Will I be able to do 10GB Wan in and 10GB Lan out with either the AX89X or the GT-AXE16000?

[talisman2208]

Trying to figure out which of these routers will do 10GB Wan in and Lan out, the ports are a bit confusing though. Any ideas?

 

[Tech9]

Tell us what's your idea first. Home routers have 10Gbps ports, but Raspberry Pi hardware inside. RT-AX89X is a mostly failed attempt for high-end router. It's a 4-years old model with some firmware issues history. GT-AXE16000 is a "put inside everything you've got" model with one mostly useless radio and split 5GHz band in two. This is what Asus marketing calls "the world's first quad-band router" - something it actually isn't. It has RGB lights though.

 

[talisman2208]

Tell us what's your idea first. Home routers have 10Gbps ports, but Raspberry Pi hardware inside. RT-AX89X is a mostly failed attempt for high-end router. It's a 4-years old model with some firmware issues history. GT-AXE16000 is a "put inside everything you've got" model with one mostly useless radio and split 5GHz band in two. This is what Asus marketing calls "the world's first quad-band router" - something it actually isn't. It has RGB lights though.

I just want to go from my ATT Fiber 5GB modem , to my 10GB router, to my 10GB switch to all my 10GB pc's lol, those were the only two asus routers I found with 10GB ports.

 

[Tech9]

If you already have 10Gbps switch and 10Gbps clients a home router with RGB lights and heavily relying on NAT acceleration is perhaps not the best gateway device for your setup. I would be looking at something like Netgate 6100 appliance or custom built x86 hardware running pfSense/OPNsense.

 

[talisman2208]

I agree with you, I really like ASUS's dashboard and am very familiar with it. I know nothing about OPN or PFS do you think the AXE16000 would be that terrible as a home router?

 

[Tech9]

I don't know why do you need 10Gbps internal network and 5Gbps ISP line. I can't recommend any hardware in this case. What I know is GT-AXE16000 is a home router with the same CPU as much cheaper and popular GT-AX6000 + number 10000 in marketing and + number 400 in price. It also has a mirror on it so you can look at your face when you first unpack this monster spider. I personally would never bring such a device home.

 

[talisman2208]

If my internet coming in is 5gbps isn't my only option 10gb? Sorry I'm a bit ignorant here.

 

[Tech9]

Why is your Internet coming at 5Gbps? Sorry, but I'm a bit realistic here.

 

[talisman2208]

That's what I pay for lol, It's just what I want! I do a lot of large file transfers

 

[Tech9]

You've got ISP plan promotion and now chasing the speed. This is a classic case for ISP and hardware vendors win. If you do large files transfers and this is a business generating income - you are looking at wrong equipment. If you do large files transfers and this is a hobby in your free time - you can save hundreds of dollars for extra few minutes upload/download time. Your Internet experience will remain the same, your family will use Internet in exactly the same way. The ISP will be cashing every month the payments for something you use only sometimes, Asus will be happy to sell you an overpriced home router with 10Gbps marketing around it. True story and repeated quite often. Folks with less knowledge are the usual victims.

 

[talisman2208]

I don't think it's entirely unecessary given my data usage

Don't get me wrong - I agree with here on everything, I'm just a hobbyist, I like asus's GUI and I'd just prefer to stick with them.

Would something like open or pf or unifi or untangle be better, yes, will I see or utilize all the benefits they have? No, probably not.

 

[Tech9]

You have no much options then. Order one GT-AXE16000 and see if it works for you. RT-AX89X is much older router and no Asuswrt-Merlin for it.

 

[Tech Junky]

I would go diy for longevity instead of paying Asus' bills every time you want to change speeds. Picking up a sff PC a d throwing a dual port 5ge nic inside makes more sense than over shooting with 10ge. If you bump your plan later then you only have to upgrade the nic.

All in maybe $400 and you have more control over your data. If you go with Linux instead of the prepackaged pfsense or opensense you can add more functions to lock things down or be able to monitor traffic patterns. There's plenty of homebrew tutorials out there to make it work.

Once it's setup it's hands off unless you want to upgrade the kernel weekly or the apps you're using. My weekly maintenance is about 5 minutes for the reboot to get the new kernel loaded.

 

[drinkingbird]

I don't think it's entirely unecessary given my data usage

View attachment 50289


Don't get me wrong - I agree with here on everything, I'm just a hobbyist, I like asus's GUI and I'd just prefer to stick with them.

Would something like open or pf or unifi or untangle be better, yes, will I see or utilize all the benefits they have? No, probably not.

What actual transfer rates are you getting for those large file transfers? Even if you have 5G end to end connection wise, doesn't mean the server is going to handle it. Even with torrenting and the like, you'd need a lot of peers to take advantage of that. If you use VPN, you're not going to get anywhere near that throughput (even if you built a pfsense/opnsense box capable of that, the VPN provider isn't going to hit that speed).

