Router Advise please

[gigamat]

Hi

I have been considering the Ubiquity Edgerouter lite with 3 rj45 ports but have been advised on the MicroTik RouterBoard hEX RB750GR2 as an alternative.

I would like to ask your opinions on the latter against the Ubiquity if I may.

I am purchasing the router for reliable home use and to learn more about networking.

Mat

 

[Cloud200]

For learning I would stick with the Ubiquiti.
for reliable home use . . . we need a bit more background information.
IE. what intended goals are you trying to reach from these units?
Wiremaps and diagrams also help.

 

[System Error Message]

Actually the mikrotik RB850gx2 is the alternative. To compare the edgerouter to mikrotik is basically to compare the MIPS64 with the PPC CPU for the same range.

 

[Nullity]

You can always setup your own router by getting something like this or some other micro/mini-atx board with dual NICs (or more) and installing pfSense or IPFire.

Personally, I chose pfSense because it is FreeBSD-based and FreeBSD has some of the best documentation available (FreeBSD Handbook), which was important to me because I wanted to (like you) learn more about networking. pfSense has an official wiki & book that is pretty damn good. There's also "The Book of pf", which is a great book about pf across all the BSDs (Open/Net/FreeBSD).

 

[System Error Message]

I think i'll explain a bit more between choosing ubiquiti, mikrotik and pfsense.

In terms of functionality, mikrotik is a hardcore router, ubiquiti is an embedded versatile router while pfsense is a versatile router on x86 hardware such as desktops or tiny x86 stuff. In terms of support pfsense has the best documentation, both ubiquiti and pfsense use forums so they have equal support while you shouldnt expect any support for mikrotik if you want to do any advance thing with it.

In terms of learning mikrotik is the easiest to compared to ubiquiti because mikrotik shows all that is possible via a GUI so you dont need CLI. Ubiquiti needs some CLI while pfsense has a lot on a GUI but requires some tweaking such as installing packages that you want bit is easiest to configure.

In terms of hardware benefits per price such as number of ports /SFP mikrotik and ubiquiti are cheaper than pfsense in that regard but comparing performance ubiquiti relies on hardware acceleration to get similar numbers to mikrotik while pfsense is actually the fastest unless you use an extremely terrible x86 CPU and a realtek based NIC. So in terms of performance if your needs are more than just NAT and firewall you will benefit from going with mikrotik or pfsense since the CPUs they use are more towards general purpose than the ones used by ubiquiti.

In terms of faults
Ubiquiti edgerouters - the ERL and ERPOE-5 both use usb storage so you should avoid them because they will become a hassle when you update. Other than that i have not found distinctive faults yet
Mikrotik - Their CCR series are temperature sensitive. When you reach 80C all sorts of weird things happen.
pfsense - avoid using realtek NICs if you want performance.

Comparing the ranges you want Nullity has given some advice on hardware for pfsense or you can reuse existing hardware.
For mikrotik and ubiquiti the RB750 series all use MIPS based CPUs just like ubiquiti edgerouters do but they are 32 bit instead like the ones lower than ERL such as the ER-X. The RB850gx2 is comparable to the ERL since it is a PPC vs MIPS both dual core, both 500mhz, both 512MB of ram, both use CPUs with some encryption acceleration. The RB1100AHx2 is comparable to the ubiquiti edgerouter pro. Choose a hardware that fits the performance you need well. Remember that using PPPOE adds a lot of overheard to hardware acceleration where mikrotik's software NAT using PPC can keep up easily where the ERL and faster do a lot slower for ubiquiti. For pfsense the x86 CPU usually have no issues coping with extra loads.

 

[gigamat]

Hi guys

Apologies for the delay in responding and thank you all very much for taking the time to reply and all the advice, it is very much appreciated.

I have considered pfsense after stumbling across it recently and as it happens I have a spare dell vostro with an i3 and 2 gig memory which i am hoping will be able to run pfsense without too much trouble. This route will also save me some money and make use of the spare i3 that is currently doing nothing.
The only thing I worry about is the Realtek NIC's that System Error Message highlighted, will I see a substantial decrease in speed over an Intel NIC for example?

Also since writing this thread things have changed a bit and I have now been given a small network to setup and administer at work. There is nothing mission critical on the network and I will be taking full advantage of this situation to improve my limited knowledge.

Cheers

 

[Nullity]

Hi guys

Apologies for the delay in responding and thank you all very much for taking the time to reply and all the advice, it is very much appreciated.

I have considered pfsense after stumbling across it recently and as it happens I have a spare dell vostro with an i3 and 2 gig memory which i am hoping will be able to run pfsense without too much trouble. This route will also save me some money and make use of the spare i3 that is currently doing nothing.
The only thing I worry about is the Realtek NIC's that System Error Message highlighted, will I see a substantial decrease in speed over an Intel NIC for example?

