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I have 1gbps. I had to get a decent router. Cheap home routers can't handle it even when they outright claim they can. You also want something better than cat5

I have 1gbps. I had to get a decent router. Cheap home routers can't handle it even when they outright claim they can. You also want something better than cat5 for home wiring. Lastly spinning hard drives wont keep up on sustained reads/writes you need an SSD. The above is things you should do when you have 1gbps in order to actually get those speeds. I know people will argue citing 640k being enough for everyone and have some edge case that needs this but.... 25gbps is overkill.

felixr 5y ago
On how to build a router that can make use of the 25GBps: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-07-10-linux-25gbit-internet-router-pc-build/ https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-07-10-linux-25gbit-...
xattt 5y ago
What’s your decent router? I’m in the market for something fresh and an Edgerouter-4 is looking long in the tooth…
- hak8or 5y ago
  Mikrotik makes some very capable routers. The Rb4011 is incredibly powerful and very low power, and has an SFP+ port, so you can use a sfp+ to rj45 if needed, or straight modem -> sfp+ connection, to get faster than 1 gig speeds. It has a steep learning curve though, albeit it's extremely rewarding and powerful once you gwr over that curve. It should handle routing 1 gig with zero issues, and is under $200. You can do bonding, vlans, esoteric ip rules, and tons of "misc" functionality. Do not go with ubiquiti, their hardware is very poor and their UI is very buggy and simply poorly designed, it's focused on people who know a bit above an average person about networking, which I suspect is not the case for most people here.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I have that router, and it can do up to about 2.5Gb/s with actual routing. I have it on a 10GBe direct connect to my "main" 4 port switch, but that just means it can take in multiple unrouted LAN segments. Once you start doing much esoteric the speed slows down, if you get off the fast path it can be pretty intense (thought they do sell bigger ones that can route more packets).
    - notimetorelax 5y ago
      I like that Mikrotik are very transparent about it. On their site they publish performance test results in various configurations.
      - bombcar 5y ago
        Agreed, it's nice to have the number right there and they don't make claims beyond what it actually can do (and arguably, when you're up at 10GB+ your router and your switch shouldn't be the same hardware anymore).
- wyager 5y ago
  I switched to running FreeBSD on a commodity OnLogic/Logic Supply fanless PC from Ebay and I love it. I use Mikrotik for L2 stuff but doing L3 on your own is quite nice.
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  I ended up getting a ridiculous looking Archer gx90 which is still a home router but not a cheap home router. The main thing is that the CPU in it is 1.5ghz quad core. Before that I had a Linksys with a 800mhz a single core that literally couldn't route traffic fast enough.
- radicality 5y ago
  I’m using this for a symmetrical 1Gbs line https://protectli.com/vault-6-port/ https://protectli.com/vault-6-port/ Running opnsense on it, and it’s doing fine and saturates the line when I’m maxing out downloads. For comparison, the isp (Verizon) router was consistently around 100Mb/s less than this one.
- notimetorelax 5y ago
  I got Zyxel AX7501-B0 it supports SPF+ module for 10g/s and has 10g/s for your main device or hotspot and 4 1g/s ports.
- reincarnate0x14 5y ago
  Mikrotik is probably the better general choice for consumer-ish pricing. Personally I would recommend something like a CRS326-24G-2S+RM (which is a switch but running RouterOS) or similar scaled to your needs. Router has had no problem pushing 1Gb and the switch is rated for something like 44 Gb. Has enough of a firewall and other built in services, plus POE for home devices and SFP+ ports so in the event you need a faster link. Average current draw is < 5 W and it's quiet. Although nearly any modern mini-PC running Opnsense or VyOS or whatever linux/bsd can trivially do gigabit routing as well. 25 Gb would be a bit harder of an ask :)
- floatinglotus 5y ago
  Run switchdev with Netris, if you have SmartNIC you can hit 100Gbps.
jsjohnst 5y ago
> You also want something better than cat5 for home wiring. For 25Gbps? Or are you meaning for the 1gbps you have? If the former, of course, but otherwise Cat5e can handle 10GbE if you have good connections and the loop length isn’t too long.
- mlyle 5y ago
  Yup. My whole house has Cat5E and it all works at 10gbps; though I chose to run 5gbps just to have some margin. Most hard drives will keep up with a full gigabit pipe, too, on a sequential write. I think the poster is exaggerating a bit.
  - jsjohnst 5y ago
    My home is a mix of topologies, but everything that is twisted pair copper that was pre-existing is Cat5e and has no trouble fully saturating 10gbps (30-40ft average loop length). I have cheap RG6 handling 2.5Gbps where I didn’t have an existing cable run and didn’t want to run new cable and it can fully max out the connection too based on iperf testing. In my basement, I also have fiber (for >2 meter spans) and twinax (for 1-2 meter spans) in 10Gbps and 40Gbps too.
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  Cat5 and cat5e are different though. Cat5 struggles with 1gbps.
  - yuhong 5y ago
    The differences are minimal. There is a good article on this topic: https://www.flukenetworks.com/knowledge-base/application-or-standards-articles-copper/1000base-t-over-category-5 https://www.flukenetworks.com/knowledge-base/application-or-...
    - jsjohnst 5y ago
      The differences, while minimal, do make a big difference in certain environments. Long cable lengths (>70m) is the obvious one that might apply in a home environment theoretically. The more common case where it makes a difference is in very high density cable trays or other places where you have a lot of potential interference, which generally doesn’t apply as much in a home. P.S. - a lot of your recent comments are showing as dead, might want to email HN mods and see what’s up.
novok 5y ago
It's probably sold that way because they practically do not expect any residential customer to actually use it that much.
notimetorelax 5y ago
Heh, had the same difficulties. It’s funny how slow home equipment is when compared to 25gbit/s internet. I’m waiting for my 10 gibt/s to be enabled by init7, but even that took me multiple weeks to research to find a reasonably sized router that can do 10g/s. And even that is a bit of an overkill, I’m getting it simply because it’s free if you have 1g/s already.
jerf 5y ago
"I know people will argue citing 640k being enough for everyone and have some edge case that needs this but.... 25gbps is overkill." There is actually a semi-reasonable case for there being a limit on useful bandwidth for most purposes. Exact numbers are hard to come by for many reasons both obvious and subtle but around 25gpbs you're getting to the point that with reasonable compression you can saturate a human's entire sensorium with retina-quality video, full audio, touch, proprioception, etc. While there are use cases that exceed that, like running a search across the entire locally-stored output of the Large Hadron Collider, you're certainly getting to the point where the applications are getting more and more specialist relative to the average person sitting in their home, no matter how exotic the the requirements. I mean we're literally talking about having enough data bandwidth to stream your next-next-next-next-gen VR system a holodeck-like experience for you.

