Router recommendations (another one!)

[ThehAWKs]

i would go with a combo use pfsense + EA6500 in bridge mode thats what i do and it works great.

 

 

 

[+BudMan MVC]

"I keep wanting to run pfSense but don't have a suitable old computer to run it with"

If you happy with what your running - I would stick with that, unless there is something you want to do that you can not with your current setup. No reason to change, other then want to play/learn/etc.

you don't need much as far as computer power - you don't have anything, even p3 can handle it.

Do you run any sort of virtual stuff, vmplayer, virtualbox - you can run it via pretty much any virtual software.

edit: Thats a pretty hefty lab box - nice, and running full version with vcenter. 8 cpus, that your lab at work I would have to guess. Thats a lot of box to run at your house ;)

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Mine seems to be running using about 76MHz of the processor of the ESXi box it lives on.  Although having said that, I have seen it go all the way to 145MHz

 

Missed the question, sorry!

I  wouldn't go back to the old way.  My wife wouldn't let me given how reliable our internet connection has been since I put it in.

I did make my ISP's router into an Access Point and I still have to reset that several times a week - most routers are absolute garbage in comparison.

[srbeen]

Netgear WNDR4500 has been the most solid thing I have ever used. I dont say this lightly. I was previously running a DDWRT 310N which just bottlenecked, froze, dropped wifi. Stock WNDR4500 likely moves 2-3tb of data locally and WAN per month, easy as pie to configure, and has a feature-rich locally-stored firmware, does logging, throttling, qos, bandwidth limits/timeframes, USB3 ports that worked fine in my trial. It don't have VPN support but I can setup multiple wifi networks on 2.4 and 5GHz, wireless repeating as well. Been up for 187 days now (basically last power outage) without a single problem/bottleneck. Once I had to turn off the 2.4GHz, then turn it back on for it to work. Once. no reboot needed and 5GHz and ethernet still worked.

 

If you are serious and want a good, true, reliable, don't-lie-to-you-or-report-home-enabling-features-only-when-connected-to-the-cloud, get a cheap gigabit laptop and install pfSense on it. Huge learning curve but likely the same price and a ton more flexibility. If you get a powerhouse machine, you may be able to virtualize a few OS's on it to utilize the extra power. Thinking laptop cause its small and don't draw a lot of power and most have gigabit controllers. Otherwise find this netgear one locally and try it out for a week or two, whatever the return policy is. You likley won't want to return it.

[grunger106]

If you want something good and flexible - then as others have said, pfsense would be interesting (if you want to really build it yourself)

Or look on ebay for some real (not Linksys or cisco small business) Cisco gear,

Personally at home I run a 861 ISR a 1200 AP with a couple of HP ProCurves, all ebay sourced.

[+BudMan MVC]

"Thinking laptop cause its small and don't draw a lot of power and most have gigabit controllers. "

Problem is they normally only have 1 interface. And don't have any room to add more other than say usb, and usb nics suck!! While a small box can draw as little as few watts and support multiple nics alix boards work nice for example

Now if you had a old laptop laying around not doing anything - then sure adding a usb nic you could make it work.

If looking to buy something really low power and small - you could go with something like this..

Look how cute that case it ;)

Has 3 nics, could add wireless kit if you wanted or just use ap off one of the nics.

for $225 you can get it preloaded with pfsense 2.03 -- ready to go..

[Brian M. Veteran]

I think Pfsense is the way forward. I can throw it on the box I have upstairs no problem, but I need to sit down and plan out network adapters (virtual and physical) to make sure it'll all work :p

 

PS: I've done some digging. I presume 2 NICs (what I currently have in the box) will be enough. That way I can have one for WAN, one for LAN, with all VMs on the box (including pfsense) on the LAN vswitch, with pfsense (obviously) also getting the WAN one.

 

In my head that should work - but could someone possibly confirm I'm not being stupid and that it's not going to cause issues with other vms?  :p.

[+BudMan MVC]

Yup that works!  That is how I started, my n40l comes with 1 nic - added a second one and then got a dual nic so I have 4.  This allowed me to break out my wireleess to is own physical network without having to vlan and also allowed me to let the vmkern have its own physical vs sharing the lan one - this seems to have made a nice increase in how fast I can move files to the datastore from the lan.

