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Ask Slashdot: Good Gigabit 802.11N Home Router?
nukem996 writes "This week I will be moving into a new apartment with a very fast Internet connection (100M with the possibility of 200M in the future). I'm used to running OpenWRT on my Linksys WRT54G router and would like a well supported router to replace it. While researching routers I found most reviewers were using the default firmware and since I'll be putting on OpenWRT I'd like to know how well it works when using that. My requirements are gigabit LAN and WAN, 802.11N at 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, well supported by OpenWRT and/or DD-WRT, and USB support would be nice. I was thinking of going with BUFFALO WZR-HP-AG300H but some reviewers say there are range and dropping issues. My ISP suggests the Apple Airport Extreme which isn't supported by OpenWRT or the D-Link 825 which has connection problems as well and a few friends told me to stay away form D-Link. What does slashdot think?"
Ive got an ASUS RT-N16 running DD-WRT and found it to be a solid workhorse. Supports all the functionality you require as well.
It supports 802.11N at 2.4GHz and 5GHz, has a USB port, and supports gigabit LAN. The default firmware is a modified version of OpenWRT, and it is supported by both OpenWRT and DDWRT. It performs quite well.
I use the Netgear WNDR3700 which works quite well with OpenWRT. Having said that, really slashdot? Slow day?
Prepare for lots of it! First, a question. You're dropping a lot of money on a fat pipe, why are you considering consumer grade hardware? (Unless you're talking about 100Mbps divided by the entire apartment complex, which means you could be fighting that kid down the hall with a Usenet account for a shred of 1Mbps.)
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
The best 802.11n home routers right now are the Apple Airport Extreme and the Cisco E4200. The key feature to look for is dual-band: you want to keep 802.11a/b traffic on 2.4Ghz and 802.11n on 5.0Ghz. That will allow you to achieve 802.11n's upper bound of 450 Mbps without baggage from 802.11a/b. If you want the most effortless setup, get the Airport Extreme; the accessory Airport Express devices will also allow you to extend the wireless range of your network.
Slashdot thinks you should build your own router using pizza boxes, empty cans of mountain dew, arduinos, and duct tape. Your use of OpenWRT is satisfactory, although coding your own router in Assembly is best.
Me, I'd just pick up whatever's in stock at the department store. I had to return one once, but otherwise they've all worked fine.
Get a cheap intel atom with dual intel nics and install pfsense 2.0 and away you go. Most Atoms are under 18 or so watts.
Are you running BitTorrent? I tried out two separate D-Link routers about a year ago, when I was looking to replace a dying wrt-54G. Both of the D-Link routers would crash in a big way within minutes of firing up BitTorrent. I ended up buying another wrt-54G from Newegg, which still works perfectly, and vowed never to buy another D-Link product again.
To answer the original poster's comments - I actually ended up buying a refurb Linksys E2000 on sale for cheap (less than $30). I continue to run my 54g, with my E2000 running alongside it in 5ghz mode. I would recommend this approach of running two separate routers for 2.4ghz and 5ghz access, as It's a lot cheaper to buy 2 selective dual-band routers than a single simultaneous dual band router. Also, if one of the routers should die on you, you'll have a backup.
Seconded. I tried this and the WNDR3700 and Linksys (now Cisco) was much more stable.
I'm very happy with the Airport Extreme in terms of stability. I think mine has locked up maybe once in a year, which is much better going than any other consumer wifi/router device I've ever owned. I run it as the main router for my house, and PPPoE endpoint (with an ADSL modem/router in bridge mode), with 5 GHz 802.11n. A separate ultra-cheap AP runs on 2.4 GHz for iPhones and guests without 5 GHz support.
However, like many Apple products, the firmware isn't particularly user-configurable and I've not been able to get any Linux-based configuration utilities working on Ubuntu. If you don't have a Mac or Windows machine handy, changing settings and upgrading firmware would be a pain. It's also lacking PPPv6 support, at least in the version I have, so I can't join my ISP's IPv6 network without tunneling.
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
you don't actually say what your current router is...
blog.sam.liddicott.com
This is an issue which is more likely to effect Slashdotters than the average daily user. Many ISPs are offering 100MBps+ (in civilized countries) knowing there are factors involved such as the fact that the consumers will either never use the allocated bandwidth and there will be even less who can find suitable hardware to handle the connection.
I have personally considered in the past using KickStarter to design a SOHO Layer-3 switch with IPv6 and NAT. Wireless routers will be an issue in high bandwidth environments for a time to come since wireless routers typically use low end ARM processors and perform software based routing. Even using modern high end ARM CPUs, performing routing within software at bitrates over 60MBps is a challenge. Just the memory moves are insane.
An alternative is to use a DSP for software based routing which generally can improve performance substantially in these cases as they tend to contain a separate "Device" which they call an enhanced DMA controller, but instead is simply a device which is programmable to move memory using DMA. More advanced ones even include some scatter/gather functionality which can be useful for restamping network packets for NATing.