felixr 5y ago

On how to build a router that can make use of the 25GBps: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-07-10-linux-25gbit-internet-router-pc-build/ https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-07-10-linux-25gbit-...

xattt 5y ago

What’s your decent router? I’m in the market for something fresh and an Edgerouter-4 is looking long in the tooth…

hak8or 5y ago
Mikrotik makes some very capable routers. The Rb4011 is incredibly powerful and very low power, and has an SFP+ port, so you can use a sfp+ to rj45 if needed, or straight modem -> sfp+ connection, to get faster than 1 gig speeds. It has a steep learning curve though, albeit it's extremely rewarding and powerful once you gwr over that curve. It should handle routing 1 gig with zero issues, and is under $200. You can do bonding, vlans, esoteric ip rules, and tons of "misc" functionality. Do not go with ubiquiti, their hardware is very poor and their UI is very buggy and simply poorly designed, it's focused on people who know a bit above an average person about networking, which I suspect is not the case for most people here.
- bombcar 5y ago
  I have that router, and it can do up to about 2.5Gb/s with actual routing. I have it on a 10GBe direct connect to my "main" 4 port switch, but that just means it can take in multiple unrouted LAN segments. Once you start doing much esoteric the speed slows down, if you get off the fast path it can be pretty intense (thought they do sell bigger ones that can route more packets).
  - notimetorelax 5y ago
    I like that Mikrotik are very transparent about it. On their site they publish performance test results in various configurations.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Agreed, it's nice to have the number right there and they don't make claims beyond what it actually can do (and arguably, when you're up at 10GB+ your router and your switch shouldn't be the same hardware anymore).
wyager 5y ago
I switched to running FreeBSD on a commodity OnLogic/Logic Supply fanless PC from Ebay and I love it. I use Mikrotik for L2 stuff but doing L3 on your own is quite nice.
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
I ended up getting a ridiculous looking Archer gx90 which is still a home router but not a cheap home router. The main thing is that the CPU in it is 1.5ghz quad core. Before that I had a Linksys with a 800mhz a single core that literally couldn't route traffic fast enough.
radicality 5y ago
I’m using this for a symmetrical 1Gbs line https://protectli.com/vault-6-port/ https://protectli.com/vault-6-port/ Running opnsense on it, and it’s doing fine and saturates the line when I’m maxing out downloads. For comparison, the isp (Verizon) router was consistently around 100Mb/s less than this one.
notimetorelax 5y ago
I got Zyxel AX7501-B0 it supports SPF+ module for 10g/s and has 10g/s for your main device or hotspot and 4 1g/s ports.
reincarnate0x14 5y ago
Mikrotik is probably the better general choice for consumer-ish pricing. Personally I would recommend something like a CRS326-24G-2S+RM (which is a switch but running RouterOS) or similar scaled to your needs. Router has had no problem pushing 1Gb and the switch is rated for something like 44 Gb. Has enough of a firewall and other built in services, plus POE for home devices and SFP+ ports so in the event you need a faster link. Average current draw is < 5 W and it's quiet. Although nearly any modern mini-PC running Opnsense or VyOS or whatever linux/bsd can trivially do gigabit routing as well. 25 Gb would be a bit harder of an ask :)
floatinglotus 5y ago
Run switchdev with Netris, if you have SmartNIC you can hit 100Gbps.

