Router Bottleneck

[Destinova]

I just upgraded my internet service to a 25Mb connection. In testing the new speeds I've concluded that my router (wired) is bottlenecking the connection. I get about twice the speed going straight to the modem.

I've had the router for about 5 years, so it's probably time to get a new one.

Any recommendations for a router than can handle a 25Mb connection?

 

[InlineFive]

I've seen some reports that the Dlink DL4300 (their gaming router, not sure if that is the right model number) can handle those speeds but I have never tested it myself. Consumer devices that can handle those speeds are precious few, at this moment.

 

[cheesecurd]

How is this connection being delivered to you? What kind of traffic are you pushing through the router? Is this a multiuser environment? What are you running behind the router, servers, workstations, etc . . . or is this for your home?

 

[Madwand1]

The new D-Link DIR-655 has a gigabit WAN port. Yeah, finally, I need it and have waited soo long for it!

http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=530

(Does that make you feel bad? Well I tried... 5 Mb/s DSL here, newly upgraded for free!

This product is based on IEEE draft 802.11n specifi cations and is not guaranteed
to be forward compatible with future versions of IEEE 802.11n specifi cations.
Compatibility with draft 802.11n devices from other manufacturers is not
guaranteed. All references to speed and range are for comparison purposes
only.

 

[Destinova]

Home user.

 

[Madwand1]

Faster routers are becoming more common. The AirLink's probably the cheapest of them.

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/lans_routers/charts/index.html?chart=119

 

[cheesecurd]

In that case its easy, its probably a waste of money to upgrade your router. 25Mbps sounds impressive, but that's about it. That is the theoretical maximum speed you're going to get between your CPE (i.e. cable modem or DSL modem) and whatever piece of equipment it terminates on.

Once your traffic gets there, you are sharing bandwidth with everyone else. And no ISP pays for nearly enough bandwidth for everyone to max out, or even come close to maxing out their theoretical maximum local speed (for reference an ISP will generally pay somewhere in the range of $35-$45 per Mbps to their upstream provider at a 100Mbps commmit on something like a 2 year contract -- you do the math).

Good luck finding any site or application (short of something like Bittorrent, and even that is a massively huge stretch on this scale) that can make use of anywhere near 25Mbps. For reference, I am a telecom engineer for a largish ISP/phone company, we feed about 10,000 DSL lines and 1,500 dial up lines with 145Mbps of bandwidth (one full DS3 and a 100Mbps commit on a gigE link) with room to grow. I ride all this bandwidth directly at the office and I don't really notice a difference from my DSL connection at home, with the exception of downloads from some sites. There is a point where the amount of bandwidth becomes ridiculous for the things 99% of Internet users do.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: cheesecurd
In that case its easy, its probably a waste of money to upgrade your router.

You ignored his report that he's already done measurements and found his router to be a bottleneck compared to a direct connection.

 

[cheesecurd]

The question was "Any recommendations for a router than can handle a 25Mb connection?". The answer is that is unnecessary given the nature of the vast majority of consumer broadband connections.

Consider "In testing the new speeds I've concluded that my router . . . is bottlenecking the connection". This statement lead me to believe the basic test methodology was flawed in some fashion since it seems to imply he is expecting an actual 25Mbps, or close to that, of throughput out to the Internet (presumably where he did the bandwidth test).

I cannot presume anything else as no further specific information was given regarding how it was determined the speed was halved through the router, or even what the two speeds were. He doesn't say "Any recommendations for a router that will double my current throughput rate", he specifically asks for a router capable of sustaining 25Mbps of throughput, which is completely unnecessary and indicates a lack of knowledge (and that's not a rip or anything) of how consumer broadband connections work. That only makes me further suspicious of the circumstances

Now, I may well be wrong since I do not in fact know the exact circumstances surrounding this -- but years of dealing with consumer broadband connections give me a gut feeling that upgrading his router isn't going to help much.

 

[spidey07]

cheesecurd,

I think you need to revisit consumer broadband. 25 Mbs of sustained throughput is nothing these days. Asking a SOHO router to keep up is asking a little much so I'm not surprised at all that the router is limiting his througput severely.

I'd be interested in what SOHO router can perform at this speed.

 

[cheesecurd]

I revisit it every day, its my job

Its certainly possible between the CPE and terminating equipment, but out to the Internet is another story. Unless this is a heavy multi-user or multi-application environment -- I argue it's pretty tough to find any web site, ftp site, etc . . . that is going to let you connect to it at anywhere near 25Mbps. Further more, good luck finding any ISP with enough Internet bandwidth to support that much Internet traffic on a large scale. The economics don't work, part of my job is to deal with that.

 

[dphantom]

In a single user environment, I would agree with Cheesecurd. It is unlikely any Internet site will have the capability to stream data to a user at 25mbps.

With that said, I think the OPs router may indeed need to be replaced. Live TV/movie streams are coming on line now. In my home, I have a PC for each person. Each person can view video if they so choose. I can quickly eat up my 3MB connection if all of my home users decide to do something bandwidth intensive at the same time, like watch a movie.

At any rate, I would look hard at replacing the router so as to have the capability to take advantage of the higher speed. And a five year old router probably needs to be replaced just on principle.

 

[cheesecurd]

It is possible the router needs to be replaced (my first statement was that was probably a waste of money, not is a waste of money). Without any further data I can only guess. Based on past experience most home routers, even older ones, can generally handle what most home users throw at them. Throwing money at a problem you don't know enough about is not a good solution. That sounds really sterile and corporate

 

[Destinova]

I'm well aware of the other potential limiting factors, and would never expect to actually see 25Mbps. I do want to maximize what I CAN get out of this connection however, and right now this router seems to be limiting that to about 5-7Mbps. Going direct to the modem is showing 9-12.

