Router Suggestions - Upgrade

Current Setup:
Internet: FiOS 50/15
Router: Asus RT-AC66
Firmware: Asuswrt-Merlin 378.55

Problems:

• Netflix / Youtube - Buffering Issues, quality degradation, sometimes stream freezing.
  • On Chromecast & Other devices in house, especially mobile devices.
• Have to Reset Router to gain performance back (Usually less than 1 week timeframe or less)
• Every once in awhile it doesn't work at all

Location Details:
Size: 910 sq. feet
Type: 2-Story Town Home Apartment
Physical Location: Upstairs, Inside Wall of Bedroom #1 ( Setup: Bedroom #1 - Bathroom/Stairs - Bedroom #2 )


New Router:

• Google Fiber Potential in near future or FiOS Speed Upgrade near Google Fiber Speeds
• Gaming Performance LAN & WiFi
• Gigabit WAN/LAN
• WiFi - AC
• Security
• Optional Feature -- 3rd Party Firmware
  • Easy Auto Restart per Config if possible

I was thinking about factory resetting the current router, and reflashing the current Merlin build and starting over again and setting it up as an AP at the opposite side of the house. We get no signal out on the patio to stream music to our devices so I was thinking even with the instability we could at least extend the range a little bit to work out there.

After getting out of the IT Industry over 7 years ago, I feel like all those people who looked at me back then like they were looking up in Time Square at all the flashing lights and didn't know a darn thing about what you were saying.

With that said, I am still tech savvy enough to get things up and running and working the way it should be, but when it comes to actual solutions I'm drawing a blank.

Devices on Network:

• Primary Network
  • Wireless Devices: 16+ (Mixed AC/N Devices - 2.4ghz n/ac - 5ghz ac only)
    • Gaming Console: 5
    • Chromecast: 2
    • Phone: 2
    • Laptop: 2
    • Tablets: 2
    • DVD/TV Streaming Devices: 2
    • Printer: 1
  • Wired Devices:
    • Desktop: 1
• Guest Network (One 2.4ghz channel open - password protected, Isolated Mode)
  • 0-10+ devices at any given time.

Current Equipment Available:

• Asus RT-AC66U - Current Merlin Firmware 378.55
• FiOS Router (Used for Tech Support when things go down)
• In Storage (Can't remember some details - Info listed)
  • Netgear 5 or 8 port Gigabit Switch (Not a Smart-Switch, non-programmable)
  • There may be another Gigabit Switch as well (4-8 ports)
  • Couple of Generic 10/100 Switches (4-8 ports)

Future Proofing Home (What I'd like to do list):

• NAS Server/Storage + Cloud Backup Capabilities for Important Files
• Caching Server - Network Performance
• Security Camera Integration

Key Features of Setup:

• Reliable Connectivity
• Performance Driven (Gaming & Streaming)
• Wireless AC
• Dual Band (Either Integrated, Dual Band AP, or two separate band APs)
• Secure
• Easy to Setup, Maintain, and Upgrade Software/Firmware
  • Some command line is fine, but would like GUI for ease of use on non-tech-savvy family members if I'm not around to get things back up and running.

Optional Features:

• Remote Connectivity to Home Network while traveling (In case of Thermonuclear detonation of the network, and my wife needs me to get it back up and running.)
• Integrates well with NAS Setup to offer exceptional data performance to all devices on the network as well as remote devices connected through VPN from the WAN.

In the end I would want something that is going to just work, be fast, and have the ability to be future proof for at least 2-5 years or more. No need to upgrade to bleeding edge every 3 months.

I haven't thought about price, but I'd be more willing to spend the money into a decent/good Network Rack Solution over spending $200-350 on an integrated consumer solution from Best Buy or the likes.

look for a thread in asus rmerlin about manual QoS using NAT acceleration. It would solve your issue.

No consumer routers do gigabit NAT without hardware acceleration. The only inexpensive routers that do software NAT at gigabit speeds are some mikrotiks and x86 based routers that you can build yourself. About google fibre you cant use a consumer router on it with gigabit speeds because their specific requirements means you cant use hardware NAT since you have vlans + QoS tagging.

Currently your internet only requires 65Mb/s throughput but google fibre requires 2Gb/s of throughput.

System Error Message said:

look for a thread in asus rmerlin about manual QoS using NAT acceleration. It would solve your issue.

No consumer routers do gigabit NAT without hardware acceleration. The only inexpensive routers that do software NAT at gigabit speeds are some mikrotiks and x86 based routers that you can build yourself. About google fibre you cant use a consumer router on it with gigabit speeds because their specific requirements means you cant use hardware NAT since you have vlans + QoS tagging.

Currently your internet only requires 65Mb/s throughput but google fibre requires 2Gb/s of throughput.

Click to expand...

