Consumer grade routers 1Gb

I know that Openreach supply the BT Hub for the latest 900 package but which consumer grade routers are people choosing / using.

It's a minefield trawling the internet on my poor throughput so hopefully get some help here.

What are your requirements which are not met by the BT Hub?

Since I already use the early BT Home Hub 4 here WiFi has always been an issue so some time back I bought a Netgear X6 R8000 and the difference was night and day regarding WiFi signal even with my poor throughput.

I switched the WiFi off on the BT Home Hub and run my current 1 mbps connections WiFi through the R8000.

If the 900 package (when I get it) will suffice on my Netgear R8000 I'm happy to keep it but always looking to learn what others are using.

My Netgear RAX200 significantly performs better than my BT Business Hub 6 for Wi-Fi. Can’t get above 200 Mbs over Wi-Fi 5 in some parts of the home yet the Netgear gives me full 310/50 over Wi-Fi on a 330/50 line anywhere in the home.

It’s giving me real world file transfer speeds of ~ 1 Gb/s over Wi-Fi 6 with an actual link rate of 2.4 Gb/s to my desktop pc with a TP Link TX3000E pci card - this is is based on the Intel AX200 chipset.

Once I upgrade to BT’s 1000/220 service , I probably won’t get above 600 Mbs over Wi-Fi 5 but should easily hit 900 Mbps over Wi-Fi 6.

Alternatively if the RAX200 is out of your budget and you’re not too bothered about Wi-Fi 6, then I highly recommend the Netgear R8000P or Asus RT-AC5300.

In that case, keep the R8000 and see how It performs on the 1 Gig service before splashing the cash. You might be pleasantly surprised

In reply to a post by Highland76:

In that case, keep the R8000 and see how It performs on the 1 Gig service before splashing the cash. You might be pleasantly surprised

Good advise and thank you for your input.

I knew I should have got the nighthawk ax12 in the first place.

Well worth trying my current R8000 before deciding.

I see. If the issue is specifically with wifi performance from the home hub, then I'd suggest using one or more dedicated wireless access points.

I have extremely good experience with the Unifi access points: I have two of the AC Lite ceiling mounted, and they give great coverage around the home. They are dual band, with a raw 867Mbps bit rate on 5GHz; I can easily achieve 400M+ in real throughput after setting wide (VHT80) channels. The more expensive AC Pro or AC HD will give faster rates, if they're also supported by your laptop hardware.

The other good thing about the Unifi kit is the management software: it lets you see all your APs, which clients are associated to which AP and at what signal strength, how much data consumed by each client, schedule firmware updates etc. Also supports multi-SSID, VLANs, RADIUS authentication...

But it sounds like you're already using the R8000 just for its wifi, in which case it should continue just fine with the new home hub (or you can try it actings as a router without the home hub). Ethernet-wired PCs will benefit the most from the gigabit speeds, of course.

If you mean in the true routing sense, for 1Gbps, I've also been looking into this.

I am most likely getting a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite which with its hardware accelerated NAT is capable of delivering 1Gbps without CPU limits.

It looks like a good balance of stability, performance and cost.

Others a long the way were

MikroTik Hex
pfSense on a small PC
ASUS RT-AC86U

I believe some Netgear options have issues with BT'S PPPoE & IPV6

I believe the 1.6Ghz Dual code CPU in the ASUS 86u removes the CPU bottleneck from NAT throughput limits for 1Gbps WAN to LAN. Plus they have HW NAT Acceleration I their firmware.

I'd say that's probably a simple consumer unit that's easily going to handle it.

But I don't need the wifi, so think I will go with the EdgeRouter.

Currently I have wifi5, 3 AP's over 3 floors, all with band separation and careful power configs. They will give me 400-600Mbps typical in most locations. 800Mbps peak if extremely quiet. So I'll never fully utilise the DL but its the upload of 200Mbps that is the most important to me, for moving files around for work.

Until I get more WIFI6 devices I'll stick with my AP's and controller and use the EdgeRouter.

It really depends what you want to do.

Just plain gigabit routing and basic NAT? Even an EdgeRouter Lite will handle that as will all the Microtiks. In fact it can do a lot more like loadbalancing and OSPF it you really want it to.

If you want to do smart queues and QoS with fq_codel, you will need a bit more horsepower, and the EdgeRouter 4 or 6 will be enough for that, as will any of the beefier OpenWRT-capable routers. This already gets a bit much for Microtiks though.

