Do routers really suck? (Today's Techquickie)

[Thomas A. Fine]

Today's Tech Quickie

 

 A 1GHz processor would have to be unable to transfer 1 byte (not word) per (roughly) every 10 CPU cycles in order to bog down data transfer on a 1Gb WAN line.  That seems unlikely to be a real problem.  And even very slow memory can easily keep up with that data speed without blinking.  Even if a user is saturating both upload and download bandwidth, that's till well within the capabilities of the cheap processors used in these things.

 

Now, if you have a high speed home network that spends more time talking to itself than to the WAN (e.g. a video server at home used by five people editing video), then you might need a bigger router. Likewise if you have a 10Gb WAN connection.  But 99% of home users don't have either of those "issues", and won't benefit from this effort at all.  They'll just spend a lot of time building and configuring an expensive, bulky, power-hungry PC wasting most of its CPU and memory doing nothing, and they'll gain no performance at all.  Meanwhile off-the-shelf wifi routers are inexpensive, have small form factors that you can hang on a wall, and get by on like 5W of power.

 

If I'm wrong, I suggest you use your new lab to see if routers have CPU/memory transfer speed problems in the real world.  (Almost all testing of these things I can find focuses on over-the-air performance, not internal performance.)

 

   tom

 

[emosun]

well all I know is most routers do suck , cept my wrt54g that thing is nuclear

[Chiyawa]

Well, I would add a fan to move air in because usually, this chips will thermal throttle when it gets hot. Sometimes I just wonder why router or switch couldn't install a $5 40mm fan.

[Bender Blues]

11 minutes ago, emosun said:

well all I know is most routers do suck , cept my wrt54g that thing is nuclear

 

The notorious router in South Park had the town scrambling with no internets. Wasn't nuclear, just power cycled. 

 

[DrMacintosh]

Yes, I'd argue most routers are awful. That being said, most routers are not Linksys Velops or a Netgear Nighthawks. Most routers come from an ISP and those all suck. I love my Velop router and my old AirPort Extreme that's a second WAP. 

[emosun]

10 minutes ago, Bender Blues said:

 

The notorious router in South Park had the town scrambling with no internets. Wasn't nuclear, just power cycled. 

 

k neato

[CerealExperimentsLain]

11 hours ago, Thomas A. Fine said:

Today's Tech Quickie

 

 A 1GHz processor would have to be unable to transfer 1 byte (not word) per (roughly) every 10 CPU cycles in order to bog down data transfer on a 1Gb WAN line.  That seems unlikely to be a real problem.  And even very slow memory can easily keep up with that data speed without blinking.  Even if a user is saturating both upload and download bandwidth, that's till well within the capabilities of the cheap processors used in these things.

 

Now, if you have a high speed home network that spends more time talking to itself than to the WAN (e.g. a video server at home used by five people editing video), then you might need a bigger router. Likewise if you have a 10Gb WAN connection.  But 99% of home users don't have either of those "issues", and won't benefit from this effort at all.  They'll just spend a lot of time building and configuring an expensive, bulky, power-hungry PC wasting most of its CPU and memory doing nothing, and they'll gain no performance at all.  Meanwhile off-the-shelf wifi routers are inexpensive, have small form factors that you can hang on a wall, and get by on like 5W of power.

 

If I'm wrong, I suggest you use your new lab to see if routers have CPU/memory transfer speed problems in the real world.  (Almost all testing of these things I can find focuses on over-the-air performance, not internal performance.)

NAT is pretty CPU demanding. My AC66U capped out at about 500mbps once I got a 1gbps fiber connection.  Buried the needle on the CPU and started hanging and stuff.  The solution was pfSense.  Right now I'm using a Celeron J4005 board with a dual 1gbps NIC card to do the job.  That does 1gbps no problem.  The AC66U continued on simply as the wifi AP for years till it died, where I then replaced it with an AC68U.

I also like that the pfSense box is upgradable.  Get faster internet?  Just install a faster dual NIC. CAD$55 for a dual 2.5g NIC, easy drop in upgrade.

