choose a new router

[System Error Message]

When i said that the edgerouter dual core MIPS is faster i said in NAT, not encryption. Please refer to what the originator of the post wanted and some of my other posts. It is not an apples to apples comparison. MIPS would beat ARM in simpler things and the edgerouter dual core MIPS simply has better packet processing hardware acceleration than broadcom ARM. Its just the ARM A9 has more FLOPS than MIPS so it does math a lot faster which translates to faster VPN.

For LAN to LAN (Switching) that depends on the switch chip not the CPU. The switch chip decides which packets go to CPU and which dont.

WLAN to WLAN does not use the CPU either but WLAN to LAN uses the CPU because wireless arent connected to the switch chip. Even with an SoC the wifi is connected through the CPU instead of directly to the switch chip. wired switching doesnt support wireless switching properly due to their difference in networking architecture.

 

[jegesq]

To Hggomes and Merlin:

BTW, I said in my original post that the 66U was slightly slower than the 68U/R/P, and that the 68P was slightly faster than the 68U. And I didn't just pull that statement out of my butt either.

But clearly, Merlin and Hggomes pretty vehemently disagree with my use of the word "slightly". And based on Hggomes' benchmarks (as translated and formatted by Merlin), they have the data to back it up, I suppose.

But I guess I must have just been misreading Tim Higgins review of the AC68U and Netgear 7000 (both of which use the BCM4709 processors), which Tim Higgins was benchmarking when they were first released, and comparing with the AC66U, (see this link) in which review he wrote the following:

AC1900 is mainly a marketing ploy to make you feel like you are getting something extra for the higher price you'll pay. And extra you will pay because you'll need two of whatever you buy to get that magic 600 Mbps link rate. But your chances of getting 600 Mbps are even lower due to other factors I'll cover in another article that will post in the next day or so.

Even with these preliminary results, I don't recommend buying either of these products if you already have an AC router. At $200 or more, you're paying at least $40 more than you have to for an AC1750 class router that, for all practical purposes, is going to be just as good.

But if you simply must have one, I'd have to say the NETGEAR is the better choice. But that's mainly because its (slightly) faster processor has more power to handle heavier simultaneous routing, wireless and storage loads, with significantly higher storage performance being the real benefit for your $200.

Now as I read that last paragraph, his use of the term "slightly faster processor" couldn't possibly have been a comparison description of the processor used in the Netgear as compared with the processor used in the AC68U, because they both use the same identical processor.

To me, it's quite obvious that Tim Higgins was referring to the "slightly faster" processor used in the Netgear and AC68U, and comparing its speed to the processor used in the AC66U.

So my use of the word "slightly" in relation to the faster and slower characteristics of the AC68 vs. AC66 wasn't just something I made up.

But I guess Tim's review must have just been wrong, and the benchmarks above prove it....it's not a "slightly faster" processor used in the 68U than in the AC66U.....no, it's significantly faster. I'm such an idiot [sound of palm slapping face].

 

[Lethasniper007]

so there saying the night hawk ac1900 is better and faster then the asus rt- ac68u/r And performs better even for gaming do to better speed and dual core processor

 

[RMerlin]

To Hggomes and Merlin:

BTW, I said in my original post that the 66U was slightly slower than the 68U/R/P, and that the 68P was slightly faster than the 68U. And I didn't just pull that statement out of my butt either.

But clearly, Merlin and Hggomes pretty vehemently disagree with my use of the word "slightly". And based on Hggomes' benchmarks (as translated and formatted by Merlin), they have the data to back it up, I suppose.

But I guess I must have just been misreading Tim Higgins review of the AC68U and Netgear 7000 (both of which use the BCM4709 processors), which Tim Higgins was benchmarking when they were first released, and comparing with the AC66U, (see this link) in which review he wrote the following:



Now as I read that last paragraph, his use of the term "slightly faster processor" couldn't possibly have been a comparison description of the processor used in the Netgear as compared with the processor used in the AC68U, because they both use the same identical processor.

To me, it's quite obvious that Tim Higgins was referring to the "slightly faster" processor used in the Netgear and AC68U, and comparing its speed to the processor used in the AC66U.

So my use of the word "slightly" in relation to the faster and slower characteristics of the AC68 vs. AC66 wasn't just something I made up.

