Just got 1Gbps up/down fiber internet...

[FloorPizza]

Yesterday, I had CenturyLink install 1 gigabit up/down fiber internet to my home. I was ecstatic, right up until I looked at the stats on the bottom of the Technicolor C2000T router they hooked up; the WiFi in this box is .n. Unbelievable that they would supply a .n box for a gig fiber connection.

I removed the C2000T and replaced it with my Netgear Nighthawk R7000 (it is setup to do the PPPoE login for the fiber connection). Searching around the web, I've found many sources saying that you will hit a cap of around 500Mbps across the WAN port with this router. I can confirm that. I am maxing out at 500 up/down with the R7000. So I'm cutting my total internet speed in half.

I'm looking to replace the R7000 with a box that can handle the full 1Gbps internet speed. I'd like good .ac WiFi performance, as well. I've looked at the RT-AC87U, but understand that it has reliability issues on the 5ghz band.

Can someone offer me some advice on what routers I should look into that can handle my internet speed and provide good .ac WiFi?

 

[System Error Message]

you wont achieve gigabit speeds with wifi, the ratings there are only theoratical. If you want a router that can properly handle gigabit connections than you're looking for a $300 wired router like what ubiquiti and mikrotik have. I say $300 because the famouse edgerouter lite from ubiquiti uses usb storage whereas their higher end versions have faster CPU and use flash storage instead. Mikrotik offers PPC and TILE based routers that can do gigabit with software NAT while ubiquiti requires some acceleration to keep up. Mikrotik doesnt have any support while ubiquiti has a bit of support and they have more fans. And although the edgerouter lite claims wirespeed it means wirespeed routing with layer 3 using routes and such and not NAT. The NAT speed of the edgerouter lite is above 800Mb/s which is what you would be using for internet and even slower if you add PPP to it.

Other solutions would be using an x86 desktop/server and not using realtek NICs. Higher end cisco and juniper routers also offer what you ask but they would be very expensive though they would have very good support.

You already have the R7000 which is a good wifi router. If the CPU isnt fast enough you can still use it as an AP. if you want speed use wire instead of wifi. Wifi is only for convenience. With wifi there are so many more variables to deal since it is shared unlike with wire.

since you have 1 Gb/s up and down you actually need a router that can handle 2Gb/s of NAT which is what i have suggested.

 

[coxhaus]

We are still waiting for vendors to catch up to the gig offerings. None of the current crop of consumer routers processors are fast enough to process an internet gig pipe.

 

[FloorPizza]

Thanks for the replies, gents!

Yeah, I know that i won't achieve gigabit speeds on the wifi. I have four devices that are connected via ethernet in my den, and a ton of wifi devices throughout the rest of the house. I certainly don't expect wifi speeds to hit 1 gig, but it would be nice to have the total pipe available for the hard wired devices.

It's just a shame that the Technicolor C2000T has .n wifi; I was able to get full 1 gig speeds on it's ethernet ports. I'm sure I could come up with some solution of using both boxes... the C2000T for the ethernet connections and the R7000 for the wifi, but so far my attempts at doing so have been less than a complete success.

The ideal solution would be to have a .ac router in the den, to which I could hardwire with ethernet, then have the R7000 in the family room as an access point. I have two xboxes, a Wii, and a Dish Hopper I could then connect to the R7000.

There are reports that the RT-AC87U can handle around 850mbps across it's WAN port, so that would be a definite improvement, but the reports about that router's WiFi reliability leave me hesitant.

I must say that I'm quite happy with the R7000's 5ghz wifi speed. With my laptop two feet from the router, speedtest.net reports 200mbps up/down, decreasing to 100 in the family room. This is certainly satisfactory for the family room devices. Now if I could just get full speed to my ethernet connected devices in the den, I'd be a very happy camper.

 

[paraplu]

Thanks for the replies, gents!

Yeah, I know that i won't achieve gigabit speeds on the wifi. I have four devices that are connected via ethernet in my den, and a ton of wifi devices throughout the rest of the house. I certainly don't expect wifi speeds to hit 1 gig, but it would be nice to have the total pipe available for the hard wired devices.

It's just a shame that the Technicolor C2000T has .n wifi; I was able to get full 1 gig speeds on it's ethernet ports. I'm sure I could come up with some solution of using both boxes... the C2000T for the ethernet connections and the R7000 for the wifi, but so far my attempts at doing so have been less than a complete success.

The ideal solution would be to have a .ac router in the den, to which I could hardwire with ethernet, then have the R7000 in the family room as an access point. I have two xboxes, a Wii, and a Dish Hopper I could then connect to the R7000.

There are reports that the RT-AC87U can handle around 850mbps across it's WAN port, so that would be a definite improvement, but the reports about that router's WiFi reliability leave me hesitant.

I must say that I'm quite happy with the R7000's 5ghz wifi speed. With my laptop two feet from the router, speedtest.net reports 200mbps up/down, decreasing to 100 in the family room. This is certainly satisfactory for the family room devices. Now if I could just get full speed to my ethernet connected devices in the den, I'd be a very happy camper.

The R7000 should do better than that. I got around 500/400mbps speedtest.net over wifi, using an ipad air2 nearby.

 

[Nullity]

Why not use the C2000T as a wired-only router (disable WiFi) and use your R7000 as a WiFi AP?

You mentioned that you want full speed in the den, which means you may need a quality network switch in there. Then connect your devices to that switch. You can connect the R7000 to either the switch or the modem, your choice. The switch and modem need to be wired together, of course.