Before you use EdgeRouter, also consider Ubiquiti's Unifi range. If you have CAT5 wiring and want to manage your WiFi APs, switches and routers via one management pane. Unifi is very cheap for what it is, but equally you're getting multiple APs, switches and a router and it adds up.

OpenWRT-capable doesn't mean you have to use OpenWRT. You can Tomato which is much more user-friendly.

Finally, the biggest horsepower requirement comes with IDS/IPS (intrusion detection/protection). If you want the device to sniff for any potential malware, it needs a lot of grunt to process at gigabit speeds. Only the Unifi UDM or quite a beefy pfSense PC (Xeon-D level) will handle that.

Note most of the above routers will not have a DSL modem. You will probably need to get one separately. You can pick up an ex Openreach HG612 for fleabay for £15-20 if you need.

NOTE: 1 Gbps service implies FTTP so the Openreach ONT is a fixed entity, no need to worry about DSL modem.

zzing123

I find all this a bit amusing for a "consumer grade" router

Sounds much more like a medium grade business, than an ordinary household!

Ubiquiti's consumer grade system is called Amplifi, and may be worth a look at. It's more of an affordable all-in-one solution than their prosumer Unifi range, though not as flexible or powerful

They have launched a model in the US (not here yet) which includes "Wifi 6" (802.11ax). Presumably not too long before it arrives over here

In reply to a post by PianSomB:

Ubiquiti's consumer grade system is called Amplifi, and may be worth a look at. It's more of an affordable all-in-one solution than their prosumer Unifi range, though not as flexible or powerful

They have launched a model in the US (not here yet) which includes "Wifi 6" (802.11ax). Presumably not too long before it arrives over here

I'm afraid just because its made by Ubiquiti, that's no guarantee it will be any good. I bought the Amplifi Alien a month or two ago via a US freight forwarding company. I paid around £300 (excl shipping), so hardly a cheap router. Wifi 5/6 performance was nothing special, it was on a par with my £60 Phicomm K3 router which I keep as a spare. Certainly nowhere near as good as high end Asus or Netgear routers.

I found the Alien's firmware restricted, it didn't allow you to do basic stuff like change wifi radio channels...quite poor for a router costing £100s. Luckily I managed to sell it for more than £400 on ebay so wasn't out of pocket. Due to lack of supply, these are being sold for as much as $600-$700 on ebay. Sheer madness to pay this much for a router which is nowhere the best wrt wifi performance. IMHO probably worth about £100-£150 given that's its targeted at non-technical users - you can only configure it via a smartphone app.

Edited by deleted (Fri 10-Apr-20 16:14:35)

In reply to a post by zzing123:

If you want to do smart queues and QoS with fq_codel, you will need a bit more horsepower, and the EdgeRouter 4 or 6 will be enough for that, as will any of the beefier OpenWRT-capable routers. This already gets a bit much for Microtiks though.

Depends which model of Mikrotik. Performance-wide, the RB4011iGS+RM will walk over most home routers, while the CCR1036-8G-2S+ will grind them into dust However they don't do fq_codel.

In reply to a post by zzing123:

Finally, the biggest horsepower requirement comes with IDS/IPS (intrusion detection/protection). If you want the device to sniff for any potential malware, it needs a lot of grunt to process at gigabit speeds. Only the Unifi UDM or quite a beefy pfSense PC (Xeon-D level) will handle that.

Given that most traffic these days is TLS, edge IDS is becoming of less and less value - unless you decide to do man-in-the-middle traffic interception with your own fake CA, in which case, you get to keep the pieces.

Compare and contrast prices: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=asus+router&ref=nb_sb_n...

vs EdgeMax: https://www.msdist.co.uk/ubiquiti/edgemax/edgerouter
or Mikrotik: https://www.msdist.co.uk/mikrotik/hex

So it depends what you mean by 'consumer', because it doesn't necessarily mean cheaper.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Depends which model of Mikrotik. Performance-wide, the RB4011iGS+RM will walk over most home routers, while the CCR1036-8G-2S+ will grind them into dust However they don't do fq_codel.

Absolutely. And on a non-asymmetric line, you don't even need QoS - it only matters when there's a bottleneck and you need smart traffic management just like a road junction. It's ironic that a leased line requires much less complexity and horsepower to drive than a DSL line

In reply to a post by zzing123:

Given that most traffic these days is TLS, edge IDS is becoming of less and less value - unless you decide to do man-in-the-middle traffic interception with your own fake CA, in which case, you get to keep the pieces.

True, too.

Wasn't looking at prices, just the complexity of what is being talked about for a home consumer.