Question High end router with Basic dual band WIFI?

[iperson]

Can you buy a quality router with good connection management/logging/QOS without paying for all the latest/greatest WIFI? My home is hard wired with CAT6 so everything that matters is connected via ethernet. I have a few things that use wifi of course like tablets, printers, and phones, and other smart home devices, but nothing that demands the latest and greatest wifi connectivity. It's not a large house and I've honestly never had any wifi connectivity complaints.

I work from home over a COX Gigablast connection and I have 3 teen gamers in the house in addition to me and the wife who game so connectivity is important. I've found that most of the cheaper routers struggle to keep up with multiple VPN connections, netflix/amazon/PLEX streams, etc... but wonder if spending $300+ on a "gaming" wifi router with all the latest wifi bells and whistles is really going to be the best bang for my buck. Are there high end routers (quad core and >=1GB RAM) that have basic dual band wifi support but with less of the component costs sunk into 12 different antennae or other wifi improvements I don't really need? Every where I look the rankings/ratings are heavily weighted on wifi performance.

I'm looking at TP-Link Archer C5400X right now but thought I'd ask here before pulling the trigger. I need something soon because my existing router (ASUS RT-AC66R) is struggling. When I'm downloading a new game to my xbox or ps4 other connected things are timing out no matter how I configure the QOS. I was going to upgrade the firmware to tomato or DD-WRT but the reset button doesn't work and I can't get into recovery mode.

 

[jeremyj_83]

I would look into MikroTik. There you can get some very high end hardware with an open source OS for a good price. This is their most expensive router and it has good specs compared to most routers for the same price. https://mikrotik.com/product/rb4011igs_5hacq2hnd_in

 

[digitalgriffin]

How many wifi connections do you have? What's your signal strength? (Walk the house and use WifiAnalyzer by VREM Software on google play) and report the signal numbers here. You want to give the weakest signal number. Weaker signal = slower throughput on wifi.

Also what's your broadband connection like? If you truly do have gig up and down, you'll most likely have to go a more professional dedicated route and learn about traffic shaping. You might also consider upgrading to 10gb internal. While your gateway node is 1gb, the additional internal speed will make it easier for dedicated switches to direct traffic. Plus you have a plex server. If you run NAS on top of it, it does eat internal bandwidth. (Although the total amount is small)

And what other services do you need? What hardware are you using for your plex server?

 

[kanewolf]

MicroTik can provide a high powered wired only router. It is not the easiest to configure. Ubiquiti UniFI Security Gateway is another wired only option that is easier to admin.

 

[iperson]

I would look into MikroTik. There you can get some very high end hardware with an open source OS for a good price. This is their most expensive router and it has good specs compared to most routers for the same price. https://mikrotik.com/product/rb4011igs_5hacq2hnd_in

Looks promising. The reviews make it sound like there's a pretty high learning curve though with RouterOS. Just some cursory googling has me concerned about the possibility/probability of creating a vulnerable system. Not sure I'm ready to commit, but thanks. I'll keep it in mind.

 

[iperson]

How many wifi connections do you have? What's your signal strength? (Walk the house and use WifiAnalyzer by VREM Software on google play) and report the signal numbers here. You want to give the weakest signal number. Weaker signal = slower throughput on wifi.

Also what's your broadband connection like? If you truly do have gig up and down, you'll most likely have to go a more professional dedicated route and learn about traffic shaping. You might also consider upgrading to 10gb internal. While your gateway node is 1gb, the additional internal speed will make it easier for dedicated switches to direct traffic. Plus you have a plex server. If you run NAS on top of it, it does eat internal bandwidth. (Although the total amount is small)

And what other services do you need? What hardware are you using for your plex server?

I have about 2 dozen wifi connections. 5 phones, 5 tablets, misc smarthome devices (bulbs, 2 echo shows, 6 or so other echo devices.) My worst signal is -56 dBm. I get about 700-800Mb down on average from steam. Upstream peaks at 35Mb with averages in the high 20s. My plex server is running on a QNAP TS-453mini. I've shared my library with 3 people who access it remotely albeit it infrequently. I've restricted remote streams to 1.5Mbps. Each room has a 5 port gigabit switch for smart TVs, PCs, consoles and my comm closet which is where the router is/will be located is positioned almost exactly at the center of my home, it has one 8 port POE switch for security cameras and an 8 port switch that all the rooms connect to (other than the cable modem only the switches are connected directly to the router.) The QNAP is connected to the non POE switch via 2 built in NICs. 1 NAS NIC is dedicated to plex only, the other is time machine, network shares, camera DVR, etc...

One feature I would really like that I don't already have is the ability to see bandwidth usage for each connection.

 

[jsmithepa]

Looks promising. The reviews make it sound like there's a pretty high learning curve though with RouterOS.

More power (or features) begets more responsibility (or skill).

 

[jeremyj_83]

Looks promising. The reviews make it sound like there's a pretty high learning curve though with RouterOS. Just some cursory googling has me concerned about the possibility/probability of creating a vulnerable system. Not sure I'm ready to commit, but thanks. I'll keep it in mind.

I've used RouterOS before and it isn't that bad to understand. It has a GUI so doing work on it is pretty straight forward, especially if you have used more enterprise level firewalls before.

 

[failboat]

What all services have you turned on inside the router? is the vpn client or server running from the router? If you have a 1Gbs line most routers under $200 can only do NAT. You have to be careful what you turn on. Are you getting the speeds you pay for now?

A lot of the things you want to do could be done on a small home server.

I'd also suggest buying the router and wifi separate. unifi sells great access points.

