Want Gigabit WAN and "pretty good" wireless

[act4554]

I just signed up for 1 gbps up/down with my local ISP. I currently have an ASUS RT-N16 which I'm learning does not have the guts to handle those top speeds. So I'm thinking it's time to buy a new router.

At home I have a couple computers on a gigabit wired LAN and a couple on Wi-fi. One of the wireless PCs is using a USB wireless G adapter and will be getting an upgrade to AC speed, the other is on wireless N. Both are upstairs while the router is in the basement, currently I'm able to get about 54mbps with the RT-N16 in this setup.

I'm looking for a router that will give me at least 100mbps real-world speeds on the wireless devices and near 1gbps speeds on the wired computers.

Also a bonus requirement would be a USB 3 port and the capability to run a bittorrent client natively on the router, hosting files from the USB 3 hard drive (I wish it could read/write at 1gbps but I haven't seen any reviews demonstrating that.)

I'm looking to spend $100 +/-50%. Anybody got a recommendation for me? Thanks in advance.

 

[L&LD]

The cheapest way to go right now is with an RT-AC56U with RMerlin firmware.

The best way to go long term is with an RT-AC68U with RMerlin firmware.

There are your price points.

 

[Trip]

Good USB 3 performance plus all the other features in one embedded device is a bit of a tall order, at any price, not to mention the possible wifi interference issues with some USB 3 hardware (here's PC Mag's article on the topic).... So if things have to go at high speed, you might want to consider separating your network shares from your routing/wireless, if at all possible. You could re-purpose an extra PC to run pfSense, Windows Server, etc. Or do an actual NAS/media enclosure. Either involve more money, of course, but I believe I get what I pay for and in my experience I haven't had such good luck with the everything-in-one routers when it comes to sustained, reliable operation of standalone clients. As always, your mileage may vary, take it for what it's worth, etc.

 

[htismaqe]

For all of the features you want, the AC1900 "big three" are probably your best bets.

The Asus AC68U is closest to your top end price range, but it also has the worst USB3 performance of the three.

Given all of the items on your wish list, the Netgear R7000 is probably the best bet.

 

[act4554]

First off, thanks very much for the responses. You all have me wondering whether I should ignore the USB 3.0 requirement. One of the LAN PCs is "always-on" so it could certainly host files and run bittorrent, as it does now.

Do you guys have any thoughts about one router vs another for handling large amounts of bittorrent traffic without slowing down other traffic (such as gaming?) Can all the suggestions handle a lot of simultaneous connections? I'm thinking bandwidth may not be the limit, but processing power and I have no experience with that.

What I may just do is buy a $100 router now & use my PCs to serve files, and think about a long-term plan to build a pfsense router that can do all the cool things I'm interested in.

Thanks again.

 

[htismaqe]

What I may just do is buy a $100 router now & use my PCs to serve files, and think about a long-term plan to build a pfsense router that can do all the cool things I'm interested in.

Honestly, I think that sounds like the best plan.

I am a big fan of using a single-purpose router and limiting the services that run on a device that is exposed to the internet.

 

[Trip]

I'd agree - your latest comment sounds like the best way to go. As I said before, I'd actually favor a setup that keeps devices and roles segmented, for better performance in each area because the overall workload is spread out and the responsibilities are delegated to devices which are more specifically designed to be the best at handling each task (ie. buy a router to route, a firewall to filter/protect, and a NAS or server PC for those duties, etc). Yes, I realize it's more boxes to buy and plugs in the wall, but why buy a $300 silver bullet with beta-level functionality on wishful thinking, when you can piece together a more powerful, reliable and customizable setup for roughly the same cost? Seems a no-brainer to me, but to each their own.

 

[sfx2000]

For all of the features you want, the AC1900 "big three" are probably your best bets.

The Asus AC68U is closest to your top end price range, but it also has the worst USB3 performance of the three.

Given all of the items on your wish list, the Netgear R7000 is probably the best bet.