 

But yup 2 is all that is needed, one is wan connected to your modem and a wan vswitch in esxi..  Then other nic connects to physical lan switch and your esxi lan vswitch and vmkern port group.  All that there is too it.  Shazam your running your router in a vm ;)

 

here is the current vswitches on my esxi - notice pfsense has interfaces in wan, lan, wlan and dmz which is not tied to the physical world.

 

[ThehAWKs]

BudMan my esxi box stated its life as a hackintosh, i got tired of waiting for sandy bridge-e and power management to work natively. so i turned it into a esxi whitebox all in one zfs.

 

asus rampage iv gene

intel xeon e5 2658 

intel pro/1000 vt quad

lsi 9211-8i 8 x 4tb seagate nas

intel 313 20gb zil

ocz vertex 4 256gb datastore

samsung 840 pro 256gb l2arc

 

edit: im tying to find a good switch cant decide between hp 181024g or dell power connect 5424 

oh and the cpu i got it of ebay 350$ and its a C2.

[Brian M. Veteran]

Awesome - thanks guys. Is there really any tangible benefit to splitting the wlan and vmkern off?

 

I wont be transferring to the data store manually pretty much ever (all my actual data is on an NFS share - so the only thing I'll be copying is the odd installation ISO). I mean, if it's going to give a real benefit I can easily get a third NIC (possibly even a dual/quad one since you can get ex-corporate quad pulls very cheap these days) - but it's not really worth it if there's not going to be any benefit.

[+BudMan MVC]

I wouldn't worry about breaking out your vmkern -- speed was not all that bad, and yeah an install iso shouldn't be all that often.  There a thread a while back where people complained about slow moving to datastore.  I agreed it wasn't all that speedy, etc..

 

I got the dual nic just because I wanted to play with breaking out my wlan - and dual wasn't that much more than single, etc.  so hey why not breakout the vmkern since I have a space nic, etc.

 

You only really need 2 nics - one for wan and one for lan.  And to that matter it is actually possible to do it 1 arm bandit style with 1 nic an vlans -- but its bit complicated setup and would not suggest it...

[Ambroos]

Well, I have a Linksys E4200 v1, running on Tomato firmware, and I love it. Uptime is in months and I never had a single issue with it. I get 100Mbps+ over WiFi and configuration is a breeze.

 

If you don't want to go pfSense or don't want to spend the money on it (don't forget energy costs) just a regular WiFi Router/AP with Tomato will do. Asus stuff is really good.

[ELVIS7]

Ok so im hoping someone here can perhaps help me.  I purchased my ea6500 back in December 2012. Now it is dying. How? Well it randomly disconnects every connected device, the speeds on it are super low,ex I connect only my PC via Ethernet to it and was getting about 50mb down did a direct connection from PC to modem and was getting 150ish Mbps . now I'm only getting 9Mbps ... Even after multiple resets it still doesn't work right and will randomly have a fit... Not to mention all the flaws, limited Mac address list, multiple devices under one. Really bad range. Yes it been updated and rolled back. No media prioritization is not on. So I still have my best buy warranty and they said I could bring it back to get a refund or exchange. We have more than 20 devices in this house, Netflix gets streamed a lot (two streams at once) and 3 gaming consoles etc.

 

I've been looking at the amped RTA 15 and The ASUS RT-AC68U . any one know if they are better than my ea6500 and which one of the two would give me the strongest range and control of settings?

[+BudMan MVC]

"We have more than 20 devices in this house, Netflix gets streamed a lot (two streams at once) and 3 gaming consoles etc."

 

All of which are wireless?  I would go with multiple AP in that case with different bands 2.4 and 5 to distribute the bandwidth usage.  Wireless is SHARED!!  I wouldn't want 20 devices all sharing the same wireless pipe.

 

150Mbps internet connection is fairly fat and should be able to handle multiple devices all using the net, depending on what your doing.  But your all trying to share a wireless connection not fun..

 

 

But if you had more than 1 wireless AP and simultaneous dual band 2.4 and 5ghz at same time your now rocking in style with where your different wireless devices are on different wireless connections not having to compete with the other devices for bandwidth. Now your limitation is more your ISP fat pipe and not wireless shared overhead pipe.

