Product-review: Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite

[Cloud200]

I would actually be more interested in a review of the ER-X model. The only feature iirc that is not on the ER-X yet is DPI and that can be a short blurb article. Kind of like synology and qnap os updates.

 

[zsoltika007]

The only feature iirc that is not on the ER-X yet is DPI

And the missing offload features. Which is make it useless to faster internet users.

 

[Cloud200]

And the missing offload features. Which is make it useless to faster internet users.

Depends what you define as fast.
In addition . . .
If you enable QOS, the ER-X can be faster than the ER-Lite.

 

[zsoltika007]

If you enable QOS, the ER-X can be faster than the ER-Lite.

But if you don't need QOS ER-Lite is your only choice above 300Mbit.

 

[Cloud200]

But if you don't need QOS ER-Lite is your only choice above 300Mbit.

Well . . . you still have the ER-8 and ER-pro. They have DPI as well as almost double the performance.

 

[zsoltika007]

Well . . . you still have the ER-8 and ER-pro. They have DPI as well as almost double the performance.

At double/triple price. A typical soho user never gonna buy them here.. A company will.

 

[Cloud200]

At double/triple price. A typical soho user never gonna buy them here.. A company will.

I wouldn't go so far as never.
The AC3200 routers from DLink, asus, netgear, Linksys are ~$300.
Users with a large ranch style or multilevel home also can't get great coverage from a single access point most of the time. I have seen spending in the $400-900 just on access points to get overlapping coverage where if any AP dies the wife and kids won't notice.
There are also many users esp Soho users with limited or no options for broadband. I have seen people install a $250-$350 router like a peplink balance 20, Linksys LRT224 for a 3/.768 bonded with a 10/1 cable connection when something half the price would have worked.
There is a market for expensive, overkill gear. It's just smaller than the cheaper options.

 

[stig]

We even have people asking us for 10Gb/s interfaces routers so they can use http://www.xfinity.com/multi-gig-offers.html. A router with multiple 10 gig interfaces would like cost at least $1000. I still don't get why people need that kind of bandwidth at home.

 

[System Error Message]

i have a router with multiple 10Gb/s in my room. Sure i dont need that kind of bandwidth but when you use the features and configure everything, all the extra throughput does help. Although it rivals the cisco edgerouter series in throughput it still is a very different router (60W vs 3KW) and non blade-configuration.

Routers with direct CPU interfaces can have lower latencies than using a router that uses a bus/port based switched port communication and better throughput more often. The 10Gb/s interfaces can be used with stacking and wirespeed layer3 when stacked with a regular managed switch.

I really wish i had such internet but it doesnt cover my area. Consumer routers only do 2Gb/s via hardware NAT while my router does wirespeed NAT using software NAT so i can still have all the goodies from the better QoS and firewalls to a whole bunch of other enterprise based features. Even comparing a $1000 router that does 28Gb/s of software NAT to the cheapest consumer router that does hardware NAT which doesnt even reach 2Gb/s, my router is still much cheaper in price/performance compared to that consumer router even if it is tp-link.

I use a mikrotik CCR1036 with 2 SFP+ ports. It has 36 TILE cores and each TILE core does 2Gb/s of software NAT from testing so it has so much more throughput than it physically has. The highest i've ever gotten from it is 70Gb/s from creating and dropping packets to a virtual non existent interface which only used about 60% CPU. The CPU specs show that it has 4 sets of CPU direct connected networking interfaces which are either some ethernet ports or SFP+.

The other advantage of such throughput is that each core does 300Mb/s of PPTP VPN per core and a bit faster with IPSEC.

 

[coxhaus]

Don't say never. I have heard it many times in the past. The switch from 10 meg to 100meg, "You never will need the kind of speed for home use". I heard it when we switched from 100 meg to 1 Gig, "You never will be able to use that much speed at home". Here we are. It is time to start looking at 10 gig. I know ...we will never need that fast of a port at home. You can now buy multiple internet pipes for home which are faster than a 1 Gig pipe router can deliver. We now need faster routers for home use. They may be expensive at first but the price will come down as always. It was that way on all the other switch outs.

 

[LoneWolf]

Don't say never. I have heard it many times in the past. The switch from 10 meg to 100meg, "You never will need the kind of speed for home use". I heard it when we switched from 100 meg to 1 Gig, "You never will be able to use that much speed at home". Here we are. It is time to start looking at 10 gig. I know ...we will never need that fast of a port at home. You can now buy multiple internet pipes for home which are faster than a 1 Gig pipe router can deliver. We now need faster routers for home use. They may be expensive at first but the price will come down as always. It was that way on all the other switch outs.

By the time it is needed, the equipment will come down in price too.

I won't say never. I'll just say I think the likelihood of any need for the next several years is low, especially when you can bond a couple of gigabit ports on a switch as a LAGG if necessary. Nobody has a sustained throughput need for 10Gb at home currently, let alone burst, and gigabit Internet is still rare and/or expensive in many locations.

Heck, I'm overjoyed to have an 80/12 connection at a reasonable price.

 

[coxhaus]

By the time it is needed, the equipment will come down in price too.

I won't say never. I'll just say I think the likelihood of any need for the next several years is low, especially when you can bond a couple of gigabit ports on a switch as a LAGG if necessary. Nobody has a sustained throughput need for 10Gb at home currently, let alone burst, and gigabit Internet is still rare and/or expensive in many locations.