But I guess Tim's review must have just been wrong, and the benchmarks above prove it....it's not a "slightly faster" processor used in the 68U than in the AC66U.....no, it's significantly faster. I'm such an idiot [sound of palm slapping face].

Tim's comment was in reference to the BCM4709 (1 GHz) used in the R7000 versus the BCM4708 (800 MHz) used in the RT-AC68U. His review was correct on this - the R7000 and AC68U don't use the same processor. The Netgear one is indeed slightly faster.

 

[huotg01]

5 days ago:

Jheroen
Question choose a new router
hi all,
i currently have a asus rt n 66 u working but can sell the thing, what asus router is a good follower of the rt n 66 u?
i am looking for better performance over all; can anyone guide me?
i did read several issues with new asus routers, i won't buy the new 4 stream router because it's price is way to high (€ 220 )
i hope anyone can guide me
also question: i now have the rt n 66 u version B1, is there also another build?

2 days ago:

@Jheroen If you don't have any problem with the n66u and it responds to your need, why would you change ? IF you want to change your router, many opinions expressed here goes for the ac68u (or the ac56u). Most have been said.

I have the impression here we all go round in circles, no ?

Today: same feeling...

 

[Jheroen]

And here it is, the AC68U is online

atm installed with the asus stock FW, now having to find out if Merlin's FW brings changes we can use, anyone?

Thanks all for your help!

 

[huotg01]

And here it is, the AC68U is online

atm installed with the asus stock FW, now having to find out if Merlin's FW brings changes we can use, anyone?
Thanks all for your help!

Good move Jheroen. For information about additional features in RMerlin: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=7846

 

[hggomes]

Yes, it's certainly more helpful when translated into English. Thank you for that. Sorry but I don't speak Portuguese....

I didn't realized that OpenSSL benchmark results were "Portuguese" for you, in fact it's a very common known application but sometimes i forgot that eventually some people could not understand it at first sight.

I think RMerlin has already said it all, thanks for helping in here

Btw RMerlin:

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=161309&postcount=39

Your comparation had a small "typo", you have compared MIPS router 660MHZ (overclocked) results with ARM router at 800MHZ (stock).

These are the correct results on N66U (600MHZ) stock speeds:

The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-128 cbc 9986.04k 10690.36k 10908.33k 11003.72k 11000.29k

 

[jegesq]

Tim's comment was in reference to the BCM4709 (1 GHz) used in the R7000 versus the BCM4708 (800 MHz) used in the RT-AC68U. His review was correct on this - the R7000 and AC68U don't use the same processor. The Netgear one is indeed slightly faster.

Yes, I see that now...different CPU's and different switches. Broadcom BCM4709A vs. Broadcom BCM4708A. Thanks.

But still a question lingers: How do you square Tim's overall conclusion that
he didn't and couldn't recommend buying either of the AC1900 routers if you already have an AC1750 (e.g., AC66U)? As he wrote in the penultimate paragraph: "At $200 or more, you're paying at least $40 more than you have to for an AC1750 class router that, for all practical purposes, is going to be just as good.

Just one man's opinion? Hey we're all entitled to our opinions, right?

Or are there, as System Error Message suggests, other benchmarking tests and other uses in which the differences between the two types of chips wouldn't be as great as they apparently are when running OpenSSL cryptographic implementations? As I vaguely understand it (and by no means do I claim to really know this stuff) OpenSSL benchmarks mostly measure themselves. It's my understanding that if you were to actually hash a lot of input bytes, e.g. one or two very big files, you would have to take into account the time needed to move the data around, in particular reading it from disk or network, but that the OpenSSL benchmark, by construction, only plays entirely within the CPU L1 cache, making it often an unrealistic benchmark for real world implementations.

I just find it pretty odd that when we're comparing a 600MHZ CPU with an 800MHZ CPU, it's not ok to describe the latter as "slightly" faster, but when we're talking about comparing an 800MHZ CPU with a 1000MHZ CPU the words "slightly faster" are perfectly acceptable. That is all.

 

[cHarley]

I just find it pretty odd that when we're comparing a 600MHZ CPU with an 800MHZ CPU, it's not ok to describe the latter as "slightly" faster, but when we're talking about comparing an 800MHZ CPU with a 1000MHZ CPU the words "slightly faster" are perfectly acceptable. That is all.