I can go into extensive details about how software based routers will always suffer for one reason or another and present dozens of alternative methods of implementing a SOHO (sub $300) solution to this problem, but the point is simply this. It is in fact a problem.
I can't be 100% sure whether the guys at Linksys/Cisco, Netgear, DLink etc... read Slashdot, but raising awareness to the issue may increase the awareness among these vendors to a need we "high end users" are coming across. The aging platforms from these vendors need an overhaul to support higher bandwidth and time has come which network routing is no longer really an option for strictly software based solutions. It is time we start getting consumer priced layer-3 switches with NAT, IPv6 and 6-over-4 solutions as well. The designs should include the features we expect from SOHO routers but should function as switches. This is entirely possible using low end FPGAs and using for example either an Intel Stellerton platform or possibly a Xilinx with embedded ARM would be ideal for these cases.
So, I am pretty pleased this topic has come up here. I am hoping that by the time my ISP upgrades me to 100 MBps (I'm a cheapskate... I only pay for 50up/50down, but can get 400up/400down for twice the price) I'll be able to handle the performance. At the moment, I'm using a Cisco 1900 series router which is soon to max out.
Apple AirPort Extreme Technical Specs: "Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet". What?
Dual band, well supported OpenWRT. Decent DD-WRT support. USB. Great performance, gigabit, meets all your specs.
CPU, RAM, and Storage are listed right on the box.
There is no fancy reflashing to other OS proceedure. Pick any image of any OS you want and flash. No protection at all.
Hell the OS it ships with is (I believe) an OpenWRT derivative!
It is this generations WRT54G(GL in later years).
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
I recently bought this and can say it is the best router I have ever owned. Besides running both 2.4 and 5 GHz networks, the router is fast and stable. The two USB ports are handy as I use them to run a shared disk between all of my home machines. The only downside to the that is the USB ports are 2.0 instead of 3.0 so it is not the fastest external disk access.
There is some benchmarks at SmallNetBuilder you might be interested in, I've been eyeing on those for my next router.
I completely agree: I've got an old PC running pfSense as our main firewall/NAT box for our public wi-fi network at our motel, and it runs rock-solid. They also give some guidelines at:
http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=49
Combine that with a good dual-band N card or AP, and your requirements are met.
One last thing, keep in mind we're talking routing, not switching: I don't see *ANY* cheapo ARM, MiPS, ATOM, etc box ever keeping up, even with just simple NATing. You can do switching in hardware, but routing--by definition--must be done in software, and at those speeds you're starting to talk serious horsepower, even more if you start running Snort, ntop, etc.
FWIW, I really do wonder if whatever your CPE is (the device from the ISP you plug in to) can actually handle all that data itself--I wouldn't be surprised if it starts choking, too.
If you _must_ have OpenWRT, you can stop reading.
If not, consider Mikrotik. I used OpenWRT, DD-WRT and the rest, but none of them was as good as Mikrotik. It's simply an incredible list of features the box and OS gives you, and you can easily configure it via WinBox (Wine or Windows) or simply via SSH. They have a range of products from 10/100 routers to a 9-port 10/100/1000 router/switch (see link below), where you can attached up to three wireless-cards.
See http://www.mikrotik.com/ and http://www.roc-noc.com/mikrotik/routerboard/rb493g-complete.html
(I do not live in the US, so I do not know the prices, but it's defiantly a big bang for the buck :-))
Coming from the perspective of a Sr. Network Engineer, who deals in the world of high-end routing on Cisco gear (Cat 6500/7600s), I typically recommend the Airport Extreme for the home environment. It's a solid workhorse and doesn't change models every two months so there's little confusion. I have three of these units (two back at my mother's house and another at my apartment). Have had mine for 3yrs now and they are built solid -- You won't be buying a new one every year like the average Linksys/Netgear/Dlink user does. The only drawback is that the initial setup/management is done through a fat client (Windows/Mac application) -- no web interface. The client app is capable of crossing IP subnets though, so if you're network is complex, it still wouldn't be an issue. Btw -- I'm not an Apple Fan-boy by any means to clear any potential bias. David.
I have been using a D-Link DIR-615, wireless N single channel router for a few years now, and have never experiences any problems with it. That includes torrenting while up to three others are browsing/gaming and another is playing on XBOX Live. Granted I'm not running on a 100 Mbps line, but it works just fine.
I second the E2000.
People love to hate Linksys, but I had great luck with my WRT54G for years and now I'm having the same luck with my E2000.
Try installing Tomato or DDWRT and tweak the maximum number of simultaneous connections value. Raising that will dramatically improve your performance with BT. This will use up significantly more RAM on the router, though, so try to use a model that has beefy hardware (for a consumer-grade home router). I highly recommend the WRT54-GL, which has double the RAM of the standard WRT54G models. The "L" means it supports Linux. =)
Doesn't help the OP any, though.