[LAwLz]

12 hours ago, Thomas A. Fine said:

If I'm wrong, I suggest you use your new lab to see if routers have CPU/memory transfer speed problems in the real world.  (Almost all testing of these things I can find focuses on over-the-air performance, not internal performance.)

You're not wrong OP.

 

It's a terrible video. It makes a bunch of incorrect assumptions and statements in order to push people to an overly complicated solution. They probably made this video because they needed a reason to justify saying "hey, pfSense is something that exists".

Saying "routers suck" gets more clicks than saying "this is what pfSense is".

 

 

26 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

NAT is pretty CPU demanding.

It really isn't. I mean, it is probably done in software on these routers but even a old end single core CPU is enough for gigabits of NAT throughput.

 

27 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

My AC66U capped out at about 500mbps once I got a 1gbps fiber connection. Buried the needle on the CPU and started hanging and stuff.

My guess is that you ran into some software bug or had non-optimal settings on your router. For example I have seen people turn on excessive logging on their home routers and that can tank performance. One thing I can say for certain is that it was not because your CPU couldn't handle more than 500Mbps of throughput though.

I know this because a quick Google search shows that reviewers of that router got 914 Mbps throughput LAN to WAN on that router.

And before someone points out that "836Mbps is not 1Gbps", that's effective throughput and doesn't include the usual overhead. In this test, 914Mbps essentially means 1Gbps.

 

 

39 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

I also like that the pfSense box is upgradable.  Get faster internet?  Just install a faster dual NIC. CAD$55 for a dual 2.5g NIC, easy drop in upgrade.

I would be that in 99% of cases, buying a computer to run pfSense on, and then upgrade it later, will end up costing more than just buying an off-the-shelf router and then replace it when necessary.

[Pickles von Brine]

I havent had any issues with AX86s in my house. Work a hell of a lot better than the old air port extremes we were using. Great coverage, speed is fantastic and overall very stabile. 

At work I run pfsense with routers in AP mode. Honestly, havent had too much of a performance drop with either. 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

7 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

My guess is that you ran into some software bug or had non-optimal settings on your router. For example I have seen people turn on excessive logging on their home routers and that can tank performance. One thing I can say for certain is that it was not because your CPU couldn't handle more than 500Mbps of throughput though.

I know this because a quick Google search shows that reviewers of that router got 914 Mbps throughput LAN to WAN on that router.

And before someone points out that "836Mbps is not 1Gbps", that's effective throughput and doesn't include the usual overhead. In this test, 914Mbps essentially means 1Gbps.

PPPoE and VLAN tagging on the WAN required for the connection.  Not to mention some firewall rules for port forwarding.  What you call 'Non-optimal' I'd just called 'Basic router stuff'.  850mbps is basically the fastest the BCM4706 can accomplish and that's with an acceleration scheme and some other functions stripped out as a result.  It's just a 600mhz single core MIPS CPU after all.

 

12 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I would be that in 99% of cases, buying a computer to run pfSense on, and then upgrade it later, will end up costing more than just buying an off-the-shelf router and then replace it when necessary.

CAD$93.60 for the ITX J4004 board, USD$22.66 for the Intel 82575EB dual 1gbps NIC.  Pretty affordable setup really and the ability to upgrade the NIC is a huge asset.  Pulls about 15w out of the wall.

 

 

 

[Mnky313]

Idk about getting a speed increase compared to a consumer router but I will say pfSense has been MUCH more reliable than any normal consumer router I've seen.
Also if you do stuff like with VPNs they are usually unusably slow from my experience on normal routers (not to mention they usually don't support protocols like IKEv2/Wireguard).

I decided to jump into pfSense after getting annoyed that the routers we have don't expose options or just do things in a stupid way compared to how they could be done.

One of the things that bugs me is how most routers handle setting DNS via DHCP. I use a PiHole so it's nice to see each device's requests for troubleshooting/finding things that should be blocked, but on conumser routers specifying a DNS for the DHCP server usually doesn't pass that address to the client, it just passes the routers IP and the router forwards requests to the IP specified. This means in PiHole all the requests come from the router not individual devices (unless you manually went to each device and added PiHole as the DNS server. (yes, I know you can use PiHole as a DHCP server but I didn't want to do this).

