Question Good router for gaming cafe (100pc)

[infever]

I have 100 pc in my gaming cafe running in a 500 mbps internet speed. I am having fortigate 100d as my router. Is it good? Need recommendation for good router because sometimes some games are having lag spikes on peak hours. TYI

PS. Im having a giga switch also and all of my NIC are having gigabit speed

 

[androbourne]

Why not make your own PFSense firewall? Get a good little minibones PC and flash it with PFSense. At my home I have 1GB WAN from ISP and I use a barebones system by Jetway. Its been rock solid for 2 years straight.

I'm using but it is a fanless design and my system is in a closet with only a fan there and it runs at 54c (can handle 105c max) which is great considering its location and that this is in FL...

https://www.jetwaycomputer.com/JBC375F533.html

For your needs. I could go a step up or two on the CPU and increase the memory to help make things like external DOS attacks harder to take down your system due to increased specs etc... Plus with 100 PCs you will have a decent amount of traffic.

But to give you an idea. I run 2 websites and 4 application servers from home and my firewall CPU is currently sitting at 1% cpu usage...

P.S.
Only thing you need to be concerned about is WiFi. The drivers on this unit are not quite compatible with PFSense but thats not a big deal. Just dont use the wifi on this device and get Access Points instead.

 

[infever]

Why not make your own PFSense firewall? Get a good little minibones PC and flash it with PFSense. At my home I have 1GB WAN from ISP and I use a barebones system by Jetway. Its been rock solid for 2 years straight.

I forgot the model I'm using but it is a fanless design and my system is in a closet with only a fan there and it runs at 50c which is great considering its location and that this is in FL...

https://www.jetwaycomputer.com/Barebones.html

Thanks for the reply. I was thinking also on that one but I'm not 100% sure if it can handle 100 gaming pc not having any lag or packet lost issue during peak hours. Haven't got any proof yet on this one.

 

[androbourne]

Thanks for the reply. I was thinking also on that one but I'm not 100% sure if it can handle 100 gaming pc not having any lag or packet lost issue during peak hours. Haven't got any proof yet on this one.

Well your limitations are going to be the hardware specs of the device. Not really the firewall its self. Thats why I stated PFSense because you can install it on your own customized hardware that can be over spec'ed. If you buy something like a Watchguard or Sonicwall or pretty much any standard firewall. They are not expandable and you are stuck with its limitations.

This is why I moved to my own custom PFSense box. It can handle all the traffic I need for my servers and have room to expand more if I want in the future.

 

[infever]

Well your limitations are going to be the hardware specs of the device. Not really the firewall its self. Thats why I stated PFSense because you can install it on your own customized hardware that can be over spec'ed. If you buy something like a Watchguard or Sonicwall or pretty much any standard firewall. They are not expandable and you are stuck with its limitations.

This is why I moved to my own custom PFSense box. It can handle all the traffic I need for my servers and have room to expand more if I want in the future.

You have a point. I haven't try using PFsense but I've heard about this one. I'm thinking to raise this idea to my senior. In any case, do you have any recommendation for the hardware specs to handle our units? having two 1gb NIC is ok or do we go for 10gb NIC?

 

[androbourne]

You have a point. I haven't try using PFsense but I've heard about this one. I'm thinking to raise this idea to my senior. In any case, do you have any recommendation for the hardware specs to handle our units? having two 1gb NIC is ok or do we go for 10gb NIC?

I'd say get one with 4x NIC ports at 1GB each. Just incase in the future you decide to do any optional LANS or QOS etc... 1GB should be enough. There is no point is trying to go for 10GB if you are not getting that WAN wise. Plus you would need to upgrade each PC to 10GB NICS and that will get super expensive. 1GB is just fine.