Do you have a link. I'm not seeing anything in the AsusWRT Merlin Forum with that. Just a bunch of things like "Enable Adaptive QOS" etc. Nothing explaining how to do that. The only option I have is SmartQoS.

Thanks for the help. Although I'm not sure it is a bandwith issue, because we usually aren't doing anything else while streaming Netflix, Chromecast(youtube, pandora, etc). So we aren't taxing our internet connection. Previous builds of the firmware didn't have this issue. It wasn't until I upgraded to the current version did it start doing this.

System Error Message said:

No consumer routers do gigabit NAT without hardware acceleration.

Click to expand...

There are consumer based routers that do not have dependencies on Broadcom's CTF... and not all of them are AC1900 class...

sfx2000 said:

There are consumer based routers that do not have dependencies on Broadcom's CTF... and not all of them are AC1900 class...

Click to expand...

I know that.

If you want a solution that is rack based than take a look at ubiquiti edgerouter PRO, mikrotik RB1100AHx2, mikrotik CCR1009. Ubiquiti can do some hardware acceleration despite having configs. Mikrotik will do the work with configs and software NAT but they are very noisy except if you get a silenced CCR which is probably more than your mentioned price range but the CCR will do 2Gb/s of software NAT with configs easily as long as you avoid the switched ports. Both the edgerouter PRO and CCR have SFP ports which means you dont need a modem for fibre optic if you can find a compatible SFP module.

First off, I wouldn't "future proof" too much beyond maybe a year's worth of planned changes; edge connectivity and consumption habits are just changing too fast to warrant hedging your bets much further. That said, you at least deserve a setup that will hit the numbers you need today and run for longer than a week without a reset (...a LOT longer!).

Starting with what you have, I've found Tomato to be the most stable on stuff like your AC66. It probably won't help wifi range, but there's a good chance it will help with the reboots. If you do reset and flash, make surely to do so properly, clearing NVRAM, etc. Then re-config from scratch. Further, I'd move your routing and packet handling to a dedicated wired box and delegate wifi duty to separate APs meant solely for the purpose (your AC66 being one of them, paired with as many additional APs as are necessary for coverage and back-haul).

As for the router, if there's a high chance you'll remain around a couple hundred Mb/s of WAN for the next year or two, then you could probably get away with most any mid-to-high clock embedded box. If you actually want to be Gigabit capable then the options change a bit (perhaps towards SEM's suggestions, maybe a pFsense build considering your thoughts on serving and/or caching, perhaps even a higher-end UTM if built-in filtering/monitoring is appealing). A lot also depends on how much support you want, too...

I do like where your head's at re- the plastic monoliths.

So to rewind a little, I don’t need a million dollar solution. I just need something to compliment my current living condition; living in an apartment.


I can’t drill, cut, or take out walls and am stuck with what is currently available, so hence the need to keep our devices happy. I can run a minimal amount of exposed wire but will have to limit it to probably connecting Two AP’s from both sides of the house to the Router/Switch.

So the key things this setup needs to be is:

Reliable, Secure, Performance Driven for Gaming

The most important is reliability because I’m getting tired of having to reset the router all the time. I shouldn’t have to.

Budget Today: $200-$500+ (Purchase of Router, Switch, APs) {Can open more funding up to purchase other items over time as I upgrade the system}


Key Network Requirements:

• Gigabit Networking
• Dual-Band Wireless AC
• Capable of connecting to a Dual NIC NAS Server (Future Purchase)

Equipment Available:

• Asus RT-AC66U
• Couple of 4-8x Port Consumer Netgear Gigabit Switchs
• FiOS Actiontec Router/Modem
• Couple of Older Wireless-N Routers

Requirements Today:

• Replace Asus AC66 with new router.
• New Router - Wired or Wireless
  • Gaming Performance
  • Capable of Automation : Reboot, etc
  • Reliable & Durable

** Below Items only if I purchase a Wired-Only Router Solution **

• New AP or two
  • Dual Band
  • Wireless AC Capable
  • Can use old AC66 as AP in mean time or as Guest AP if I purchase new AP
• New Switch
  • Able to segment network
  • Guests only have access to internet, not main network of devices.

So down to the nitty gritty. If you make suggestions, please include Brand / Model / Reason for choosing the device. Don’t just say pick up a Mikrotic. Be Specific for the sake of my Chemo-Brain, it can’t handle vagueness. :-/



@System Error Message
- Why should you stay off the Switched Ports?
- Can you pickup a SFP Module for FiOS? (Researching, I haven't seen anyone who's not used the ONT)

switched ports have maximum speed of 2Gb/s because of link to CPU but if you connect both WAN and LAN to it you get limited to 1Gb/s because again of link. Its the same for every router. Another reason is CPU usage and latencies. Besides the CCR is more than fast enough than a switch for layer 2 stuff.

