Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
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.
really slashdot? Slow day?
Agreed. Aren't their better places to ask for the best gigabit 802.11n router supporting DD-WRT and OpenWRT? Not really "News for Nerds" or "Stuff that Matters". I'm sure any number of a hundred forums would be better, maybe the dd-wrt forum or openwrt forum would good places to start since you require a router that support both of those.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
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.
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.
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.
"Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet". What?
Obviously, to go higher, you need SpacePort.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
Having said that, really slashdot? Slow day?
Perhaps, but it is surprisingly difficult to find good info on this. I mostly blame this on hardware manufacturers releasing hundreds of models, instead of just a few that work. But what you will find in practice is that free operating systems haven't been tested on most of them, many don't achieve the rated speeds (many not even anywhere near), much of the software has reliability issues, and much of this hasn't been posted to the Internet yet. So, you ask around. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Also, as I am going to be in the market for a new router myself, I am very interested in this thread.
I currently have a TP-Link TP-WR1043ND, which I am happy with. It runs OpenWRT, supports Gigabit Ethernet, and has a USB port. Sadly, transferring files over SSH only achieves about 1 MB/s, due to the CPU getting saturated. It has no problems saturating my Internet connection, though. In short, it does what I want it to do, and it's cheap.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
There is some benchmarks at SmallNetBuilder you might be interested in, I've been eyeing on those for my next router.
I agree with this post.
I also have the 4th gen Airport Extreme Dual Band and it has been rock solid on my high speed internet connection with all manner of clients. I'm not using a separate 2.4GHz AP, the AE is providing both 2.4 and 5GHz without issue, as well as hardwired ethernet connections to one or two devices in the house.
I share a house with 4 other people and it's been smooth sailing without lock up or wireless issues except for one laptop (running Vista, pre patch) that just would not connect to either the 2.4 or 5 radios on a/b/g or n. Never did sort that out no matter how much fiddling or upgrading we did to the settings on the AE or upgrades and so on on the Vista laptop. Other Vista machines have used it with no issue, so I put it down to hardware conflict with the specific laptop.
As far as ipv6 goes, I have the option for host/tunnel/router/off in the current firmware, but at the moment I am not using it - it's set to link-local only.
We're also sharing a hard drive from the USB port which has also been flawless. Last year we were using a drive on it for an Time Machine backup for one of my housemate's MBP, but she took that drive with her when she moved to AZ, so since then it's just been a big drive with a ton of stuff on it for XBMC. Neither setup has been a problem (despite the Time Machine config being unsupported officially).
My only gripes about the whole setup are that I feel they were slightly stingy on the LAN ports - only three instead of the usual 4 or more you get on most home kit, and the need to use the specific Airport Config utility, which means I cannot modify the settings from a Linux machine - this personally doesn't really affect me since there are a ton of Mac and Windows machines in the house, but it strikes me as a bit of an oversight that could be an issue for someone else (like the article writer perhaps).
If you have a mixed network with at least one Windows or Mac machine for configuration, it is an excellent home router. My other choice was going to be to build something running pfsense, but since the box has to live in someone else's room due to the location of the cable modem, I decided to go with something small and silent that would cause minimal disruption, and the AE has certainly been that.
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.