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Home Router For High-Speed Connection?
soulprivate writes "My cable company has recently begun to offer Internet access plans with speeds over 30 Mbps (60, 80 and 100 Mbps). However my D-link router is unable to go beyond 30 Mbps if I use NAT; it reaches 60-70 Mbps only if NAT is disabled. Is there any recommendation for a brand/model of residential router that is able to get more than 70 Mbps with NAT enabled? I have been looking for benchmarks or comparisons, to no avail. Does anyone know one? What are your experiences at home?"
The reason I would expect most brand-name ones to is the public embarrassment if they were caught out like that.
Now everyone is going to check their routers and if the Belkins and Linksys-by-Cisco and others are all super-slow when NAT is on it's going to cause some major embarrassments for the industry.
I expect you either have an inferior manufacturing run, an inferior model, or an inferior brand.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Second of all, shouldn't a gigabit router give you what you need? Or am I completely off-base here and missing something...?
My ISP links to http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_chart/Itemid,189/ which has throughput numbers for common home routers.
The long and short of it is that a lot of these devices have pretty poor performance, and can get away with it because they're used on 1.5mbps lines. However, there are some out there that are decent.
Of course, there's the build-it-yourself approach with m0n0wall or pfSense or something else. With a spare PC laying around you'll likely get reasonable performance, although electricity usage is quite a bit higher than an appliance.
... and use pfsense. My Intel CPU mini-itx board, with processor and ram was $100 and it works better than any consumer grade, BestBuy special router.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I have a 100/10 mbit (fiber, no modems etc) line at home and use a Linksys WRT-160NL. When I do heavy file transfer (downloading, mainly from big FTPs like universities and such) the speed is around 90 mbits (~9.5 Mb/sec).
I highly recommend it. And if you're extra geeky, I know that there's a OpenWRT port being worked on, but it's not finished yet.
The replies you've got so far seem to think that just because a router has gigabit ports that it can do NAT at gigabit speeds, which of course you've already figured out is nonsense.
For a standalone firewall box you might need to look at something like a Cisco ASA. Not cheap but they will at least specify the actual NAT throughput for whatever model you pick.
The other way to go is to roll your own on a decent PC with Linux which will get you a few hundred Mbps easily. For example a Mac Mini or FitPC will be fast enough.
Like another user stated use pfsense. We had this problem at work. We are a library and just got 100/100 fiber service. Couldnt afford to buy some $10,000 router and our $1000 router couldnt handle the speeds. Downloaded pfsense and put it on an old server and get full 100/100 speed. Its open source , has snort and everything. ITs free to use and they have a pay for support option as well.
This is /.
There is no "why," we do things because we "can," "want to" or simply to see if it can be done.
Hmm, I have one of those, running HyperWRT... I can't manage to go over 2MB/s between the internal LAN and the WAN, though. On the same LAN, my hosts usually push 6-10MB/s between each other.
My ISP gives me a couple of static IPs, though... so I put my main box (and any other hosts I want good performance on) on a GigE switch connected directly to the 15Mbps uplink... the NAT router is just for all of the rest of the lazy wifi laptops and older wired boxes who just deal with the slower performance.
I thought everyone on Slashdot built their own firewalls using Linux and / or OpenBSD. WTF? I guess they'll give an account to just about anyone these days.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
You could do what I do: use a compact computer with two NICs (motherboard NIC plus a PCI 3Com NIC) as the firewall. Run Devil-Linux from a read-only device. Then, the inside of your firewall can be a gigabit switch. Devil-Linux is pretty easy to configure, although perhaps not quite as easy as a consumer firewall/router with a good web-based GUI. You can boot Devil-Linux from a CD drive, with a write-protected floppy holding your settings; you can roll a custom CD with the settings burned onto it; or you can use a write-protected USB flash drive for everything. No hard drive is needed.
Pro: Fastest possible throughput and lowest latency; excellent security.
