Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

Hello all!

Some of you might have seen my previous thread about my wonderful call with VM support regarding a SuperHub replacement. For those that didn't, the rep wouldn't listen to me and I had to end the call due to getting nowhere. It was suggested I get a proper router, so I'd like your suggestions please. :)

I was looking at the Asus RT-N66U which seems pretty good, though I'm not sure how recent it is. Budget is around £100 max, I'd also like it to be energy efficient to compensate for the SuperHub's crap power consumption.

Thanks!

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

A very good router, which I have.

There are newer models, but for home use it should more than meet your needs.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

you can't go wrong with the rt-n66u it hits the nails on the head for being bang on the £100 mark as well. That being said, there are better routers out there such as the AC variant and for the sake of £20 you might want to consider it given the level of future proofing it will provide.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

n66u can only handle 200Mbps with its hardware acceleration ctf mode enabled - turning on QOS turns off this mode then the router will be a limiting factor in your speedtests.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

that is what I was just going to say, I wasn't sure if he was talking about wireless or wan to lan. Just to keep things fair and balanced, the wan to lan throughput is 730mbits which will be more than enough for the next 3 or 4 years I imagine.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

I know this appears in reviews, but report from experience with this router (I have 2!) with VM SHUB1. I can confirm it is great with VM 100Mb/s service, but limitations seen with next speed double.

With my normal config with Tomato plus superhub in modem mode the maximum wired wan to lan was 160Mb/s, 50Mb/s less than direct to modem. WAN to wireless was less, but similar to wired speeds if wireless to second router wired to first - suggesting CPU limit hit. With Asuswrt-merlin can speedtest to limits of modem wired when ctf enabled, which seems fine wouldn't have to even thibnk about QOS if VM upped the upstream!

I never understand this class of router marketed as N900. Max wireless connect speed is 450Mb/s (3 streams 3 antennae), which seems to be capable of 150Mb/s data transfer! Perhaps full duplex wired Ethernet should be marketed as 2000Mb/s since it is so much better!

Never measured power consumption - this router does run hot, has a big internal heat sink no fans, mine is wall mounted which I think is ideal for heat dissipation, the PSU is 18V and there are a number of internal switch-mode 3.3V convertors, so should be energy efficient?

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

Router manufacturers these days like to add up the cumulative speeds of all the separate wireless interfaces (and sometimes inflate them further) to quote a number for marketing. Thus "N900" can mean any combination of wireless networks that add up to a link rate of 900Mbps total, such as 450Mbps on 2.4Ghz plus 450Mbps on 5Ghz in this case, or 300+300+300 or 600+300, etc.

Course you'll never hit anything close to that total speed - many router CPUs are too slow to even max out a single 450Mbps network let alone two simultaneously. Which make more recent claims of ludicrous speeds like AC3200 even more hilarious.

If you used the same logic on ethernet chances are your router would be marketed with a rating something like AB8000.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

It is pretty tiresome.

I kinda get the thing about 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios and adding them up, but running 2 5GHz radios and adding that on?

If they're going to do this they really should advertise the maximum throughput per interface, so xxxMb at 2.4GHz and xxxMb per 5GHz radio.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

Stop right there. There's your problem. Tomato on this router does not support hardware acceleration. That's why you have performance issues - it's Tomato's fault, not the router.

If you need more features than the (Already decent) stock Asus Firmware, try the Merlin builds.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

Yes, but you can only use the hardware acceleration with QOS (and various other features) turned off even in the Asus/merlin software - fortunately don't seem to need QOS - which enables the fast speedtests for bragging purposes.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

This is correct, but the point remains that the poor performance you're seeing on that router is because you're using a non-standard firmware that isn't completely compatible with it. Not a fault of the router.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

Well, that's arguable. If firmware specifically designed for a router can't use all it's features because the manufacturer has locked it down and refuses to allow/license access to those features then that's entirely the fault of the router. Also if it cannot use HWNAT while other features are on even with stock firmware that's either shoddy programming or a hardware limitation, again both being the fault of the router.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

I don't know why Tomato can't use the hardware acceleration, so I can't comment on it.

