Time for a new router. Have A LOT of devices - it needs to handle a lot of bandwidth.

A

ArbY

Limp Gawd
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Oct 6, 2007
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(Just a note: I looked at the router stickied post, and the front page hasn't been updated since 2010, so hopefully it's OK that I made my own thread here)

For a several years I used the ASUS RT-N16 wherever I was living at. Along with an uBee modem, I never had any trouble with my network. However, I only had 2 desktops & 1 laptop plugged in, and 2 smart phones using the wireless at any given time.

Where I've now moved to, things have changed. I had to leave behind the modem and router, and am now plugged into a network that has a lot more devices and a dated router that isn't wireless..

19 total wired devices, and 4+ wireless devices. 8 PCs, smart devices like a BD player, a wireless hotspot, an AT&T Microcell, and other things. Although, there may be 12 devices using bandwidth concurrently on average.The router is a Cisco-Linksys 10/100 router with 4 port switch. Here's a link: (Model No. BEFSR41). The 4 switch ports on the router are occupied by ethernet cables coming from 4 different switches placed in different areas where the consolidated 19 devices plug into at various places.

The Problem: Basically, at times a lot of us living here will lose internet access / our connections would time out -- I would sometimes need to refresh a webpage 5+ times in order for it to load. Stuff like that. Did some troubleshooting, and I'm like 85% sure that the problem is the router. It's 10/100Mbps, and with so many devices, it simply can't handle the bandwidth.

What I really want are some suggestions/recommendations for wireless routers that can best fit my network situation. I need to eliminate the wireless hotspot (which is also very old) and simply have all wireless devices connect directly to the router. I also need it to be able to effortlessly handle the bandwidth of having so many wired computers/devices being used concurrently.

I've done some online research and have found some highly-rated wireless routers (reviews by tech sites, not users like on Amazon or Newegg):

  • Trendnet AC1750 Dual Band Wireless Router (TEW-812DRU) -- Amazon.com URL
    (600 MHz MIPS32 74K superscalar CPU with 64 MB of RAM)
    OR
  • TRENDnet Wireless AC1900 Dual Band Gigabit Router (TEW-818DRU)
    (1GHz ARM Cortex A9 dual-core chip with 128MB of RAM)
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  • Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 Smart WiFi Router R7000 -- Amazon.com URL
    (Dual-core 1GHz processor with 256MB of RAM)
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  • Buffalo AirStation Extreme AC 1750 -- Amazon.com URL
    (800 MHz dual-core processor with 512 MB of RAM)
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  • Asus RT-N66U -- Amazon.com URL
    (Broadcom 4706 @ 600MHz with 256 MB of RAM)

I noted the processor and RAM (but not flash memory) that each router has inside because I'm curious as to how much processing power and memory should be more than enough to meet my needs (gaming & streaming on several devices all at once, and other ordinary online usage & connectivity for the large number of devices here).

To be honest, I'm feeling pretty lost, even with this list I've made. And I know there are other routers out there that compete or surpass what I've found, but I'm just not aware of at this point (more research then, eh?). I don't want to pay too much, maybe between $160 - $180 would be my max. But I also like saving money! So it'd be great if I found a router that came in below my upper budget.

Thoughts?
 
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I refuse to buy any routers from Netgear. The last one I had died about a month out of warranty. Upon disassembling it, I found that the heatsink that was supposed to cool the main chip was being held in place by a single soldered to the board post. The solder had cracked and so it overheated and fried the chip.

Not only that, but the heatsink only covered about 1/2 of the chip. It wasn't even centered, it was hanging off the side of the chip because of the horrible design.

And that was a modem/router that cost about $150. Never again.

That ASUS router is supposed to be good.. but be aware that if you buy any ASUS product, you will pretty much be buying something with absolutely no mfg warranty.
 
25 Mbps down / 10 Mbps up

QoS would be nice. Don't need, but do want.
 
You should replace your old router anyway because even the cheapest router today is likely head and shoulders better.

You list a wireless hotspot as one of your devices? It shouldn't have anything to do with your current network. By default it will act as a router itself. Two routers/DHCP servers/etc on one network would be bad

ArbY said:
25 Mbps down / 10 Mbps up
Click to expand...

I'm leaning towards this (and lack of QOS) being you problem. One device hogging all your bandwidth - especially that low upload - and causing everything else to come to a halt.
 
TP-Link Archer C5 or Archer C7 v2.
The CRS*-series from Mikrotik are known to be buggy at least in the past...
//Danne
 
diizzy said:
TP-Link Archer C5 or Archer C7 v2.
The CRS*-series from Mikrotik are known to be buggy at least in the past...
//Danne
Click to expand...

