FTTP Routers

Would any of you kind people post what you think the best 3 FTTP routers are to get?

I have FTTP 900 being installed in a week or so. I have an ASUS RT-AC68U at the moment on FTTC and have been very happy with it over the years and it has some nice extra features,

Can anyone recommend a great router to get to immediately to replace the BT one supplied please?

Thank you

Edited by Scoot (Mon 15-Nov-21 16:52:26)

Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro ... plus WAPs

I use two of these. One upstairs, one downstairs. My entire house has great coverage and the App is great.

https://eu.store.ui.com/products/amplifi-alien-route...

Just check the MAX WAN throughput before buying any Router. Some seem to have good LAN WiFi rates, etc. but the WAN throughput is poor.

I know if I ever move above 300MB I'll have to replace my trusty Vigor 2860, as it's MAX is 300MB.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro ... plus WAPs

If I am googling the correct model, then this is a rack mounted device of which I'd prefer to stay away from due to limited space. Thanks for the suggestion

In reply to a post by kingbiscit:

I use two of these. One upstairs, one downstairs. My entire house has great coverage and the App is great.

https://eu.store.ui.com/products/amplifi-alien-route...

This isn't a brand I'm well aware of to be fair, they look nice though 😁thanks for the suggestion.

In reply to a post by Adduxi:

Just check the MAX WAN throughput before buying any Router. Some seem to have good LAN WiFi rates, etc. but the WAN throughput is poor.

I know if I ever move above 300MB I'll have to replace my trusty Vigor 2860, as it's MAX is 300MB.

Thanks for the heads up and suggestion.

Does anyone else have any suggestions please? I was kinda hoping to stay with ASUS and use a unit which was more suited to the home but with advanced features. I currently use the ASUS to VPN in to and such and MAC assign my network and devices under the roof. I dont know what features the BT modem/router will come with as its been years since I used any homehub's or BT hardware but I am guessing im heading for a huge downgrade in features unless I buy something before install day.

Any further suggestions welcome.

Edited by Scoot (Fri 19-Nov-21 16:49:41)

In reply to a post by Scoot:

...I currently use the ASUS to VPN in to and such and MAC assign my network and devices under the roof. I dont know what features the BT modem/router will come with as its been years since I used any homehub's or BT hardware but I am guessing im heading for a huge downgrade in features unless I buy something before install day.

Any further suggestions welcome.

You will need something beefy. I saw the AC88u which might be OK but you might need to go higher up the range e.g. AX88u so it is getting pricy.
They do at least have adaptive QoS.
The Dream machine is not a rack mount device - https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-unifi...

The UDM-Pro which I suggested is rack mount. The basic UDM will be at full stretch 0n a Gbit connection

In reply to a post by smouty:

In reply to a post by Scoot:

...I currently use the ASUS to VPN in to and such and MAC assign my network and devices under the roof. I dont know what features the BT modem/router will come with as its been years since I used any homehub's or BT hardware but I am guessing im heading for a huge downgrade in features unless I buy something before install day.

Any further suggestions welcome.

You will need something beefy. I saw the AC88u which might be OK but you might need to go higher up the range e.g. AX88u so it is getting pricy.
They do at least have adaptive QoS.
The Dream machine is not a rack mount device - https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-unifi...

Hi, thanks for the response. The Dream Machine Pro that was suggested was a rack mounted device if I found the right one. Either-way thanks for posting the one you have.

I don't mind spending a decent amount on a good unit, I'd probably prefer to stay with ASUS but willing to swap if anyone can suggest something they use and are happy with and that looks to fill my needs.

The UDM-Pro which is designed for rack mount does not have the mounting flanges fitted on delivery so it can sit on a desk. Or get a 1U underdesk mount to hold it out of the way.

Do any of these suggestions encompass Modem and Router? is it best to keep the BT modem, guessing it will be an all in one device they supply.

