Looking for fastest home router

[inetsurfer]

I would like to find the fastest home router that I can purchase under $150.

It does not have to be a wireless router or it could be a wireless router, but I will not be using the wireless portion. I am mainly focused with the best processor and memory to route the data traffic as quickly as possible after a cable modem. It does not look like the non wireless routers have been improved much, but I could be wrong.

Looking for some recommendations.

Thxs in advance, Jim

[jdabbs]

What speed is your Internet connection, and what traffic are you routing?

[thiggins]

Just use the Router Charts (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/router-charts/) and the Price filter.

[inetsurfer]

jdabbs - it is a standard cox cable internet connection. I have an older linksys befw11s4 router (w lastest firmware) and it works. Not sure if I would see much improvement for the money.

thiggins - that chart is great. I wanted ask the question, just in case I missed a lower $ wired router.

[Madwand]

Alternatively, you could use an old / off-lease / whatever PC with a couple of NICs and a router OS such as Smoothwall Express for this purpose -- it can of course have a much faster processor, more RAM and a richer feature set than any consumer router.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Off the shelf retail product...refer to Tims router charts.

To literally answer the question...use an older PC..or my preference..an older laptop, install a 2nd NIC...download a *nix router distro. IPCop, m0n0wall, Smoothwall, or one of my favorites and a very fast one...PFSense. You can pickup used Pentium 3 laptops easily within your budget..I use IBM Thinkpads. They're small, built in keyboard/monitor obviously, low energy consumption, low noise, low heat output, and a built in battery backup.

Or better yet...a UTM distro like Endian or Untangle....you gain additional antivirus/threat scanning of all traffic. Endian desires an upper P3 or higher and 512 megs of RAM, Untangle wants a P4 and 1 gig minimum...so may push your budget more.

[donaldd]

Apologies for butting in this is excellent information just what I was also looking for, a newbie question if you use an old pc that has a 10/100 ethernet port to connect to the cable modem and a installed gigabit card for the internal traffic would the 10/100 port slow everything down? Several years ago I used smoothwall for a while do you know of a comparison review of the other distros you mentioned without which it's hard to know which is the best for my needs.
Thanks Donald

[thiggins]

Unless you have 100 Mbps or higher service from your ISP, your shouldn't have a problem. The 100 Mbps limit will only come into play for Internet inbound/outbound traffic, not LAN.

[YeOldeStonecat]

I have a link of some distros on this thread...
http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?t=235860

There's a list of quite a few distros at Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_router_or_firewall_distributions?c6b 0b560

I've not found articles comparing them....there's just too many distros out there. And it's near impossible to "performance benchmark" them all, as the hardware they get installed on is, naturally, inconsistent. You can be confident that any distro, if running on properly supported hardware, will easily run circles around any "off the shelf boxed router" you could purchase for under several grand.

To select one...
*Think of the features you want...just a barebones NAT box, or better QoS features, or UTM features.....
*Look at what "horsepower" each one requires...as if you have an older PC that is all you can use, some of the heavier UTM distros may be out of your reach
*Look at the websites...screenshots
*Download some and try them. Many support running off the "live CD"..so you can quickly and easily see if they will work on your hardware, and get a "feel" for them to help you decide which one you wish to install and use.


Apologies for butting in this is excellent information just what I was also looking for, a newbie question if you use an old pc that has a 10/100 ethernet port to connect to the cable modem and a installed gigabit card for the internal traffic would the 10/100 port slow everything down? Several years ago I used smoothwall for a while do you know of a comparison review of the other distros you mentioned without which it's hard to know which is the best for my needs.
Thanks Donald