Con: Will consume more electricity at idle than a consumer firewall/router box.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Anything should do. I guess your d-link is a few years years old? I worked for D-link support (yes, yuck) around 5 years ago when people started getting 100/100 at home, and we got plenty of complaints about specifications vs reality. But that wasn't a problem with the "new" models back then, and I can't imagine any home router for sale now that can't handle 100Mb with NATing and Firewalling etc.
Don't worry about speed, look at the price, support (do you have to a broken unit to china or can you get it replaced in the store?) and features instead.
Or even better: bring up an old computer with two NICs from the basement, install Linux or FreeBSD and add a cheap switch. That beats any home router in price and features!
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_chart/Itemid,189/
I found this a few months ago... seems what you are asking for.
Eh, in most european countries its fairly common to see 100 Mbps at home. And NAT and such isn't exactly CPU hungry, at least not in the 30-100 Mbps range.
What comes to the submitters question, you probably have old router (and it's D-Link too..)
For the most delicious router, choose Buffalo or Linksys. They are like the bacon, steak, onion, american cheese and pineapple pan pizza on a BBQ sauce - you just gotta love it.
Going to the internet without a good router is like taking a flight to Somalia and except you get a good service in their Pizza Hut. It might be good, it might even be delicious, but you aren't going to get ice cream as a dessert.
Dude, you skipped lunch again.
Mikrotik Routers, despite some bad press, are good. They are inexpensive, can be build with commodity hardware, and easily handle that level of traffic.
hardware specs on mine: 2.4Ghz P-IV, 512MB Rambus RAM, 1 * T100 Ethernet port (motherboard)connected to modem, 5 * 10/100/1000 ports (NICs) connected to home network and one 802.11g wifi NIC (operating as a hotspot), 1 256MB flash card in IDE adapter.
FIOS connection gives me 60*5 with one IP, and regularly sustains that with as many as four separate machines running BT at any given time, 2 public game servers, as well as various other uses. 60+ firewall rules, full NAT with 20+ port forwarding rules, it runs like a champ.
http://www.mikrotik.com/
If you already have the hardware laying around doing nothing, go ahead and give them a look.
A PIX or an ASA would really be more appropriate. I picked up a 50-user ASA 5505 a while back, but it cost me $300.00
Pretty much any home router in a box that you can buy is going to be rubbish. To be fair, it is pretty impressive what you can get for $30-$50; but intense price sensitivity and competition have pretty much leveled the home router field. You can either get the (impressive for the money; but not good enough) basic model, or you can go cry.
The Ciscos and Junipers of the world will probably cut it(with the distinctly possible exception of older used ones. If you get something from the era where routing a 10Mb lan into a T1 line was Real Serious Stuff, bittorrent over a 30Mb line is going to make it cry expensive enterprise tears); but they are expensive, even used, and many of their features are probably overkill for home applications.
Your best bet might be to run m0n0wall or pfsense. Depending on your tolerance for fan noise, you can either get a basic intel atom board for ~$80 or an embedded x86 board from soekris or pcengines or similar.
That combination will be pretty featureful, quite a bit more powerful than your basic home box, and cheaper than any business box that isn't seriously antiquated.
I'm on an unmetered 100 Mbps line, bursting up to 300 Mbps from time to time. Just like you, I had a tough time finding consumer-grade hardware able to keep up with speeds > 30-50 Mbps. After going through most of what's on offer here in the EU, short of DIY routers, I ended up with D-Link's "Wireless N Gigabit router DIR-655". Believe it or not, but I have actually seen throughput close to 150 Mbps (using NAT) on the WAN while on this network.
Of course, YMMW, but my search ended with this piece of hardware.Of course, it's priced slightly higher than the average router, but IMHO it's worth it.
On a side note: I personally, had no luck what so ever using Linksys offerings, including the WRT54*. Most "premium" hardware platforms in the consumer sphere only offer throughput close to 30-40 or even 50 Mbps while on NAT.