You may not need a switch if the R7000 is capable of full gigabit speeds, but you mentioned that it was only capable of 850Mbit on the WAN. Whether that limut applies to LAN to LAN traffic, I dunno.

 

[thiggins]

What does the C2000T provide for up/down throughput to Ethernet?

 

[Trip]

If the C2000T can do PPP at Gb+ speeds, then per @Nullity 's suggestion, sounds to me like it could at least serve as your wired router... ?

Then, assuming you can run Cat6 anywhere that's needed, add in the appropriate number of switches with as many APs as are needed for coverage and bandwidth, and you should be all set.

When buying switches, make sure you buy gigabit stuff that's actually gigabit-capable -- ie. the backplane actually has the capacity. Lots of lower-end "gigabit" switches are often far from it. I'd recommend at least Cisco SG-level or better, even HP ProCurve or Allied-Telesys (if you can get it).

 

[thiggins]

Lots of lower-end "gigabit" switches are often far from it.

Can you cite specific examples. Any 16 port or lower switch I've seen can handle full Gig wire throughput between all ports.

 

[Trip]

Just off the top of my head, a few of the D-Link DGS switches. Doesn't take too much searching to discover reports of where there's just an uplink and a single device, everything's fine, however at a certain number of devices and traffic, latency and throughput start to deviate from the expected norm. I had an Asus GX1008B that also exhibited somewhat similar behavior as well.

 

[thiggins]

Could be flow control issues.

 

[FloorPizza]

Why not use the C2000T as a wired-only router (disable WiFi) and use your R7000 as a WiFi AP?

You mentioned that you want full speed in the den, which means you may need a quality network switch in there. Then connect your devices to that switch. You can connect the R7000 to either the switch or the modem, your choice. The switch and modem need to be wired together, of course.

You may not need a switch if the R7000 is capable of full gigabit speeds, but you mentioned that it was only capable of 850Mbit on the WAN. Whether that limut applies to LAN to LAN traffic, I dunno.

Initially, I had the C2000T handling the ethernet connections with the R7000 as the WiFi AP, but the R7000 kept crashing every couple hours.

What does the C2000T provide for up/down throughput to Ethernet?

It can handle the full gig, Tim.

 

[Trip]

If you haven't done so on the R7000, make sure it's running the latest factory firmware. If it's still acting up, flash AdvancedTomato or xVortex's port of AsusWRT-Merlin. Wifi may be a bit weaker than stock (driver/code issue), but stability should most likely be better.

 

[FloorPizza]

Thanks for the suggestions, Trip, I'll look in to those firmware versions. Prior to replacing the C2000T with the R7000, I had been using the R7000 with my old cable modem. I was running Kong's version of DD-WRT. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the Kong firmware to play well with the C2000T; it was the firmware I was running at the time of the crashes. I then flashed Netgear's firmware, after which I set up the R7000 to completely take over for the C2000T.

It looks like Technicolor *does* make a .ac router, the C2100T. I need to read up on it still, though.

 

[Trip]

I'm sure the C2100 would be decent if CenturyLink can get you one/is willing to. However, since you've already got the R7000, I'd try a clean flash, proper NVRAM clear-out and manual re-config, and I bet you can get the stability where you want it to be.

DD-WRT, in my experience, is often a flake-show. Bugs inexplicably creep up, go away, and then return again along sub-version tracks. Just take a look at the forums for each brand/model -- a bulk of the posts are users looking for opinions on which sub-build to go with for stability, as there's no single consensus most of the time, nor is there up-to-date enough information in the "official" database. Add to that the development was so splintered for a while (Eco, BrainSlayer, Kong, others, etc.). Many nice features, for sure, but the current state of things could definitely use some tightening up. That said, I opt for Tomato or OpenWRT (or its variants) when I can -- tighter release work and more reliable. YMMV of course.

 

[FloorPizza]

I really appreciate the great advice, Trip, I'll give AdvancedTomato a go today.

Thanks again!

 

[Trip]

Good deal. FYI, AT is based off Shibby's TomatoUSB and there's usually a lag in baking in the latest shibby version (from days to weeks). For example, right now the current shibby version is 132 but AT is still on 131. Not a huge deal because ARM-based routers are largely stable since v 130, but just something to keep in mind if for whatever reason you want the latest version, you could flash to shibby from AT -- you'd just loose the nice GUI that AT offers.

 

[Nullity]

I would assume the stock R7000 firmware is the most stable, especially when it is acting only an AP. Stock also usually has the strongest and most stable wireless.

Have you tried stock lately?


Also, if you need 2 WiFi APs, you might think of using the C2000T's 802.11n WiFi in addition to the R7000. I get ~200Mbit from my RT-N66U (802.11n), which is enough throughput for plenty of simultaneous services.

 

[FloorPizza]

The horrible early stock R7000 firmware is what caused me to flash DD-WRT in the first place, but it appears that Netgear has finally worked out the bugs. When I took the C2000T out of service, I flashed the R7000 to the latest stock firmware. The R7000 is currently doing it all (PPPoE sign in, DHCP, 2.4 & 5Ghz WiFi, four hard wired ethernet devices) all on stock firmware. I had originally planned on flashing back to third party firmware once I figured out how to set DD-WRT up for a CenturyLink specific connection, but so far the factory firmware has performed flawlessly. Quite a shock from the constant reboots I got on earlier versions.

This may change when I add the C2000T back in so that my ethernet devices can utilize all of the bandwidth of my gig internet... we'll see.

 

[FloorPizza]

The R7000 should do better than that. I got around 500/400mbps speedtest.net over wifi, using an ipad air2 nearby.

The radio in my laptop is only 1x1.