I would also look for a unit with 8GB or more and a more solid CPU. Maybe something like this. (but with 4x NIC ports) or something similar to this.

https://www.jetwaycomputer.com/FFF793.html

 

[kanewolf]

You only have 500mb WAN. 10GE won't benefit. Getting your rules to prioritize game traffic and limit streaming and other non-game traffic will be the more labor intensve part. You are going to need very good stats and logs. Make sure you ave a good time source for your net so that all data is synchronized. Create vlans for your gaming PCs to separate from any business traffic and any WIFI traffic.

 

[infever]

I'd say get one with 4x NIC ports at 1GB each. Just incase in the future you decide to do any optional LANS or QOS etc... 1GB should be enough. There is no point is trying to go for 10GB if you are not getting that WAN wise. Plus you would need to upgrade each PC to 10GB NICS and that will get super expensive. 1GB is just fine.

I would also look for a unit with 8GB or more and a more solid CPU. Maybe something like this. (but with 4x NIC ports) or something similar to this.

https://www.jetwaycomputer.com/FFF793.html

Two 1gb NIC ports is enough right? 1 for my WAN and 1 for my LAN.

 

[infever]

You only have 500mb WAN. 10GE won't benefit. Getting your rules to prioritize game traffic and limit streaming and other non-game traffic will be the more labor intensve part. You are going to need very good stats and logs. Make sure you ave a good time source for your net so that all data is synchronized. Create vlans for your gaming PCs to separate from any business traffic and any WIFI traffic.

I'm really having a hard time prioritizing my gaming traffic on my current router. Even though I already prioritize gaming traffic but on peak hours random lag spikes happens.

 

[androbourne]

Two 1gb NIC ports is enough right? 1 for my WAN and 1 for my LAN.

It could work if you dont plan on doing VLANing or QOS. One port for the WAN and one for the LAN going to a switch. Sure.

 

[androbourne]

I'm really having a hard time prioritizing my gaming traffic on my current router. Even though I already prioritize gaming traffic but on peak hours random lag spikes happens.

That is called QOS. When setup properly you can pick specific network traffic to take priority over other traffic (such as gaming traffic would have priority over web browsing traffic)

PFSense has this feature. You'd just need to configure it.

 

[infever]

It could work if you dont plan on doing VLANing or QOS. One port for the WAN and one for the LAN going to a switch. Sure.

If I will be working with Qos or traffic shaping, I will need 4 NIC ports?

 

[androbourne]

If I will be working with Qos or traffic shaping, I will need 4 NIC ports?

I would recommend it. This way you arn't sharing the same ethernet line to split the traffic. You can make a dedicated port just for QOS traffic and another port for everything else.

You can do it with just two ports but that means QOS traffic would be transmitted over the same cable as other traffic. While still separate and would work. I like to physically separate it as well to not have any chances of saturating the physical cable.

 

[kanewolf]

It could work if you dont plan on doing VLANing or QOS. One port for the WAN and one for the LAN going to a switch. Sure.

Multiple NIC cards or LAN ports are only going to complicate things.. I would not recommend it.

 

[failboat]

If I will be working with Qos or traffic shaping, I will need 4 NIC ports?

If your main reason is to get rid of bufferbloat. I would recommend ipfire. class configuring is not required.

https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/What_can_I_do_about_Bufferbloat/

 

[infever]

If your main reason is to get rid of bufferbloat. I would recommend ipfire. class configuring is not required.

https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/What_can_I_do_about_Bufferbloat/

Thanks, I will also consider your suggestion. Haven't tried ipfire yet.

 

[digitalgriffin]

I have 100 pc in my gaming cafe running in a 500 mbps internet speed. I am having fortigate 100d as my router. Is it good? Need recommendation for good router because sometimes some games are having lag spikes on peak hours. TYI

PS. Im having a giga switch also and all of my NIC are having gigabit speed

Sorry misread original post. Answer incoming.

 

[digitalgriffin]

100 pcs is a lot. 500mbits is a lot. There are industrial solutions like what you picked out. But this is where you need a managed switch with a SIP port running at 10Gbps that can be cascaded and a serious industrial router. These mulitple small packets can eat up a lot of processor time. So packets can be reshaped into larger packets before being sent out. This is part of traffic shaping. This has to be configured by an experienced engineer who knows how this works.