Maybe just a personal opinion of what "slightly" means.
600 to 800 is a 33% increase
800 to 1000 is only a 25% increase.

 

[jegesq]

Maybe just a personal opinion of what "slightly" means.
600 to 800 is a 33% increase
800 to 1000 is only a 25% increase.

LOL. Yeah.

 

[hggomes]

You are comparing different things:

1. 600 to 800MHZ on different archs. (huge difference)
2. 800 to 1ghz on same arch. (slightly difference)

1 and 2 are two completly different scenarios, as i mention earlier MIPS vs ARM clock to clock speeds are complety different, ARM is alot faster.

Downclock any ARM router (N18U, AC56U, AC68U, AC87U, AC3200U) CPU to 600MHZ and compare it with the 600MHZ on MIPS router (N66U, AC66U) and you will have your answer, you will get double performance at the same frequency.

For a better compreension please see the benchmarks results on those 2 archs:

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=160989&postcount=34

You will see that with only 400MHZ (overclocking) on ARM you will get 21000 score more and with 660MHZ on MIPS, you will get only almost half of that score.

 

[RMerlin]

But still a question lingers: How do you square Tim's overall conclusion that
he didn't and couldn't recommend buying either of the AC1900 routers if you already have an AC1750 (e.g., AC66U)? As he wrote in the penultimate paragraph: "At $200 or more, you're paying at least $40 more than you have to for an AC1750 class router that, for all practical purposes, is going to be just as good.

Just one man's opinion? Hey we're all entitled to our opinions, right?

It's always a matter of what your specific needs are. If all you do is wifi, then yes, at the time Tim wrote it, there was no point in buying an RT-AC68U over an RT-AC66U. Wireless-wise, you won't see any difference.

If you use OpenVPN, disk sharing over USB, or want the new Adaptive QoS and AiProtection technologies (which weren't available at the time the review was written), then the 40$ extra can easily be justified.

I just find it pretty odd that when we're comparing a 600MHZ CPU with an 800MHZ CPU, it's not ok to describe the latter as "slightly" faster, but when we're talking about comparing an 800MHZ CPU with a 1000MHZ CPU the words "slightly faster" are perfectly acceptable. That is all.

Megahertz are not an indicator of speed, they are an indicator of a clock rate. It means nothing if you are comparing different architectures. A 1 GHz mobile Intel Core CPU is faster than a 1 GHz ARM or MIPS CPU, for instance. The difference between a 800 MHz and a 1 GHz ARM CPU is linear (25% faster), but the difference between a 600 MHz MIPS and 800 MHz ARM CPU is 250% faster.

Personally, I consider 25% to be "slightly faster", but 250% to be "much faster". The first one might barely be visible unless running a benchmark tool. The second one can humanly be perceived.

 

[System Error Message]

RMerlin, even within the same architectures there are different architectures. There are different MIPS, ARMs and even x86s. It may be better to mention their variants sometimes.

the ARM Cortex A15 can be faster than intel iseries clock per clock and core per core depending on what you were doing. For example the IBM cell (like in the PS3) is faster than the 1st gen intel iseries for FLOPS and doubles and the ARM A15 may be as well. Some have designed credit card sized board with ARM CPUs with the compute power similar to a GPU so the different between architectures isnt a simple comparison but it will still lose out to x86 CPUs for logic based operations.

When comparing architectures it is better to state what they are faster at. There are a few things that doesnt follow those rules called hardware accelerators. Aside from those you have the catogaries of logic, math, data type operations and memory access latency. For routing logic and memory access are important. The only way to actually tell how fast it is is by reading their specsheet on their assembly instructions which tell you special conditions, the latency of each instruction(like how many cycles to execute and add the changes), the complexity of the instructions available and the pipeline.

I tell this from experience as this is what i do. For the fun of it check out packet shader. It is a GPU based router designed to run on GPUs.

 

[jegesq]

. . . the ARM Cortex A15 can be faster than intel iseries clock per clock and core per core depending on what you were doing. For example the IBM cell (like in the PS3) is faster than the 1st gen intel iseries for FLOPS and doubles and the ARM A15 may be as well. Some have designed credit card sized board with ARM CPUs with the compute power similar to a GPU so the different between architectures isnt a simple comparison but it will still lose out to x86 CPUs for logic based operations.