AFAIK there is no reason why they don't just push the DNS IP you give, pfSense does it and it works fine...

Also the ability to have proper firewall rules is awesome, it allows you to do awesome things like sending certain IPs/MACs over a VPN or creating a site-to-site VPN and allowing devices to communicate as if it is one big LAN.

I highly recommend pfSense for anyone who wants to experiment with this kind of stuff,  I had 0 experience with it when I started but it's really not that hard to pick up and understand, especially for simple setups.

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

PPPoE and VLAN tagging on the WAN required for the connection.  Not to mention some firewall rules for port forwarding.  What you call 'Non-optimal' I'd just called 'Basic router stuff'.  850mbps is basically the fastest the BCM4706 can accomplish and that's with an acceleration scheme and some other functions stripped out as a result.  It's just a 600mhz single core MIPS CPU after all.

Again, I am very surprised if it couldn't push more traffic than that even with some VLAN tagging and PPPoE enabled. Although, now we're getting into the territory of very niche features. You should not judge a consumer router based on which niche features you light need for your use case, but that 99% of people don't need. 

 

 

5 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

CAD$93.60 for the ITX J4004 board, USD$22.66 for the Intel 82575EB dual 1gbps NIC.  Pretty affordable setup really and the ability to upgrade the NIC is a huge asset.  Pulls about 15w out of the wall.

 

 

 

You're forgetting the price of the case, the price of the power supply and the price of the storage. As well as the price of the access point and switch you need to add to get similar functionality to the all-in-one consumer router people got. 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

4 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Again, I am very surprised if it couldn't push more traffic than that even with some VLAN tagging and PPPoE enabled. Although, now we're getting into the territory of very niche features.

...PPPoE in a router is niche...?

[DavidKalinowski]

6 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

...PPPoE in a router is niche...?

maybe they meant PoE? that would be kinda niche.

[Alan G]

18 hours ago, Caroline said:

 

But, it was fun to watch how people overcomplicate things for the sake of ease of use and convenience to the point even fridges and washing machines are connected to a wireless network today, makes sense that a router slows down or crashes when one has so much shitware devices connected to it, hogging resources all at the same time.

We just bought four new appliances that are Internet enabled.  I was pretty much forced to hook up the Cafe range to our network as there are features that cannot be enabled without WiFi.  None of the other appliances will be connected as I really don't need to have remote operation of a washer and dryer that are right outside my office in our condo.  the dishwasher gets started after dinner and likewise, I don't need the Internet to do this.  I did up date the range software last night which took about 20 minutes to download and install.  Now I can use the oven for air frying!!!

[LAwLz]

9 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

...PPPoE in a router is niche...?

When I said niche feature, I was referring to VLAN tagging.

But anyway, I strongly doubt that it was a CPU issue that prevented you from getting more than 500Mbps throughput. 

 

Besides, the routers shown in the video are quad cores at 1.8GHz, and a far superior architecture to the one you have in your router. So we're talking like 20 times the performance of your router. On top of that, some workloads are not even running on the CPU. I can't comment on the specific processor your router uses, but the processor in the routers mentioned in the video both have the BCM49408 which has hardware accelerated circuitry for NAT, on top of a dedicated processor for the wireless portion. So things like NAT does not run on the CPU at all, with the exception of maybe under some circumstances with some specific features enabled (like certain logging or inspection features). Neither does any of the wireless processing.

 

 

Home routers are very purpose built, and very good at what they were designed to do. Most of the information in this video is bollocks because it does not apply to the 99% of people. The CPU being "bad" does not matter for home routers because the CPU does very little to begin with, and the few things they do do not require a lot of processing. 

It's when you start enabling some features that might break certain hardware acceleration that you may run into problems. But most people do not do that so it's not an issue.

[OhioYJ]

On 2/22/2022 at 10:38 PM, Chiyawa said:

Well, I would add a fan to move air in because usually, this chips will thermal throttle when it gets hot. Sometimes I just wonder why router or switch couldn't install a $5 40mm fan.

