Router throughput.

[stelleg151]

I am planning a home network with a basic FTP and Gaming server, as well as mostly just general usage.

I plan on getting FIOS as soon as it gets to my area, and overheard a brief conversation about home routers not being able to take advantage of the full 15mb/s.

The only solution discussed in that thread was expensive cisco equipment, and although I'm a network noob, I have a basic understanding of how networking works, and dont understand why a linux box setup as a NAT router/firewall combined with a gigabit switch couldnt handle the job.

Thanks for your help.

 

[skyking]

linux box setup as a NAT router/firewall combined with a gigabit switch couldnt handle the job.

It will. Some of the cheaper hardware based units might falter, but what you propose will do the trick.

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: skyking

linux box setup as a NAT router/firewall combined with a gigabit switch couldnt handle the job.

It will. Some of the cheaper hardware based units might falter, but what you propose will do the trick.

Depending on hardware of course - a P3 or something would be fine. And you get a great set of firewalling/security tools with linux.

 

[Madwand1]

Older consumer routers only had 10 Mb/s WAN ports even when they had a 10/100 Mb/s switch on the LAN side. Certainly these would not work well in this case. Going further, it may be reasonable conjecture that even more recent consumer routers weren't designed to run at that speed on the WAN side for SPI / etc., so may not be fast enough. However, I find this a bit hard to believe in general -- with 100 Mb/s WAN ports and even gigabit switches in some consumer routers, I think that there should be some that can handle 15 Mb/s without trouble.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: Madwand1
Older consumer routers only had 10 Mb/s WAN ports even when they had a 10/100 Mb/s switch on the LAN side. Certainly these would not work well in this case. Going further, it may be reasonable conjecture that even more recent consumer routers weren't designed to run at that speed on the WAN side for SPI / etc., so may not be fast enough. However, I find this a bit hard to believe in general -- with 100 Mb/s WAN ports and even gigabit switches in some consumer routers, I think that there should be some that can handle 15 Mb/s without trouble.

That exactly right. This was the case way back in the day, but a new $50 wireless router will have no problems with a 15Mbps FIOS connection. I know, a coworker of mine has FIOS connected to a Linksys WRT54G router. If you are getting a router, I'd HIGHLY recommend this one though.

 

[Atheus]

Wow, I wouldn't have expected the humble WRT to be able to handle 15Mb on the WAN side, mine slow to a crawl under a bittorrent load at 1Mb. I suppose that's stressing it in a completely different way though...

 

[stelleg151]

Firstly, thanks for the replies.

Secondly, I already have a D-624, and if I choose to use an old P3 dell w/ linux as a router/firewall, are there programs that can give certain ports (gaming ports) bandwidth favoring? (like the linksys linked)

Thanks again for the help, and could anyone explain what exactly is special about Cisco routers, other than how many ports they have. Or just give a link if you have a good one and I will happily learn myself.

 

[Nothinman]

Depending on hardware of course - a P3 or something would be fine. And you get a great set of firewalling/security tools with linux.

You shouldn't even need a P3 unless you plan on having a really complicated ruleset or running other things on the box.

 

[JackMDS]

If you are a serious gamer you do not choose a Computer with P-II 300 MHz 64MB of RAM and S3 graphics.

Entry Level Routers are a little computers (usually based on the ancient 486 CPU) with very small none volatile memory running on subset of Linux (or propriety) OS.

They were Not built for heavy pirating and after a while the GIGO clogs them.

:sun:

 

[Nothinman]

If you are a serious gamer you do not choose a Computer with P-II 300 MHz 64MB of RAM and S3 graphics.

Why not? It would give you a lot more control than one of those crap SOHO things?

They were Not built for heavy pirating and after a while the GIGO clogs them.

That's a BS excuse.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

If you are a serious gamer you do not choose a Computer with P-II 300 MHz 64MB of RAM and S3 graphics.

Why not? It would give you a lot more control than one of those crap SOHO things?

They were Not built for heavy pirating and after a while the GIGO clogs them.

That's a BS excuse.

Oh Yeah Sorry I forgot that 99% of BT activities are used for Medical Research.:shocked:

And BTW, you are right, in the civilized world BS stands for British Standards.

http://www.bsi-global.com/British_Standards/index.xalter

:sun:

 

[Nothinman]

Oh Yeah Sorry I forgot that 99% of BT activities are used for Medical Research.

Irrelevant. Network companies are selling hardware that's supposed to be able to reliably pass traffic between two networks, if it can't handle a few torrents it should be replaced with something less crappy.

 

[stelleg151]

So you think a 20 person game server + 6 computers general web surfing = possible clogging with current generation d-link router?

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Oh Yeah Sorry I forgot that 99% of BT activities are used for Medical Research.

Irrelevant. Network companies are selling hardware that's supposed to be able to reliably pass traffic between two networks, if it can't handle a few torrents it should be replaced with something less crappy.