When comparing architectures it is better to state what they are faster at. There are a few things that doesnt follow those rules called hardware accelerators. Aside from those you have the catogaries of logic, math, data type operations and memory access latency. For routing logic and memory access are important. The only way to actually tell how fast it is is by reading their specsheet on their assembly instructions which tell you special conditions, the latency of each instruction(like how many cycles to execute and add the changes), the complexity of the instructions available and the pipeline.

I tell this from experience as this is what i do. For the fun of it check out packet shader. It is a GPU based router designed to run on GPUs.

Not to get too far off topic, but I found an interesting PDF describing the Packet Shader Router here. Pretty unbelievable stuff. I would never have thought of using a GPU as a router. As proof of concept it's great stuff, but even at 2010 dollars, $7,000 (which is what it cost the authors to set up their's) is a bit steep, and it's too expensive for me to get into as a hobby. SEM, have you set up and run such a GPU router? Just curious....

 

[Jheroen]

Don't know if i can use this thread for the question i have now, i thought that merlins fw also has an option to increase the wifi by extending the strength of the wifi radios is that correct?
I read in several topics about the latest stock fws that lowered the (total) output of the radios due to all kind of regulations about wifi signals and their maximum output, can anyone point me to the right direction?

 

[Lethasniper007]

Question guys is the asus rt ac56u a dual core router? Would this router be good for gaming and how does it perform with 4 or more clients online? what's the from ac56u or the ac56r. Now if I had to choose from ac66u and ac56u which one? There are 2 Xbox consoles for online gaming and 2 laptops online browsing/ facebook/ YouTube

 

[System Error Message]

Not to get too far off topic, but I found an interesting PDF describing the Packet Shader Router here. Pretty unbelievable stuff. I would never have thought of using a GPU as a router. As proof of concept it's great stuff, but even at 2010 dollars, $7,000 (which is what it cost the authors to set up their's) is a bit steep, and it's too expensive for me to get into as a hobby. SEM, have you set up and run such a GPU router? Just curious....

I havent set up a GPU based router. It costed them $7000 because they used dual xeons with ECC ram and 10Gb/s ports but you can make your own for many times cheaper skipping the fancy stuff. My dual xeons, ECC ram and GPUs cost me a lot less than that lol. It would be nice to see nvidia ARM routers that are GPU accelerated but that project never went further unfortunately.

Both my router and switch have some 10Gb/s ports but it would just be cheaper for me to combine a bunch of gigabit ports and keep the router and switch connected via 10Gb/s ports.

I am looking at making something like packet shader with openCL instead. This is useful for both intel and AMD that have integrated openCL capable GPUs in them and even ARM CPUs that include a GPU in them too.

 

[Gravityz]

it depends on the technology refresh with routers.

The N standard was hot a couple of years ago, now it is the AC standard.

so yes if you are on N for a couple of years the moving to AC makes sense.

if you just bought a N router you are probably going to switch again within 2 years from now because most new clients(ipad, iphone, notebooks) talk AC now

Yes, different network environments, different opinions.

But you are correct that if you want to stick with Asus and RMerlin, this is the best choice right now.

How much is the RT-AC87U in your country? If they're a few Euros more, I would be tempted to buy both and try them out side by side and return the lesser one.

After all, a router is a once or twice in a decade purchase. Not usually something that gets upgraded every year or two for most.

 

[huotg01]

Question guys is the asus rt ac56u a dual core router? Would this router be good for gaming and how does it perform with 4 or more clients online? what's the from ac56u or the ac56r. Now if I had to choose from ac66u and ac56u which one? There are 2 Xbox consoles for online gaming and 2 laptops online browsing/ facebook/ YouTube

This question has been answered many times in the thread, but the thread is going in so many directions (out of the OP) that it could be good to repeat...

Yes the ac56u is a dual core cpu. If I had to choose between the ac56u and the ac66u (one core cpu and "previous" ASUS architecture), it would be the ac56u: dual core, new architecture (the same as the ac68u, ac87u), usb3 port. The only thing you should think about is the fact that its antennas are internal (2 for each band). No known problems with the load. " u vs r"? I think, someone else can confirm or deny, that is is related to the distribution channel.