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Nonexistent "torrent"router?

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The_Immortal

New Around Here
Hi there!

Guys, I'm looking for a strange solution so I wanna ask you to try to be outside the box.

Is there a router which will be capable of downloading and uploading torrent traffic on it at speed like 200/200 Mbit/sec via Transmission (or thru another torrent-router-ready client)? And during that torrent load this router should provide some surfing by LAN/Wi-Fi - so it means its CPU should not be overloaded too much at this time.
I'm going to connect a bay HDD dock (like ORICO 6629S3) to that router via USB 3.0 as file storage.

Is there such router?

Yup, I'm acutely aware of that the given task are not designed for routers in and of itself, and I have to probably take a look into NAS for doing this job but I wanna find a router - it is a challenge!

So till now I've been offered with 3 routers:
- Linksys WRT1900ACS (with installed OpenWRT on it): ARM v7 Cortex-A9 Marvell 88F6820 2 cores 1.6GHz, RAM 512MB, FLASH 128MB;
- ASUS RT-AC86U: ARM v8 Cortex-A53 Broadcom BCM4906 2 cores 1.8GHz, RAM 512MB, FLASH 256MB;
- Netgear R7900P / R8000P: ARM v8 Cortex-A53 Broadcom BCM4906 2 cores 1.8GHz, RAM 512MB, FLASH 128MB.

Actually they were proposed not by their owners - accodring to opinions of some people those routers theoretically can do this job without overloading its CPU. I haven't found any reviews to prove or disprove it.

What do you think about it? Is such router nonexistent in real?

Thank you!
 
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there are, asus definitely has that feature or if not would require RMerlin firmware, some libraries and such however i think the software library for asus routers is borked or hard to deal with.
Ubiquiti routers actually can do torrenting, as long as it has a USB port that works with storage.

With torrents, CPU speed doesnt really matter much, more on RAM. Openwrt might be able to do it if it has a software for it you can easily download and im more partial to linksys with openWRT because marvel is much better than broadcom on the CPU side.

However irregardless, the file server feature/file storage is CPU taxing for routers. This is something you will need to be aware of when doing LAN transfers as well.
 
No, not for simultaneous 200/200 Mb/s and enough overhead to comfortably handle file transfer/storage operations, and anything else you might want to do that would be NAS-related.

Save yourself the headache and and go with an embedded Pentium or i-Core box, a few Gb or RAM (or more), with your firewall distro of choice on an M.2 ssd, and a 2.5 SATA SSD for file (torrent) storage. Something like a Protectli appliance off of Amazon. Then install the Transmission web package, and you should be good to go. Wire in a separate all-in-one or purpose-built AP to handle wifi, and you're set. And you have a WAY more solid overall solution than any all-in-one could ever muster, and for not that much more cost or all that much more complexity.
 
there are, asus definitely has that feature or if not would require RMerlin firmware, some libraries and such however i think the software library for asus routers is borked or hard to deal with.
Ubiquiti routers actually can do torrenting, as long as it has a USB port that works with storage.

With torrents, CPU speed doesnt really matter much, more on RAM. Openwrt might be able to do it if it has a software for it you can easily download and im more partial to linksys with openWRT because marvel is much better than broadcom on the CPU side.

However irregardless, the file server feature/file storage is CPU taxing for routers. This is something you will need to be aware of when doing LAN transfers as well.

I would go with a one or two bay consumer NAS - QNAP or Synology, both are good choices, and they have torrent client support.

Thought here is off-load a bit of the "load" to something that is built and designed to handle that kind of traffic - keep in mind that one might also be using content inside the LAN, as well as sharing outside of the LAN to the wider internet.

For routers - the Asus and Netgear devices you mentioned - similar chipsets and RAM configurations, so really up to personal preference, but like @Trip mentions, torrents are pretty hard on the firewall - each connection needs to be tracked, and many of the consumer router/AP's will run out of memory just keeping track of that traffic.

@The_Immortal - docks like you mention - they generally don't work well under Linux, esp. the embedded linux's that are normally part of the BHR range - they're really intended for Windows, and maybe Mac, and most of them are built on a chipset that doesn't support some of the more advanced USB storage features - I would suggest something like a single disk platform - Seagate has USB3 drives that work very well there in their Backup/BackupPlus line.

Going back to what I mentioned above - a decent 1 or 2 bay NAS is a good choice...
 

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