I currently have FTTC so have no idea what hardware BT will be supplying as I have an old HG612 modem connected to my ASUS currently.

thanks

You can get the UDM-Pro to run a PPPoE session which replaces teh modem.

In reply to a post by Scoot:

Do any of these suggestions encompass Modem and Router? is it best to keep the BT modem, guessing it will be an all in one device they supply.

There is no "modem" as such with FTTP, but what you get instead is an Openreach-supplied Optical Network Termination (ONT). This is a small powered box. On one side of this is where the engineer connects the fibre, and the other side is an RJ45 connector which you connect to your router's WAN port.

You *must* use the Openreach supplied ONT: you cannot change this out, and you don't own it. If you move house, you leave it behind with the property.

So whichever provider you use - and it doesn't have to be BT - you will have a two box solution: the Openreach ONT, and the router (either ISP-supplied or your own), with a CAT5e ethernet cable between them.

Note: if you took the BT FTTP service with voice, the voice service can *only* be accessed via the BT-supplied router. You can replace the router, but you'll lose the voice if you do.

In reply to a post by MHC:

You can get the UDM-Pro to run a PPPoE session which replaces teh modem.

That's wrong in several important ways:

* There's no modem with FTTP
* There is an ONT (which arguably does the job of a "modem"), but you can't replace it

You're right in saying that if you bought service from BT, and you connect your own router to the ONT, then it needs to run PPPoE. (Some other providers don't use PPPoE, e.g. Sky and Talktalk resi)

I haven't used the UDM/UDM-Pro, but people on this list have said it doesn't do a good job of PPPoE, so buyer beware.

I would suggest, firstly: if you're not a technical expert, then seriously consider sticking with the BT-supplied router. It's free, it's supported, and it's already set up to provide a gigabit.

If you are a technical expert, then you wouldn't be asking on this list anyway.

If you still want to use your own router, then buy whichever model you're comfortable with configuring. *You'll* be the one responsible for setting it up and tuning your network to make use of a gigabit.

I think that when most people say they want to use their own router, what they really mean is they want better wifi coverage. In that case, in my opinion it makes more sense to install separate wifi access point(s) in other parts of the house, with CAT5e cable(s) back to the router. This will give you far better wifi coverage than any single device in one location.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I haven't used the UDM/UDM-Pro, but people on this list have said it doesn't do a good job of PPPoE, so buyer beware.

Resolved (finally!) in a recent FW update:
https://community.ui.com/questions/ETA-on-bugfix-for...

I use their access points (excellent) but use others for routing.

Edit to add: in my experience and that of others, numerous issues with Ubiquiti are down to [censored] poor firmware, which is a shame as they do have some good hardware, features and the UX is good…. but let down by frequent release of immature/buggy FW.

I’ve probably just started a small flame war with the UI cognoscenti…but there you go.

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 20-Nov-21 10:03:01)

I would only recommend pfsense or OPNSense but appreciate that it is not for everyone.

It is scalable to multi gbit connections and can be tailored to do pretty much whatever you want but there is a learning curve that is pretty steep and the official hardware is expensive.
Most people build their own for this reason.

Once working though it is about as stable and reliable as anything.
I currently have it running on an APU2 which is a great little box using around 5w but is limited to around 350mbit using PPPoE so I'll need something beefier when I upgrade to a 400/400 connection.

I also have an HP T620 plus which should be OK upto 1Gbit and uses 10w.

The Qotom or Protecli mini PCs are popular and pretty much identical to the official offerings.

I also use Unifi access points and they have never had an issue. They just work.

So running a 1gbit internet connection is not as straight forward as most people think and requires some investment in equipment of around £500+ to get the best out of it.

Edited by smouty (Sat 20-Nov-21 13:14:49)

In reply to a post by smouty:

So running a 1gbit internet connection is not as straight forward as most people think and requires some investment in equipment of around £500+ to get the best out of it.