Your also going to want to make sure what router you use as your gateway, connected directly to your ISP can actually route a 150Mbps connection.

Here is good start

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/

They have listing of different routers wan to lan throughput - some are just not going to be able to route 150Mbps from your isp to your lan..

[ELVIS7]

I'll elaborate more,

Around 7 cell phones are connect at time.

1 desktop.

3 laptops.

Two Xbox 360's.

Two tablets.

An internet TV streaming box.

A Netflix/crackle streaming DVD player.

1 apple TV.

That list doesn't include guests and their devices.

My current setup is one 2.4 abg and one 5ghz N/ac on the ea65000. And a art 54gs being used as a bridge upstairs with one 2.4 BG network. The ea6500 isn't strong enough for my house, its barely able to output to my room on the same floor 30 feet away through 3 walls.

At random times, no matter the device count, the entire network will slow down to a gault. I've tried only connecting the desktop directly to Ea without any devices and was only getting 9ish mb then 50is. Plugged directly into the modem and it skyrocketed..and that's with nothing on the network. Also, the ea6500 has a limited amount of Mac address allowed slots... Around25. And for some reason, it doesn't allow any console to system link...I've tried everything. My only options to system link were that I used a crossover cable for direct connection or used the wrt54gs. I also do a lot of streaming over the network. Large HD files.

[ELVIS7]

Hello?

Its between the amped rta15 and the Asus ac68

[Brian M. Veteran]

Just an update to this - I had a major networking day yesterday, and now have the following:

 

HP Microserver re-provisioned running:

 

 - pfsense

 - unRAID

 - debian install (clone of my old physical server - deals with my internal crap)

 - second debian install for external facing stuff (LAMP/bind)

 - Windows XP (VERY stripped down install, runs in about 300mb RAM - basically an iTunes server).

 

All seems to be running well. I did a WAN to LAN test and I can get about 930Mbps throughput - which I don't think is that bad considering the NICs are the onboard one combined with 2 horiffic Realtek ones. I'm going to order a decent 2 port intel card today though - I figured I may as well spend a bit to get a more robust setup (the Access point was like ?130 - what's an extra ?50 on a decent NIC). One question I did have though - putting the management network on it's own NIC increased my throughput by about 70Mbps - I've read that this is likely to be because of the amount of broadcasting that happens on the management network. Is it recommended, with this split, to just connect the management network to the same (physical) switch as the LAN, or to just leave it disconnected, and plug into it directly when I need to use it (something which I have no problem doing).

 

I've also made use of the old AirPort Extreme I had lying around to get wireless internet in the conservatory/garden (always used to be impossible due to lead flashing in the way!). I've created two networks - a 5GHz one and a 2.4GHz (different SSIDs) with both APs broadcasting. I've set them on as wide-apart channels as possible, with the Linksys (better router) on higher frequencies. There's about a 10 meter overlap area - which seems to work well - machines automatically pick up the stronger linksys unless it's out of range.

 

One other advantage is that I'm no longer limited to having 255.255.255.0 as the subnet mask, so I can have 10.0.1.* for servers, 10.0.2.* for computers, etc, etc - making my static IPs much easier to remember! All in all - it was quite a bit of work but certainly worthwhile!

[+BudMan MVC]

"increased my throughput by about 70Mbps - I've read that this is likely to be because of the amount of broadcasting that happens on the management network."

As I said in this thread or another breaking out vmkern would be an increase.. But I doubt it has to do to broadcasting.. Just did a quick sniff and didn't see one packet come from it, be it broadcast or even multicast.

So I am not exactly sure why breaking out vmkern onto its own nic helps, but it sure isn't do to broadcasting so there is no reason to unplug the connection.

I have both nics lan and vmkern connected to the same physical network and I am not having any issues at all.. And I sniff my network all the time I would for sure notice odd traffic for sure.

On your unraid, are you booting a usb stick or did you set it up fully vm?

And welcome to the world of full router distro and running on vm even -- I think you will find its a great combination.

You mentioned looking for a dual nic -- this is the one I got, and you can not beat the price ;)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J3OPOU

I contacted http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?ie=UTF8&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER&me=A3O6GNX9CB6SWD directly to make sure they shipped the low profile model.