 

[digitalgriffin]

What all services have you turned on inside the router? is the vpn client or server running from the router? If you have a 1Gbs line most routers under $200 can only do NAT. You have to be careful what you turn on. Are you getting the speeds you pay for now?

A lot of the things you want to do could be done on a small home server.

I'd also suggest buying the router and wifi separate. unifi sells great access points.

I was wondering the same thing. VPN on the individual computers is fine because all the encryption and traffic handling is done at the end point. Trying to run VPN and all that traffic at the router would be bottle-necking it.

QOS could be bottlenecking too if it's on. QOS will often lower total throughput on consumer grade routers. It's mainly useful when you have slower connections.

Routers & Switches have a secondary rating which is often not publishes called PPS. (Packets per second) which rates how many separate rated messages a given piece of network hardware can handle. If theres SPI or DPI inspection or repacking for WAN, then there's additional overhead associated with each packet. This is where 10gb switches help because they give more breathing room to process these packets. That means you'll have to have Cat 6a or better between the networking components.

This is where traffic shaping and network topology comes into play. A switch can analyze where the data is coming/going and put it into a bucket and then send that out as one "packed" message which has lower overhead, thus increasing the efficiency across the network and lowering overall load. But it has to be used wisely or you could get performance degradation.

You can use tools like these:

7 Best Bandwidth Monitors - Track Network Traffic Usage in 2024

We've compiled a list of the best Bandwidth monitors to track your Internet & Network traffic usage within your business or home.

www.netadmintools.com

Or PfSense with DarkStat package to figure out what's hogging things. But again these all have a learning curve. I'm betting though the limitation is the 35mbps upload.

At the very least I would revamp the house with a couple of access points (3x3 preferably) and get a 4x4 router to deal with the couple dozen wireless devices. Each would be set to a different channel. You could use the same SSID channel if you have an eco-system from the same hardware provider (one that negotiates hand-off to a stronger signal base) I would put 10gb switches for all between network components. This will give the network processors time to breath as packets are processed quicker.

If that doesn't cut the mustard...

Next I would engage traffic shaping and start modifying devices with QOS traffic shaping with pfSense on an Intel i5 based unit as the gateway. Preferably with a 10gb card on the LAN side. The router's duties would end up being duplicated at this point and I would turn it into an access point. A waste of money to be sure.

 

[iperson]

VPN is all handled client side. My router is essentially handling NAT, QOS, and DHCP. Although, it appears to have some kind of firewall and DOS protection enabled as well. Those unifi devices look neat but I can't tell how much functionality is retained without replacing all my current switches to ubiquiti unify devices. I know you are all trying to help, but tbh I think I've opened a bigger can of worms than I was prepared for. Should I decide to become an network engineer I think this information would be very helpful, but for now I think I'll stick with a dumb router....

 

[failboat]

VPN is all handled client side. My router is essentially handling NAT, QOS, and DHCP. Although, it appears to have some kind of firewall and DOS protection enabled as well. Those unifi devices look neat but I can't tell how much functionality is retained without replacing all my current switches to ubiquiti unify devices. I know you are all trying to help, but tbh I think I've opened a bigger can of worms than I was prepared for. Should I decide to become an network engineer I think this information would be very helpful, but for now I think I'll stick with a dumb router....

QOS might be slowing you down quite a bit. qdisc based ones only run 30-100 Mbs. even a limiter might slow you down.

I'd check if you're getting the speeds you pay for. Some routers aren't built for heavy traffic so a large download could overheat it. Most can't NAT 1Gbs down/up at the same time.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/bar/179-wan-to-lan-tcp/35

 

[digitalgriffin]

QOS might be slowing you down quite a bit. qdisc based ones only run 30-100 Mbs. even a limiter might slow you down.

I'd check if you're getting the speeds you pay for. Some routers aren't built for heavy traffic so a large download could overheat it. Most can't NAT 1Gbs down/up at the same time.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/bar/179-wan-to-lan-tcp/35

Ill second this. Try turning your qos off. I wont gaurentee it will solve your problems. But it could b upe the source of them.

Btw: Sorry i dint mean to ovwrwhelm you. I sometimes forget people arent as big a geeks as myself.

The reason i suggested multiple access points, all at different frequencies is because none of your devices is wifi 6. Thus available bandwidth is poorly managed due to the sheer number of devices you have. Creating multiple access points gives more dedicated frequencies to the devices you have. So its like creating a wider highway. Also more lanes equals better efficiency when dealing with slower devices (poor signal)

The multiple managed switches is to offload some of the duties of the routers by cleaning up amd prioritizing and pre directing traffic before it reaches the router. This lowers its overall traffic processing burden. The managed switches become like little managers in the field directing data so the ceo doesnt have to worry about it.

Even the best consumers routers today can only hit about 90% of rated theoughput under ideal conditions with single traffic and no other features on. Overiding a router with lots of messages from lots of devices is a way to overload it quick.

But to be honest im thinking its your qos slowing you down, combined with your 35mbps upload. These two could be really bottlenecking you.

With all the devices you have i would just hogwild and get somethig like the top of the line nighthawk pro gaming routers with wifi 6. Its deaigned for lots of clients. However i cant gaurentee that would work. And spending $500 on a router is insane unless you know it will do what you want it to. (Even i balk at that price)

One viable option might be netgears new lease program. You pay a monthly fee and that includes tier 1 tech support for consumers tied with their best router. And if a better router comes out you get upgraded. The downside of this program is you become the guinea pig for new tech and you mever really own the router. But if you like it you could just kill your orase and buy it outright.