Fastest wired through-put Router

[randomName]

Looking for a router with the fastest transmission/receive on a wired connection on a consumer level, home use type scenario. Is that best described as Wan to Lan throughput(Tx), or Lan to Wan chart(Rx)?

Also which router has the fastest processor right now? Is dual core better

Wireless is not really a big concern right now.


Thanks

 

[Nullity]

Edge Router Lite?

What is your budget?

Do you plan to use traffic-shaping/QoS?

 

[randomName]

This is consumer level, home use type scenario. I'll update the OP with this info. But if that's what you are talking about I'd say 300$ USD tops. Well lets just say money weren't a concern. Not that it isn't but I am just curious about the best

 

[kvic]

In a typical wired home LAN, traffics are switched and they're switched by hardware very efficiently at near wire speed. Most consumer routers shall be capable enough of doing a great job.

When internet access comes into the picture, that's where you have to look at WAN-LAN/LAN-WAN throughput. That's how fast traffic can be routed to Internet and back to LAN. Different make and models vary in performance but not much on current product lines. SNB's ranking charts may be one good reference.

If you want _fast_, EdgeRouter Lite suggested by Nullity is a very good pick. The lesser EdgeRouter X is also good. Both are very sexy little capable boxes. I'm constantly being tempted by one of those...

They're not as easy to setup as other all-in-one home routers...to put the machine to good and full use of its capabilities. Aren't recommended for people lacking skill in linux/command line. Otherwise, go for it. I'm sure you'll love it.

 

[randomName]

OK, I'll take a look at it but unfortunately I am not familiar with Linux command line type stuff. Thanks

EDIT: and if I need Wifi I guess I could aggregate the rt-n66u, or does it have wifi? just briefly read some reviews on B&H Photo

 

[Trip]

Consumerland is basically 99% embedded devices running lighter-weight SoCs with narrow-lane switching architectures. They'll get you into the high hundreds of Mb/s, many doing do via hardware offload and/or cut-through forwarding schemes. As soon as you start doing stuff like QoS and/or VPN, though, things will take a plunge, typically by an entire power of magnitude (ie. 600-900Mb of throughput all of a sudden drops to 100 or less). Just the inherent limits of the underlying designs and firmware.

Even the "prosumer" stuff running Cavium chips, MIPS, PPC, etc. will have its limits, typically somewhere in the low to mid hundreds of Mb/s with services running, shapers, policies, etc.

If you want big-boy throughput while running stuff like that, you need to move to data/control planes that are well beyond the capability of those architectures. One somewhat-friendly way to accomplish this is to run something like IPFire, pFsense, etc. on a spare x86 box with, say, an i-series CPU and 2 or more Intel NICs. Then you're powering things in software, and as long as you've got enough CPU to swallow up services and RAM for connections, the sky is the limit in terms of throughput.

All depends on your goals for throughput and kinds of services you want to run on your router.

 

[randomName]

Yeah, as soon as you turn on QoS you can forget it, hah. I don't think I'll be getting into using an x86 box with an i7 but how does Edge Router Lite compare to something like a dedicated box? Is that Edge Router lite a step above Prosumer level?

 

[coxhaus]

Non of the consumer gear including the ERL is going to compare to a dedicated x86 box. The PC processors are so much faster.

I have a Cisco RV320 router which is the fastest on the router charts for a wired router. I would like to see the ERL retested with the newer firmware so we could see which is faster. The RV320 is easy to configure as you don't need to know Linux because it is menu driven. But neither of these routers will compare to the x86 dedicated box for processing power.

Unless you have a very faster internet connection or high demands on QoS the average router is going to be fast enough.

 

[DanK]

I think the ERL and the RV320 both use the same chip. But the RV320 only uses the 300MHz version while the ERL uses the 500MHz version.

 

[System Error Message]

if you want multi-G internet i would suggest a mikrotik CCR or an ERPRO. Both of them have SFP so if you use fibre optics you can get an SFP module instead of using a modem. The mikrotik CCR has a lot of processing power so it is much faster than the ERPRO for things like VPN, QoS and firewall.

If processing power is what you need take a look at the GPU based linux router. If you dont need embedded theres always the standard x86 solutions to use with GPU based linux router, pfsense and the like.