I doubt any Asus is going to go give you 5Gb throughput at this point, but I could be wrong, maybe if you don't enable any special features or addons it may be able to, especially for large transfers (full size packets). Your PC also needs to be up to spec, a cheap 5 or 10G card probably isn't going to cut it, need something server class with its own processor/ASIC built in, and still a decent PC to back it up.

There is technically a 5G standard but mostly for consumer stuff and likely it won't have the horsepower to actually transfer at full rate, so sticking with 10G is probably the way to go. Not all 10G stuff is backwards compatible to 5G and 2.5G either so you need to confirm what the AT&T ONT has in it, my guess is probably 10G that can do 2.5 and 5 but not sure.

 

[Tech Junky]

Not all 10G stuff is backwards compatible to 5G and 2.5G

True. Nbase-t isn't widely used even though it's been around for awhile now. It's something you still have to suss out a bit.

I use a quad port 5ge nic from qnap that goes for $200 and a USB adapter from sabrent $70 for the laptop to get the full 5ge speed locally on my setup. The reasons for the quad port if it's a lot cheaper than a 5ge switch and I calculated my disk speed for throughput beforehand. My AP also has a 2.5gs port.

The other thing to consider is the switch and whether it will do 5ge as well.
..

use VPN

Nord is the only one I've been able to get line speed with using wireguard. Ovpn is the limiting factor for speed on anything gig+ as it will top out at 600mbps no matter the hardware.

you'd need a lot of peers

Not really, you need quality peers with the bandwidth. If you get seeds that have the bandwidth it's possible. Tweaking the client settings filters out the low rent seeds and blocking the lackluster peers as you find them will speed things up.

A good test is to dl the ISO for Linux distros as you'll have higher end servers hosting the files that have the fat pipes to saturate most connections.

I limit my active connections to 50/file and overall connections to x*50 and purge the ones that just idle during transfers every 30s to make room for the ones that work at the best speeds. Also, have the tor client on the server itself that directly connects to the ISP and simply add them via the web GUI is years of a local client.

 

[drinkingbird]

Not really, you need quality peers with the bandwidth. If you get seeds that have the bandwidth it's possible. Tweaking the client settings filters out the low rent seeds and blocking the lackluster peers as you find them will speed things up.

A good test is to dl the ISO for Linux distros as you'll have higher end servers hosting the files that have the fat pipes to saturate most connections.

I limit my active connections to 50/file and overall connections to x*50 and purge the ones that just idle during transfers every 30s to make room for the ones that work at the best speeds. Also, have the tor client on the server itself that directly connects to the ISP and simply add them via the web GUI is years of a local client.

Well other than linux distros the use case is pretty small these days. Anything good has very few quality seeds now and you have to use VPN (which goes back to that issue).

 

[Tech Junky]

Anything good

Well, if you locate yourself in scandanavia chances are you will get higher speeds. For all we know the op is streaming high quality 4k media. For top VPN speeds Nord is the best bet for server quality and bandwidth when not using a router off the shelf. I tested a few different providers awhile back and it was night and day in terms of speed.

 

[drinkingbird]

Well, if you locate yourself in scandanavia chances are you will get higher speeds. For all we know the op is streaming high quality 4k media. For top VPN speeds Nord is the best bet for server quality and bandwidth when not using a router off the shelf. I tested a few different providers awhile back and it was night and day in terms of speed.

True, the ISP "you've been naughty" notices are mostly limited to US and a couple other countries.

I'd still like to see a monthly bandwidth chart to see what he's actually using. But hey, if you have the money, go for it. But you'll either need to run the top of the line asus router with no features enabled (and not even sure if it will hit 5G then) or set yourself up with an x86 mini PC.

Kind of at the point where an L3 switch with NAT support and ACLs (Juniper makes them and Cisco Nexus now supports NAT) is the direction people should be looking. Granted there is no stateful firewall but hide nat combined with well designed ACLs is sufficient for many.

 

[Tech Junky]

@drinkingbird

The only option is x86 at these speeds unless you want to drop 5 figures on a device that connects to the ISP.

Basic x86 at least keeps things competitive with a router off the shelf in terms of cost. However of you want to make it more than just that you can easily do that by building something custom. There's always the option to expand the setup to meet your wants vs buying new gear that is limited to a specific function. L3 switch wouldn't do a VPN easily unless you have a site to site option available outside of a commercial setup. Not even sure the switch CPU would be able to handle the encryption stress.

Either way though there's a million ways to skin the cat when it comes to designing things.

 

[drinkingbird]

@drinkingbird

The only option is x86 at these speeds unless you want to drop 5 figures on a device that connects to the ISP.

Basic x86 at least keeps things competitive with a router off the shelf in terms of cost. However of you want to make it more than just that you can easily do that by building something custom. There's always the option to expand the setup to meet your wants vs buying new gear that is limited to a specific function. L3 switch wouldn't do a VPN easily unless you have a site to site option available outside of a commercial setup. Not even sure the switch CPU would be able to handle the encryption stress.

Either way though there's a million ways to skin the cat when it comes to designing things.

Yeah the L3 switch route wouldn't support VPN or encryption unless you can find a provider that does MACSEC.