However, while I agree that the router can be limited in performance if you use certain features of it, I wouldn't say that's particularly out of the norm for most electronics out there. From my experience, the QoS on the device isn't worth the performance penalty anyway (I've never found it to be particularly good).

Care to recommend another router that will do 700Mbit+ WAN-to-LAN with QoS and in the same rough price range as the Asus?

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

There are some flavours of Tomato that can use Broadcom ctf. Just need the right kernel patches to go with the switch and wifi drivers and load the kernel module. BUT little interest since it is compatible with features such IP accounting, web monitoring, custom port-forwards as well as QOS. It is also possible that the module is designed to improve speedtest benchmarks - but has little effect in real use with multiple clients/multiple connections.

IMHO QOS essential when sharing a limited internet service between many users, but does need careful tuning and Tomato has many tables/ pie charts to assist by classifying traffic - you want to prioritize human requested web pages/ game commands and limit background p2p like traffic. If a restricted upstream is not managed, it is not possible to make full use of the downstream. If only a few considerate users not maxing out the connection QOS not needed.

The multi-core ARM routers should be many times faster than the MIPS N66U, and I have no doubt will be the standard in future. I still favour Asus since they are so active with firmware upgrades and release of GPL source-codes (the 5-year old RT-N16 has just had a new beta firmware released!).

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

The hardware, stack, and driver design for hardware-accelerated NAT on consumer devices is still messy and dirty and proprietary. HW NAT on consumer routers is still at around 1.5th gen where it's slightly better than the original first-gen implementations which broke everything if you turned it on (firewall, port forwarding, QoS) but only barely. This particular limitation purely as a result of bad design.

I wouldn't say such limitations are the norm. You don't expect your mobile phone's web browser to stop working if you switch on 4G. You don't expect your MP3 player to stop playing certain files if you turn on the equalizer. You don't expect your antivirus to only work if you turn off the firewall. You don't expect half your fridge to stop working if you turn on the freezer.


Depends entirely on the situation. If you have a high bandwidth environment that isn't regularly bottlenecked or bandwidth use is already well constrained, you've no need for QoS. I've never needed QoS when using a symmetric gigabit internet connection, but one person uploading Youtube videos on a throttled VM upload is enough to slow everyone else's web to a crawl.

I'm certain some products that have the hardware capabilities exist but I'm not aware of ones that actually expose that combination aside from high-end gear or custom x86 builds.

That said, there are still better routers for less money. My personal preference is for the Archer C7, which does 1320Mbps WAN-to-LAN and depending where you look beats the AC66U's wireless performance for £50 less.

---------- Post added at 16:52 ---------- Previous post was at 16:46 ----------

Indeed, as mentioned latest-gen hardware should be capable of those speeds even with pure software NAT. My personal experience shows with a fully flexible software stack you can get well over 200Mbps with a single-core 400Mhz MIPS SoC so 1.2Ghz dual-core ARM chips should have no problem.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

On Gigabit Ethernet? There is a good reason even clean room lab tests cannot exceed 1024!

The "TP-LINK AC1750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (Archer C7)" does rank highly though I agree

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/view

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

It's not that it causes things to stop working, just that using certain features impacts the performance of other areas - again, this is normal for a lot of stuff. Your examples are a little different, it's more like you wouldn't expect 18+ hours battery on your phone while watching HD media, but standby is more realistic.

I'll have to look into this, it sounds impressive.

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

I'm not sure what 1024 has to do with anything. The maximum full-duplex throughput on gigabit ethernet is nominally 2000Mbps. Half duplex, which shouldn't exist on gigabit, is nominally 1000Mbps.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wirel...owall=&start=4

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2015/04/51.jpg

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

I stand corrected, once you hit the limit in one direction you have to look at simultaneous up and down to rank the CPU throughput. TP-Link do seem to be helping keep all the prices down, there are several newer cheap new routers in the current table

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools...76-total-simul

GPL source-code seems to be available - any 3rd party firmwares - I see OpenWRT ...?

Re: Best Router / Hub combo for 2015
 

Yes indeed, that's the main reason I use TP-Link routers, including the C7. Atheros SoCs = good open-source and 3rd party support. That said, it's a fairly slow CPU, and the wireless is CPU limited to about 800-900Mbps.