Right, so you buy a small two sitter convertible, and then you complain that the hardware is Not suitable to be used for transporting cement to a construction site.

:sun:

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: stelleg151
So you think a 20 person game server + 6 computers general web surfing = possible clogging with current generation d-link router?

You should be good. The only thing that will hold you up will be your server (make sure it can handle 20 players) and your FIOS connection. Remember, if you are hosting a game server, your upload is what is most important. You most likely have the common FIOS plan which is 15Mbps down 3Mbps up. So you'll basically have 3Mbps to work with. I think you should be good with 20 players though. But if something is the weak link, it definitely won't be your router.

Note: I'm assuming the clients will be connecting to your server via the internet and not on your LAN.

 

[spidey07]

I peronsonally think most SOHO routers would choke on that kind of load (especially BT or gaming)

It's not necessarily the bandwidth, but the number of packets per second. Gaming servers don't present much in terms of bandwidth - but it is a whole bunch of small packets.

never know till you try though.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: spidey07
I peronsonally think most SOHO routers would choke on that kind of load (especially BT or gaming)

It's not necessarily the bandwidth, but the number of packets per second. Gaming servers don't present much in terms of bandwidth - but it is a whole bunch of small packets.

never know till you try though.

Absolutly right.

I think that the whole issue stems from many not understanding in functional technical terms how the Hardware works and especialy what choke means.

So in a very very very lose way, too much traffic and you kind of creating you own internal DDOS attack.

:sun:

 

[Nothinman]

Right, so you buy a small two sitter convertible, and then you complain that the hardware is Not suitable to be used for transporting cement to a construction site.

That's a terrible analogy, it takes virtually no power to handle a few thousand pps. A 486 running Linux would do that just fine as long as the firewall ruleset wasn't abnormally complex and the NIC could handle it.

I peronsonally think most SOHO routers would choke on that kind of load (especially BT or gaming)

I agree that they do, but I don't think they should. And if you have one that does, you should return it and complain.

 

[JackMDS]

With 8-16 of RAM? (Which is the amount of RAM inside the Entry Level Routers).

Actually some of the Entry Level Routers do use Linux.

May be the Penguin is Hungry,

May be this can Help. :beer: :beer: :beer:

:sun:

 

[Nothinman]

With 8-16 of RAM? (Which is the amount of RAM inside the Entry Level Routers).

Sure, and even if it did have some problems it should just drop a packet here and there to compensate not lockup like so many people see happen. Manufactures are marketing the devices as capable routers, if they can't handle the job they need to be fixed. Wouldn't you be pissed if you bought some mailserver software and it hung whenever you fed it too much mail?

 

[spidey07]

If manufacturers did that then they would lose money. They normally sell tiered products depending on what it does and how it perorms.

I certainly don't expect a SOHO router to perform flawlessly at 10s of megabits per second and cost under 100 bucks. Under 1000? Sure.

A single megabit of traffic could potentially be 15K packets with 10 megabits couldbe 156,000 packets per second. Not to mention the state/nat tables that have to be maintained.

That is a little too much to ask of a piece of plastic with extremely limited resources (processor/memory). Not to long ago even 50K dollar routers had a hard time driving a 45 megabit connection - just routing, not including firewalling/nat capabilities.

I guess what I'm trying to say if you need something that does the job then you'll have to pay for it. Or just do a linux box.

 

[Madwand1]

I'd think that encryption would be a more processor-intensive task than NAT / gateway / SPI, and consumer wireless AP's/routers handle that routinely with throughput figures in the 20 Mb/s range. So before I dished out lots of money, I'd test what I had / could easily afford (and then return to Staples / etc. if it didn't work out.)

 

[Nothinman]

I certainly don't expect a SOHO router to perform flawlessly at 10s of megabits per second and cost under 100 bucks. Under 1000? Sure.

With Cable, DSL and now FIOS speeds available I sure would.

A single megabit of traffic could potentially be 15K packets with 10 megabits couldbe 156,000 packets per second. Not to mention the state/nat tables that have to be maintained.

A single ip_conntrack entry is only a few hundred bytes (it varies per architecture and compile-time options, it's 236b right now on this notebook). So it would only take ~2.3M of memory to keep a state table for 10,000 entries.

 

[nweaver]

you get what you pay for...and I bought a cheap $20 router, turned off DHCP and set it up as an AP, works great for that, but is terrible as a router (my brother in law reboots his every day).

Is it acceptable that they underperform? No

Is it expected? I think so. That's why I shy away from SOHO gear

 

[spidey07]

nothingman,

but it takes processor to maintain those tables. And more cycles to do a lookup. Plus having to rewrite the layer2 and 3 header. eitherway more load = less performance to the point where it can no longer keep up. You have to look at it from their side - would you cut your margins 10-20% just to please the extreme minority of your customers?

My guess is these things aren't memory bound, but processor. Who knows, I've never checked the memory on these guys.