If one doesn't hang a USB3 disk off the router - then the AC86U is almost a no-brainer...

A router/AP is not a NAS - even with the USB3 disk, the performance on the disk won't be fast compared to a dedicated NAS/Server...

If you let it be a router/AP - the AC68U seems to be the right place to be at the moment for most folks...

 

[stevech]

I just signed up for 1 gbps up/down [WAN] with my local ISP. .

1Gbps from your ISP. Wow. You must not be in North America!

No consumer quality router is going to do NAT and forward packets at that speed, dare I say.

Perhaps a typo?

 

[act4554]

No typo, it's scheduled to be installed Tuesday. Here is a link:
http://www.surewest.com/1gig/index.php

It seems competition from Google Fiber is a good thing...

I just bought the TP-Link Archer C7 when it was on sale for $60. So I will report back how it works.

 

[sfx2000]

1Gbps from your ISP. Wow. You must not be in North America!

No consumer quality router is going to do NAT and forward packets at that speed, dare I say.

Perhaps a typo?

cox hsi is deploying Gig in the PHX...

while we in SAN get doubled up broadband - at least for downlink - I went from 30 Mbps to 60+, but uplink is still limited to around 5 Mbps...

 

[sfx2000]

which is better, IMHO, than the folks in fly-over country - it's good in town perhaps, but getting out to the farm, one either has to do satellite or 3G/4G/LTE mobile services... and caps are hard there...

It's akin to growing up in the 60's/70's, when a long distance voice call cost much...

 

[htismaqe]

which is better, IMHO, than the folks in fly-over country - it's good in town perhaps, but getting out to the farm, one either has to do satellite or 3G/4G/LTE mobile services... and caps are hard there...

It's akin to growing up in the 60's/70's, when a long distance voice call cost much...

I live not only in flyover country but in the country, about 1.5 miles from a town of 600 people.

I have a fiber NID on my house and 30/5 ethernet.

Some of us out here in the sticks have the good fortune of being served by rural independent telephone companies.

 

[sfx2000]

I live not only in flyover country but in the country, about 1.5 miles from a town of 600 people.

I have a fiber NID on my house and 30/5 ethernet.

Some of us out here in the sticks have the good fortune of being served by rural independent telephone companies.

True true - and many of those Rural Telco's are pretty good at what they do..

The use case I presented was my dad's place - too far from the CO for xDSL, the Telco does have 900MHz wireless, but for him to get it, they would have to drop in a tower mid-way as he's in a 'draw' and can't see the current tower...

We tried 3G, which worked, but at low data rates (2 bars or less at his place), so satellite was really the only option for him - I've got him on Hughes for the moment, but always open to other suggestions (speed isn't bad, but ping time/latency is very high, so stream is ok, but Skype is a non-working solution for anything more than just IM).

Tough situation... oddly enough, I see this sometime here in San Diego in some of the suburbs - just out of range of cable, and too far from the CO for DSL - sometimes it's less than a mile...

 

[htismaqe]

Hughes has a rather insidious data cap limit mechanism. I wonder if Exede would be better?

Overall, like you, I'm not a big fan of VSAT for primary internet access. Too many problems overall.

 

[azazel1024]

True true - and many of those Rural Telco's are pretty good at what they do..

The use case I presented was my dad's place - too far from the CO for xDSL, the Telco does have 900MHz wireless, but for him to get it, they would have to drop in a tower mid-way as he's in a 'draw' and can't see the current tower...

We tried 3G, which worked, but at low data rates (2 bars or less at his place), so satellite was really the only option for him - I've got him on Hughes for the moment, but always open to other suggestions (speed isn't bad, but ping time/latency is very high, so stream is ok, but Skype is a non-working solution for anything more than just IM).

Tough situation... oddly enough, I see this sometime here in San Diego in some of the suburbs - just out of range of cable, and too far from the CO for DSL - sometimes it's less than a mile...

