Question Is it worth to spend bucks on a expensive router ?

[sponge_b0b]

Hi everyone,

I would like to buy me a router (not crazy expensive) and install DD-WRT.

Here my current selection

Linksys N300 (E1700)
Linksys WRT1200AC
NetGear R7000 v1

But the price for those goes from 1 to 4x ! So I'm wondering if that really worth it to spent 4 times more than the cheaper one ? Because I don't think my ping will be 4 times faster ? am I right ?

BTW I will disable the WiFi, the only thing that matter for me here is the response time.

 

[bill001g]

The ping time is mostly a measure of distance between you and the server. The ISP are not connected in the most optimum manner for some connections but that is all outside your house.

Any router will never increase the ping time unless some is messed up or you overload your internet connection.

It will mostly depend on how fast your internet connection is and which feature you really intend to use on dd-wrt. The router CPU can bottleneck you. A more expensive router will have a larger CPU.

Be aware if you have a very fast internet connection say above 250mbps you pretty much can't use anything other than fairly basic features. The manufactures have offloaded the NAT function off the CPU. You have to disable this to use almost any feature. My asus you can't even run the simple traffic usage monitor because the traffic is bypassing the CPU.

 

[sponge_b0b]

Thank you very much @bill001g for you extensive reply

Regarding you two last paragraph, yes I have a good connection ~400mbps

and I intend to use the firewall functionality of dd-wrt (but only on layer 2, filtering domains for example) and cutting WiFi and other features that I don't need.

So in tha scenario you think it's better if I go with a good CPU router ?

 

[bill001g]

The wifi is on different chips so it has no impact on performance good or bad.

With a 400mbps I am not sure there is a consumer router that will keep up just running the NAT via the CPU. Adding firewall filters will likely slow it down more.

I used to follow all the third party firmware all the time until I got a fast internet connection. After I discovered the nat hardware assist features had such a drastic impact I pretty much use my routers as a stupid nat box.

I suspect you are going to be better off using a small pc with 2 nic cards and running pfsense. The cpu in routers just does not compare to one in a PC. You can likely buy a firewall appliance but they tend to be costly.

 

[kanewolf]

For a 400Mbit connection, I would recommend a Mikrotik HEX wired router and use a separate WIFI access point. The Mikrotik routers are very performance oriented.

 

[sponge_b0b]

@bill001g , Thank you for your advice I think I will go for the pfsense on a small dedicated computer in a real near futur.

@kanewolf , So you think that the Model hEX RB750Gr3 will not impact my ping ?
Did the RouterOS L4 who is inside have the same functionality as DD-WRT ? Firewall etc.. ?

 

[kanewolf]

@bill001g , Thank you for your advice I think I will go for the pfsense on a small dedicated computer in a real near futur.

@kanewolf , So you think that the Model hEX RB750Gr3 will not impact my ping ?
Did the RouterOS L4 who is inside have the same functionality as DD-WRT ? Firewall etc.. ?

There are specific articles on how to implement queuing in the Mikrotik to minimize bufferbloat.

I don't know how Mikrotik compares to DD-WRT. But it is a VERY complete OS.

This article from ArsTechnica is why I picked a Mikrotik when I upgraded to 400Mbit service. Other Jim Salter articles on ArsTechnica give more background.