 

[Nullity]

if you want multi-G internet i would suggest a mikrotik CCR or an ERPRO. Both of them have SFP so if you use fibre optics you can get an SFP module instead of using a modem. The mikrotik CCR has a lot of processing power so it is much faster than the ERPRO for things like VPN, QoS and firewall.

If processing power is what you need take a look at the GPU based linux router. If you dont need embedded theres always the standard x86 solutions to use with GPU based linux router, pfsense and the like.

GPU meaning graphics card? Link?

 

[System Error Message]

GPU meaning graphics card? Link?

http://shader.kaist.edu/packetshader/

 

[Nullity]

http://shader.kaist.edu/packetshader/

The page was last updated on Feb 2011 with the latest papers published in 2010. Is this still a thing or has it died off?

 

[coxhaus]

I think the ERL and the RV320 both use the same chip. But the RV320 only uses the 300MHz version while the ERL uses the 500MHz version.

I have heard this before but the router graphs don't show it. Even the ERL big brother ranks lower then both of these.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

For under or around 100 bucks...the Ubiquiti EdgeRouters are very fast...hard to find that much speed for that low of a price. Some Microtik models also....very fast performance for a low price.

FYI, while the first generation or two of firmware on the Ubiquiti Edge Router was very bare bones...requiring some CLI knowledge for setting up advanced features, over recent years they've been updating their firmware. For a home user...and even for many uses in small business, everything you'll need to do to it is available in the GUI now. Rarely or pretty much never a need to use GLI for the majority of users unless you need to dig up really advanced features.

 

[coxhaus]

The Cisco RV320 router sells for the same amount on eBay as the ERL. I was going to buy an ERL when I figured out the RV320 sells for the same amount on eBay and has a higher router graph rating. So I bought the RV320. It is fast.

Using the RV320 router don't be complacent about ACLs as they work like pro gear. You need to use them for everything as they are not automatic like consumer gear. I have no problem with this once I know the rules.

 

[System Error Message]

the GPU based router was a project, while its not being updated the code is still usable. If choosing between the ERL or cisco RV go for the ERL because it is a more stable platform but the ERL's usb storage is an issue so go for the higher end or lower end version. IF you want raw processing speed than either get a mikrotik CCR or ERPRO.

A lot of the wired routers use the same MIPS with VPN acceleration CPU whether it is a tp-link TL or a VPN router or a cisco RV or the ERL and above series. Those platforms have stability issues but ubiquiti managed to get their firmware working stable on so if i were using that CPU i would go for ubiquiti. Even than Ubiquiti has more features than the cisco RV for the price.

 

[kvic]

This thread was initially posted in Asuswrt-Merlin. Apparently we shall take home use into the context. I don't know perhaps the OP could adjust the title a bit...

If UBNT can gradually turn on HW offload in ERX within the coming two years, it will be a very attractive for home or even small business.

 

[sfx2000]

The page was last updated on Feb 2011 with the latest papers published in 2010. Is this still a thing or has it died off?

Schoolhouse science project/proof of concept, and valid for 100Gbps and above connections...

Some of that has been implemented in SSL accelerators for big iron (as vector specific ASIC's) - AES-NI for newer Intel chips is similar, and ARM/MIPS have implementations that can work very well depending on the core in use...

 

[sfx2000]

Looking for a router with the fastest transmission/receive on a wired connection on a consumer level, home use type scenario. Is that best described as Wan to Lan throughput(Tx), or Lan to Wan chart(Rx)?

Also which router has the fastest processor right now? Is dual core better

Getting back to OP's post - with Gigabit connections becoming more common, I think that the Cortex-A9 (and similar, e.g. Marvell Armada and QCA-Krait) are starting to run out of headroom on the 32-bit ARM7* architecture - which is the basis for most AC1900 (and above) consumer Router/AP's...

Clock speed only carries so far... when dealing with Gigabit at the curb, chipset vendors will need to either migrate into ARM8 (AArch64) or explore other options like X86-64 (Silvermont/Airmont or Haswell on the Intel side, Jaguar/Piledriver perhaps on the AMD side)....

The biggest problem is cost - a dual-core ARM7v Cortex-A9 based SoC costs about 20 bucks at the moment, and for 2015, that was more that enough...