Home Router For High-Speed Connection?

soulprivate writes "My cable company has recently begun to offer Internet access plans with speeds over 30 Mbps (60, 80 and 100 Mbps). However my D-link router is unable to go beyond 30 Mbps if I use NAT; it reaches 60-70 Mbps only if NAT is disabled. Is there any recommendation for a brand/model of residential router that is able to get more than 70 Mbps with NAT enabled? I have been looking for benchmarks or comparisons, to no avail. Does anyone know one? What are your experiences at home?"

Find a cheap machine...

[TheRealMindChild]

... and use pfsense [pfsense.com]. My Intel CPU mini-itx board, with processor and ram was $100 and it works better than any consumer grade, BestBuy special router.

Why do you need it?

[SpinyNorman]

What website do you expect to give you more than a 30Mbps connection?!

You may need 100Mps internal to your house, but a switch or even dumb hub would be sufficient for that. Why do you need to route at that speed?

Cisco

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out ebay for a used Cisco router.

Re:Why do you need it?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is /.

There is no "why," we do things because we "can," "want to" or simply to see if it can be done.

Re:Cisco 891

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy a used Cisco 2651XM router. For $200 you get a kickass router and you can learn IOS.

Re:Cisco

[spectre_240sx]

A PIX or an ASA would really be more appropriate. I picked up a 50-user ASA 5505 a while back, but it cost me $300.00

I wouldn't count on it.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Like most technology, they assume it's never going to be used to its potential. Take my laptop -- only when I actively cool it or balance it precariously several inches off the desk can I max out both cores. Try that with it sitting on its little rubber feet, and it overheats and throttles itself to 800 mhz. Try that when using the video card for anything stressful at all, and it shuts off.

Anyway, more on-topic, I've had a Linksys router (WRT54G) crash repeatedly when I attempt to run BitTorrent through it to a 100 mbit fiber connection. The solution was to replace it with a Linux box, and let the Linksys router only handle the wireless.

It's the same mentality that they've used to sell you 100 mbits -- works great if you just want to browse faster, maybe watch the occasional YouTube video. Sucks if you want to actually use it -- BitTorrent, maybe a Freenet node, or just transferring files between two machines connected to 100 mbit Internet -- before you know it, they're throttling it and bitching that you're a "bandwidth hog". In other words, they wanted to sell you 100 mbits because it sounds faster than 30 mbits, not because they expect people to actually need it.

Cisco

[gluffis]

Well, the Cisco ASA 5505 is not that expensive anymore. Does 150Mbps according to Cisco.

Re:hmm...wish i had that problem

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Gigabit refers only to the speed of the router's ethernet ports. Assuming that the router isn't total trash, that should make a genuine difference(vs. a 100Mb router) for network activity that allows the router to act more or less as a dumb switch(file transfers between PCs on the LAN, say). If the router actually has to do much routing, it will likely be hamstrung by its rather weedy little CPU.

The fact that you can get a ~200MHz MIPS or ARM SBC with multiple LAN ports and a wireless card for $50 is quite impressive in the historical sense; but it is still pretty wimpy.

Re:Why do you need it?

[pipatron]

Try thinking outside the box. Maybe he wish to run his own web server. Maybe he wants to use VNC or similar to his office. Maybe he wants to link his friends computers together so they can all access eachother's file storage. There are millions of uses for a fast network connection, unless you subscribe to the cable-tv-internet that the media companies would like you to have. That is, passive receiver of pre-filtered information.

Re:Why do you need it?

[geekoid]

Because there is more then one person suing the system?
Because there are places to get a greater then 30Mbps download.

Because he is moving 1080P images in real time?

When someone asks a question like this, why is there always someone without imagination implying there is no use for it?

Choose one from the list

[Anonymous Coward]

I would recommend that you check out the list on the following website:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_chart/Itemid,189/

The list is a WAN to LAN throughput list, where you can see how much WAN to LAN throughput the different routers can handle. Personally I ended up buying a DIR-655 (fastest available 2 years ago when I bought it). Its a very fast router, that enables full 100/100 speeds on my internet connect where I peak at around 11mb/s.

Cisco ASA5505

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it doesn't sound like a SOHO solution, Cisco's ASA5505 would be a good choice. It will do up to 150 Mb/s of firewall throughput, or 100 Mb/s of VPN crypto. If you have a small network, the model you want is ASA5505-BUN-K9, which can be bought from many online retailers for under $400. If you aren't comfortable with Cisco's CLI (specifically PIX/ASA), the ASA line now also has a very good GUI which can be used to configure almost anything on the firewall. It mangles object names and such for CLI junkies, but it works well if you always use the GUI.

There are a few feature restrictions on the base-model 5505, such as a maximum of 10 "inside" hosts getting to the Internet at any one time. Also, while the 5505 base supports 3 VLANs, one of them is restricted and can only really be used as a "guest" segment, and not a true DMZ. None of the restrictions should cause you much concern if you have a 'typical' (geek) home network of a few internal hosts and a couple ports opened into internal machines.

Re:WRT-160NL

[Anonymous Coward]

No modems? What would you call the box that has a fiber port on one side and an ethernet port on the other.

Re:The best

[dysan27]

Get an access point, yes it's another piece of kit to worry about, but then you can get a good router, AND a good wireless AP, and not have to worry about getting one device that is BOTH at the same time.

And most wireless routers can be used as an AP.