Cisco rvs4000 (v2) or Asus RT-N56U

[Charlie_Croker]

I was hoping for some advice.
At present I have an N56 which does sterling service as a router and provides wi-fi for the downstairs of our property. It's been flashed with Padovan's firmware and generally I am extremely happy. We have a 100mbps cable service.

Our house is wired with Cat6 and from the N56, runs to a few HP Pro-curve switches, on to a Netgear WNR2000 (flashed with DD-WRT) which provides wireless signal upstairs. (admittedly as this is in the loft/attic it gets signal from 200mbps powerline adapters.!

Now while watching ebay a Cisco RVS4000 (V2 hardware) came up and as the auction was about to end, I whacked in a nid and got it for a bargain price.

Question is, do I relegate the N56 to just being a wireless access point and let the Cisco provide routing or do I stick with the N56 and stick the RVS4000 to one side?

I have read that routing performance is much better with the IPS switched off and on the later firmware speed issues have largely been improved on. But I also read that WAN performance is not very good, somewhere about 15mbps?

So any advice really gratefully received!

Oh and I would have to say this site is awesome. I have learnt so much about networks from this site in last few weeks.

Mick

 

[thiggins]

Is the N56 currently limiting your Internet speed? Getting a router that is much faster than your Up/down throughput won't make a difference in Internet speed and does nothing for LAN-LAN throughput.

 

[Charlie_Croker]

Thanks for reply Tim,

I think I just couldn't resist the Cisco at the auction price, the N56 with the custom firmware is excellent, I just like "tinkering" I guess plus moving to a more enterprise and less consumer based hardware seems fun... Lol

I read that wan performance on the rvs4000 was topping out at 15mbps which would hold back network speed

My thinking was that if I took the routing load off the N56 then it might get better wireless performance, though in all actuality I know it won't.

Though I might end up using the RVS4000 as a managed switch.

 

[thiggins]

Unless your Internet service is up around 100 Mps, you're not going to see a performance difference in wireless. Check this stress test as an example.

 

[Charlie_Croker]

Tim,

Our Internet is 120mbps or soon will be once Virgin role it out to our area.