Best router which can handle 50Mbps with and with 50 users

[master4g]

Any suggestions? Im looking for a solid router which can handle traffic from 50 users at once, and deliver speeds of wan-to-lan of 50mbs. I read throught many of the router reviews on this site, but im confused about the "Max connections" part... does it mean the number of users at once?

Anyways, any personal experience or suggestions.

Do you guys think that the Linksys WRT310N can handle?

Also, if I had a setup where all the users were connected to another gateway before it reached the router... would that put less burden on the router. I was thinking of an Untangle Gateway. Would the router be able to handle that much traffic?

[thiggins]

Maximum simultaneous connections is the number of sessions that a router can handle. Our test limit is 200, so any router in the Chart that shows 200 can usually handle more. A session is a connection made from a client to the Internet and clients can have multiple sessions open.

Putting two routers in series doesn't reduce the load on either of them since traffic must pass through both.

Untangle would handle your needs quite well. The WRT160N handles only 160 simultaneous sessions, but is fine for 50 Mbps routing throughput.

[master4g]

Thanks for the reply.

Just curious, in normal internet browsing, how many sessions are in use? how about if you have several things open, like the browser, instant messenger, maybe internet radio?

Just on a note, I will probably not be using most of the features on the router, most of the firewall, dhcp, vpn, logging features will be disabled. Do you think the WRT310N can handle this many users? Maybe 40 at a time?

If not, can you suggest another router if you have one in mind?

I was also looking into the Linksys RV082. What are your guys' thoughts on that?

[thiggins]

Originally Posted by master4g

Just curious, in normal internet browsing, how many sessions are in use? how about if you have several things open, like the browser, instant messenger, maybe internet radio?

Every connection an application makes is a session. So depends on the application. A browser might open a half dozen or more, given the different ad networks, trackers, etc that are in a typical web page.

What are your 50 users going to be doing? If all 50 are running torrents, watching streams or other things that hold sessions open for a long time, that's different than users who are web browsing, email, etc.

D-Link's Ubicom-based routers have tended to be pretty solid for handling high #s of sessions and also upstream QoS. They also automatically tell you how many sessions are open.

[master4g]

Its hard to say what all those users will be doing. We provide internet service to all the apartments in the complex. However, we have a proxy server set up before the router which blocks of many things like online gamings (xbox live , etc). The main usage will be internet browing, and i know some ppl use torrents, and recently online videos like youtube have been popular.

I read all the reviews for the dlink routers on this site and the several which interest me are:

the DGL 4300 (or 4100). I think the review for this was done some time ago so the format for the test wasn't the same (like the throuhput chart), but the review did state that the router can do 100mbps throuput. It also stated that it can handle 1000 sessions (main thing i like about this router). price is also good, and the amazon review is nice as well.

The DIR 655 review stated that it had the highest number of sessions the site had tested. I think this was because it was right when your test procedure allowed a test with 200 sessions. Do you think this router would out perform the above?

The Dir 825 also interests me. The thing I like about this review was that you guys performed a stress test. This is imprortant because I dont want to worry about the router performing poorly when its heavily used.

What do you think about these 3? Which one would you pick? Any other suggestions? How about a router with DD-wrt? or the linksys rv082. Do you think it would matter that those dlink routers have 16mb ram and 4 flash... Some other ones in the same range have up ot 64/16mb

Thanks

[thiggins]

Now that I know you are serving an apartment complex, I would not advise using consumer routers. I'll let one of the guys who install and service these types of networks for a living advise you on the way to go.

[master4g]

Hey, I finally convinced my boss that I need more money for this router... and we ended up buying a used Cisco ASA 5505. now I just have to figure out how to use it.