jsjohnst 5y ago

> You also want something better than cat5 for home wiring. For 25Gbps? Or are you meaning for the 1gbps you have? If the former, of course, but otherwise Cat5e can handle 10GbE if you have good connections and the loop length isn’t too long.

mlyle 5y ago
Yup. My whole house has Cat5E and it all works at 10gbps; though I chose to run 5gbps just to have some margin. Most hard drives will keep up with a full gigabit pipe, too, on a sequential write. I think the poster is exaggerating a bit.
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  My home is a mix of topologies, but everything that is twisted pair copper that was pre-existing is Cat5e and has no trouble fully saturating 10gbps (30-40ft average loop length). I have cheap RG6 handling 2.5Gbps where I didn’t have an existing cable run and didn’t want to run new cable and it can fully max out the connection too based on iperf testing. In my basement, I also have fiber (for >2 meter spans) and twinax (for 1-2 meter spans) in 10Gbps and 40Gbps too.
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
Cat5 and cat5e are different though. Cat5 struggles with 1gbps.
- yuhong 5y ago
  The differences are minimal. There is a good article on this topic: https://www.flukenetworks.com/knowledge-base/application-or-standards-articles-copper/1000base-t-over-category-5 https://www.flukenetworks.com/knowledge-base/application-or-...
  - jsjohnst 5y ago
    The differences, while minimal, do make a big difference in certain environments. Long cable lengths (>70m) is the obvious one that might apply in a home environment theoretically. The more common case where it makes a difference is in very high density cable trays or other places where you have a lot of potential interference, which generally doesn’t apply as much in a home. P.S. - a lot of your recent comments are showing as dead, might want to email HN mods and see what’s up.

novok 5y ago

It's probably sold that way because they practically do not expect any residential customer to actually use it that much.

notimetorelax 5y ago

Heh, had the same difficulties. It’s funny how slow home equipment is when compared to 25gbit/s internet. I’m waiting for my 10 gibt/s to be enabled by init7, but even that took me multiple weeks to research to find a reasonably sized router that can do 10g/s. And even that is a bit of an overkill, I’m getting it simply because it’s free if you have 1g/s already.

jerf 5y ago

"I know people will argue citing 640k being enough for everyone and have some edge case that needs this but.... 25gbps is overkill." There is actually a semi-reasonable case for there being a limit on useful bandwidth for most purposes. Exact numbers are hard to come by for many reasons both obvious and subtle but around 25gpbs you're getting to the point that with reasonable compression you can saturate a human's entire sensorium with retina-quality video, full audio, touch, proprioception, etc. While there are use cases that exceed that, like running a search across the entire locally-stored output of the Large Hadron Collider, you're certainly getting to the point where the applications are getting more and more specialist relative to the average person sitting in their home, no matter how exotic the the requirements. I mean we're literally talking about having enough data bandwidth to stream your next-next-next-next-gen VR system a holodeck-like experience for you.