Which consumer routers can do full Gigabit speeds over WAN in PPPoE mode?

[Eug]

Got fibre-optic based (FTTH) Gigabit internet access installed. Service is 1000/100 but it turns out my router is the bottleneck. While non-PPPoE speeds are fine, as soon as PPPoE authentication is used, I get max 225 Mbps (wired) on my 6th gen 802.11ac Apple Airport Extreme. If I just use the included modem to do PPPoE authentication and routing, I get much, much higher real-world speeds.

I then starting looking into other consumer routers and found that similar issues exist. For example, I'm told that the very well-rated Netgear Nighthawk R7000 maxes out at about 550 Mbps in PPPoE mode.

Are any out there can can do full Gigabit speeds over the WAN when doing PPPoE authentication?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm curious why the fiber provider would even use something like PPPoE. Sounds like a backwoods DSL provider.

 

[sdifox]

I'm curious why the fiber provider would even use something like PPPoE. Sounds like a backwoods DSL provider.

It is Bell, so backwoods is correct.

 

[Rifter]

If you are really that worried about it why not just make your own router from old PC parts, any CPU from the last 10-15 years should be ok, put a few intel NIC's in it and run linux/BSD on it and make your own router. And keep using your current wireless router just as a AP. There are lots of linux/BSD based router OS's kicking around.

 

[Eug]

Yeah, it's Bell Canada. Pretty big backwoods company though as they have 50000 employees and revenue over $20 billion.

Hmmm. Looking further online I get the impression that few third party mainstream consumer router can push Gigabit over PPPoE and the ones that do are often unstable at those speeds. To get that would require a desktop or something repurposed as a router as the above post suggests but I don't want to do that. I just want something off the shelf. The supplied gateway can though so I may have to stick with that for the time being.

BTW, the gateway is an all-in-one custom Sagemcom combo DSL / fibre optic modem plus ONT that also is a wireless and Gigabit router and outputs telephone as well. So it looks like it has some serious horsepower and even has a built in battery but it's new and has some firmware bugs so I would have rather used my own solution.

 

[Rifter]

Yeah, it's Bell Canada. Pretty big backwoods company though as they have 50000 employees and revenue over $20 billion.

Hmmm. Looking further online I get the impression that few third party mainstream consumer router can push Gigabit over PPPoE and the ones that do are often unstable at those speeds. To get that would require a desktop or something repurposed as a router as the above post suggests but I don't want to do that. I just want something off the shelf. The supplied gateway can though so I may have to stick with that for the time being.

BTW, the gateway is an all-in-one custom Sagemcom combo DSL / fibre optic modem plus ONT that also is a wireless and Gigabit router and outputs telephone as well. So it looks like it has some serious horsepower and even has a built in battery but it's new and has some firmware bugs so I would have rather used my own solution.

If you do not want to build your own from scratch for power consumption or size or whatever else reasons you can buy a NUC sized PC with dual LAN and run a router OS on it.

such as http://www.qotom.net/goods-128-QOTOM-Q190P+Bay+trail+mini+PC.html

 

[VirtualLarry]

I guess, my comment really revolved around the router / gateway overhead necessary for PPPoE over Gigabit fiber. That's a lot of PPS to be pushing through PPPoE gateways, lots of horsepower needed. Also, the disadvantage of not having a 1500 MTU, which can cause issues with some sites. (Rare, but possible, if not every router in the path follows specs.)

I know that certain swathes of Verizon FIOS territory used to be PPPoE, but I think that they converted most/all of them to DHCP instead, over the years.

I guess, if they had existing DSL infrastructure, including authentication, provisioning, and billing, that used PPPoE (from their prior DSL services), then maybe I can understand the business case for sticking with PPPoE. But not from a technology perspective.

 

[JackMDS]

I guess, my comment really revolved around the router / gateway overhead necessary for PPPoE over Gigabit fiber. That's a lot of PPS to be pushing through PPPoE gateways, lots of horsepower needed. Also, the disadvantage of not having a 1500 MTU, which can cause issues with some sites. (Rare, but possible, if not every router in the path follows specs.)

I know that certain swathes of Verizon FIOS territory used to be PPPoE, but I think that they converted most/all of them to DHCP instead, over the years.

I guess, if they had existing DSL infrastructure, including authentication, provisioning, and billing, that used PPPoE (from their prior DSL services), then maybe I can understand the business case for sticking with PPPoE. But not from a technology perspective.

QFT

Verizon still offers DSL in places that they can not provide Fiber.