Good luck. And enjoy the speeds you have been blessed with, son.
Like most technology, they assume it's never going to be used to its potential. Take my laptop -- only when I actively cool it or balance it precariously several inches off the desk can I max out both cores. Try that with it sitting on its little rubber feet, and it overheats and throttles itself to 800 mhz. Try that when using the video card for anything stressful at all, and it shuts off.
Anyway, more on-topic, I've had a Linksys router (WRT54G) crash repeatedly when I attempt to run BitTorrent through it to a 100 mbit fiber connection. The solution was to replace it with a Linux box, and let the Linksys router only handle the wireless.
It's the same mentality that they've used to sell you 100 mbits -- works great if you just want to browse faster, maybe watch the occasional YouTube video. Sucks if you want to actually use it -- BitTorrent, maybe a Freenet node, or just transferring files between two machines connected to 100 mbit Internet -- before you know it, they're throttling it and bitching that you're a "bandwidth hog". In other words, they wanted to sell you 100 mbits because it sounds faster than 30 mbits, not because they expect people to actually need it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Well, the Cisco ASA 5505 is not that expensive anymore. Does 150Mbps according to Cisco.
Even alcohol can bend the room...
Try thinking outside the box. Maybe he wish to run his own web server. Maybe he wants to use VNC or similar to his office. Maybe he wants to link his friends computers together so they can all access eachother's file storage. There are millions of uses for a fast network connection, unless you subscribe to the cable-tv-internet that the media companies would like you to have. That is, passive receiver of pre-filtered information.
c++;
We have a SMC2804WBRP-G router for our home net, with a 100/10 WAN connection through a fiber switch. It handles our traffic smoothly using NAT and firewall with both wired and 11g wireless LAN connections. We've had it for almost 6 years now, and upgraded our WAN connection during that time. The SMC2804 was not particularly expensive, but cost about 50% more than the Netgear and Buffalo trash of the time. Typically, there are 3-4 PCs, a multifunction printer, and a headless server on our wired LAN, and there may be another PC or two on wireless from time to time. The firewall rules prevent the headless server and printer from calling home, among other things.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
look here: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_wireless/Itemid,200
stoppit, you're making badAnalogyGuy excited and hungry at the same time
I can't believe that no one has yet mentioned Untangle - www.untangle.com or Endian www.endian.com
Actually considering there are content distribution networks like Akamai and of course Google that have servers within one hop of most metropolitan ISP's edge routers, it's pretty likely you'll be able to achieve those speeds for a lot of your content.
I recommend they take a look at some of the small business products from Cisco and Sonicwall. They are a step above the home stuff in features and price. Most of them will list their firewall throughput, how much they can NAT is a function of the processor and more importantly the software.. Beware that there is some Cisco branded stuff that is actually Linksys in disguise (with minor software changes), however Cisco won't put it's name on total crap (yet) so they are pretty good.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
a Cisco ASA 5505 would certainly do the job. I upgraded to a 5505 / 10 user unit at home after having a PIX 501 for years and it rocks. You're looking at just under 400.00 new for a 10 user unit and used is all over the place. Throw on 100.00 for SmartNet if you've never used Cisco's IOS before....
What website do you expect to give you more than a 30Mbps connection?!
Website(s) plural. The neat thing about the net is you can have mulitple connections going, which is extra neat if you have more than one computer. Me personally, I'd use that to sync with the server at work so I have a bunch of stuff at home to access. Fun stuff.
Frankly, though, I'm not sure why you're asking. "You're paying for a really fast connection, but couldn't you just settle for half of it?" How would you respond to somebody suggesting you disable one of your cores?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Or you could be in a bad part of the 'net as far as Akamai or whatever distribution network you're using. When I download an ISO from MSDN, they're able to max out my connection, and I'm not on one of the "lite" connections.