Also since writing this thread things have changed a bit and I have now been given a small network to setup and administer at work. There is nothing mission critical on the network and I will be taking full advantage of this situation to improve my limited knowledge.

Cheers

Maybe? With FreeBSD/pfSense, it is more a question of compatability, (I think they adopted USB 3.0 with the last 12-16 months...) rather than performance. That i3 should be more than enough CPU, even with "software" NICs. I have 2 PCI Intel NICs, but for bufferbloat research, all NIC off-loading and check-summing is disabled. Though, lol, my 12Mbit WAN only needs like 3 hamsterpower.

The Intel 2 & 4 port PCIE cards are very well-respected. They must be expensive for some reason...

 

[gigamat]

Hi Nullity

Thanks for the info.
I will look into the possible compatibility issue's with pfsense, something else I did not consider, drivers.

Cheers

 

[System Error Message]

If you buy a motherboard that has 2 NICs compared to a micro ATX with only 1 NIC the cheapest you can get (unless you want to overclock) it is much cheaper to get the cheapest motherboard and a 2nd hand server NIC than it is to get a motherboard with 2 NICs.

hardware offloading is when you want gigabit performance. Realtek NIC combined with a recent CPU even an i3 is fast enough unless it is one of those low powered ones. If you look at the most cheapest 3 port AMD CPU box for this sort of stuff i dont think it can do gigabit NAT but it would be in the range of a few hundred Mb/s since it uses realtek NICs. Even AMD CPUs are actually quite fast if you couple it with a non realtek NIC.

 

[coxhaus]

The Intel I3 CPU is going to be way more powerful than any consumer router CPU.

 

[Cloud200]

The Intel I3 CPU is going to be way more powerful than any consumer router CPU.

To be fair, even an Intel Atom will wipe the floor with any consumer router.
Add in a server grade Intel NIC with offload/ECC/buffers . . . it hits gigabit without maxing out the CPU

 

[gigamat]

I will be looking for a 2nd hand dual gigabit ethernet card to put in the i3 machine and disable the on-board realtek nic.
Will 2 Gb memory be ok? what about a hard drive? Currently has a western digital blue 500GB sata drive, would I be better off buying a small ssd? I assume the only thing using disk access will be logs?

Really appreciate the advice every one thank you

 

[System Error Message]

I will be looking for a 2nd hand dual gigabit ethernet card to put in the i3 machine and disable the on-board realtek nic.
Will 2 Gb memory be ok? what about a hard drive? Currently has a western digital blue 500GB sata drive, would I be better off buying a small ssd? I assume the only thing using disk access will be logs?

Really appreciate the advice every one thank you

you'll be wanting a 2nd hand dual port gigabit intel server NIC or even a 4 port one. 2GB of ram would be plenty. For a router the only difference between an SSD or hard drive is just booting times otherwise they have no use and pfsense doesnt have any NAS functions. You can find used intel server NICs really cheap on ebay.

 

[sfx2000]

To be fair, even an Intel Atom will wipe the floor with any consumer router.
Add in a server grade Intel NIC with offload/ECC/buffers . . . it hits gigabit without maxing out the CPU

Combine that with pfSense, and one has a robust solution that meets or exceeds most home/small business networks...

And looking at the small intel cores, they run OpenVPN very nicely, even the J1800/J1900's that lack AES-NI specific support.

 

[gigamat]

Thanks

I have had a look but its a bit of a minefield out there

what about something like this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-NC7170...001-313881-B21-High-Profile-NIC-/121462815123

 

[System Error Message]

if you have a PCI-X port. look at the motherboard you're using and get the right one for it. PCIe is a lot better.

 

[gigamat]

Thanks

I have had a look but its a bit of a minefield out there

what about something like this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-NC7170...001-313881-B21-High-Profile-NIC-/121462815123

Actually forget that its pcix which I do not have

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-Intel...IC-PCI-e-GB-Server-Network-Card-/181615643583

This looks more promising.

 

[gigamat]

if you have a PCI-X port. look at the motherboard you're using and get the right one for it. PCIe is a lot better.

Yes System Error Message I just see that thank you

 

[System Error Message]

ah i see you're browsing in the UK. Its a lot cheaper in the US but that card will do fine. You can do better and get used for the same price for a quad port NIC instead. I have 2 intel quad port NICs i got for £25 each because i just searched a bit more. If you log into ebay and set your delivery address it will show you more. make sure the motherboard has a mechanical slot for it. The quad ports need 4 PCIe lanes.

 

[gigamat]

ah i see you're browsing in the UK. Its a lot cheaper in the US

Its a lot cheaper everywhere else unfortunately! Ordering from the US will incur a large delivery charge.