As strange as it sound in NYC there are places that Verizon can not get in. My office is in a building that has a Bank in the ground floor. The bank has Fiber FIOS that get to the Building General communication room in the basement. The FIOS goes to the bank but other (my personal connetion is few feet from it) yet other tenants in the building are not allowed to use Fiber and have to resort to Cable, or old DSL.

I know the in other business around in NYC have strange iteration DSL over fiber and other bizarre concoctions.

Enthusiasts are probably less tha 2% of general users. Others care about cost and work done. They would use the old string metal cans if it works for them.

 

[Eug]

Apparently, this Ubiquiti router will do it, is uber stable, and it's only $100 US:

https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-lite/

Unfortunately, it's not consumer friendly. It's a (wired-only) small business router.

---

Regarding fibre installs: Strangely enough in my area, if you ask Bell for just 15 mbps service, apparently they'll come to your house and install FTTH and then provision you for 15/15 service over fibre. When I type in my address, ALL of the options they list have faster than VDSL2 uploads:

15/15, 25/25, 50/50, 150/50, 300/100, 1000/100 (which is what I have).

 

[Viper GTS]

The EdgeRouter firmware today is not THAT much worse than a consumer router. It's not nearly as simple but it does have wizards that will get you up and running fairly easily. It's come a long ways since release and the reputation it had then.

And yes, absurdly powerful and stable for its ~$90 street price.

Viper GTS

 

[PliotronX]

If you are really that worried about it why not just make your own router from old PC parts, any CPU from the last 10-15 years should be ok, put a few intel NIC's in it and run linux/BSD on it and make your own router. And keep using your current wireless router just as a AP. There are lots of linux/BSD based router OS's kicking around.

I agree with this. If the Edgerouter or mikrotik CBRs can't do it, pfsense is the best option. We have a $3k Cisco ASA at work that can't muster more than 400Mbps.

 

[Eug]

OK, I'll keep the EdgeRouter Lite 3 in mind then. I'll see if I can find some decent recent reviews that outline some of the wizards, because I won't be using the CLI.

In the meantime, I'll continue to just use the existing gateway to see how stable it is. I'm not sure how accurate its monitoring tools are but I was downloading a couple of files from the internet and I was hitting about 150 Mbps. During this period I went into the modem info page and it claimed it was only using 2-3% CPU. If that is even close to being accurate it would seem that it is doing all the PPPoE data transfers in hardware.

It seems the main problem with most of the consumer routers is that while regular traffic may be hardware, PPPoE is usually on the CPU in software.

P.S. The installer told me that Bell actually provisions the fibre line for home use at 1.4 Gbps down and 120 Mbps up. That makes sense, because the modem has an internal speed test app built-in and it benches at 1.29 Gbps down and 115 Mbps up, so it's the Gigabit Ethernet ports of the gateway on the LAN side that actually represent the bottleneck here.

 

[Eug]

The installer told me that Bell actually provisions the fibre line for home use at 1.4 Gbps down and 120 Mbps up. That makes sense, because the modem has an internal speed test app built-in and it benches at 1.29 Gbps down and 115 Mbps up, so it's the Gigabit Ethernet ports of the gateway on the LAN side that actually represent the bottleneck here.

I was not able to max out Gigabit speeds on my Core i7 870 iMac. Yeah, it's a 7 year-old Core i7, but it's still a desktop Core i7. It turns out I had not completely turned off my anti-virus because there are multiple parts that needed to be turned off. With the antivirus partially on I was only getting about 75% of max speed. With it completely turned off, I'm getting expected speeds, albeit with 225% CPU usage in Chrome. (Apple shows up to 100% CPU usage per virtual core.)

Note though, this is NOT with my own router doing PPPoE and routing. The PPPoE and routing are both being handled by the modem. Luckily though with my usage the modem has been 100% stable for the past 1.5 weeks. I have relegated my two Apple Airport Extreme routers and one Airport Express to simple WiFi bridges.

My iMac is connected as follows:

Modem --> Unmanaged Zonet 24-port switch --> Unmanaged TrendNET 8-port switch --> iMac.

So I'm thinking 932 Mbps from the internet is pretty good in this context. Testing with iPerf just on the internal network in the past, I have never surpassed 936 Mbps on this network.

This modem doesn't have a reputation of being super stable, so I'll keep an eye on it. However, I suspect I may be getting decent stability because I'm not using it for WiFi. I've hardwired all of my three TV boxes (which included having to buy a foot-long masonry bit to use with my hammer drill to wire up one of them), and all WiFi traffic is being handled by the Airports, bridged to the Gigabit backbone.