router suggestions for gigabit internet

[Sdot]

Hello all, Saturday I am upgrading to 1 gigabit, I currently have 115 down/ 25 up. I assume I will need a better router yes? What is the cheapest router I can get that will allow me to use all of this new speed? I don't need one with a bunch of features because I probably won't use them.

[Electronics Wizardy]

What ISP? you will probably get a router with it, otherwise, edgerouter lite + ap ac lite.

[SCHISCHKA]

you should prob state your location. whatever your local is i would filter the search by AC wifi speed. 10/100/1000 speed routers are very affordable now

[Sdot]

16 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

you should prob state your location. whatever your local is i would filter the search by AC wifi speed. 10/100/1000 speed routers are very affordable now

I live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

17 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What ISP? you will probably get a router with it, otherwise, edgerouter lite + ap ac lite.

It is RCN.

[Remix]

17 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What ISP? you will probably get a router with it, otherwise, edgerouter lite + ap ac lite.

Curious as to why you're recommending the ER-Lite over the ER-X. 

[tt2468]

11 minutes ago, Remix said:

Curious as to why you're recommending the ER-Lite over the ER-X. 

Because the er-x is essentially a fancy switch. The ERLite-3 has full nat/routing offloading. For a gigabit connection, ERLite-3 is the way to go. The ER-X does not offload routing, so it would get bogged down by high amounts of routing, like a gigabit connection.

[Sdot]

2 hours ago, tt2468 said:

Because the er-x is essentially a fancy switch. The ERLite-3 has full nat/routing offloading. For a gigabit connection, ERLite-3 is the way to go. The ER-X does not offload routing, so it would get bogged down by high amounts of routing, like a gigabit connection.

So is this the one I should grab?

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Edgerouter-ERLITE-3-Desktop-Router/dp/B00HXT8EKE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484017259&sr=8-1&keywords=ERLite-3

[tt2468]

1 minute ago, Sdot said:

So is this the one I should grab?

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Edgerouter-ERLITE-3-Desktop-Router/dp/B00HXT8EKE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484017259&sr=8-1&keywords=ERLite-3

Yep, that's the one.

 

If you need any help setting it up, just send me a PM. I can guide you through the whole process.

[Sdot]

1 hour ago, tt2468 said:

Yep, that's the one.

 

If you need any help setting it up, just send me a PM. I can guide you through the whole process.

Thank you, is it difficult? I have only used the WRT54G from Linksys and this 25 dollar crappy router that I am using now. Both are pretty much plug and play.

[tt2468]

52 minutes ago, Sdot said:

Thank you, is it difficult? I have only used the WRT54G from Linksys and this 25 dollar crappy router that I am using now. Both are pretty much plug and play.

It's more complicated, but still easy. You just have to remember to use the wan+2lan2 wizard in the wizards tab.

[Remix]

18 hours ago, tt2468 said:

Because the er-x is essentially a fancy switch. The ERLite-3 has full nat/routing offloading. For a gigabit connection, ERLite-3 is the way to go. The ER-X does not offload routing, so it would get bogged down by high amounts of routing, like a gigabit connection.

 

The EdgeRouter-X has offloading enabled in some instances. HWNAT and IPSec can both be offloaded on the device, as well as DPI can be used as of recent updates. With HWNAT Offloading, you can easily achieve gigabit speeds. The CPU on the ER-X is also better than that on the ER-Lite. The ER-Lite is essentially dead unless you need BGP or iPv4 offload.

[tt2468]

25 minutes ago, Remix said:

The EdgeRouter-X has offloading enabled in some instances. HWNAT and IPSec can both be offloaded on the device, as well as DPI can be used as of recent updates. With HWNAT Offloading, you can easily achieve gigabit speeds. The CPU on the ER-X is also better than that on the ER-Lite. The ER-Lite is essentially dead unless you need BGP or iPv4 offload.

Welp, I use the erlite-3 for all my gigabit clients that dont require vpn and they seem to be pretty happy.

[Remix]

4 hours ago, tt2468 said:

Welp, I use the erlite-3 for all my gigabit clients that dont require vpn and they seem to be pretty happy.

I almost always recommend the ER-X to my clients, because it's essentially the same performance (with a few exceptions) for a bit less than the ER-Lite. Both have advantages, such as the QoS on the ER-X or the larger flash storage on the ER-Lite.

[tt2468]

2 hours ago, Remix said:

I almost always recommend the ER-X to my clients, because it's essentially the same performance (with a few exceptions) for a bit less than the ER-Lite. Both have advantages, such as the QoS on the ER-X or the larger flash storage on the ER-Lite.

Even with its 130k PPS routing throughput? 

[Sdot]

I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that I also need wifi. Neither of these two devices off that correct?

[skywake]

1 hour ago, Sdot said:

I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that I also need wifi. Neither of these two devices off that correct?

If what you want is the best performance you should get an access point separately. Which is what was suggested when the Edge Router was brought up. If you're going the Ubiquiti route anyways then they also have some pretty decent access points. If anything it's what they're better known for. For the best performance I would go for something like the AC-Pro rather than the AC-Lite as was mentioned earlier. Put one at either end of the house, don't enable zero-handoff. That'll give you the maximum amount of performance overall.

[Guest]

On 10/01/2017 at 11:37 AM, Remix said:

Curious as to why you're recommending the ER-Lite over the ER-X. 

As someone who not only deploys the Ubiquiti routers for businesses on a daily basis but also worked for the largest Ubiquiti reseller in Australia for 3 years , the ERX is possibly one of the worst products that Ubiquiti has ever released, running a close 2nd to the UAP-AC-LITE but I'm not going into that now. 

On 10/01/2017 at 3:33 PM, Sdot said:

Thank you, is it difficult? I have only used the WRT54G from Linksys and this 25 dollar crappy router that I am using now. Both are pretty much plug and play.