I see that too here, and I am not too far outside of DC and Baltimore. Current house is fortunate to have Verizon FIOS and Comcast cable service, but interestingly, no DSL from anyone (too far from CO. I am vaguely rural. Call it dense rural/edge of suburban). I am pretty much the edge of FIOS deployment and much further than that and cable is spotty too.

3 miles from my current house is another house I was looking at buying. It had no service. Comcast is there, but the house was never hooked up and it sits around 400-500ft from the cable box. Comcast wanted something in the $8 per foot range for a hook-up, so around $3,000-4,000 to do the hookup IIRC when I contacted them about it. The houses surrounding were already hooked up. I tried to brow beat them down (because my wife and I really liked the house) and they were willing to do a $10 a month credit on our bill for half the cost (IE a $10 credit for around 150-200 months...), but we still had to eat 100% up front.

Fortunately we ended up actually liking the house we bought a little more (still rural-ish, but closer to work and schools, better ISP options...since I hate Comcast plus...you know, having a hook-up existing and the house needed less work, though still a lot).

I have a friend who lives about 5 miles away from me. He has NOTHING in his area. Its dial up or satellite. There aren't any WISP options for him where he is located. This is around 25 miles outside of Baltimore. He is fortunate that he is friends with a couple of his neighbors (he is smack in the middle of a bunch of 50-200 acre farms) and he got his immediate neighbor as well as one about a mile away (LoS) to setup some 30ft towers with Yagi's and wifi bridges for him to share internet with someone about a mile and a half away, who does have Comcast (my friend and two inbetweeners with the towers all share the one guys connection, they do split the internet bill). I think the total link is close to 2 miles with the 3 hops. He gets around 18Mbps down and 7Mbps up if no one else is using the internet (I think it is a 105/10 connection).

 

[DoctorA]

Checked out website. They are only in Sacramento, CA and Kansas City areas. Hope the competition pushes things. Only services where I live are slow DSL and Timewarner Cable. I have TWC with 100mbps/10mbps service. Fast enough for what I do with it.

 

[htismaqe]

Checked out website. They are only in Sacramento, CA and Kansas City areas. Hope the competition pushes things. Only services where I live are slow DSL and Timewarner Cable. I have TWC with 100mbps/10mbps service. Fast enough for what I do with it.

SureWest Kansas almost assuredly started offering those speeds to compete with Google Fiber, which is up and running in KC.

 

[act4554]

So I got the service installed and have been playing around with it a little bit. It's definitely a ton faster than the 10/10 I had previously, no surprise there. However I can't really exercise the 900Mbit+ speed in anything I've tried. I had a torrent going at peak speeds of about 25 Mbytes per second but with a lot of fluctuation, and my brother said he had a direct download at 50 Mbytes per second at another time.

I tried installing Google Drive, but I realized that in dropping files into my Drive folder my Windows filecopy was only managing 30 Mbytes per second! So that was a failed experiment.

Also, this is all with the NetGear R6300v2 that the ISP supplied. I ordered the Archer C7 but haven't opened it yet. Speedtest programs show somewhere in the 900mbps+ both ways.

Does anybody have suggestions for me to try to max out the speed or want to live vicariously through my gigabit?

 

[L&LD]

Unless you find a very fast server (other than ookla speedtest) that has files that you actually want to download from, I don't think you can find a test that will max out your internet connection with one client.

With multiple (fast, SSD based) clients though, you may start to approach that almost 1Gbps speed you have.


Not a real test, but just curious if you open a folder of web shortcuts at once (50 or more) if they load any faster?

The best I have seen so far is on an i7 4700 32GB Ram and SSD and the isp was a dsl 50/10 connection with 55 tabs opening at once; that took over two minutes to fully load those particular sites after clearing the history, cookies and temp files and rebooting the laptop.

If a bigger pipe doesn't increase something as basic as this, then maybe we have to wait for the websites we connect to play catch first.