RT-AC86U vs RT2600AC vs ubiquiti ERlite 3 for dual Wan and VPN

[kevin7505]

Hi,
I'm looking for a good router for OpenVPN and fail over function.
I saw reviews that RT-AC86 is good for speed and VPN, however not good for failover.
I saw review that ERlite 3 is good for failover, however it is not too fast

Please let me know which router is good for both openVPN and failover(dual wan).
Thanks.

 

[avtella]

RT2600AC has fail-over and decent VPN performance and the excellent QCA9984 WiFi chip as in the R7800.
The 86U is still the better of the two VPN wise but no Dual WAN with failover option that you require.

 

[kevin7505]

Thank you.
By the way, is there other router better than RT2600AC for both good VPN and Dual WAN with failover option?

Spectrum line down so often, so I'm thinking to get one more line from ATT, and setup failover so that we can use internet continuously in case one line down. (I don't want to switch line manually in case line down.)

 

[umarmung]

What kind of OpenVPN speeds are you looking for? If it is less than 50 Mbps, there is the new Edgerouter ER4.

Otherwise, if it is higher than that and you are not going with the Synology RT2600AC, you may have no choice than to make you own router and run something like pfSense on it. Though that would be overkill for consumer OpenVPN providers because they max out at 150-250 Mbps (you can get higher performance with IPSEC or Wireguard).

 

[kevin7505]

Ok, I think I need to get RT2600AC. I just worry about the some of reviewers say that the failover is not working well. By the way, how much do I have to spend to make my own router with pfSense which support dual Wan for failover and VPN?

Thanks.

 

[umarmung]

~$300 for mini-PC with Intel CPU that supports AES-NI. If you are US resident, you may be able to get a bit cheaper.

Or you can just turn a spare PC/laptop into a router by adding a spare NIC or if you have a VLAN switch, but it may cost a lot more to run in terms of electricity cost.

 

[avtella]

pfsense with an x86 CPU (ie Intel/AMD) would definitely be better in terms of VPN performance by far vs the ARM based routers above, you can find Qotom boxes on Amazon and other sites for $150-250. Obviously get one with 3-4 ports since you want dual WAN. Make sure not to get the boxes with the Quad Core J1900 CPU as the new pFsense requires AES-NI instructions. The newer Qotom boxes have dual core Intel CPU's with AES-NI and you want those ones.

 

[primitivo]

Ok, I think I need to get RT2600AC. I just worry about the some of reviewers say that the failover is not working well. By the way, how much do I have to spend to make my own router with pfSense which support dual Wan for failover and VPN?

Thanks.

Nothing to worry about. I have this router running for few days already in dual wan failover setup and it works excellent. Much better than buggy Asus, where failover is broken for years. Also much better than Asus running Tomato (there is no Tomato on AC86U anyway), where multiwan also fails in reliability. I still use Asus AC86U in another location where I need VPN performance but RT2600AC wins hands down as an overall well thought product with excellent GUI.

 

[kvic]

I recently got the chance to try load balance of dual WAN (could be more than 2 WAN) on a Edgerouter X. Here is a nice feature of status report..

$ show load-balance status
Group WLB
  interface   : eth0
  carrier     : up
  status      : active
  gateway     : x.x.93.254
  route table : 201
  weight      : 50%
  flows
      WAN Out : 37794
      WAN In  : 1107
    Local Out : 1403

  interface   : peth0
  carrier     : up
  status      : active
  gateway     : y.y.86.254
  route table : 202
  weight      : 50%
  flows
      WAN Out : 35994
      WAN In  : 97
    Local Out : 1291

I tortured the 2nd WAN by bringing it down to test fail-over. That succeeds every time.

Don't want to promote for Edgerouters since its firmware is in stagnation (and introduced more bugs) after the departure of the old team. But dual WAN is a joy to use and apparently built by the old firmware team.

OpenVPN speed will improve in 2.0 firmware based on Debian Jessie. But if you have control on both ends, no reason to use OpenVPN really. Use IPsec VPN instead.

 

[Danny Sasmita Natapradja]

I have the same situation as yours and bought 2 routers. TL-R470T+ for load balance then connect to AC86U for routing+vpn+wifi

 

[Luminair]

Peplink is famous for dual WAN and user-friendliness, they have Balance 20 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0042210U6/?tag=snbforums-20 and Balance One Core is the newer higher performance one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011VDJWSA/?tag=snbforums-20

 

[plunderisley]

Bumping this thread as the OP's question is exactly mine.
I'm looking for a router which can do VPN (I have 500mbps down, and getting over 100mbps is kinda a must) and failover to a 4G modem.
I had the Asus 87U which is dying. I purchased the 86U, which is total crap. I have no clue if I got a dud or not, but the failover doesn't work (I keep getting a DHCP issue from ISP, yet the same modem works in the 87U and on the PC) and it is blocking some SSL connections (I got no idea why). I want to stay away from Asus.
I was looking at that Synology RT2600ac or some Netgear one (R9000, R7800, XR500), but all of these seem to get slow VPN speeds.
Any new devices that came out the past year that would fit the requirements?
I do not need wifi as I got a unifi AP for that.

Or would a Cisco RV-345 be the better choice?