Router recommendations?

[routeninja 23]

What do you guys recommend for a good router for AVPN? I am looking to spend <$100. I know pfsense is the preferred answer, I just don't want to spend $500 a year on power. Any pseudo home routers good? Maybe some of those Asus-WRTs? Any super powered DD-WRT devices?

 

EDIT: Just saw another post down the line that is this exact question: Please delete this one.

[go558a83nk 362]

You can't expect much for less than $100.  I built my pfsense box for $130 but I already owned one of the NIC.  So, maybe you could do it for less than $200 pretty easily.

 

What kind of speeds are you wanting?

[routeninja 23]

I have a 50/50. I am currently have this: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Netgear_WNDR3800

 

I am going to set it up tonight and see how it goes. I just dont want to build a huge PC to do this. 

[tehhellhound 8]

My Netgear R8000 with Tomato firmware is delivering excellent performance identical to my naked ISP. In some instances, even better as my ISP has good speed packages but awful peering to some sites. AirVPN seems to gave better peering to some sites I use, actually boosting performance.

[routeninja 23]

My Netgear R8000 with Tomato firmware is delivering excellent performance identical to my naked ISP. In some instances, even better as my ISP has good speed packages but awful peering to some sites. AirVPN seems to gave better peering to some sites I use, actually boosting performance.

That is a pricey device. If I wanted to spend that much, I would simply get a pfsense box.

 

Currently I am getting about 20/20 Mbps on my Netgear.

[tehhellhound 8]

Fair enough. I already had the device because of its wireless chipset and wanted to max out its capabilities later on, so I installed Tomato on it. Which then came in handy when I wanted to use this service on my whole network. I just mentioned it because I can vouch for its performance if you had one lying around or were thinking of getting one.

[Vimes 4]

If you have read that other thread you will see that the Linksys ACS1900 with its dual core 1.6Ghz CPU does a pretty good job, as noted by the poster who has one, with it running DD-WRT.

 

My Netgear R7000 with its dual core 1Ghz wasn't really up to my 75Mb connection. Sadly it didn't seem to be that stable when overclocked and multiple devices were connected. But running AsusWRT-Merlin firmware was an amazing experience with its great UI and relative ease of setting up AirVPN as a client. When maximising the VPN connection the CPU load was around 98 to 99% utilised.

 

The R7800 with its dual core 1.7Ghz might manage a good speed but that is not as cheap as you would want, also it is dependant on  third party firmware.

 

FYI The Netgear R700 when used only as an Action Point and in idle mode consumes 10w of electricity. My newly built ITX J355B dual core celeron with Pfsense consumes, IIRC as the watt meter I have is connected to the R7000 at the moment, around 15w. But then again I needed to follow exactly the pfsense guide written in this forum to get AirVPN to connect, I will not pretend to understand much of what I followed either..! At full speed for the VPN connection the CPU load is around 14 to 21%.

 

AirVPN only allows a AES-256-CBC connection and that can be quite demanding of hardware over that of AES-128-CBC, from what I have read. 

 

I do not know how easy it is to configure a DD-WRT powered router for policy based router for a VPN, if that is what you need.

 

Then again for less than $100 I doubt that you will find much with the capability you will need, unless second hand.

 

I would have prefered a router with an AsusWRT-Merlin type firmware with the superb client support and ease of policy based routing over the pfsense box that I built but I simply could not find one with the guarantee of supporting my line speed. The price of those Asus routers would have been more than double of what the pfsense box cost to build.  

 

 

 

[Tamarrano 4]

the best router for me is the asus RT-AC88U with merlin firmware , I use an asdl 100.000 in vpn with full power .

[routeninja 23]

If you have read that other thread you will see that the Linksys ACS1900 with its dual core 1.6Ghz CPU does a pretty good job, as noted by the poster who has one, with it running DD-WRT.

 

My Netgear R7000 with its dual core 1Ghz wasn't really up to my 75Mb connection. Sadly it didn't seem to be that stable when overclocked and multiple devices were connected. But running AsusWRT-Merlin firmware was an amazing experience with its great UI and relative ease of setting up AirVPN as a client. When maximising the VPN connection the CPU load was around 98 to 99% utilised.

 

The R7800 with its dual core 1.7Ghz might manage a good speed but that is not as cheap as you would want, also it is dependant on  third party firmware.

 

FYI The Netgear R700 when used only as an Action Point and in idle mode consumes 10w of electricity. My newly built ITX J355B dual core celeron with Pfsense consumes, IIRC as the watt meter I have is connected to the R7000 at the moment, around 15w. But then again I needed to follow exactly the pfsense guide written in this forum to get AirVPN to connect, I will not pretend to understand much of what I followed either..! At full speed for the VPN connection the CPU load is around 14 to 21%.

