What router to buy?

[kongolav 3]

Hello!

I`m buying a new wireless router to get better coverage in my place - and since I`m buying a new router - I`m thinking it could be a good idea to buy a router that I can setup airvpn on directly - so that all the computers behind that router is "protected".

I`m looking at an asus RT-AC68U - would that be a router - or do you have any other better suggestions?
http://www.asus.com/no/Networking/RTAC68U/

 

 

Have a great day!

best regards
Olav

[Guest]

Hi. First thing you need to consider is if you will be able to maintain your normal speed when you have openvpn running on the router. I don't own the router myself but i searched a bit and saw it does 50mbps(Merlin firmware). Other than that it's a very good router. 

[go558a83nk 362]

or the AC87 would be a good step up over the AC68. 

[rainmakerraw 94]

As our friend above says, consumer routers will struggle with the encryption overhead of openvpn. A high end (i.e. expensive, top of the range) router might hit 50Mbps throughput WAN > LAN with openvpn if you're lucky. Slightly older (eg Asus N56U) will struggle to hit 10Mbps. So it all depends on what your ISP line speed is? If it's less than that go ahead. If it's more than that, or if you want to do it properly anyway, build a small box with an AES-NI capable CPU, 4GB to 8GB of RAM, Intel Pro dual or quad NIC and (if you want a WAP) a good Atheros wifi card. Then install pfSense onto a USB key and use that as your router instead.

[!Petafoster47 0]

Hi,

Am using the RT AC68U at the moment, flashed with DD-WRT and running the openvpn client on the router. It all runs smoothly.

 

I've got 30mbps cable and torrents download upto ~23mbps; unclear if my limit is the ISP or the router itself.

DD-WRT reports about 60% router CPU load at this speed (accuracy unknown).

 

My understanding is that the router-build of the OpenVPN client is single threaded, so a twin CPU router doesn't necessarily buy double the performance.

 

I've also got a single-CPU TP-LINK WDR3600 which maxs out around 5mbps download (CPU load shows around 90%).

 

FYI -  I'm in Australia with 200-300msec ping times to the nearest airvpn server - so your mileage may vary.

 

As for wireless coverage the RTAC68U is far superior to anything with internal antennas.

Happy Shopping.

[SlyFox 10]

Hi,

Am using the RT AC68U at the moment, flashed with DD-WRT and running the openvpn client on the router. It all runs smoothly.

 

I've got 30mbps cable and torrents download upto ~23mbps; unclear if my limit is the ISP or the router itself.

 

I have the AC56U which is very similar (same cpu). I didnt need the external antennas so I saved money there. You can very easily overclock the CPU to 1.2ghz and it runs cool. Very stable on latest shibby tomato. I put a small silent usb fan behind it just to be safe. The overclock will get you to 50mbps+

[amnesty 18]

I have my ISP's slowest plan they offer and use the RT-AC68U with Merlin. Streaming video is OK. I watch live sporting events and sometimes the resolution drops to the point where I cannot read the numbers/scores. But that also happened watching Olympic events without a tunnel. So for this/my environment it handles the encryption fine.

I tried this router after seeing the specs a few years ago on dd-wrt's router database. It looks like the AC87U, AC68P and the AC3200 have a faster processor. The latter two have more RAM - same as AC68U.

I moved over to the Merlin firmware because it allowed for a bit more flexibility with MAC filtering and Whitelisting. I have some services shut off and use it for DHCP server, WAP, routing and packet filtering.

There are 3x9dBi antenna (about 20 bucks US/EU) that improved the wireless range which was already good.

If I watch an HD video at 1080p and upload a 100 MB file neither core went over 18%.

 

EDIT: I would like to try pfSense (for sh**s and giggles). It looks pretty cool.

[bayesguy 0]

Hey folks.

I just got a new ASUS AC 87R. Can I connect to airvpn with my router without installing any extra firmware? Or how should I use airvpn on the router level with merlin?

[Staff 9972]

Hey folks.

I just got a new ASUS AC 87R. Can I connect to airvpn with my router without installing any extra firmware? Or how should I use airvpn on the router level with merlin?

 

we have made a topic for How-To configure Asus Router with native OpenVPN support.

Model tested: RT-AC68U

but it should work for all Asus routers that have OpenVPN support, for example model RT-AC87U.

 

Kind regards

[Aaronson 5]

My 2 cents after some testing today.