Or you use the router provided / recommended by the ISP, which for a Gigabit service should have hardware acceleration for PPPoE. Unless using Virgin Media.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by smouty:

So running a 1gbit internet connection is not as straight forward as most people think and requires some investment in equipment of around £500+ to get the best out of it.

Or you use the router provided / recommended by the ISP, which for a Gigabit service should have hardware acceleration for PPPoE. Unless using Virgin Media.

My Qotom was more like £200 and from a desktop PC I can drive my 1gbit internet connection using DHCP at full speed,

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by smouty:

So running a 1gbit internet connection is not as straight forward as most people think and requires some investment in equipment of around £500+ to get the best out of it.

Or you use the router provided / recommended by the ISP, which for a Gigabit service should have hardware acceleration for PPPoE. Unless using Virgin Media.

My Qotom was more like £200 and from a desktop PC I can drive my 1gbit internet connection using DHCP at full speed,

So add in a couple of APs and a switch or two and it is closer to £500 I would say.

In my experience ISP equipment is able to meet the advertised speeds and nothing more.

The following site gives throughput figures for a lot of the consumer grade routers so may be worth a browse to compare the available kit and prices (in $$s).

You may need to fiddle with the filter settings to see what benchmark is the most suitable for your use case (available client wifi capabilities etc).

If you want to stick with Asus I'd have thought the RT-AX86U with Merlin firmware installed would be relatively future proof.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/...

For now why not stick with the 68U and see what happens?

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

My Qotom was more like £200 and from a desktop PC I can drive my 1gbit internet connection using DHCP at full speed,

But that's a custom decision, a lot more technical than the majority of ISP customers want to be ? My Asus AX88U WiFi 6 router was about that price in Jan 2020. I know from other reports it can handle high speed lines with PPPoE, but as I have no FTTP around here, its not (yet) important to me.

In reply to a post by smouty:

In my experience ISP equipment is able to meet the advertised speeds and nothing more.

Which of course is all that you need.

There are certainly people who need better routing capabilities: those who use multi-WAN, or site-to-site VPNs, or inter-VLAN routing, or OSPF, or even QoS. Those people know who they are, and what equipment to meet their needs.

For everyone else, the ISP-supplied router will work just fine, with the proviso that a single router may not give whole-house wifi coverage. If that's a problem then some ISPs provide wifi extenders at extra cost - and if not, you can buy additional APs or mesh wifi which plug into the existing router.

Using an RT-AC86U and it works wonders on my 900/110 FTTP.

It's basically a value judgement, I tend to either use a Mikrotik RB4011iGS+RM(10xGigabit port router with a Quad-core 1.4Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, SFP+ 10Gbps cage and desktop case) or run OPNsense or Untangle(Home Basic $50/year licence) on silent x86 hardware(Alpine passive cooler/no fans - special low power AMD CPU).

Untangle is the easiest to use for beginners, then OPNsense, then Mikrotik RouterOS. Downside to OPNsense is because it is open source you always run the risk that some future update is going to break something(pfSense suffers from that a lot).

Edited by Spud2003 (Tue 07-Dec-21 03:10:26)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I haven't used the UDM/UDM-Pro, but people on this list have said it doesn't do a good job of PPPoE, so buyer beware.

Definitely, I was using a UDM Pro initially when upgrading from my Edgerouter Pro 8. Aside from the fact some settings/functionality was missing (e.g. missing NAT settings), PPPoE performance didn't max out on gigabit. Something buyers need to be aware of.

In reply to a post by Spud2003:

I tend to either use a Mikrotik RB4011iGS+RM(10xGigabit port router with a Quad-core 1.4Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, SFP+ 10Gbps cage and desktop case)

Mikrotik, as advised to me here on the forum a short time ago, was the best move I did.

I'd also recommend Mikrotik if OP has some technical understanding at least. Otherwise maybe a newer ASUS router. I had an RT-AC68U a long time ago and it was reliable, had Marlin on it but it was used with FTTC back then, unlike its DSL modem variant (DSL-AC68U?) which had an unreliable modem sadly.