Downloading from Windows Update, on the other hand, tends to run a lot slower. But that's because it's using BITS to transfer, even when it's in the foreground. Downloads from the developper's network, or direct download of manual patch files is unthrottled.
I installed DDWrt on my Linksys and noticed a speed decrease, although it's completely worth it as I no longer have to reboot it daily...
Maybe they're secretly the same person, but with different accounts. Kind of like when Bruce Banner takes of his glasses, no one can tell he's Zorro.
Because there is more then one person suing the system?
Because there are places to get a greater then 30Mbps download.
Because he is moving 1080P images in real time?
When someone asks a question like this, why is there always someone without imagination implying there is no use for it?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't have an answer to your problem (other than "get a computer"), but you have my deepest sympathies. It is so hard to hear of my fellow human being having such horrific adversities inflicted upon them, and I cannot help but wonder: could this misfortune fall upon me some day?
I can only hope that you overcome the terrible burden of a 100 Mpbs internet connection thrust upon you and your residence, and somehow, god-willing, find a reason to keep on living, in order to set an example for others who may some day suffer the same fate. No matter how dark and hopeless things look right now, don't give up! If you can survive this calamity, maybe I can overcome my own problems as well.
Bless you, my friend, and good luck!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I've given up hope on those cheap routers. Sure, DD-WRT and Tomato are decent products, but they don't come close to a box with pfSense. Just pick up the smallest, cheapest and least power consuming ITX box you can find and install pfSense on it. You can control it all from the web browser. Best of all, it's based on FreeBSD.
I have a WRT54GL and a 100/10 conection as well, and I can also confirm that getting above 30-40 Mbps is difficult. With some tweaking seems to be possible to reach 50 perhaps, but then the CPU simply won't handle more traffic. Enabling QoS or other features will obviously decrease this value even more. At first I thought I might have misconfigured something, but after a lot of googling this really seems to be the capacity limit of these routers.
Looking for an alternative that's quiet, low power and linux friendly I came across the Routerstation Pro http://www.ubnt.com/products/rspro.php. It runs the same linux-based firmwares as the WRT line of routers, but with a CPU clocked more than 3 times as high, more RAM and expansion possibilities etc. I have not tested it yet though, but reviews seems promising, routing 100 Mpbs should not be a problem.
Also, as far as low end professional stuff, the ASA 5505 is pretty good (overkill for home use probably). It'll do 150Mbps NAT and it does that with hardware VPN also. The lowest version (10 user license) is around $350. It has a built in layer 3 switch also.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
doesn't make sense anymore - those projects all took advantage of spare clockcycles which were being provided anyway, and not being used. Modern CPUs throttle themselves right down if they're not loaded, and running a project like that just makes them run at full power when they don't need to. I was running rosetta@home 24/7 on my Q6600, until I realised that it was thrashing my system's cooling so hard that it was making ~ 3x more noise than it needed to be. Luckily I shut it off before I did any mechanical damage to the fans and my system is whisper-quiet again.
Anyway, to bring this back on topic. OP could try rolling his own. (Note: I haven't done this, I don't know whether it would work, and those look frightfully expensive. It just looks like it would be a neat toy, and a geeky talking point)
FGD 135
I have 25/25 FiOS with the actiontec router. The Actiontec would often lock up after heavy BitTorrent sessions. (something about memory leaks in the routing tables i heard) Anyway I had the internet connetion switched from Moca (cable output) to ethernet and I run it through an old pentium 200 with 3 nics running ipcop 1.4.21 a 24 port switch and hung the router on after for wireless and Moca for the stbs. It has yet to crash, been up for over 2 years and I get full bandwith on nat on the clients . and over 10/10 on the wireless.
wanted: one clever sig,apply within
This is bad advice. The WRT54GL is *not* capable of routing at much faster than 30Mbps, because the LAN and WAN ports are on the same switch, connected to one physical Ethernet interface.
You at least need a device with 2 physical Ethernet interfaces, like the ar71xx platform.
Can you explain that in car analogy?