 

I've been doing this forever. I noticed a long time ago on extended downloads, my speeds dropped. I added fans to my cable modem and router, speeds no long drop. I add extra heat sinks internally, and power the fans off of the devices power adapter (just solder leads to the board, using a connector in case the fan needs replaced).

 

Some various pictures I could find easily: 

 

 

 

Even my current router Ubiquiti Amplifi Alien has a built in fan, adding another one dropped my temps 20-25 degrees.

 

I've found over all the ones I've modified, even when the placement isn't ideal, any air flow through these things is better than none. 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I was referring to VLAN tagging.

It's required by the ISP to make the internet happen. o.O

[Alex Atkin UK]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Home routers are very purpose built, and very good at what they were designed to do. Most of the information in this video is bollocks because it does not apply to the 99% of people. The CPU being "bad" does not matter for home routers because the CPU does very little to begin with, and the few things they do do not require a lot of processing. 

It's when you start enabling some features that might break certain hardware acceleration that you may run into problems. But most people do not do that so it's not an issue.

Sorry but you're completely and utterly wrong.  Do you even read this forum?  There are tons of examples of people having their broadband hobbled due to their router being overloaded!  I'm not even talking WiFi (that a whole other issue), just routers incapable of the raw NAT speed required, especially if you need PPP on top too.

 

I gave up on consumer routers over a decade ago because its so easy to overload them.  Now sure, I have some pretty extensive things on there with VPNs, policy routing, multiple WANs, but I didn't when I first started - I only have those because now I can.  Things like pfBlockerNG so you can block known bad IPs from trying to connect to your LAN, or your clients from trying to connect to them, its basic Internet security IMO.  I also region lock connections to remote services I host at home.  The fact most people are just trusting their router to be secure, doesn't mean they should be and things like pfSense let you lock things down much better than most consumer routers.

Yes most modern routers have hardware offloading, but that also disables most advanced functionality such as QoS, policy routing, etc.  Its a quick and dirty hack to get around the fact the CPUs are too weak.

You're also forgetting that a LOT of people have older routers that do not have that feature.  People upgrading from DSL to FTTP, or their cable service got upgraded, etc.  A friend of mine has an old TP-Link WDR3600 I left him and that tops out at around 120Mbit with SQM enabled.  Ideally unless you have monster broadband, you want QoS turned on to minimise buffer bloat, particularly if you are a gamer.

So yes I think its safe to say the average router is junk, because the average router is not necessarily what is sold today, its what is in peoples homes.  Setting up a old PC to replace your router can be a much cheaper and long-term solution than buying a new router every time you upgrade your broadband package.

[Alex Atkin UK]

8 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

It's required by the ISP to make the internet happen. o.O

To be fair, that usually happens on the modem/ONT so your router never needs to know about it unless you have everything integrated into the one box, which unfortunately is rarely possible.

ONT on SFP modules are not common (though hopefully going forward will become a standard thing to do), DSL modems to plug into a PC are basically none existent these days and I'm not aware of any adapters that can connect cable directly to a PC either.  Of course all those things are in consumer routers and mostly if not entirely hardware offloaded AFAIK.

So even with an x86 router, you need a consumer router in bridge mode to handle that stuff - often the ISP provided device.

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 2/23/2022 at 3:24 AM, Thomas A. Fine said:

Now, if you have a high speed home network that spends more time talking to itself than to the WAN (e.g. a video server at home used by five people editing video), then you might need a bigger router.

The router plays ZERO part in devices talking amongst themselves, its even mentioned in the video.  The switch handles all communication between LAN devices and if you need that to be faster you add a faster switch external to the router, which I believe they also mentioned in the video.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

9 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

To be fair, that usually happens on the modem/ONT so your router never needs to know about it unless you have everything integrated into the one box, which unfortunately is rarely possible.