"So down to the nitty gritty. If you make suggestions, please include Brand / Model / Reason for choosing the device. Don’t just say pick up a Mikrotic. Be Specific for the sake of my Chemo-Brain, it can’t handle vagueness."

I have been through a lot of routers in the last 10 years always it always came down to gaming performance.

Here is how I always approach it now.

Step 1 - By the fastest stand alone wired router you can afford. Look at the wired router performance charts here and pay attention to the type of CPU's that you see inside the fast routers. When it comes to gaming the CPU in the router is all that matters (Almost). Short list to any brand of router that is running a CPU that is found in one of the top 3 routers on wired router speed charts. CAVEAT - Do not buy any of the Cisco RVXXX routers even if they are listed in the top 3 unless you want a whole world of hurt. It runs games fine, but you only need to type RV3 into google and it will quickly auto fill the complaints. Been there dumped that.

Step 2. You can buy new stand alone AP's but any of the existing router/wifi combo's you have will work fine as an AP. Personally I would download a wifi analyzer first and see how many SSID's are broadcasting around your place and which channels they are using. Choosing the least congested channel with an N Band AP is going to be a lot more effective than buying a wideband channel hogging AC router in. There is a great article on the home page to walk you through getting better WiFi. In my case I have rock solid WiFi using one dual band AP with the power decreased from factory settings. I used to have 2 AP's with cranked up power before I realized that they were actually just interfering with each other and making things worse.

Step 3. Google your game/console/application whatever and the brand of the routers you have on your shortlist. It could be the best router in the world, but if it breaks the game it sucks. A quick google search will highlight any issues.

OK..now you wanted a very specific recommendation and why.. That is near impossible to do because we really don't have all of the info.. like which types of games, consoles etc. For example - 2 xbox's don't play well on the same internet connection even with UPNP. One will be able to get to xbox live and you kinda have to pray the other will work.

That said I have 2- xbox's , PS4, 3 iPADS, streaming all content to TV's, Nest thermo's .. you get the idea.

I am running SOPHOS on an Intel Atom router box from aliexpress.com. It has 2G of RAM with ATOM quad core 525 cpu and 6 Intel 1000baseT ports. Look up "Multi Core WAN Router" and you will see all kinds of them <$250. Sorry they don't have a "Brand" but any of the 2G ram boxes with Intel atom 525 will work. You will need to add an SSD to install SOPHOS UTM which is free for home use.

With dual internet connections, firewall, content filtering, IPS and VPN configured the processor is running on average at 12%. More importantly gaming rocks.

In summary SOPHOS $free for home use, Multi Core WAN Router from China $250, SSD $100 Grand total $350 and you will have one hell of a kick butt gaming house.

My2Cents

a few corrections to your advice.
1) CPU does not matter for gaming router. It matters for internet speeds you need and for applications you want to run on the router such as torrents or even a network anti virus. However a router with gigabit ethernet ports/SFP that has CPU connected ports (not through a switch) does reduce latency by an insignificant amount but better than it going through a router with CPU+switch combo. Ofcourse for gaming you want to use wire and you want low latency internet with good upload and download. The router CPU only need to be fast enough to send more packets per second if you play games with high update rates like FPS games. MMO games rely on bandwidth instead.

2) avoid D-links too

3) game consoles rely on UPNP and/or port forwarding so it will work with any router that has a good implementation of it or that lets you configure it. They also rely on layer 2 protocols like multicast, broadcast and such for LAN based applications such as media streaming from LAN. Problems with consoles are caused by routers with a bad implementation of UPNP.

4) gaming is rarely done via VPN and usually people use p2p based tunnels for LAN based gaming over WAN so the load is handled by the gaming platform CPU however if you do set up your own VPN than read my other posts regarding the approximated speeds you want for VPN based on the CPU type. What the intel ATOM lacks compared to a normal x86 CPU is encryption performance. It does logic well just like a MIPS based CPU since they both use very little power but give it some math and it will be slow at it. So what the guy above didnt tell you is that he is not running his VPN at wirespeed/WANspeed.

System Error Message said:

a few corrections to your advice.
1) CPU does not matter for gaming router. It matters for internet speeds you need and for applications you want to run on the router such as torrents or even a network anti virus. However a router with gigabit ethernet ports/SFP that has CPU connected ports (not through a switch) does reduce latency by an insignificant amount but better than it going through a router with CPU+switch combo. Ofcourse for gaming you want to use wire and you want low latency internet with good upload and download. The router CPU only need to be fast enough to send more packets per second if you play games with high update rates like FPS games. MMO games rely on bandwidth instead.

Personally in my experience as a serious gamer the CPU has a huge impact on latency regardless of the lan port speeds on the router or other wise. Of course assuming you have a decent internet connection. And yes the slightest improvement in latency is an huge deal.

