Consumer routers for high speed WAN (eg 400Mbps VM)

[Rainmaker]

Following on from the 'Virgin Media looking at 400Mbps broadband', as well as the 'Be still any good?' threads. I was thinking (and I'm not alone judging by the other couple of unanswered posts on this subject) about what routers would be capable of handling this type of WAN speed, while still maintaining a decent performance on the WLAN and LAN side without falling over.

I'm guessing there aren't many routers that can effectively handle 400Mbps with a few thousand connections recycling quite quickly (bittorrent, Usenet etc) as well as keeping up with streaming, games etc. VM hint that they've "found" capable modems and routers. But what are they?

I'm still suffering with the VM-provided DIR-615, which is very basic indeed and reguarly needs a power cycle to 'wake up' after a download session. I want to buy something that will last as long as possible, and not need replacing when 200Mbps and later 400Mbps become available. I've already paid for, and rather quickly given up on, a WRT54GL, simply because the speeds I get now are too high for it to handle.

I considered building a small box (HTPC stylee) and installing ClearOS or Debian on there and setting it up as a router/firewall. It'd be cheap, 10x more powerful than any shop-bought router, and 100% custom built. It could also double up as a download box (SABNZBD+) and server.

On the consumer side though, what are the current options? I'm guessing the Asus RT-N16 would fare quite well? It's Tomato compatible, sports a massive Broadcom 4718 processor at 533MHz, 128MB RAM and a 32MB Flash ROM. That's some router! The Netgear WNR3500L seems good too, and again is Tomato compatible. But that 'only' has a 480MHz clock speed CPU (same chip as the Asus), only 64MB RAM and a poxy 8MB of Flash ROM.

Your thoughts, gentlemen/ladies?

 

[Azuse05]

RT-N16 & WNR3500L have the same 480mhz cpu. Broadcom had issues with it (and their closed source drivers - wth) at 533mhz. You simple see that number where people have been to lazy (or don't know) to change it to 480mhz. They're good purely because the run tomato, or DD-WRT if you're so inclined, while the fast routers don't give you anywhere near the freedom with their fixed firmwares. http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/index.php?option=com_chart&Itemid=167

Not that any of this is relevant. Virgins 100 & 200 meg trials have been going on for a very long time e.g. the 200 meg one is 2 years long and not even half way. It will be several years before we get 400 meg lines en-mass so anything you buy/build now will be out of date by the time you get a line capable of using it to it's fullest capacity. You sound like someone who's seen virgin & 400meg in the news, where they carefully omit certain details unfortunately.

If you'd asked people would have told you 54GLs are great routers, but their effectiveness on a 50meg line depends entirely on what you've got them doing.

A better question would be what routers do fibercity use? Their 100meg ftth is in both Bournemouth and Dundee. The speed boosts they sell raise the line speed to 1gb for a short period of time. What router can handle that speed?

 

[Rainmaker]

Thanks for your reply.

If you'd asked people would have told you 54GLs are great routers, but their effectiveness on a 50meg line depends entirely on what you've got them doing.

A better question would be what routers do fibercity use? Their 100meg ftth is in both Bournemouth and Dundee. The speed boosts they sell raise the line speed to 1gb for a short period of time. What router can handle that speed?

I didn't need to ask anyone; if you re-read my OP you'll notice I said I bought the WRT and then got 50Mbps. Having re-read though I can see how ambiguously that might read. Sorry. I was originally using it with an AM200 ADSL2+ modem, fully bridged to the WRT. Actually the WRT54GL runs nicely on 50Mbps (wired) without issue, it's just the wireless G that can't keep up. I'm currently browsing and downloading from Usenet at 6.32 MB/sec rock solid. I did install Tomato RAF, clock the CPU to 250MHz and tweak some settings though.

I was well aware of the duration of the 200 meg trials, and the long wait for 400Mbps. This was more a question about the hardware involved in such set-ups rather than the rollout itself (which I know will be quite some time coming). 100Mbps should be starting by Q3 though so that's something. 1Gbps is common abroad, and as you say used sparingly in the UK (consumer lines that is). I too wonder what hardware they provide.

As for any hardware I purchase being out of date by then; not necessarily. That was the point of my OP - to find out what might potentially last a while. After all I can build a small, smart box for ~£50 that'll outperform every commercially available residential router for years to come. There must be some good routers out there? Hence my thread.

Anyone?

 

[Edward78]

I considered building a small box

I have wondered about building a router also, mostly cause I live in a god awful boring town. Be great to find small cases somewhere that were router size. Get a Pico-ITX board, alap it in the router sized case, out Clearos on the laptop drive you put in & have a nice homebuilt router, that looked like a store bought router. Anyone know what router form factors are called??

 

[Azuse05]

Good is subjective p) but that link clearly shows 6 routers capable of 400mb wan to lan. Building your own box would obviously be the best option if you're will to take the time. I'm sure a few people would be interested in doing that themselves.

 

[Edward78]

Good is subjective p) but that link clearly shows 6 routers capable of 400mb wan to lan. Building your own box would obviously be the best option if you're will to take the time. I'm sure a few people would be interested in doing that themselves.

I think it would be awesome, if I knew of a place that soled router size cases. Pico-ITX board, case the size of Linksys WRT54g, & a 2.5 HDD with ClearOS on it.

 

[Rainmaker]

I think it would be awesome, if I knew of a place that soled router size cases. Pico-ITX board, case the size of Linksys WRT54g, & a 2.5 HDD with ClearOS on it.

I'm thinking more along the lines of a smal form factor PC (bigger than a normal router). Mini or nano ITX board, 1x flash card for the OS, 2x 1TB hdds for storage, 2x GbE NIC (WAN and LAN), 1x wireless N card set as an AP, a decent low-powered dual core CPU and 512MB DDR2 RAM.

Stick Debian or ClearOS on there, set up as a router and install the usual LAMP, SSH, Samba, Proftpd, Sabnzbd+, Torrentflux-b4rt etc. Voila. A router/firewall with downloading and media serving capabilities that takes little power and is way more powerful than anything you'd buy in a shop. I feel a project coming on. LOL

 

[Zarf]

I think it would be awesome, if I knew of a place that soled router size cases. Pico-ITX board, case the size of Linksys WRT54g, & a 2.5 HDD with ClearOS on it.

Remember that you need dual Gigabit LAN (or at least Gigabit+an expansion slot), which I think limits you to mini-ITX boards. All told you'd be looking at around £150 at least.

Cheapest is just to get a cheap second hand desktop or mini-tower and hide it where it can't be seen or heard, you can probably get a complete Athlon 64 system for less than £50.

 

[Edward78]

This site is good, but the boards come with a OS on the board already. Something tells me, that ClearOS is easier. Does anyone have boars like that that are not tied to one OS?