They used to be quite difficult to use and for some things, still are (eg L2TP VPN server) however there are a heap of guides out there on using the CLI (the L2TP vpn server is handy for a more secure way of connecting client devices eg tablets and laptops into the network as PPTP is insecure) 

 

Assuming you're using an external switch, you'll want to first do the firmware upgrade to the router as they ship with 1.2.0 and they're up to 1.9.x which includes a heap of bug fixes and new features including the wizards. Once you have 1.9 loaded, run the 1 WAN plus 1 LAN wizard - DO NOT USE the bridge LAN or 1 WAN + 2 LAN feature as this uses software based switching between eth 1 and 2 (as a joint LAN interface switch0) meaning that it impacts performance. Routers and switches are physically different in design in terms of their electronic layout and switches aren't designed to route and vice versa. 

On 10/01/2017 at 4:26 PM, tt2468 said:

It's more complicated, but still easy. You just have to remember to use the wan+2lan2 wizard in the wizards tab.

No - see above. 

17 hours ago, Remix said:

The EdgeRouter-X has offloading enabled in some instances. HWNAT and IPSec can both be offloaded on the device, as well as DPI can be used as of recent updates. With HWNAT Offloading, you can easily achieve gigabit speeds. The CPU on the ER-X is also better than that on the ER-Lite. The ER-Lite is essentially dead unless you need BGP or iPv4 offload.

Only issue is it's not designed for it. The ERX was a budget product variant of an already budget product. It has less RAM, less storage and overall lower performance. Hardware offloading was only bought to their software after users complained about terrible performance. DPI used to crash the router when running at high load - I know this for a fact when I was given evaluation models.

 

They've also got an annoying issue with their linmited storage whereby load 1 or 2 firmware versions and their storage is full meaning you have to use command line to delete the secondary boot files and ensure you don't brick your router while doing so. Technical people can do this but it's most certainly not ideal for someone who doesn't understand what they're doing. 

[Guest]

To further note, the ERL is also not ideal if you're on gigabit and want to run QoS. Without QoS it can handle 1000mbit routing without a problem but QoS really takes a toll. 

[.:MARK:.]

13 hours ago, Remix said:

I almost always recommend the ER-X to my clients, because it's essentially the same performance (with a few exceptions) for a bit less than the ER-Lite. Both have advantages, such as the QoS on the ER-X or the larger flash storage on the ER-Lite.

The larger flash is not just an advantage, but a requirement. The ER-X can't even update successfully because of how tiny that flash is.

[.:MARK:.]

6 minutes ago, Windspeed36 said:

To further note, the ERL is also not ideal if you're on gigabit and want to run QoS. Without QoS it can handle 1000mbit routing without a problem but QoS really takes a toll. 

To add to this, the QoS basically removes the ability to run HW offloading as it manages queues in software, you'll basically get 80-100Mbit/s speeds using QoS.

Though I really doubt that you'll need any kind of QoS on a gigabit line.

[tt2468]

6 hours ago, .:MARK:. said:

To add to this, the QoS basically removes the ability to run HW offloading as it manages queues in software, you'll basically get 80-100Mbit/s speeds using QoS.

Though I really doubt that you'll need any kind of QoS on a gigabit line.

A buddy of mine has been testing sophos home. Apparently the fq_codel works super will with 500Mbps+. I think it could be a good alternative.

[Sdot]

On 1/11/2017 at 7:46 AM, Windspeed36 said:

As someone who not only deploys the Ubiquiti routers for businesses on a daily basis but also worked for the largest Ubiquiti reseller in Australia for 3 years , the ERX is possibly one of the worst products that Ubiquiti has ever released, running a close 2nd to the UAP-AC-LITE but I'm not going into that now. 

They used to be quite difficult to use and for some things, still are (eg L2TP VPN server) however there are a heap of guides out there on using the CLI (the L2TP vpn server is handy for a more secure way of connecting client devices eg tablets and laptops into the network as PPTP is insecure) 

 

Assuming you're using an external switch, you'll want to first do the firmware upgrade to the router as they ship with 1.2.0 and they're up to 1.9.x which includes a heap of bug fixes and new features including the wizards. Once you have 1.9 loaded, run the 1 WAN plus 1 LAN wizard - DO NOT USE the bridge LAN or 1 WAN + 2 LAN feature as this uses software based switching between eth 1 and 2 (as a joint LAN interface switch0) meaning that it impacts performance. Routers and switches are physically different in design in terms of their electronic layout and switches aren't designed to route and vice versa. 

No - see above. 

Only issue is it's not designed for it. The ERX was a budget product variant of an already budget product. It has less RAM, less storage and overall lower performance. Hardware offloading was only bought to their software after users complained about terrible performance. DPI used to crash the router when running at high load - I know this for a fact when I was given evaluation models.

 

They've also got an annoying issue with their linmited storage whereby load 1 or 2 firmware versions and their storage is full meaning you have to use command line to delete the secondary boot files and ensure you don't brick your router while doing so. Technical people can do this but it's most certainly not ideal for someone who doesn't understand what they're doing. 

I felt like I knew a bunch about tech before reading what you guys are dropping in here, A bunch of this is going over my head lol. I've never really dove into networking.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Sdot said:

I felt like I knew a bunch about tech before reading what you guys are dropping in here, A bunch of this is going over my head lol. I've never really dove into networking.

That's fine - what's going over your head?

[.:MARK:.]

On 1/11/2017 at 7:26 PM, tt2468 said:

A buddy of mine has been testing sophos home. Apparently the fq_codel works super will with 500Mbps+. I think it could be a good alternative.

Pretty much anything running on x86 will work better with fq_codel, the EdgeRouters have a very low power MIPS chip in them.