2) avoid D-links too

3) game consoles rely on UPNP and/or port forwarding so it will work with any router that has a good implementation of it or that lets you configure it. They also rely on layer 2 protocols like multicast, broadcast and such for LAN based applications such as media streaming from LAN. Problems with consoles are caused by routers with a bad implementation of UPNP.

The caution I was pointing out is that consoles operate on fixed ports and if you have two xbox's or two ps4's only one of them will work correctly regardless of UPNP. Personally I have two separate internet connections just because of this and I don't bother with UPNP because it never opened the correct ports even when I had a single console on a single internet pipe.

4) gaming is rarely done via VPN and usually people use p2p based tunnels for LAN based gaming over WAN so the load is handled by the gaming platform CPU however if you do set up your own VPN than read my other posts regarding the approximated speeds you want for VPN based on the CPU type. What the intel ATOM lacks compared to a normal x86 CPU is encryption performance. It does logic well just like a MIPS based CPU since they both use very little power but give it some math and it will be slow at it. So what the guy above didnt tell you is that he is not running his VPN at wirespeed/WANspeed.

Click to expand...

Never said I used VPN for gaming so not sure where that came from. I use it to connect to my security camera's when I travel and of course it's not wire speed... is there even such a thing as a wire speed vpn?

phowarth said:

Never said I used VPN for gaming so not sure where that came from. I use it to connect to my security camera's when I travel and of course it's not wire speed... is there even such a thing as a wire speed vpn?

Click to expand...

If you ping an old router it will still show <1ms even for a new router so router CPU doesnt really matter. comparing the latency to internet of a 200mhz MIPS based dlink router and a 800mhz MIPS based mikrotik router they both show the same latency for internet although the dlink router had almost no security. as long as the network ports are gigabit and the router doesnt use a switch chip than the most you can reduce the latency by is 1ms. Some gaming routers use tricks like region restrictions so you dont get high latency servers for games that dont let you choose your server. QoS for gaming is important and all the router CPU has to do is be enough to handle all that is going on in the router. It doesnt need to be fast that at maximum only 1% of the CPU is used.

wirespeed VPN means performing encryption on the speed of all ports and there is such a thing.
The normal x86 CPUs have units for performing bigger data maths such as SSE variants and SSE speed for the x86 greatly influences it's FLOPS performance.
Offerings with TILERA in them can also do multi gigabit VPN speeds. Some CPUs have hardware based encryption on them that make them faster at a particular encryption. The reason why VPN routers such as the cisco RV was sold was because it used a MIPS based CPU with some hardware based encryption but those platforms were very problematic but at that time normal consumer routers didnt have VPN on them and fibre optics was a rare thing in offices and homes. Some networks use VPN even over local wires and a lot of ISPs use PPP even if it adds overhead because it does actually encrypt data over the wire and provides some protection against data corruption.

VPN speed is mainly influenced by encryption performance.

UPNP or port forwarding is what consoles rely on. While they do operate on fixed ports many devices not just consoles will want the ports opened and if you have multiple they will fight over it. Using a bit a trickery all you have to do is either configure UPNP (impossible on a low grade consumer router but possible on asus or non consumer routers) or port forward through different ports. A lot of people have consoles that they never had such problems with. I myself never had issues with my either considering i played games that always required an internet connection and i did have multiple consoles on the same internet. All i did was use a mikrotik router and configure UPNP and firewall.

If you are very geeky about latency you will find that the switch chip on a router often adds 200 microseconds of latency which is basically 0.2ms for older routers which the worst i've seen responds in 0.6ms. Desktops respond at 0.2ms even for realtek and some NICs respond to pings at 0.4ms and this is all on gigabit ethernet.

What you want everybody wants. It comes with a price. That price is knowing your network limitations. Wireless is the biggest limitation. Use wire. You only want to use wireless for your mobile devices. The other thing is don't string out a bunch of switches. Try to reduce your switches to one large core switch. Run all devices from a core switch if possible.

Just reading your top post about your system I believe you are streaming Netflix and games across WIFI wireless networking. Don't do it. Use wire for your Netflix TVs and gaming console. This will be the best upgrade you can perform on your network.

PS
Your problem is going to get worst if you get google fiber.

You can get SmallWall (a m0n0wall fork) routers from MITXpc, and any of the Intel based nics on this page http://www.mitxpc.com/products.php?cat=140 will do full wire speed. And yes, CPU is needed if you want gigabit NAT, but most routers in this class have enough for that now.
As to your skipping and stuttering, good traffic management helps a LOT with that. SmallWall (and m0n0wall and t1n1wall) have VERY easy to configure traffic shaping that works quite well for streaming and gaming.
As to WiFi, I like EnGenius APs. Personal preference, but they do well for me. But the key for me is separating wireless and routing. The only reason to put them together is cost, and cheap stuff performs and lasts like cheap stuff.