Heck, I'm overjoyed to have an 80/12 connection at a reasonable price.

Seems like we need faster CPUs for what we have. It is so easy to fall out on hardware acceleration. 10Gb connections will guarantee that.

 

[System Error Message]

Seems like we need faster CPUs for what we have. It is so easy to fall out on hardware acceleration. 10Gb connections will guarantee that.

By the time it is needed, the equipment will come down in price too.

I won't say never. I'll just say I think the likelihood of any need for the next several years is low, especially when you can bond a couple of gigabit ports on a switch as a LAGG if necessary. Nobody has a sustained throughput need for 10Gb at home currently, let alone burst, and gigabit Internet is still rare and/or expensive in many locations.

Heck, I'm overjoyed to have an 80/12 connection at a reasonable price.

If 10G was available where i was i would go for it. I already have a router that is fast enough for 20Gb/s of software NAT(10Gb/s full duplex). It will do 300Mb/s of PPTP VPN per connection and would max out at a total of 10Gb/s for PPTP VPN if one could establish enough VPN connections or have enough clients connected to it. If only servers had enough bandwidth available.

I get that browsing doesnt use much internet and having each website being 1GB in size isnt healthy for the client considering the CPU and memory requirements to render such a website but with that much worth of internet you could host your own file servers, game servers, media servers.

 

[LoneWolf]

If 10G was available where i was i would go for it. I already have a router that is fast enough for 20Gb/s of software NAT(10Gb/s full duplex). It will do 300Mb/s of PPTP VPN per connection and would max out at a total of 10Gb/s for PPTP VPN if one could establish enough VPN connections or have enough clients connected to it. If only servers had enough bandwidth available.

I get that browsing doesnt use much internet and having each website being 1GB in size isnt healthy for the client considering the CPU and memory requirements to render such a website but with that much worth of internet you could host your own file servers, game servers, media servers.

This goes to illustrate my point. You would do it --that doesn't mean you have a need, which is completely different (and my words centered around need). I'm not even talking browsing. I'm talking about how many homes need data transfers at a 10Gbps speed between LAN devices. 4K video doesn't need 10Gbps. I don't know of a household that would be able to take a 10Gbps connection and use its total throughput for more than a handful of seconds at a time, and I'm not talking benchmarking, but real-world usage. The userload/taskload necessary for regular use of that bandwidth is beyond a residential household.

 

[System Error Message]

This goes to illustrate my point. You would do it --that doesn't mean you have a need, which is completely different (and my words centered around need). I'm not even talking browsing. I'm talking about how many homes need data transfers at a 10Gbps speed between LAN devices. 4K video doesn't need 10Gbps. I don't know of a household that would be able to take a 10Gbps connection and use its total throughput for more than a handful of seconds at a time, and I'm not talking benchmarking, but real-world usage. The userload/taskload necessary for regular use of that bandwidth is beyond a residential household.

1080P at 60 fps pixel streaming requires that much bandwidth.

 

[Cloud200]

1080P at 60 fps pixel streaming requires that much bandwidth.

Yes, completely uncompressed 1080p 60fps video is about 3gb/s.
Where do you need that in a router though?
I can't imagine any use case scenario for that in any home or small business.

 

[System Error Message]

not video but it means you could game and using GPUs from other systems to do the rendering for you. Real time simulation does benefit too for a distributed system

 

[Cloud200]

I use the Nvidia Shield tablet to stream games from my PC to my TV.
With a USB micro Y cable, USB ethernet adapter, and mini HDMI to HDMI cable I connect it to a TV while charging.

I can stream games from my PC just fine at 1080p/60FPS.
This is with a 10/100 link, not even gigabit.

 

[System Error Message]

I use the Nvidia Shield tablet to stream games from my PC to my TV.
With a USB micro Y cable, USB ethernet adapter, and mini HDMI to HDMI cable I connect it to a TV while charging.

I can stream games from my PC just fine at 1080p/60FPS.
This is with a 10/100 link, not even gigabit.

nvidia shield works by having the GPU do video encoding and sending it to the nvidia shield which is an ARM based thing that can decode 1080p media. So it only needs 16Mb/s of bandwidth.

But with 10Gb/s internet you could have multiple GPUs from around the network rendering for you (as have been done since core2quad times for private render farms). Besides rendering distributed computing and real time simulation also benefits from that. For the house it means you can run real time simulations and do number crunching.

Relating to rendering, refer to the eGPU guide that is currently on another forum in which it explains the amount of bandwidth needed to have for a GPU connected externally to game using the laptop monitor. 4 PCIe lanes are needed for 60 fps.

 

[Cloud200]

nvidia shield works by having the GPU do video encoding and sending it to the nvidia shield which is an ARM based thing that can decode 1080p media. So it only needs 16Mb/s of bandwidth.

But with 10Gb/s internet you could have multiple GPUs from around the network rendering for you (as have been done since core2quad times for private render farms). Besides rendering distributed computing and real time simulation also benefits from that. For the house it means you can run real time simulations and do number crunching.

Relating to rendering, refer to the eGPU guide that is currently on another forum in which it explains the amount of bandwidth needed to have for a GPU connected externally to game using the laptop monitor. 4 PCIe lanes are needed for 60 fps.

Right, now what realistic scenario would require something like that?
You say private render farms . . . that's medium to enterprise level businesses.
Real time simulations? How would that help compared to just running the simulation on the server vs wasting bandwidth sending the raw gpu data instead of the completed portion of the sim?