Ask Slashdot: Good Gigabit 802.11N Home Router?

nukem996 writes "This week I will be moving into a new apartment with a very fast Internet connection (100M with the possibility of 200M in the future). I'm used to running OpenWRT on my Linksys WRT54G router and would like a well supported router to replace it. While researching routers I found most reviewers were using the default firmware and since I'll be putting on OpenWRT I'd like to know how well it works when using that. My requirements are gigabit LAN and WAN, 802.11N at 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, well supported by OpenWRT and/or DD-WRT, and USB support would be nice. I was thinking of going with BUFFALO WZR-HP-AG300H but some reviewers say there are range and dropping issues. My ISP suggests the Apple Airport Extreme which isn't supported by OpenWRT or the D-Link 825 which has connection problems as well and a few friends told me to stay away form D-Link. What does slashdot think?"

Intel atom and PFsense 2.0!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a cheap intel atom with dual intel nics and install pfsense 2.0 and away you go. Most Atoms are under 18 or so watts.

Kinda interesting though

[LostMyBeaver]

This is an issue which is more likely to effect Slashdotters than the average daily user. Many ISPs are offering 100MBps+ (in civilized countries) knowing there are factors involved such as the fact that the consumers will either never use the allocated bandwidth and there will be even less who can find suitable hardware to handle the connection.

I have personally considered in the past using KickStarter to design a SOHO Layer-3 switch with IPv6 and NAT. Wireless routers will be an issue in high bandwidth environments for a time to come since wireless routers typically use low end ARM processors and perform software based routing. Even using modern high end ARM CPUs, performing routing within software at bitrates over 60MBps is a challenge. Just the memory moves are insane.

An alternative is to use a DSP for software based routing which generally can improve performance substantially in these cases as they tend to contain a separate "Device" which they call an enhanced DMA controller, but instead is simply a device which is programmable to move memory using DMA. More advanced ones even include some scatter/gather functionality which can be useful for restamping network packets for NATing.

I can go into extensive details about how software based routers will always suffer for one reason or another and present dozens of alternative methods of implementing a SOHO (sub $300) solution to this problem, but the point is simply this. It is in fact a problem.

I can't be 100% sure whether the guys at Linksys/Cisco, Netgear, DLink etc... read Slashdot, but raising awareness to the issue may increase the awareness among these vendors to a need we "high end users" are coming across. The aging platforms from these vendors need an overhaul to support higher bandwidth and time has come which network routing is no longer really an option for strictly software based solutions. It is time we start getting consumer priced layer-3 switches with NAT, IPv6 and 6-over-4 solutions as well. The designs should include the features we expect from SOHO routers but should function as switches. This is entirely possible using low end FPGAs and using for example either an Intel Stellerton platform or possibly a Xilinx with embedded ARM would be ideal for these cases.

So, I am pretty pleased this topic has come up here. I am hoping that by the time my ISP upgrades me to 100 MBps (I'm a cheapskate... I only pay for 50up/50down, but can get 400up/400down for twice the price) I'll be able to handle the performance. At the moment, I'm using a Cisco 1900 series router which is soon to max out.

Re:WNDR3700

[inglorion_on_the_net]

Having said that, really slashdot? Slow day?

Perhaps, but it is surprisingly difficult to find good info on this. I mostly blame this on hardware manufacturers releasing hundreds of models, instead of just a few that work. But what you will find in practice is that free operating systems haven't been tested on most of them, many don't achieve the rated speeds (many not even anywhere near), much of the software has reliability issues, and much of this hasn't been posted to the Internet yet. So, you ask around. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Also, as I am going to be in the market for a new router myself, I am very interested in this thread.

I currently have a TP-Link TP-WR1043ND, which I am happy with. It runs OpenWRT, supports Gigabit Ethernet, and has a USB port. Sadly, transferring files over SSH only achieves about 1 MB/s, due to the CPU getting saturated. It has no problems saturating my Internet connection, though. In short, it does what I want it to do, and it's cheap.