A new round of router tests by Ars Technica

[System Error Message]

reading the article closely from what i gather, hardware NAT breaks at the 10K file tests but disabling hardware NAT resolves the issue for many routers.

 

[System Error Message]

Yeah those graphs are generated with NetData. Pretty and modern (vector based).

I find the NetData charts tell interesting stories. Visual comparison makes a huge impact. I posted in the other forum a mini-guide how to read those test charts. Perhaps smart kids and grandpa there all can decipher with a blink of their eyes but not myself. Let me find out and share. Hopefully will be helpful to some readers here.

EDIT:

Three performance metrics the tests try to measure

1. # of concurrent NAT'ed connections

The tests repeat with 10, 100, 1K and 10K concurrent connections. On the result chart, it's respectively represented by the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th green bar (from left to right) of each set of four bars.

2. effect of packet size

"large" size packet, "medium" size packet and "small" size packet. It's represented respectively by the 1st set of four green bars, 2nd set, and 3rd set (from left to right).

3. packet per second

the tests also try to stress the limit of pps. For the "large" size packet, it's designed to test between 90 Kpps - 130 Kpps (from the 1st green bar to the 4th). For the "medium" packet, the tests target between 100 Kpps - 130 Kpps. For the "small" packets, the tests hammer between 160 Kpps - 200 Kpps.

These are rough numbers I got from looking at the reference chart (of the switch).

Nice find, just what i was looking for. I just hope theres one for windows as one of my servers runs windows. On 1 of my servers the integrated realtek NIC doesnt work in opensuse so i hope this has logging.

 

[kvic]

I would also need to know what to test, NAT? IPV6? QoS?

I could get my test bench up and running next week, If you guys could help me by telling me what sort of tests and config it would help.

Initially if you could repeat the Ars experiment, that's a very good start. Let's target AsusWRT since Netgear is taken by Ars already. Also we have a huge Asus audience here. Maybe focus on NAT'ed connections first..of course later on you can expand to more variety in typical SOHO/home use..

 

[System Error Message]

Initially if you could repeat the Ars experiment, that's a very good start. Let's target AsusWRT since Netgear is taken by Ars already. Also we have a huge Asus audience here. Maybe focus on NAT'ed connections first..of course later on you can expand to more variety in typical SOHO/home use..

I do have the AC68U and AC88U i could benchmark but they both run RMerlin firmware. I also have some other random routers i could benchmark too such as BT homehub 5A

I think NAT and ipv6 would be a good start but i dont know how exactly to configure ipv6 in the ISP's sense. Do i use static with ipv6 routing?

 

[kvic]

I do have the AC68U and AC88U i could benchmark but they both run RMerlin firmware. I also have some other random routers i could benchmark too such as BT homehub 5A

I think NAT and ipv6 would be a good start but i dont know how exactly to configure ipv6 in the ISP's sense. Do i use static with ipv6 routing?

Okay, let's go for NAT first, then IPv6. Static IP for both shall be fine I believe. In case you need any technical support on nitty gritty. Feel free to ping me offline for this experiment. *grin* Of general interest issues, surely post here

 

[mackintire]

Ubiquiti Edgerouter firmware 1.8.0 was a feature release, 1.8.5 was a maintenance release, firmware 1.9.0 was a mixed release, firmware 1.9.1 ETA of Dec is expected to be another maintenance release.

Personally I think that the Edgerouter line up will get all new processors late 2017. That and the core feature set not being completed is probably what pushed back the Edgerouter Carrier which had multiple 10Gbe ports.

VFR Lite, MPLS, full BGP tables working reliably and completion of the IDS classification module along with documentation and lots of little issues are still holding the product line back.

Ubiquiti is a company at the breaking/making point. They are working towards diversifying their product line in both directions....consumer and enterprise. Trying to do what they do best, offer something that someone else doesn't.

For example, I deployed this: https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-wall/
It works very well. I'm looking forward to the AC version's release. It powers our Alcatel Lucent POE phones just fine and provides wireless in a small room over original Cat5e cable from a decade ago.

 

[kvic]

@mackintire when you showed up last time (at least from my perspective), not long after ancheng left the firm. This time around stig left a week or so ago...the two UBNT handles I read most.

I don't have insider information but judging from the forum over there, I sense it's been quite a different UBNT in the past month or two.

The old Cavium based models are overdue for a HW refresh. Not so for the ER-X platform models. That's good for all users. So that the new ERL will distinctively outperform the ER-X. UBNT can also unleash the full power in ER-X (not the ER-X-SFP..sorry folks).

At the moment I still prefer EdgeOS to RouterOS but I can see very capable people behind RouterOS...which eventually may drive me over to Mikrotik camp if UBNT doesn't play out well in the coming year.

 

[mackintire]

The good is Ubiquiti's new CEO has good ideas. The bad is ancheng left which really hurt the Edgerouter team. I didn't know about stig. The devs are pushing hard to get the AP side of UNIFI cleaned up before the end of the year. The Edgerouter team has really been set back by ancheng leaving, they need to fill his role for both the edgerouter and USG teams. There's a bit of siloing that is still going on inside Ubiquiti and it needs to be dealt with in 2017. I think the BIG pole for the edgerouter team is Cavium not releasing support binaries for Jessie. They don t want to do deep level coding that takes a lot of effort if that is just going to be obsoleted in a year. So I think we will see 802.11 r k v implemented in the next 9 month, lots of tuning and debug, wizards and bugfixes, but the really transformative stuff will wait for new hardware. Speaking of which, UNIFI 802.11ac draft 2 APs are coming next year.

 

[thiggins]

The good is Ubiquiti's new CEO has good ideas.

Who is the new CEO? Pera is out?

 

[mackintire]

Who is the new CEO? Pera is out?

I mispoke, I was referring to Michael Hurlston whom just joined Ubiquiti from Broadcom. He as hired to offload some duties from Pera.

 

[thiggins]

I mispoke, I was referring to Michael Hurlston whom just joined Ubiquiti from Broadcom. He as hired to offload some duties from Pera.

Thanks. I'm sure Pera would be interested to know he'd been replaced!

 

[thiggins]

ERL suitability for Gigabit Internet posts moved to separate thread. Ars article discussion only here, please.