Router with fast PPTP client

[Silvester]

Hello!

I moved to a student accomodation in Bergen, and the apartments have a 100/100 Mbps internet connection which requires clients to log on with PPTP.

Currently, I have a Asus RT-N56U. If I let the router connect with PPTP, the speed drops to about 40/15 Mbps. Therefore I let all my machines initiate the PPTP connection themselves, because then I can use the full 100/100.

Anyway, the RT-N56U recently started to become unstable and I want a new router which can handle 100/100 using PPTP. Do you good folks know about any, preferably costing about $300 or less? It does not need to be wireless, but it is a nice addition.

Thanks in advance!

 

[overdrive31]

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/finders/router/products

Filter out PPTP WAN, and gigabit ports, then just find one with the speed/features you're looking for. The Asus RT-N66U looks like a winner, if you wanted an recommendation.

 

[Silvester]

Thank you for the suggestion, but I don't see any benchmarks with the PPTP client? Maybe I am just overlooking something, so please enlighten me

The problem I have had with other routers is not the WAN->LAN speed (my RT-N56U is one of the fastest at that according to the numbers here), but the speed you get if it connects with PPTP. There seems to be a very big performance penalty on that for some reason, and I would be happy to have a router that can do the full 100/100 even when PPTP client is used. I read the RT-N66U review, but could not find any benchmarks on the PPTP client speed.

(I am using wired ethernet, not wireless, for the speed tests.)

 

[GregN]

, but the speed you get if it connects with PPTP. There seems to be a very big performance penalty on that for some reason

PPTP has both routing rules, and more significantly line encryption ( at various levels: 40, 56, or 128 bit ). A consumer router generally has limited cycles to handle both tasks, which is why I suspect (or guess) you are seeing the performance hit.

PfSense, a FreeBSD based router distro includes PPTP out of the box, and because it will run on the processor of your choice, is much less likely to be as incumbered. It will run on most anything.

There are several articles here about setting up a DIY Router using PFSense, you might want to take a look at them. PFSense has the added advantage of giving you a bunch of other performance and security features.

PFSense essentially kicks butt, and takes names.

 

[overdrive31]

The encryption being a factor seems logical, but a flaky and unstable router like he's got would seem just as logical a reason for the low performance, all you can do is try a few out and see. Good advice on the PfSense, if cpu limitations are the root cause.

 

[Silvester]

Yep, seems like it was the encryption and compression bringing the speed down. Disabling it in the router gave the same speeds as with no PPTP. But then anyone in the building with a packet sniffer can see my net activity.

Seems like pfSense is the way to go then. I found a mini-itx motherboard with dual gigabit ethernet, which I think will make a sweet router.

http://www.mini-box.com/Jetway-JNC9KDL-2700

Thanks for the help and input, guys!

 

[overdrive31]

Disabling one of the most resource demanding features of a router and testing for throughput impact is no way to test a router. You need to test using another router with out of the box features enabled, preferably a router based on broadcom hardware rather than the other stuff. The PPTP tunnel is going to the same place, whether you're given a private or public IP would determine if others could snoop, not how the router is setup.

 

[Silvester]

Had the same PPTP-related speed problems with DIR-825 and E4200 previously. The point is that the encryption seems to be too intensive for the RT-N56U (and the others I've tried), and since it has become semi-defective as of lately, I have decided to simply go for a pfSense solution and be done with it, since I haven't seen any concrete info on ~$300 routers that would do the job

On the snooping part; I am on the same subnet as the rest of the apartments, and there is no isolation of the clients. Most of the people on my floor are even on the same physical switch. Every apartment has an ethernet socket, and you can fire up e.g. ettercap and see traffic. I even get other people's computers in network location if I plug directly into the ethernet socket. The DHCP gives out 10.39.0.0/255.255.0.0, and the only external connection allowed is to the VPN of the university. If I connect to the VPN without any encryption, anyone with a packet sniffer in the building can see the traffic. So, yeah, I prefer the encrypted PPTP connection any day

The Jetway mini-itx board will hopefully arrive in a couple of days. I will set it up as a pfSense router and let it connect with PPTP, and use the RT-N56U as an access point behind it (seems to work stable in AP mode).

 

[GregN]

What did you decide on for a Case, PSU, Boot drive and alike?

Keep us apprised of how this goes for you, I'd be interested.

 

[Silvester]

Got the motherboard a couple of days ago and have now built the system. I use a simple Morex case with a 60W PSU.
http://www.morex.com.tw/products/productdetail.php?fd_id=126

It seems to have been made with the prison market in mind or something like that, because it requires that you take out eleven screws before it will open. Four of them are underneath, and can only be accessed after taking it off the base by unlocking it with a key. Also the power and reset buttons require something sharp to reach them. Not going to open it or power cycle it a lot, so I don't mind though

For storage, I simply used a 8 GB USB stick. The pfSense installer seemingly hangs at 39%, but I just let i run for a few hours and then it completed and boots without a hitch. Just a small caveat, the NICs are not supported by pfSense 2.0.1, so I had to grab a development version of 2.1. Which runs unbearably slow for some reason on this hardware (even if booted from CD or a proper HDD). In other words, no workable pfSense solution for this setup yet... If I get the time soon I will probably load the thing with Arch Linux and set things up myself. Luckily, I had a school project involving iptables, so creating the routing rules should be relatively easy. I think the iptables tutorial is a very good resource for learning iptables.

Just a small note about the motherboard: It does not support 64-bit. Yes, the CPU does have 64-bit, but the support is disabled in the BIOS. After some searching I have found this thread about the issue. It is not a big deal to run a 32-bit OS for me, but I just wanted to mention it if anyone else was looking at this board and require 64-bit.

Cheers!

 

[GregN]

It seems to have been made with the prison market in mind or something like that, because it requires that you take out eleven screws before it will open. Four of them are underneath, and can only be accessed after taking it off the base by unlocking it with a key. Also the power and reset buttons require something sharp to reach them. Not going to open it or power cycle it a lot, so I don't mind though

Dude, you should like write hardware reviews, quite amusing.

For storage, I simply used a 8 GB USB stick. The pfSense installer seemingly hangs at 39%, but I just let i run for a few hours and then it completed and boots without a hitch. Just a small caveat, the NICs are not supported by pfSense 2.0.1, so I had to grab a development version of 2.1. Which runs unbearably slow for some reason on this hardware (even if booted from CD or a proper HDD). In other words, no workable pfSense solution for this setup yet...

Guess I should stop telling people that a chimp could get PFSense up and running, a surprising list of issues.

Just a small note about the motherboard: It does not support 64-bit. Yes, the CPU does have 64-bit, but the support is disabled in the BIOS. After some searching...

Were you liked cursed as a child by the Toaster Fairy or something? I've now install pfSense on a Dual Xeon VM, a D525 Atom, an I3, and on a Pentium II, all went smoothly.

Sounds like the Jetway board is not the best choice...