Need advice on throughput

[l0ddify]

Hi!

In my house i got two asus rt-ac66u running Tomato by Shibby (v130), one is used as my primary router and the other is just a repeater in the basement. I just love the Tomato firmware and I have never had any problems with it so far. With 3 children, I am a big fan of the access restriction/bw limiter part of this firmware.
A week ago my fiber connection got a big update, from 75mbit/75mbit to 500mbit/500mbit. I then found out that the throughput on my rt-ac66u running Tomato was a bit low (140-180mbit down/100mbit up). From the information I have managed to find online, this is something that I just have to accept if I want to continue running Tomato on my routers. I have tested the merlin firmware and that gives me full speed, but I feel I loose some of my configuration posibilities, and speed on my repeater routers was not as good as I have hoped.

And here is my question to you guys, is there some routers out there that can manage my wan speed running Tomato by shibby that you can recommend ? Or can you recommend some others firmware?

Thanks,
l0ddifyr

 

[L&LD]

I would suggest t0 use the RMerlin firmware or one of the forks (john9527's or hggomes) and use the second router as an AP not as a repeater.

If you have a LAN cable from router 1 to router 2 (AP), it should give you a big increase in your speeds.

 

[l0ddify]

I would suggest t0 use the RMerlin firmware or one of the forks (john9527's or hggomes) and use the second router as an AP not as a repeater.

If you have a LAN cable from router 1 to router 2 (AP), it should give you a big increase in your speeds.

I would have used a LAN cable between the routers if I could (router 1 is on 2nd floor, router 2 is in the basement). I have tested RMerlin firmware, but I have to check out the forks.. tnx..

 

[stevech]

One LAN.
One WiFi Router.
Many APs
WiFi routers can be configured as APs.

WiFi routers can be cascaded, where two in cascade are both routers. This is strongly discouraged.

 

[l0ddify]

My configuration works fine, that was not the issue here. The issue was that tomato by shibby has a very slow throughput. I would like to continue with this firmware, and was asking for help getting a new router with faster throughput, or a firmware with simulare functions as Tomato..

Sent fra min GT-I9506 via Tapatalk

 

[stevech]

I have 56Mbps ISP service.
$50 11n router is just fine. ASUS.

 

[System Error Message]

You're using a MIPS based device without hardware acceleration. ARM A9 dual core devices have software throughput up to 500Mb/s (you may need to overclock to 1.4Ghz and have a lean config). On the sidenote mikrotik MIPS based devices are much faster doing 300Mb/s of NAT using the older MIPS at 680Mhz but their best devices usually dont have wifi.

Unless you can return your asus ac66u for something like an asus ac68p that has a dual core ARM A9 CPU you will find the asus ac68 much more expansive than the ac66u. Tomato firmware cannot use hardware acceleration because the drivers are closed source and broadcom only works with manufacturers hence 3rd party firmware excluding merlin which is basically is a modified stock firmware with some additions cannot utilise the hardware fully.

It would also be cheaper if you tried a mikrotik RB850gx2 which would be able to easily max out your connection (both ways) and they also have new features that allow MIPS based devices much faster throughput with NAT but i havent had the time to go through it and try it. The demo for mikrotik routerOS is at demo.mt.lv . If you like and can set up tomato firmware you might have the skill for it. I suggest the RB850gx2 since using PPC based CPUs lets you use more features while losing less throughput. If you did get a mikrotik router you can use both your AC66u as APs and switches. At one point i did consider Tomato firmware but mikrotik just had more features at a much better price/performance ratio. Part of my setup involves using a CCR1036 as my main router and an asus ac68u and ac3200 as access points.

Since you have a 500/500Mb/s connection you need a router with a NAT speed of 1Gb/s which no consumer router can give you without hardware acceleration. If you download and upload at the same time you will be using 1Gb/s of forwarding capacity. Try not to confuse port capacity and forwarding capacity since if a device had 2 gigabit ethernet ports than it will need a forwarding capacity of 2Gb/s to fully max out the ports (4Gb/s).

 

[sfx2000]

You're using a MIPS based device without hardware acceleration. ARM A9 dual core devices have software throughput up to 500Mb/s (you may need to overclock to 1.4Ghz and have a lean config). On the sidenote mikrotik MIPS based devices are much faster doing 300Mb/s of NAT using the older MIPS at 680Mhz but their best devices usually dont have wifi.

Be careful - Broadcom MIPS vs. ARM, this statement is valid perhaps with CTF.ko

Other ARM's, they have their own methods whether it is QC-Atheros or Marvell.. they don't need this particular piece of Broadcom code, and performance is similar.

sfx

 

[System Error Message]

Asus likes to use broadcom and tomato focuses on broadcom based chipsets. There may be other tomato distributions that would work on other chipsets.