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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?"
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.
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.
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!
Thanks for the advice! Too bad it's incorrect and you apparently just wrote something to see your name here. There's no reason for the brand-name ones or any one (they all buy and rebrand from the same Chinese OEM developers anyway) to maintain speeds faster than the fastest broadband connections on the market. This has been cheap and easy so far, since the market in this case suck at delivering fast speeds.
It's common knowledge among those of us that have 100/100 at home that those routers just can't keep up. They usually also lack RAM to track enough connections to saturate the bandwidth with torrent downloads or similar.
I'd set up openwrt or distro-of-your-choice (m0n0wall was nice last time I looked at these things) on a small and silent PC with two network cards, mini-itx or such. That would give you the prestanda and flexibility you want.
c++;
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++;
stoppit, you're making badAnalogyGuy excited and hungry at the same time
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.
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 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.
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.
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