[TriLUG] Router Recommendations

[Michael Marley via TriLUG]

If a router has a gigabit switch, all that means is that it can handle
gigabit traffic from one LAN port to another.  In order to route traffic
to and from the Internet in LEDE, that traffic must go through the
router's CPU and not just the switch.  The CPU then becomes the
bottleneck.  The stock firmwares for these routers usually support
hardware-accelerated NAT, which allows the switch to handle much of this
load, increasing performance in most cases.  This is why if you want to
be able to route between LAN and the Internet at 1Gbps on LEDE, you need
a fairly powerful CPU.  As far as specific devices, I would still
recommend asking the #lede-dev channel on Freenode.  People there have
much more experience with different models than I do. 

Michael 

On 2017-06-30 11:58, Thomas Delrue wrote:

> On 06/30/2017 11:26 AM, Michael Marley wrote: 
> 
>> That only has a 680mHz MIPS processor, so I highly doubt it can handle
>> gigabit routing on LEDE.  It probably won't do much better than 200Mbps
>> or so if even that.  For gigabit, you would need one of the newer ramips
>> devices (like Dlink DIR-860), a new ARM device (Linksys WRT1x00AC), or
>> an x86_64 processor.  (Obviously, check LEDE's compatibility with
>> specific hardware revisions before you buy anything, I don't keep up
>> with this stuff precisely.)
> 
> Why would the device not be able to handle Gigabit routing if it is a
> Gigabit (4 lan gigabit ports + 1 gigabit wan port) device? (Again,
> hardware is not my expertise)
> Is this something specific to LEDE or is it a flaw in the device (i.e.
> you have gigabit ports but are unable to use them as gigabit)?
> 
> I think I'll need some more information.
> 
> Does that bring me back to my original question? Which gigabit router
> (see above) would satisfy my requirements?
> 
> On 2017-06-30 11:20, Thomas Delrue wrote:
> 
> On 06/29/2017 06:52 PM, Michael Marley via TriLUG wrote: 
> 
> Instead of OpenWRT, you might want to look at the LEDE project
> (https://lede-project.org/), a fork of OpenWRT.  Most of the development
> activity now occurs on the fork, leaving the original OpenWRT project
> fairly stagnant.  It hasn't had a stable release in almost 2 years now
> and has multiple components with known security vulnerabilities.
> 
> As far as gigabit routing, only a few LEDE/OpenWRT-supported devices are
> capable of such speeds considering as it doesn't support any kind of
> hardware NAT.  It might be a good idea to ask on the #lede-dev IRC
> channel on Freenode to see which devices can do gigabit routing these days. 
> Thanks for the information!
> I think I'll go with this guy
> (https://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-AirStation-HighPower-Wireless-WZR-600DHP/dp/B0096239G0
> - USD 80 is very reasonable) and put LEDE on it.
> 
> Thanks to Michael Marley for pointing out that OpenWRT hasn't had a
> release in 15-ish months. I did not know that OpenWRT was inactive.
> 
> It looks like the LEDE development is much more active (last release was
> 10 days ago or so with latest commits just a couple of hours ago).
> LEDE it is then :D
> 
> Thanks
> 
> On 6/29/17 6:41 PM, Thomas Delrue via TriLUG wrote: 
> I am in the market for a new home router (wired & wifi) but hardware is
> not really my area of expertise so that's why I'm reaching out to you guys.
> 
> Given the following requirements, which routers would you recommend?
> - WAN port capable of handling 1 Gbps
> - 4 (or ideally more) LAN ports capable of handling 1 Gbps
> - WiFi capability (b/g/n/... ? What am I looking for here?)
> - Ability to put OpenWRT on it to configure it to my heart's content
> 
> I'm pretty serious about putting OpenWRT on it so that's a hard requirement.
> 
> I've looked at https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start but again, hardware is
> not my area of expertise and so these are just names to me, nothing more.
> Have any of you done something similar? With which devices and what was
> your experience?
> 
> What is the price range I'm looking at? Are we talking 100-to-200 USD or
> more?