Hi All,
Thanks for all the replies. I am still on the lookout for a new Router.

I have had FTTP for some weeks now and my current router isnt saturating the line without hitting 100% CPU. I do run OpenVPN on it and Merlin firmware with some extras so the VRAM and CPU are struggling to saturate the 900Mb/s.

In reply to a post by jhorton88:

Using an RT-AC86U and it works wonders on my 900/110 FTTP.

Hi pal, maybe I am running more intensive tests and have more running in the background on the Route but although its a great router I think its a little underpowered for saturating the full speeds with several users and many Philips Hue/Ring devices and VPN, etc etc

Definately need to upgrade. Just dont know what to yet.

In reply to a post by mrc99:

The following site gives throughput figures for a lot of the consumer grade routers so may be worth a browse to compare the available kit and prices (in $$s).

You may need to fiddle with the filter settings to see what benchmark is the most suitable for your use case (available client wifi capabilities etc).

If you want to stick with Asus I'd have thought the RT-AX86U with Merlin firmware installed would be relatively future proof.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/...

For now why not stick with the 68U and see what happens?

Thanks for the response, I did try the RT-AC68U for a few weeks but it is struggling. I was looking at the RT-AX86U and some other ASUS higherspec models. I've not decided on a router yet or found any great deals so still looking but appreciate your input and advice 👍

In reply to a post by Scoot:

Hi pal, maybe I am running more intensive tests and have more running in the background on the Route but although its a great router I think its a little underpowered for saturating the full speeds with several users and many Philips Hue/Ring devices and VPN, etc etc

Number of devices doesn't affect this. Its more likely the options within the router you have enabled.

If you're running Merlin, click on the Tools menu option, and then scroll down the panel, you should have a line labelled HW Acceleration, showing Runner and Flow Cache. Both of mine show Enabled.

Some of the filtering features disable one or both of these and that reduces the overall speeds the router can handle as it puts more load on the main CPU.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 26-Dec-21 12:55:31)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

If you're running Merlin, click on the Tools menu option, and then scroll down the panel, you should have a line labelled HW Acceleration, showing Runner and Flow Cache. Both of mine show Enabled.

Some of the filtering features disable one or both of these and that reduces the overall speeds the router can handle as it puts more load on the main CPU.

Do you use PPP?

I'm not sure about the current range of Asus routers but on the older models the hardware acceleration called "flow acceleration" wouldn't work on a connection with PPP.

I have "flow cache" enabled but I'm on Talktalk with no PPP.

I don't know if flow cache works the same as flow acceleration but if so it won't work with PPP.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

Do you use PPP?

not currently, as on Virgin Media 200 Mbps.

I'm not sure about the current range of Asus routers but on the older models the hardware acceleration called "flow acceleration" wouldn't work on a connection with PPP.

I have "flow cache" enabled but I'm on Talktalk with no PPP.

I don't know if flow cache works the same as flow acceleration but if so it won't work with PPP.

Gotcha, thanks, that may have changed since I moved from my old Openreach based service.

Edited by jchamier (Mon 27-Dec-21 23:54:58)

I'm using PPP on my AX88U, but only with a ~60Mbps VDSL connection, both Runner and Flow cache are showing as enabled, but its barely ticking over at that speed. I'm due 500/75 in a week or two so will see how things go then. Seen quite a few posts on the BT forum and the odd one on SNB where people are getting lower speeds on their Asus routers.

Using the AX88U on 500/75 with no issues with speed. Always just over 500 down and 80 up. Rock solid and wouldn't go near anything else now since using.