[Brian M. Veteran]

"increased my throughput by about 70Mbps - I've read that this is likely to be because of the amount of broadcasting that happens on the management network."

As I said in this thread or another breaking out vmkern would be an increase.. But I doubt it has to do to broadcasting.. Just did a quick sniff and didn't see one packet come from it, be it broadcast or even multicast.

So I am not exactly sure why breaking out vmkern onto its own nic helps, but it sure isn't do to broadcasting so there is no reason to unplug the connection.

I have both nics lan and vmkern connected to the same physical network and I am not having any issues at all.. And I sniff my network all the time I would for sure notice odd traffic for sure.

On your unraid, are you booting a usb stick or did you set it up fully vm?

And welcome to the world of full router distro and running on vm even -- I think you will find its a great combination.

You mentioned looking for a dual nic -- this is the one I got, and you can not beat the price ;)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J3OPOU

I contacted http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?ie=UTF8&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER&me=A3O6GNX9CB6SWD directly to make sure they shipped the low profile model.

 

Running it from VM, but I need the USB in there for the key. It's certainly much better!

 

This afternoon, however, I made one further step - I returned the EA6500 and bought one of the new AirPort Extremes (roughly the same price with academic discount). Finally got that POS out of my life!

[+BudMan MVC]

It would be nice if you could run pure VM and not need the usb, you would think it should be possible if just running the free version. Or a way have the usb with your lic be a vm as well??

But with the microservers having 7 usb ports, its not all that big of an issue to have to have on plugged in.. Could use the internal one so not even sticking out, etc.

Have fun with your setup -- if you have any questions about running pfsense on vm, just ask - been doing it for quite some time and happy to help.

BTW what kind of speed you getting to and from your unraid -- you hear people complain that its slow, etc. I have not found this to be the case when I have played with it.

I currently give raw access to the disks on my file server, you can do it with the built in controller of the N40L just search for raw disk mapping.. lots of guides out there.. There better performance with the raw for sure.

[Brian M. Veteran]

It would be nice if you could run pure VM and not need the usb, you would think it should be possible if just running the free version. Or a way have the usb with your lic be a vm as well??

But with the microservers having 7 usb ports, its not all that big of an issue to have to have on plugged in.. Could use the internal one so not even sticking out, etc.

Have fun with your setup -- if you have any questions about running pfsense on vm, just ask - been doing it for quite some time and happy to help.

BTW what kind of speed you getting to and from your unraid -- you hear people complain that its slow, etc. I have not found this to be the case when I have played with it.

I currently give raw access to the disks on my file server, you can do it with the built in controller of the N40L just search for raw disk mapping.. lots of guides out there.. There better performance with the raw for sure.

 

Yup that's how I do it - unRAID has access to the disks through RDM. Just did a quick test, I'm getting roughly 90MB/s read and 55MB/s write.

 

It's not blistering, but I don't need really need massive disk performance - so I'm not going to spend hours chasing performance I don't need. Writes could easily be improved with a cache drive - I have a small SSD around somewhere that I could use if I can be bothered adding it in (and I haven't run out of SATA ports!). I found the slowest part of the system was reading from/writing to data stores. Now all of my VMs access my drives through NFS to unRAID - which is a massive improvement over using bog standard datastores.

 

Also with NICs - welcome to rip off Britain - that $40 card? http://www.amazon.co.uk/NC360T-Express-Gigabit-Server-Adapter/dp/B000J3OPOU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375024128&sr=8-1&keywords=HP+412648-B21

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Also with NICs - welcome to rip off Britain - that $40 card? http://www.amazon.co.uk/NC360T-Express-Gigabit-Server-Adapter/dp/B000J3OPOU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375024128&sr=8-1&keywords=HP+412648-B21

 

http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/121129044679?var=gv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&_lwgsi=y&cbt=y&device=c&adtype=pla&crdt=0&ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=65&ff19=0

[Brian M. Veteran]

http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/121129044679?var=gv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&_lwgsi=y&cbt=y&device=c&adtype=pla&crdt=0&ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=65&ff19=0

 

Great minds think alike - I ordered that exact one about half an hour before you posted that link :laugh: