Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router • Hacker News Board

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#101

Post by krakensden » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 7:14 AM UTC

sheraz wrote: post #44

krakensden wrote: post #28

Has anyone given CeroWRT (the bufferbloat project's distribution) a spin?

yeah -- I came across their site the other day. Would love to see some quantitative / qualitative numbers from that project.

They've done a bunch of work on reducing buffers and setting up AQM by default, and I've heard mumblings about improvements but can't find numbers. Closest thing I could find was this github repo: https://github.com/dtaht/deBloat/tree/master/test with lots of tests but no comparisons (stock OpenWRT vs ceroWRT would be interesting, for instance).

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#102

Post by soldermont001 » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 7:33 AM UTC

I have been running the RT-N16 + TomatoUSB for a couple of years now.

Pros:

- Hard to brick, easy to revert an f'ed up flash

- 5-6mo uptimes (most stable consumer router I've owned at least)

- Tracks network usage, attractive graphs

- Easy to add local DNS entries for your systems

- Improves DNS performance with a transparent DNS proxy (dnsmasq) (e.g. you can have it query all servers at once, and return record from the first server to respond)

- Easy to use port forwarding rules

- Attach a USB HD to it to act as a NAS (smb/ftp/dlna, nfs possible with unfsd)

- Setup a full pxeboot enviroment with it, including a shared nfs root!

- Run tcpdump to troubleshoot network issues!

- Runs most openwrt packages

Cons:

- Sensitive to heat (90f days will cause it to crash, only reason I've had to reboot it though)

- Doesn't always mount my USB thumb drive at boot (poor USB connection?)

- Not fast enough to stream 1024p HD over wifi

- Limited internal flash, I store my utils (e.g. tcpdump, nmap) on my USB thumb drive

- TomatoUSB doesn't appear to be maintained anymore :(

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#103

Post by nicpottier » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 8:36 AM UTC

btgeekboy wrote: post #7

No mention of Mikrotik? I picked up a RB750GL last week, and so far, it's everything DD-WRT/Tomato/etc wish they could be. It works as a basic plug-and-play router, but it's incredibly flexible beyond that. Check out http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:RouterOS_features if you're interested. You can download the OS and run it in a VM if you want to give it a try before purchasing.

I have one of these, and they certainly seem powerful, but holy crap, the configuration isn't for the faint of heart.

I'm not a network engineer, I just want a static IP to be assigned to the router and simple switching on the other ports, but damn if I couldn't figure that out in 15 minutes.

In the end I had other things to do so I put it aside, but be warned that you need to be willing to invest the time to make these work. (or already have a networking background)

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#104

Post by ZeWaren » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 8:38 AM UTC

What I really like about all these opensource firmware, is that you can really easily hack the hardware.

For example, if you read the datasheets of the internal components of the DLink DIR300, you can notice that by setting a few registers here and there you can achieve 802.1Q VLAN Tagging on the device's 4 port switch.

Very fun times.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#105

Post by mahrain » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 8:40 AM UTC

I don't mean to shill, but after trying all kinds of Netgear, Linksys and ADSL Modem/router combi's, I really love my Apple Airport Extreme. I haven't had to reset it once in two years, and it's every bit as fast and reliable as a wired connection. They are sold as tag-on purchases but really are a hidden gem.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#106

Post by GeorgePB » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 8:49 AM UTC

soldermont001 wrote: post #102

I have been running the RT-N16 + TomatoUSB for a couple of years now. Pros: - Hard to brick, easy to revert an f'ed up flash - 5-6mo uptimes (most stable consumer router I've owned at least) - Tracks network usage, attractive graphs - Easy to add local DNS entries for your systems - Improves DNS performance with a transparent DNS proxy (dnsmasq) (e.g. you can have it query all servers at once, and return record from…

> TomatoUSB doesn't appear to be maintained anymore :(

I recently switched to Toastman (http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/toastman-releas...) which: is based on TomatoUSB; has better QoS rules; and is updated more frequently. I currently use it on a RT-N16 and a WRT54G.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#107

Post by ZoFreX » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 8:58 AM UTC

I'm done with routers. Totally fed up of them running out of RAM, taking too long to open new connections, not being able to open more connections if someone is using 200 to torrent, fed up of them forgetting static IP assignments, port forwards, upnp never working...

I got fed up of all that and decided to do something about it. Routers have 8, 16mb of RAM? My worst computer that's lying around has 256mb. Slap another ethernet card in, install iptables, it's one day's work tops and your router will never crash and never forget anything again. My personal best is 7,000 torrents all going at once with the internet still being fairly usable.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#108

Post by mjwalshe » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 9:01 AM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #9

citricsquid wrote: post #6

Maybe this is a reasonable place to ask for some advice: I have 2 broadband connections, one via my phone line (ADSL) (76/17) and one cable (50/4) does anyone have any experience with using 1 piece of hardware to manage them both, possibly load balancing (not important, but would be cool)? I currently have 1 modem and 2 routers... it's not a very power efficient set up, it's also a bad experience because they're all…

Realistically, you'd be looking at a soho (small office/home office) load balancing router, specifically a dual-wan router. Cisco offers some [1] as well as Peplink [2]. I don't have a lot of experience with them (did some research on it a few years ago but never pulled the trigger), so YMMV when it comes to custom firmware etc. Doing a google search on "dual wan router" would give you a good feel for the environment…

Well the cisco route i would go for second hand Cisco kit 2600 with a pair of ADSL WIC's comes to mind.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#109

Post by unwind » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 9:06 AM UTC

zxoq wrote: post #58

jtreminio wrote: post #21

One thing Jeff didn't mention is that due to the high CPU and RAM in that ASUS router, you can be downloading several different torrents and the internet experience in general won't be degraded. With my Verizon FIOS's router, if I try to torrent anything it gets throttled down to less than 10KB/s, and on my old Linksys, attempting to torrent would make browsing the internet nearly impossible.

While that router may be beefy enough for multiple downloads. Installing an open-source firmwire degrades WAN performance a lot. I've tried a few different routers and dd-wrt / tomato generally reduces the WAN speed by 75 - 90% (from 500-1000mbit down to <100) in comparison with the default firmware. That is simply unacceptable, although understandable since this is probably not something that hits the devs very hard…

That sounds ... sensational. I've never used any of the open firmwares (so I don't have any deep motive) but I would really really hope that you provide this information to the developers. Preferably as a bug report with some kind of measurement data backing up your description, of course.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#110

Post by mjwalshe » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 9:08 AM UTC

But it's still consumer grade kit with all the limitations that implies if your running a proper business you need to go for proper kit that you can set and forget for years in my opinion.