You can roll your own for a fraction of the price using pfSense. (As someone suggested). But pfSense as powerful as it is can be just as useless as a consumer grade wifi router if not configured correctly.

None of the solutions you are looking at are going to be truly turn key. You have to hire someone, pay for tiered business class support, or invest a lot of time yourself to figure out how to set your system up.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Why not make your own PFSense firewall? Get a good little minibones PC and flash it with PFSense. At my home I have 1GB WAN from ISP and I use a barebones system by Jetway. Its been rock solid for 2 years straight.

I'm using but it is a fanless design and my system is in a closet with only a fan there and it runs at 54c (can handle 105c max) which is great considering its location and that this is in FL...

https://www.jetwaycomputer.com/JBC375F533.html

For your needs. I could go a step up or two on the CPU and increase the memory to help make things like external DOS attacks harder to take down your system due to increased specs etc... Plus with 100 PCs you will have a decent amount of traffic.

But to give you an idea. I run 2 websites and 4 application servers from home and my firewall CPU is currently sitting at 1% cpu usage...

P.S.
Only thing you need to be concerned about is WiFi. The drivers on this unit are not quite compatible with PFSense but thats not a big deal. Just dont use the wifi on this device and get Access Points instead.

That jetway cant handle it. Youll need a multi core processor and lots of memory. This will take care of both buffer bloat and the packet handling issues. The pfSense webpage can give you rough recommendations. However being there are lots of small udp packets associated with games the processing overhead will go up in some ways (even if you dont do frame reconstruction of tcp ip). Its the difference between trying to deflect a cannon ball versus machine gun fire. The later requires lots of quick routing decisions.

 

[failboat]

Thanks, I will also consider your suggestion. Haven't tried ipfire yet.

Do you happen to know how many G are being downloaded per hour? With fq_codel or cake knowing the number of connections is important. Any type of flow/fair queue separates each connection. If BitTorrent is allowed it can create a very large number of flows. ipfire can block some trackers which will make it harder to do.

Another suggestion is if all the hardware is yours trying to manage game downloads. most downloads now are https so trying to create a squid server won't help as much. I'd recommend creating one and also using pihole. If you can cache games another way locally and pull from the client or download after hours that would help; which might not work depending on the time they come in. another alternative is game update CIDR ranges can be found which will allow some class based shaping on those.

 

[androbourne]

That jetway cant handle it. Youll need a multi core processor and lots of memory. This will take care of both buffer bloat and the packet handling issues. The pfSense webpage can give you rough recommendations. However being there are lots of small udp packets associated with games the processing overhead will go up in some ways (even if you dont do frame reconstruction of tcp ip). Its the difference between trying to deflect a cannon ball versus machine gun fire. The later requires lots of quick routing decisions.

Read what I said... I said the one I linked is the one I'm currently using. He will have to search for a jetway that fits his needs... I said this pretty clearly.

For your needs. I could go a step up or two on the CPU and increase the memory to help make things like external DOS attacks harder to take down your system due to increased specs etc... Plus with 100 PCs you will have a decent amount of traffic.

 

[androbourne]

Multiple NIC cards or LAN ports are only going to complicate things.. I would not recommend it.

Lol no it wouldn't and it is also better for QOS.... And I didn't stay multi "NIC Cards" (I said PORTS you can have one NIC with multiple ports...) it is always better to split the traffic up both physically and logically if possible. It avoids bandwidth issues of flowing all that traffic through a single cable and single port... it is pretty standard stuff. I do this for VOIP QOS setups almost daily...

 

[AtkinsFriendly]

I have experience with both pfSense and Ubiquiti USG Pro 4 for environments of 100+ devices. Both work great and will be more than efficient on all the things you're looking to do. the USG Pro 4 is a bit more user friendly IMO, and requires a little less setup time. It pairs well with a good quality layer 2 managed switch.