Preferably in non pizza delivery vehicles.
I use a dedicated PC for my 100Mbps connection. An old PIII 800 computer with Gentoo. Works like a charm.
Onda Technology Institute
Except the WRT54GL can't handle torrents
Mine handles a HTTP/IRC/SMTP/IMAP/DNS server with medium use AND heavy torrenting. I have gotten over 30mbps with it, bottlenecked only by 802.11g and by my cable line. If you are getting bad torrenting throughput, dropped connections, reduce the connection limit in your torrent client so it will use less connections to transfer the same amount of data. Your router is likely trying to manage a huge NAT table for no good reason.
In my experience, I've had great success with the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 with Tomato in my house, and I've personally setup an OpenBSD box with pf for a coffee shop. I don't have the connection at home to really saturate much of anything at the moment (I have a Comcast 22 Mbps connection myself), so I can't really comment on how well the router would scale up with a faster connection + NAT. But OpenBSD + pf works extremely well with 20-30+ users all hitting up YouTube; before that, the coffee shop had a D-Link router which faltered within two hours of it being reset (by this time, it has to be power cycled again, ad nauseum.)
As other posters have said, be sure to get at least one 1 Gbps NIC card from Intel or 3Com. I'd personally get two of them and leave the motherboard NIC untouched; I've found that a lot of the lower cost motherboards with low power CPU's usually only have a 10/100 Mbps port, which should be more than enough for most internet connections, but could possibly peter out in real world scenarios.
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
Hardware costs are pretty much free for a PC that can serve as a router. Just yesterday I pulled a Compaq Presario with an Athlon XP 1900+ and 1GB of ram out of the trash. Works fine, minus no harddisk, but draws over 100W at idle so probably not a good router candidate.
I have an old P3-600E running as a router. I picked this particular one out of the scrap pile because the 2nd generation slotted P3's are pretty low power processors (all under 20W). I have it turn off the HDD when not needed, which is most of the time. It draws about 30W with the 2 dual NIC Intel ethernet cards I put in it. which is not bad. I figure it's costing me about $20 a year to run in electricity, well worth it for the flexibility it gives me.
These little WRT's and such have the equivalent of 8-bit 200 Mhz CPU's.
They have what is a 32-bit 200 MHz processor. Specifically this one in the referenced Linksys model.
Get an access point, yes it's another piece of kit to worry about, but then you can get a good router, AND a good wireless AP, and not have to worry about getting one device that is BOTH at the same time.
And most wireless routers can be used as an AP.
It's been more than 4 years since 100Mbps connections became popular in Korea. Nowadays, almost all routers sold in Korea are 100Mbps ready. Best selling local brands like Iptime or Anygate and impoted models like Netgear WGR614SS are all advertised to support a 100Mbps connection. It's been discontinued, but even a new version (can't remember the version number) of Linksys WRT54G with 100Mbps support was introduced in Korea couple of years ago.
In some countries, like here in Sweden, this was a problem 8-9 years or so ago (when we started getting 100/100mbit at home) and was under much discussion then, but I fail to see how it is a problem now. There are plenty of consumer home routers now that can handle this. I can highly recommend the more expensive DLINK routers, yes I know, the cheaper ones are ... not very good. Have a look at the DIR-655 or all of the DIR8xx series, excellent in my and many others experience. Stable, fast, never needed a reboot and has no performance problems for high-speed downloads, be it direct downloads from a single source or hundreds/thousands of connections in torrents. Have no problems maxing out my 100/100 connection. Even has traffic shaping so your downloads or uploads don't interfere (noticeably) with your gaming or browsing etc.
Pfsenese or m0n0wall might be more fun though, but if you don't run it on some small embedded device (but still have to find one powerful enough) it will draw more power than a small modern above average home router.
See this chart of actual WAN-LAN throughput for home routers: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_chart/Itemid,189/
Mind you you will have to use wired not wifi for those speeds.