Also on Merlin FW showing:

HW acceleration Runner: Enabled - Flow Cache: Enabled

Edited by BuckleZ (Mon 27-Dec-21 23:17:14)

I noticed I have trouble saturating my 900/110 line. It just about manages but frequently dips and I'm wondering if it could possibly be the BT router? Everything is wired with cat6 and I have a modern PC with a realtek 2.5g lan. No matter what I throw at it torrents, whatever. Those dips are always there. 960 mbps > dip to 800 > 960 > dip to 800. It just does this over and over I've tried all sorts of different things from rclone and sftp to the various gaming distribution platforms (steam, xbox etc)

Just to note I'm the only person in my area who has FTTP so far. (pole is in my garden)

Edited by Xuse (Tue 28-Dec-21 10:57:45)

Dips like that are pretty normal. I don't think you have anything to concern yourself about.

If you are expecting a dead flat line at 940 Mbps you will be disappointed to find that is not probable or possible in reality. Ditto with upload.

Agreed, I think people need to adjust their expectations slightly now that broadband connections are reaching a gigabit. It's still a contended service like all broadband has been, but the numbers are so high now that a 10-15% drop at certain points in peak hours becomes "I've lost 100Mbps" rather than "I've lost 6Mbps". A town could have 2000 subscribers on a 1Gbps service, you can guarantee there isn't 2Tbps of capacity to get that data out of the exchange.

The vast majority of the time you will be able to get the headline rate, but if you want to run speed tests and always see the 900+Mbps number then that's what leased lines are for (and then it presumes the capacity is in place on the route to the speed test server).

I guess I'm just a bit suspicious with the poor installation I received. I might just be looking for problems, but last few days ping is so much higher in general things feel sluggish even though the actual throughput is high. To elaborate a bit I mean the loading of webpages, things like seeking on youtube which were all near instant when I first got FTTP installed. Now seem to hang or buffer which seems crazy for a connection like this. Maybe my expectations were too high?

afaik you can't run thinkbroadbands quality monitor with bt routers so I'm not sure what to do to check if there is a real issue or not.

In reply to a post by Xuse:

afaik you can't run thinkbroadbands quality monitor with bt routers so I'm not sure what to do to check if there is a real issue or not.

SOME BT routers - I have never had issues with te hones I have had.

Without another router to substitute - you could go back to basics - if you have the opportunity, try connecting your computer directly to the ONT rather than via the router. You will need to setup a PPPoE client in lieu of the router doing the authentication. Re-run any tests.

You could also eliminate any possible issues with your own machine if you can test in the same way with another machine or otherwise test the basic capabilities of your PC hardware, without any possible effect from other windows programs, firewall and AV software etc and clean boot the machine with an Ubuntu stick.

Also see if you can separately test your own machines and network can between themselves on your LAN sustain and saturate your gigabit network connections by running internal tests using iperf or openspeedtest or the like.

Some great ideas, I'll look into doing that. When I built this computer I did want to get a motherboard with Intel lan, but from reading around online Realtek is not as bad as it used to be.

One good thing that happened is that openreach are coming out to remove the redundant copper cable free of charge. The guy on the phone said it should have been removed. I know it's just aesthetic reasons, but I'm still glad it's going to be removed.

In reply to a post by Xuse:

I know it's just aesthetic reasons, but I'm still glad it's going to be removed.

I couldn't agree more. I never understand why otherwise house-proud people are happy to have all kinds of old/redundant/no longer properly attached cables trailing around the front elevation of their house.

Draytek 2866. Bulletproof, feature rich and can do 1.2Gb/s combined out of its WAN ports.

Starts at £275

Edited by nofappingway (Tue 04-Jan-22 17:35:24)

Well, they came today and removed it. Looks a lot neater as the cable went from one side of the house to the other. There's no longer a thick stack of cables running around the house. Let's just say he was not very pleased to be out removing the cable, but the fact of the matter is if it had been removed during installation of my fibre he wouldn't have had to. Still, I'm very happy with how openreach themselves handled it.

In reply to a post by Xuse:

Let's just say he was not very pleased to be out removing the cable

Glad you got it sorted, if he has a problem doing that sort of work he should be telling his line manager rather than the customer.