 

My connection is 200 Mb/s down and 20 Mb/s up. I have a Asus RT-AC66U running the most recent Merlin build firmware. Using the Eddie client on my Mbp I'm able to get to 130-150 Mb/s and 19 Mb/s, using OpenVPN client on the router I'm barely touching the 12 Mb/s down and 9 Mb/s up (with WiFi bandwidth to spare).

 

The AC66U isn't on par with more recent top of the line Asus routers but I'm a bit unimpressed by the performance and don't expect wonders from a slightly more powerful CPU and more RAM.

[go558a83nk 362]

My 2 cents after some testing today.

 

My connection is 200 Mb/s down and 20 Mb/s up. I have a Asus RT-AC66U running the most recent Merlin build firmware. Using the Eddie client on my Mbp I'm able to get to 130-150 Mb/s and 19 Mb/s, using OpenVPN client on the router I'm barely touching the 12 Mb/s down and 9 Mb/s up (with WiFi bandwidth to spare).

 

The AC66U isn't on par with more recent top of the line Asus routers but I'm a bit unimpressed by the performance and don't expect wonders from a slightly more powerful CPU and more RAM.

 

overclock an AC68 to 1200mhz and it can do 50mbit/s+ with AirVPN.

[hershey81 0]

 

My 2 cents after some testing today.

 

My connection is 200 Mb/s down and 20 Mb/s up. I have a Asus RT-AC66U running the most recent Merlin build firmware. Using the Eddie client on my Mbp I'm able to get to 130-150 Mb/s and 19 Mb/s, using OpenVPN client on the router I'm barely touching the 12 Mb/s down and 9 Mb/s up (with WiFi bandwidth to spare).

 

The AC66U isn't on par with more recent top of the line Asus routers but I'm a bit unimpressed by the performance and don't expect wonders from a slightly more powerful CPU and more RAM.

 

overclock an AC68 to 1200mhz and it can do 50mbit/s+ with AirVPN.

 

I am also running AC68U and openvpn and will get over 50mbps. AC68U is a dual core and can be easily overclocked to 1.2ghz. 66U is single core.

[2Cents 7]

I highly recommend the AC68U coupled with Merlin's 378.55 asuswrt firmware... Got it oc'd to 1400MHz with memory running at 666MHz (stock) and I'm maxing out my 50Mbps fiber connection over AirVPN, mostly DE/NL servers.

admin@gw:/tmp/home/root# nvram show | grep clkfreq
size: 48313 bytes (17223 left)
clkfreq=1400,666

admin@gw:/tmp/home/root# openssl speed aes-128-cbc
Doing aes-128 cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 8391638 aes-128 cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-128 cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 2301721 aes-128 cbc's in 3.01s
Doing aes-128 cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 593767 aes-128 cbc's in 2.97s
Doing aes-128 cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 147928 aes-128 cbc's in 2.93s
Doing aes-128 cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 18795 aes-128 cbc's in 2.98s
OpenSSL 1.0.2d 9 Jul 2015
built on: reproducible build, date unspecified
options:bn(64,32) rc4(ptr,char) des(idx,cisc,16,long) aes(partial) idea(int) blowfish(ptr)
compiler: arm-brcm-linux-uclibcgnueabi-gcc -I. -I.. -I../include  -fPIC -DOPENSSL_PIC -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -O3 -Wall -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DAES_ASM -DBSAES_ASM -DGHASH_ASM
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
aes-128 cbc      44905.09k    48940.25k    51179.92k    51699.07k    51667.33k

admin@gw:/tmp/home/root# openssl speed aes-256-cbc
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 6285824 aes-256 cbc's in 2.93s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 1713540 aes-256 cbc's in 3.00s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 442539 aes-256 cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 110036 aes-256 cbc's in 2.94s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 13977 aes-256 cbc's in 2.99s
OpenSSL 1.0.2d 9 Jul 2015
built on: reproducible build, date unspecified
options:bn(64,32) rc4(ptr,char) des(idx,cisc,16,long) aes(partial) idea(int) blowfish(ptr) 
compiler: arm-brcm-linux-uclibcgnueabi-gcc -I. -I.. -I../include  -fPIC -DOPENSSL_PIC -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -O3 -Wall -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DAES_ASM -DBSAES_ASM -DGHASH_ASM
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
aes-256 cbc      34325.32k    36555.52k    37889.63k    38325.46k    38294.18k