AC86U vs EdgeRouter

[coxhaus]

I don't think a lot of router software is multi- threaded.

I have a tid bit of info. I run a Cisco layer3 switch which feeds a router on a VLAN with a 30 bit mask. When I was doing DSLreport's speedtests in the past with a 300 speed connection. I would get in the 320s running only a router no layer 3 switch. When I add the layer 3 switch I would get in the 340s with an old Cisco router. When I connected up pfsense to my layer3 switch I would get in 360s with speedtest. I think you are better off keeping your switch out of your router.

I wish I could get gig internet. I think 368 was the highest I ever hit.

 

[speedingcheetah]

I think you are better off keeping your switch out of your router.

Yea. I was concerned at first, that having separate components, vs all in one, would be worse for performance. But, i then decided to upgrade 2 of my systems to 10Gig NICs so that I could transfer files between them much faster. Options are VERY limited when it comes to 10G switches. There are only a few small ones out there, and many large many ports, many $K rack mount 10G switches. So having a separate switch for everything wired became a requirement anyway, so I no longer needed the switch ports on the ER-12, so went with the ER-4.

 

[coxhaus]

With 10gig there are really no router choices. I think it was a good decision to go with the ER-4 over the ER-12 because they seem to have the same CPU.

 

[speedingcheetah]

With 10gig there are really no router choices. I think it was a good decision to go with the ER-4 over the ER-12 because they seem to have the same CPU.

O there are 10G routers...but crazy expensive.
EdgeRouter Infinity - $1,849
UniFi XG Gateway - ~ $2,500

And other Enterprise brand equipment, that are well over $3K.

 

[coxhaus]

Well that's what I meant. Cheap 10gig equipment is just around the corner though. It has made it's way into Cisco's small business line, the affordable Cisco.

 

[speedingcheetah]

You need to look with top with the multicore option enabled (hit the "1" key). There's absolutely no way you are pushing a full Gbit routed performance with 10-15% CPU usage on a single core. The bottleneck in that case is the interrupt handling being pegged to a single CPU core, and not the full CPU itself.

This is while running 3 speedtests on different machines, to/from different test servers, so both upload and download bandwidth maxed out, and i also had several torrents actively downloading and uploading.....all were performing well, far higher result numbers then when i had done the same test back when i had the 86U and got both cores maxed out to 100% and things ground to a halt.

 

[aerokom]

I'd like to chime in here and hopefully quell the spread of misinformation. If you are seeing high CPU utilization on an edgerouter, for normal routing, then you are not taking advantage of hw offloading. Furthermore, even if you did have high CPU on a core, if it's not pegged at 100%, then it's simply doing its job. There is no problem with using a CPU to process things so long as work is not queuing and waiting to be done. In linux, the load number is more useful to judge that than just the CPU%.

I also think that people tend to overhype QOS on home connections...they run a speed test, and see a bufferbloat number, and go 'OH NO, the bloat!!'. Guess what....that is only an issue if your link is saturated, which is what the test does. Normal usage, even high usage, of a connection will not result in this state. If you seed a bunch of torrents, or are constantly uploading to cloud backups, etc, then yes you might encounter the scenario if you don't cap your upload. If you have a 1G symmetrical connection like many of you probably do, it's almost never going to be an issue.

If you run cloud backups, seed torrents, host an FTP, etc, just set reasonable limits in those apps to avoid completely saturating your line. Problem solved without QOS.

I've run all manner of consumer routers from DLink, Netgear, Asus, etc. over the years, with my last one being a Nighthawk with Merlin fw. Since switching to an ER-Lite and now an Edgerouter-4, with 3x Unifi AP AC, I would never go back. The wifi coverage is far superior. Stability is far superior; have never had to reboot a Ubiquity device for any reason other than updates; uptime over a year. No more tinkering with tomato, ddwrt, etc.

I run 10G internally on my local network (TP T1700G-28TQ, which I highly recommend), with a handful of vlans for various things, several servers, many VMs, a few DAS shelves (over 40TB), and host various services, so you could say I'm something of a power user. I plan to stick with Ubiquity for routing + wifi until I see something better on the market at this price point. It doesn't exist yet.

I've been an enterprise network engineer for medium to large companies for the last 15 years, so I have worked on many many platforms, and while I would not classify Ubiquity products as enterprise-grade, for the money their value can't be beat. Pro-sumer would probably fit best.

 

[coxhaus]

This is an old thread more than 6 months old.

I think the Cisco small business routers, switches and wireless are better supported than Ubiquity. Ubiquity seems to have lots of firmware bugs to where you have to tip toe around to make things work so you don't end up with bugs causing problems.

 

[TicoMan]

I'd like to chime in here and hopefully quell the spread of misinformation. If you are seeing high CPU utilization on an edgerouter, for normal routing, then you are not taking advantage of hw offloading. Furthermore, even if you did have high CPU on a core, if it's not pegged at 100%, then it's simply doing its job. There is no problem with using a CPU to process things so long as work is not queuing and waiting to be done. In linux, the load number is more useful to judge that than just the CPU%.

I also think that people tend to overhype QOS on home connections...they run a speed test, and see a bufferbloat number, and go 'OH NO, the bloat!!'. Guess what....that is only an issue if your link is saturated, which is what the test does. Normal usage, even high usage, of a connection will not result in this state. If you seed a bunch of torrents, or are constantly uploading to cloud backups, etc, then yes you might encounter the scenario if you don't cap your upload. If you have a 1G symmetrical connection like many of you probably do, it's almost never going to be an issue.

If you run cloud backups, seed torrents, host an FTP, etc, just set reasonable limits in those apps to avoid completely saturating your line. Problem solved without QOS.

I've run all manner of consumer routers from DLink, Netgear, Asus, etc. over the years, with my last one being a Nighthawk with Merlin fw. Since switching to an ER-Lite and now an Edgerouter-4, with 3x Unifi AP AC, I would never go back. The wifi coverage is far superior. Stability is far superior; have never had to reboot a Ubiquity device for any reason other than updates; uptime over a year. No more tinkering with tomato, ddwrt, etc.

I run 10G internally on my local network (TP T1700G-28TQ, which I highly recommend), with a handful of vlans for various things, several servers, many VMs, a few DAS shelves (over 40TB), and host various services, so you could say I'm something of a power user. I plan to stick with Ubiquity for routing + wifi until I see something better on the market at this price point. It doesn't exist yet.

I've been an enterprise network engineer for medium to large companies for the last 15 years, so I have worked on many many platforms, and while I would not classify Ubiquity products as enterprise-grade, for the money their value can't be beat. Pro-sumer would probably fit best.

I agree to this, I had an Asus RT88u… I had to always be tweaking it. QOS is a POS to be honest, most reliable I could get it was while using FreshJR. Could not keep ping down when loaded with multiple downloads. There were also a lot of other headaches that I will not mention.

Now I run an ER-4 and thing doesn’t break a sweat, it is really set and forget it. Which to be honest that is what Asus fans really hate, they like to be constantly running scripts, modifying settings (cause, again it never performs in a stable way).

I will also never going back to Asus nor another all-in-one router!