p/510215

They Run ~$100 http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-EdgeM.../dp/B00CPRVF5K

+1 for the ERL. Their GUI setup has actually come a decent way and most things can be configured without having to drop to the command line. I've been happy with mine after coming from an Untangle VM. The one thing I miss is the web filtering on Untangle and the built in OpenVPN. There is supposed to be a way to set up the ERL as an OpenVPN server, but after stumbling through it a couple times I gave up and just set it up on my HP microserver and forwarded the ports. 5 months of uptime so far.

Microtik make some Routerboard products that should handle gig, and there is the Witi board also from mqmaker.com

I'm "stuck" with Comcast and have their 60/6 package, so I'm not stressing the ERL out at all. With that said, I've been getting the itch to throw Sophos/PFSense/Untangle/whaterver on an old laptop, toss in a PCMCIA NIC for WAN, and use the onboard Intel NIC for the LAN. Built in battery backup, keyboard and screen and I would get my web filtering options back. The main reason I moved away from the VM setup was for power outages. It is a lot easier to power a small router, 8 port switch, and a wireless AP during a power outage for a couple hours than it is to keep a Dell R710 and Cisco 3750g running that long Then the kids still have Internet/Netflix/Prime access on their tablets.

[JustFred]

I've got a spare Ubiquiti ERLite-3 that I'm about to put up on eBay. New, open box. PM me if you're interested.

[pukka]

go have a look at mikrotik and the hardware devices routerboard

they are very nice bits of kit. used to run m0n0wall then pfsense and now a mikrotik device for the router and unifi for the wireless.

[valnar]

wayner, what did you decide?

I'd also recommend pfSense, with whatever hardware platform that can handle 1GB speeds + Intel NIC's. The SG-2440 box would get my vote, although you have to be prepared to have a separate switch and WAP too.

[panteragstk]

Funny that this would come up. My aging Asus router RT-66U has Tomato on it and it can't even get me my 300mbps.

I've looked at pfsense and untangle among others.

I just want a good UMT device that can do what I want. Pfsense seems to be the top dog of them all though.

I'm building a house and plan to use Ubiquiti AP on both floors. Not too bad of a price and I shouldn't have any coverage issues again.

[TechBill]

What about this RouterBoard? They been around for a long time

http://routerboard.com/


Bill

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by pukka

go have a look at mikrotik and the hardware devices routerboard

they are very nice bits of kit. used to run m0n0wall then pfsense and now a mikrotik device for the router and unifi for the wireless.

Opps I didn't see this post before posting my post .. Sorry

I second on this one!


Bill