Ok, BUT there are frequent times where the router's (internal) 100Mbps bandwidth isn't even cutting it right now. Upgrading the router from 10/100 to 10/100/1000 would seem to fix that, though I also need to stress how many devices are actually on the LAN, 19 wired & 5+ wireless. This place is also about 2550 sq. ft.

And then there's BitTorrent. But I'm assuming the CPU would carry that load. What I mean is, the RT-N16 advertised it could support up to 300,000 sessions for extensive P2P clients, and that was then related to the CPU power. If I was allowing over 10,000 global maximum number of (p2p) connections, I'd want that to have as little impact on the network as possible. Most of the network will be on CAT5.

So, I think most of tl;dr info and needs can be summarized now. MOST of these are the conditions that will exist everyday on my LAN. (other than budget)
  • Need a wireless router that has good enough throughput but a strong signal to accommodate 2550 sq. ft.
  • Can accommodate 19 wired devices & 5+ wireless that pull over 100Mbps of bandwidth over the LAN on average.
  • Must be able to support over 10,000 p2p connections (BitTorrent) without bogging down the internal network.
  • Great for gaming. Great for HD streaming, maybe 2.00+ MB/sec over the network for the entire length of a movie.
  • And, a maximum budget that I'd like to have fall in the range of $160 - $180, but coming in below that would be great.
 
1. You have regulations for signal(radio) strength, by one and get a repeater/additonal AP(s) if needed
2. That will be technically impossible given standards using 100mbit @ 24 devices as one port will serve 1000mbit tops and wireless devices barely do 100mbit on their own let alone 5+ at the time time. The wire-speed isn't normally affected by the routers SoC since they have their own switches and you'll need one anyways as they usually only have 5 ports.
3. You're doing it wrong (tm), you'll be fine with ~500-600 (that would be about ~20kbyte/s per client on a full 100mbit connection) global connections and given premature etc about 1000-1200 should hit the router tops.
4. Depends on your connection and wireless coverage more than the router itself
5. OK

The Archer C7 v2 will do fine, there's also OpenWRT support if you want to use that.
//Danne
 
Your problem is likely the small ISP connection you have compared to the amount of data you are trying to shove through it. Your current 10/100 router is about 4 times faster than your ISP pipe. My guess is you have several folks viewing streaming video, others gaming and still others doing torrent sessions. An infinite speed router won't fix a too small ISP pipe.

Recommendations:
1. Keep your edge router separate from your wireless router/AP. I know you specified you wanted a combo unit but so many times the quick fix for wireless issues is to reset the router. Do you really want the entire household yelling or worse every time their streaming movies/gaming sessions blow up because you reset the router? Plus you would be able to put the edge router near the ISP drop while putting the wireless router in the best place to cover the house.
2. Buy a router that has both QOS and the ability to limit bandwidth by service type and time. This will let you limit the bit torrent folks to times when the rest of the herd's usage is lowest.
3. Upgrade the entire network to gigabit. Won't help much with data going to/from the ISP but will give you more bandwidth for the intranet chatter.
4. Replace any wires that have served as pet chew toys or worse.
5. You are in the realm of a commercial data shop and probably need to approach it that way.
 
1. I've had very reliable experience with the ath9k driver and from what I can tell the ath10k driver is pretty good too so I don't think this is really an issue. (OpenWRT).
2. Pretty much anything does this nowdays, however you cannot limit download. If possible just one client as I said before, doing 10k connections is wrong and will just generate useless overhead.
//Danne
 
Your setup wont be demanding on pretty much any modern SOHO WAP/Router combo. But you will need to implement traffic control or QoS of some sort. The biggest issue you have is several devices using a small internet connection.

I'd pick up a fanless gigabit switch and a decent router.

For wireless, you don't plan wireless based on sq ft. You plan it based on obstructions and client counts. Your client count could be handled by low end WAPs. Id guess that for a 2500sq ft house with many walls, you may want 2 WAPs for best performance, depending on where walls, etc are located. If you centrally locate the WAP in the house you may get by. You should check the signal RSSI on your client devices to see what signal level they are receiving.
 
ArbY said:
Ok, BUT there are frequent times where the router's (internal) 100Mbps bandwidth isn't even cutting it right now. Upgrading the router from 10/100 to 10/100/1000 would seem to fix that, though I also need to stress how many devices are actually on the LAN, 19 wired & 5+ wireless. This place is also about 2550 sq. ft.