 

AirVPN only allows a AES-256-CBC connection and that can be quite demanding of hardware over that of AES-128-CBC, from what I have read. 

 

I do not know how easy it is to configure a DD-WRT powered router for policy based router for a VPN, if that is what you need.

 

Then again for less than $100 I doubt that you will find much with the capability you will need, unless second hand.

 

I would have prefered a router with an AsusWRT-Merlin type firmware with the superb client support and ease of policy based routing over the pfsense box that I built but I simply could not find one with the guarantee of supporting my line speed. The price of those Asus routers would have been more than double of what the pfsense box cost to build.  

 

 

the best router for me is the asus RT-AC88U with merlin firmware , I use an asdl 100.000 in vpn with full power .

 

I guess I will see if I can get one of these for a good price. Maybe used or something. Now that I am routing all my traffic out Air, my wife cannot watch Amazon Video...sigh

[Vimes 4]

 

If you have read that other thread you will see that the Linksys ACS1900 with its dual core 1.6Ghz CPU does a pretty good job, as noted by the poster who has one, with it running DD-WRT.

 

My Netgear R7000 with its dual core 1Ghz wasn't really up to my 75Mb connection. Sadly it didn't seem to be that stable when overclocked and multiple devices were connected. But running AsusWRT-Merlin firmware was an amazing experience with its great UI and relative ease of setting up AirVPN as a client. When maximising the VPN connection the CPU load was around 98 to 99% utilised.

 

The R7800 with its dual core 1.7Ghz might manage a good speed but that is not as cheap as you would want, also it is dependant on  third party firmware.

 

FYI The Netgear R700 when used only as an Action Point and in idle mode consumes 10w of electricity. My newly built ITX J355B dual core celeron with Pfsense consumes, IIRC as the watt meter I have is connected to the R7000 at the moment, around 15w. But then again I needed to follow exactly the pfsense guide written in this forum to get AirVPN to connect, I will not pretend to understand much of what I followed either..! At full speed for the VPN connection the CPU load is around 14 to 21%.

 

AirVPN only allows a AES-256-CBC connection and that can be quite demanding of hardware over that of AES-128-CBC, from what I have read. 

 

I do not know how easy it is to configure a DD-WRT powered router for policy based router for a VPN, if that is what you need.

 

Then again for less than $100 I doubt that you will find much with the capability you will need, unless second hand.

 

I would have prefered a router with an AsusWRT-Merlin type firmware with the superb client support and ease of policy based routing over the pfsense box that I built but I simply could not find one with the guarantee of supporting my line speed. The price of those Asus routers would have been more than double of what the pfsense box cost to build.  

 

 

>>the best router for me is the asus RT-AC88U with merlin firmware , I use an asdl 100.000 in vpn with full power .

 

I guess I will see if I can get one of these for a good price. Maybe used or something. Now that I am routing all my traffic out Air, my wife cannot watch Amazon Video...sigh

 

 

 

When looking at Asus type routers with the UI that I liked these are the figures I could find...

 

Here are my speeds using the OpenVPN Client. Both routers running Merlin 380.64 firmware. Using the VPN client to connect with PIA VPN servers. 

 

AC3100 (same as AC88U minus 4 ethernet ports)

CTF enabled

DL: 61 Mbps with core 1 at 25%, core 2 at 75%

UL: 84 Mbps with core 1 at 35%, core 2 at 100%

 

AC68U

CTF + FA enabled

DL: 43 Mbps with core 1 at 25%, core 2 at 80%

UL: 60 Mbps with core 1 at 35%, core 2 at 100%

 

AC68U

CTF enabled

DL: 44 Mbps with core 1 at 30%, core 2 at 80%

UL: 58 Mbps with core 1 at 40%, core 2 at 100%

 

As a comparison when using the PIA VPN client on my Snapdragon 808 based cell phone I get 77 down and 124 up. All speed test performed using the DSLReports HTML5 test

 

that is when using AES-128-CBC.

 

On my noted R7000 router it was also core 2 that would go almost to 100% when downloading. 

 

I did notice that the WRT3200 Linksys router has a dual core 1.8Ghz CPU but that seems to be having WiFi issues, more so with any DD-WRT firmware. But also that too is an ARM based VPU and so, like the others, does not support AES instructions for hardware decryption. And again it is a lot more that you would wish to pay.

 

Maybe with your 50/50 line you might have better results with an ARM based router.

[tehhellhound 8]

My CPU spikes to 3-4℅ with some hefty usage. Using 256 bit AES. Tomato does support hardware acceleration for the R8000, which I have enabled. I assume that helps.