Trying to decide between Asus RT-AC88U, Synology RT2600AC & TP-LINK ARCHER C5400

[avtella]

The raw performance of X86 CPUs are generally higher as can be seen from sfx2000's post above, which is from his pfsense box I assume. That allows them significantly higher OpenVPN performance and anything CPU intensive in general like video transcoding etc. The quad core Cortex A15 Alpine CPU (Made by Amazon's subsidiary Annapurna Labs) in the upcoming Asus GT9600 router and the Netgear R9000 is probably the most powerful cpu available in consumer grade routers, probably able to give roughly 2x the performance of the RT2600/R7800 in aes-256, but as you can see from sfx2000's post it would still be well below his dual core atom.

For most home users like me without 200+ Mbps internet connections and who don't do cpu intensive tasks like OpenVPN even the R7800 and AC88U are overkill, though the 5Ghz range/performance helps with fast transfers to and from my NAS. If I wasn't a tester I'd probably have an R7000 or AC68U or something much older lol.

 

[sfx2000]

Is it the architecture that's important or just the capabilities of current ARM processors?
What current processors (for home use) are up to the task?

Thanks

OpenVPN is fairly process intensive - and hard to get good performance on relative to other VPN type of services...

So part of it is architectural in how the SW is designed, and the processors on which it runs...

 

[intraz]

avtella, sfx2000: thanks for the info and answers.

 

[AkselVerg]

Hi,

This is the list I got after reading as much as I could and filtering out the other options although I am open to hearing about other models if they are considered better.

I'm a techie and aware of the differences between them in terms of hardware and supported technologies and also realise they are not completely similar but I don't have enough practical knowledge with routers and networking to make the final decision.

Criteria in order of importance:
- CPU+mem combo that is the least likely to choke on heavy load (streaming 4K while moving big files to NAS and some other less-intensive network activity).
- Wired performance.
- Reliability and maintainability (bugs, bricking, power-cycling, company tech support and updates support)
- Open firmware support.
- Wireless smart-connect that groups all channels into one logical network so that all wireless clients see each other and the wired clients.
- Extra features and future-proofing.
- Ease of use.

Price is less of an issue.
Would like to know if there are clear winners or losers, or hear of any pointers that would help with the decision.

Thanks in advance!

Hi!
What is it really such a big problem to choose a router? Follow this simple to-do list:
A) Open the Internet
B) Type " the top routers" including your requests (for example https://www.bestadvisers.co.uk/best-wireless-routers)
C) Profit
I certainly understand that you have a lot of huge requests about what should be in the router, but it's still not a gaming PC to build))

 

[pepemosca]

it's been a while but i just wanted to thank you guys for the help.
i ended up buying the rt2600ac. i received it a few days ago and for now i like it a lot.
srm is excellent and lan and wan performance are great (i knew my isp's modem-router was bad. i just didn't know how bad.).
wlan seems fine in general, though throughput on 5ghz was very unstable (jumping around values between 100 and 250 Mbps).
i keep wondering how the ac88u would have been but the same would have been true the other way around.

So... How's your experience with the RT2600ac so far?

 

[intraz]

So... How's your experience with the RT2600ac so far?

The bottom line is that I'm happy with the choice.
My everyday use doesn't involve playing around with it too much.
I love that Synology keep sending system updates once a month and updates for security issues in days (which has happened quite a lot lately).
The SRM UI is generally very good and easily better than other routers I used (I am just a casual user though).
I don't use any of the add-on packages.
I tested the Intrusion Prevention package but performance got too big of a hit so I stopped using it. If memory serves download speed got down from 100Mbit to around 40 or 30.
I live in a rather small apartment and not a big home like some of the people on SNB so I didn't run into issues with wi-fi.
I would easily recommend the router but of course get more advice around here because there might be a better fit for your needs.

 

[NUTW0RX]

I liked my first one and got a second for a different segment and mode. I expect they will be supporting this platform for longer than the consumer-grade routers.

A recent example...KRACK became mainstream around 10/16. Synology had an update on the 17th while the ac86u got it on the 24th.

 

[intraz]

I liked my first one and got a second for a different segment and mode. I expect they will be supporting this platform for longer than the consumer-grade routers.

A recent example...KRACK became mainstream around 10/16. Synology had an update on the 17th while the ac86u got it on the 24th.

Exactly. I don't know if you remember but I have you to thank for recommending them for their service and updates.