And then there's BitTorrent. But I'm assuming the CPU would carry that load. What I mean is, the RT-N16 advertised it could support up to 300,000 sessions for extensive P2P clients, and that was then related to the CPU power. If I was allowing over 10,000 global maximum number of (p2p) connections, I'd want that to have as little impact on the network as possible. Most of the network will be on CAT5.

So, I think most of tl;dr info and needs can be summarized now. MOST of these are the conditions that will exist everyday on my LAN. (other than budget)
  • Need a wireless router that has good enough throughput but a strong signal to accommodate 2550 sq. ft.
  • Can accommodate 19 wired devices & 5+ wireless that pull over 100Mbps of bandwidth over the LAN on average.
  • Must be able to support over 10,000 p2p connections (BitTorrent) without bogging down the internal network.
  • Great for gaming. Great for HD streaming, maybe 2.00+ MB/sec over the network for the entire length of a movie.
  • And, a maximum budget that I'd like to have fall in the range of $160 - $180, but coming in below that would be great.
Click to expand...
  • The problem isn't as much as purchasing a router that can cover 2500 sf. The problem is having client devices that can communicate BACK to the router through walls over that distance.
  • Bittorrent is one thing that will KILL your connection. Solving this requires judicial use of QOS, like sticking bitTorrent in the lowest QOS bucket and limiting it to a % of your total internet.
  • Supporting multiple streaming devices well is another feature that dependant on your QOS.
  • The ASUS RT-N66U with Merlin firmware will work fine....assuming you program your QOS to meet your specific needs.
    Now if you have a couple of internet pigs or two in the houise....you might have to add additional bandwidth controls.
  • You'll also need a descent network switch as well.
 
Any kind of switch will do, it's not going to be a difference in performance. Not sure what you mean by that, or at least "need".
That said, you have many different algorithms for QoS (bandwidth shaping) so that might be something worth looking up.
//Danne
 
This is slightly above my budget, but what are your thoughts on the Linksys WRT1900AC?

Amazon.com URL
BusinessWire (Release day annoucement with more details & specs)

A few specs:
  • Release date: April 10, 2014
  • CPU: Dual-core 1.2GHz ARM processor -- MV78230-B0 (ARMADA XP)
  • Memory: 256MB of DDR3 RAM
  • Flash memory: 128MB
  • MSRP: $279.00
  • Current price: $199.99 (on Amazon & at Best Buy)
  • Firmware: Last updated on 07/08/2014 to Ver.1.1.8.161917
  • Competitors:
    - - Wireless throughput: On the 5GHz band in 802.11n-only mode, the wireless throughput comes in as the slowest (~111Mbps) vs. the Netgear Nighthawk (~121Mbps) & Asus RT-AC66U (~164Mbps). Turning the 2.4GHz band into N-Only mode, it bests both the Netgear and the ASUS. (78Mbps vs 69Mbps vs 65Mbps).
    - - Wireless range: The WRT1900AC comes out on top in range vs performance. It maintained a higher throughput at the furthest range tested against the Nighthawk and the RT-AC66U.
    - - Source for comparisons PCMag.com Review
  • OpenWRT Support? Promised by Linksys, but none as of today. More info:
    "Wireless driver was announced to stay closed source on 30th of July. It'll likely consist of pre-built closed source part (so called "library") and probably some open source file calling kernel APIs." - openwrt.org
    Click to expand...
    It seems as though Marvell is not going to release the source code for the wireless driver for the radio in the Linksys WRT1900AC router any time soon." (Posted July 31, 2014, forum user on dslreports.com)
    Click to expand...
 
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ArbY said:
25 Mbps down / 10 Mbps up

QoS would be nice. Don't need, but do want.
Click to expand...


OP does not understand, what he does not understand. :rolleyes:


You NEED QOS. You WANT good QOS or easy to configure QOS.

What Dizzy is trying to say and may not know is: Windows clients often open as many connections as possible, usually resulting in Killing (heavily loading) the Router's CPU.

Almost every bittorrent client I know of has buried in it's configuration the ability to limit the number of open connections to (whatever). You should configure your clients to have somewhere between 100-500 connections. Most of these better router's can handle uploads of 35,000 connections BUT they will not run smoothly or quickly while doing so.

