Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] router woes

[Daniel Frey]

On 03/28/2017 01:19 PM, Jorge Almeida wrote:
> The point is: I connected the computers to the lan ports of my
> secondary router (with original firmware, but I intended to install
> ddwrt), and the setup works, except that the speed never reaches
> 100Mbps.

This is not unusual, the speeds they advertise are device to device
(i.e. switched, not routed.)

>
> Which part is to blame? The secondary router boasts 1300Mbps on 5GHz
> WiFi, so I assumed it could deal with 150Mbps on cat5e ethernet cable.
> The power consumption is about 4.5w, which seems a bit flimsy.
> Or maybe the primary router is thottling speed when in bridge mode? Is
> this possible at all? (And if so, what could be the purpose of such
> measure? *spooky*)
>

As Mick mentioned, a lot of the all-in-ones don't have enough CPU
available to route at those speeds. Some of them do come with hardware
offloading, thus taking it off the main CPU but that itself doesn't mean
it is able to route at port speed.

I have the same problem, I had an old RT-N16. It finally crapped out and
have read many stories about these $200 all-in-ones that can't actually
fully route at 100 mbit+ speeds. Some of the newer hardware revisions
can with hardware offloading.

For myself, as fibre is coming to my home sometime this year (I'm
looking forward to symmetrical 150mbit at $85/month) I'm probably going
to get an Ubiquiti Edgerouter and AP, and perhaps even a small managed
switch. The middle grade Edgerouters have been tested to actually route
at near gigabit speeds.

The problem with my solution is cost, it'll probably be 2-3x higher than
the high-end all-in-ones. But at least if a component fails or gets
outdated, I can replace one thing at a time. Thinking mainly wifi
technologies changing.

Dan