Let me clarify my original question:

"Any recommendations for a router than will not bottleneck a connection that could potentially see a 25Mbps throughput?"

 

[Ig]

When I ditched my BEFSR41v2 and got a Zyxel X-550, my speeds went from 5-6mbit to ~13mbit. 3 of the routers mentioned here are pretty similar. X-550 is the cheapest at ~$70 (at compusa, $50AR), the DGL-4300 costs ~$115-130, and DIR-655 is ~$170. I only have experience with X-550 but I assume the DGL-4300 and DIR-655 should perform just as well if not better.

 

[cheesecurd]

Out of curiosity, what are you using to test bandwidth at those rates?

 

[Madwand1]

I have a Linksys WRT54G v1 which would be among the faster of the older routers, and I've measured around 16 Mb/s upload/download throughput through the WAN port via SPI. (Using DD-WRT firmware. IIRC, I obtained similar results earlier with Linksys firmware, but I don't recall for sure that I used the Linksys firmware then). Moreover, this bandwidth is split between upload and download; when upload and downloads are simultaneously active, the upload or download throttle downwards so that the total throughput is around 16 Mb/s. So some such older gear certainly does not do 25 Mb/s.

Note that Tom's measured this router as 20 Mb/s. I like my number better because that's what I see consistently, using tests that I personally trust. Tom's is in the ballpark though.

Originally posted by: Destinova
"Any recommendations for a router than will not bottleneck a connection that could potentially see a 25Mbps throughput?"

I can recommend the DGL-4300 / DGL-4100 based on personal experience. I have a DGL-4300 (my Linksys usually runs a wireless bridge; the D-Link is my main router). It's a good fast, stable, functional router. I and most other owners' reports I read say that they're happy with it. I haven't tested the WAN throughput myself (mostly because my internet service isn't fast, and because I don't want to disconnect it from my network, but I could do that I guess), but the general reports are good.

If I was shopping now, I admit I'd be tempted to get the DIR-655. Caveats are price and likelihood of issues with the draft 802.11n. Risky and costly, but that's the bleeding edge..

If I was on a low budget, or trying to get buy with something cheap for now, I'd consider the Airlink (~$25).

Alternatively there's the Linksys WRT54GL. This is often recommended for the functionality you can get with 3rd-party firmware such as DD-WRT. I'd actually recommend the similar Buffalo units that appear on DD-WRT's recommended hardware list first. Tom's measures the WRT54GL v1 at around 50 Mb/s, which should be enough for the 25 Mb/s WAN limit.

 

[cmetz]

WRT54GL might be iffy at 25Mb/s down sustained, esp. with lots of flows. I definitely wouldn't be turning on too many features. I love those little boxes, but they have their limits...

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: cheesecurd
I revisit it every day, its my job

Its certainly possible between the CPE and terminating equipment, but out to the Internet is another story. Unless this is a heavy multi-user or multi-application environment -- I argue it's pretty tough to find any web site, ftp site, etc . . . that is going to let you connect to it at anywhere near 25Mbps. Further more, good luck finding any ISP with enough Internet bandwidth to support that much Internet traffic on a large scale. The economics don't work, part of my job is to deal with that.

my ISP lets me max my connection...

I'm connecting to a popular website, with about 700Mb/s (yes, you read that right)

it's 7 different locations, but we max the pipe some nights pretty quickly.

As a reference, we have a single OC3 at our office
We have 100Mb connection into Savvis data centers (x 4 locations)
we have an OC3 in XMission in SLC
We have 50 Mb/s at another SLC data center


we just opened up the 2 SLC data centers, and haven't put the hammer down yet, but the last test run the office + 4 savvis DS's couldn't fill their pipe....so we had to buy iron and more colo space.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: nweaver
I'm connecting to a popular website, with about 700Mb/s (yes, you read that right)

:Q (<- taking a good look at that post)

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Madwand1

Originally posted by: nweaver
I'm connecting to a popular website, with about 700Mb/s (yes, you read that right)

:Q (<- taking a good look at that post)

Well it is the Internet. these speeds are commonplace. 600 Mbs is the lowest common denominator. OC-192 is the norm. If that gets full just add a few more. The cards and technology are cheap these days. That's what is so puzzling about previous posts. Me thinks they need some serious work.

That's why I was so curious about previous posts and to be certain, questioning whether they have serious network problems if they can't use a full 100 meg metro connection....somethings wrong there if they can't.

Plus....a ton of content is cached (100 terabyte cachers) so a lot of it is already cached and you don't have to deal with bottlenecks. Hell, most of the ISP networks I design have 8 Terabyte sniffers. This stuff isn't hard anymore.

 

[Madwand1]

Of course the math has to work that way, and conversely is part of the reason we can't all have gigabit speed access to the 'net. Please don't tell me you become blase having access to such a pipe for your individual connection to the 'net though... I don't think I want to hear that now.

Back on topic, yeah, I was surprised to hear about the limits of the other ISP, and it's good that mweaver has confirmed that he can see much higher bandwidth. My own ISP has hops that are named "...giga...", so there's another indication of such bandwidth being available (and just as soon as they give me full access to their internal pipes I'll really need that other router .

 

[Destinova]

Thanks all for the input. I think I am going to go with the DGL-4300---->GigaExpress 8 port Switch---->LAN and upgrade my nic's to Gigabit just for fun.

 

[marulee]

Originally posted by: Destinova
I just upgraded my internet service to a 25Mb connection. In testing the new speeds I've concluded that my router (wired) is bottlenecking the connection. I get about twice the speed going straight to the modem.

I've had the router for about 5 years, so it's probably time to get a new one.

Any recommendations for a router than can handle a 25Mb connection?

DGL-4300 should do.

BTW, wow your connection is fast!