ONT on SFP modules are not common (though hopefully going forward will become a standard thing to do), DSL modems to plug into a PC are basically none existent these days and I'm not aware of any adapters that can connect cable directly to a PC either.  Of course all those things are in consumer routers and mostly if not entirely hardware offloaded AFAIK.

Being able to run my internet with literally nothing by the ONT/SFP plugged into a my own media converter and everything else is my own hardware is pretty sick tho.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Just now, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Being able to run my internet with literally nothing by the ONT/SFP plugged into a my own media converter and everything else is my own hardware is pretty sick tho.

Like I said, I really hope ONT on SFP become common as being able to just yank it out of the ISP device and plug it into your own router would be really nice indeed.  Although modern ONTs are so tiny its not too much of a big deal.  They are rolling out FTTP to my area right now, just a waiting game.

[LAwLz]

47 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

It's required by the ISP to make the internet happen. o.O

No it's not. Most ISPs handle that on their side, not on the customer side.

I mean, just stop and think for a second. Do you really believe that the router you order from Amazon.com is preconfigured to tag traffic on a VLAN, and it just so happens that it always end up being the correct VLAN tag being applied? It happens on the ISP side, not customer side.

 

 

43 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Sorry but you're completely and utterly wrong.

No I am not.

 

43 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Do you even read this forum?

Yes I do.

 

43 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

There are tons of examples of people having their broadband hobbled due to their router being overloaded!

No it's not.

 

43 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

just routers incapable of the raw NAT speed required, especially if you need PPP on top too.

[Citation Needed]

 

43 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Things like pfBlockerNG so you can block known bad IPs from trying to connect to your LAN

Not necessary for 99% of home users. Home routers already block all traffic initiated from outside to your LAN by default.

 

43 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Yes most modern routers have hardware offloading, but that also disables most advanced functionality such as QoS, policy routing, etc.  Its a quick and dirty hack to get around the fact the CPUs are too weak.

Features 99% of people don't use.

Also, the CPUs aren't too weak.

 

43 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

You're also forgetting that a LOT of people have older routers that do not have that feature.  People upgrading from DSL to FTTP, or their cable service got upgraded, etc.  A friend of mine has an old TP-Link WDR3600 I left him and that tops out at around 120Mbit with SQM enabled.  Ideally unless you have monster broadband, you want QoS turned on to minimise buffer bloat, particularly if you are a gamer.

The WDR3600 does hardware accelerated NAT and can do gigabit to the WAN.

Could it be that the performance was bad because you installed third party firmware that broke certain hardware acceleration features on your friends router? Or maybe you incorrectly configured some features that caused it to perform poorly? Seems just as likely to me as "the router was bad".

 

43 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

So yes I think its safe to say the average router is junk, because the average router is not necessarily what is sold today, its what is in peoples homes.  Setting up a old PC to replace your router can be a much cheaper and long-term solution than buying a new router every time you upgrade your broadband package.

I don't understand your logic.

So your argument is that people are stuck with old outdated routers that are bad, so instead of buying a new, good router, they should build their own for like 4 times the cost so that they can have features they won't use? 

Also, you don't have to upgrade the router every time you upgrade your broadband. Not only do people very rarely upgrade their broadband, they are often given a free router when they do. 

 

This 60 dollar router from Amazon, the best selling one, has the speed, reliability and features that 99,9% of people want and need, if we are talking about the router portion. The wireless might leave some things to be desired and a couple of access points might be better for those living in a big house and/or a house with thick walls, but if we are talking about the router then it is fine.

I dare you to find a pfSense router that would be better for the average Joe for less.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

24 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

No it's not. Most ISPs handle that on their side, not on the customer side.

I mean, just stop and think for a second. Do you really believe that the router you order from Amazon.com is preconfigured to tag traffic on a VLAN, and it just so happens that it always end up being the correct VLAN tag being applied? It happens on the ISP side, not customer side.

The internet as in my internet.  Without VLAN tagging and PPPoE, the router won't access my internet servce internet.  Welcome to fiber.

And why do you word this like it's an alien concept when Asus WRT has VLAN tagging for the WAN as a function?  It also does PPPoE as a function but that's not configured out of the box either, is it?