So properly configuring your equipment is the most important part. If you don't have that level of control over the machine's on your network....THEN you need to address this problem in the QOS. :rolleyes: which brings me back to where I started with this post.
 
diizzy said:
Any kind of switch will do, it's not going to be a difference in performance. Not sure what you mean by that, or at least "need".
That said, you have many different algorithms for QoS (bandwidth shaping) so that might be something worth looking up.
//Danne
Click to expand...

Kinda, Yes, any kind of cheap gigabit switch will get you up and running and not hold you back....

But if you want more control over your network traffic and can not get the required granularity you want at the router end... if you have a switch capable of bandwidth management you can implement some level of traffic control at the switch level. That extra feature will cost you $$ though.
 
@ ArbY
Firstly, you want some kind of bandwidth shaping. Keep in mind that this will only apply on upload since that's the only end you can control. I know that OpenWRT uses CoDeL which supposedly is really good but I haven't tried it myself. I do however know that HFSC works really well but I doubt that matters in your case. I have _no_ idea what router <insert name here> uses in their closed firmware.

That said, depending on how much you care/want to spend time on this OpenWRT compatibility might be worth considering. As I said before, raw performance isn't an issue on that kind of connection speed and the WRT1900AC would be a waste of money. You're better off grabbing a lets say TP-Link TL-WDR4900 (preferably if it's available in your region) or an Archer C5 / C7 v2 and upgrade if needed after 4+ years or so.

@ Mackintire
I'm not sure here what you're talking about to be honest.
No operating system blindly creates connections, that's up to the software and possibly firewall to handle. What I'm trying to say is that 10k connections is not a sane setting ever or for that matter a reasonable amount of active sessions. 500-600 connections will saturate a 100mbit connection unless you have really slow peers, if that's the case just accept it. You will do about 1k in the end but still much less than 10k. Doing more than that will just add overhead and not really help in terms of speed at all. Even if you do "fix" this QoS will help anyway as all your clients will upload data and the router uses fifo by default and treating all data equally.

At least in a home/small network there's no point in throttling per port unless you want to limit the overall speed which still is a bit pointless on these kinds of networks. That said, due to how the networking protocols works (such as TCP) they will throttle by themselves when congestion / timeouts occur at some node so this is not really an issue unless you're dealing with a lot of traffic flooding a device and it can't process all the data.
//Danne
 
diizzy said:
@ ArbY
Firstly, you want some kind of bandwidth shaping. Keep in mind that this will only apply on upload since that's the only end you can control. I know that OpenWRT uses CoDeL which supposedly is really good but I haven't tried it myself. I do however know that HFSC works really well but I doubt that matters in your case. I have _no_ idea what router <insert name here> uses in their closed firmware.

That said, depending on how much you care/want to spend time on this OpenWRT compatibility might be worth considering. As I said before, raw performance isn't an issue on that kind of connection speed and the WRT1900AC would be a waste of money. You're better off grabbing a lets say TP-Link TL-WDR4900 (preferably if it's available in your region) or an Archer C5 / C7 v2 and upgrade if needed after 4+ years or so.

@ Mackintire


At least in a home/small network there's no point in throttling per port unless you want to limit the overall speed which still is a bit pointless on these kinds of networks. That said, due to how the networking protocols works (such as TCP) they will throttle by themselves when congestion / timeouts occur at some node so this is not really an issue unless you're dealing with a lot of traffic flooding a device and it can't process all the data.
//Danne
Click to expand...



I use fq_codel on my ERL. It works well for my needs but there's a bug that limits it's ability to around 80Mbps of throughput total.

That last part is usually what I see when a windows user starts torrenting. The CPU on the router goes to 100% and everyone ends up with excessive latency.
 
No, what you're seeing is upload being overloaded causing congestion and slow requests/replies including acks, dns etc.
//Danne
 
@ ArbY
It sounds like you moved into a frat house or one of it's annex buildings. Most fraternity networks are wrecked by people only half knowing what they needs and by prolific BitTorrent and Netflix streaming. You guys should call in an IT group to help, otherwise you will spend a lot more time doing troubleshooting with us on the board.

You can clean up your network using a UBNT EdgeRouter Lite or POE-5 and replace the wireless with some UniFi APs. If you need additional wired ports, run some hardwires back to only a few switches. I'd suggest cutting down on un-needed equipment. For the firewall configuration, how we configure most greek houses is to only allow DNS, HTTP, HTTPS outgoing with guaranteed bandwidth to their school Blackboard site. While it's not hard to re-direct BitTorrent to port 80 or 443, most people don't know how to do it so they can't. It doesn't stop Netflix from destroying the bandwidth available, but guaranteed bandwidth on the schools Blackboard helps let people study.
 
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