So currently I have cable internet from Comcast. Directly from my current router, I get a 800/18mbps on a perfect day but most of the time they hover close to 800/18mbps. I'm not really tech savvy so to solve bufferbloat issues, I bought a B1300 from gl-inet and flashed it with openwrt. However, since my isp speeds are too asymmetric I connected the B1300 to our home security router, which can only manage a max of 100mbps, so it can actually run cake or codel.
I considered downgrading our plan but because I can only get so much upload speed(which I MIGHT need down the line if my family decides to have security cameras from Comcast), I decided to stick with our plan. But that still leaves me with my crappy home network setup. Our home is too tricky to have ethernet runs all around the house but I still want a wired connections in every room so I'm going with moca adapter which I already tried and am satisfied with. Now my desired setup would be modem-->openwrt router(your suggestion)-->moca-->weak AP in each room(so I can ditch the google router setup).
I have lurked around a bit and saw someone making an x86 openwrt build which I'm interested in. However I have no experience in building a pc despite being a hardcore pc gamer. I also saw nano pi r4s build and a few similar custom routers but I'm not sure if I could troubleshoot problems that comes along with building stuff.
Potentially my family and I will move into a new house within a few years that has access to 1gb internet so I would like a recommendation that can shape 1gb speed. I read that x86 can basically do 1gb but most concern I read about is power consumption which makes me worry too. So could you recommend me a low power pc that I can just install openwrt on? Like I said, for now my goal is to have modem-->openwrt router(your suggestion)-->moca-->weak AP in each room so the pc not being capable of wireless routing is not an issue. I would prefer to spend not more than $250 but I am "open" to <$500. Also if you really think it's not a hassle to just build the router I want, it would be nice if you could actually direct me to a how-to video that can help me make one.
Hi! x86 build you linked is mine)00
About rp4 or other stuff - do not do this if you any % gamer dota/cs/lol/etc.. games, when using rp4 you will need one more LAN interface, the options you can handle it is limited - USB to LAN adapter, and it a disaster, i've listened people here and found they all lie, it's good, reliable and outstanding they told, for youtube and browsing yes, but pings are such a awful, i tried 7 usb-to-lan adapters, wasted my money and become one of the most hatred person about rp4.
But you can buy rp4 based model with 2 LAN, it is a completely different story, which I can confidently recommend!
This seems a bit harsh, no? In my experience most folks on this list will give their honest opinions/assessments based on their own experience. Yes, this is anecdotal in nature and not guaranteed to generalize, so something working well for some is not guaranteed to work for everybody else.
But that is a different issue than claiming that people on this forum purposefully give wrong/misleading information, as you just did....
Could you please tone it down a bit? It is fine to say something like 'you followed the advice given here, and the results were underwhelming', or 'you do not think popular solution X in this forum will work for the OP', but please refrain from assigning malice to others here (I would say especially without presenting corroborating evidence for such malice, but honestly even then this would better brought up per private message with the forum admins).
But I take it, you tried a raspberry pi4b + tp-link UE300 solution and it did not work to your satisfaction, certainly a helpful datapoint for the OP.
No it is no harsh, because of rp4 propaganda lie like it proprietary companies do, some people bought rp4 believe they can play 4k video, remember this adverisement?, i do, i bought rp4 because i trusted them and wanted to play 4k videos. In the end it even can't handle 1080x60 youtube. Do not tell it's a harash.
People who use and love raspberry pi in my opinion become like apple users, they bought rp4, bought usb-lan dongle and tell everyone "hey it's a good and powerfull device for the internet", but is it? No, you can't play competitive games using it, even in low ranked CS:Go matches you will got a major disadvantage, you will fail your team and friends.
Hmmm, I did not see such claims being made, but I might have been looking at the wrong places. All I remember is that the rpi4b can drive 4K displays, not that it can display 4K video. And regarding youtube, I early on in my pi research (looking for a raspberry pi400 as light desktop) I stumbled over information that due to limited hardware assist, youtube will be problematic.... I guess I got lucky finding that information early on (then again, I did not expect the pi400 to be able to do that in the first place). But I have not seen such claims being made here in this forum...
I am puzzled, nobody claimed, as far as I can see that you play on a raspberry pie... but I did see data posted here demonstrating that a raspberry pi4b, competently configured, can deliver competent AQM and traffic shaping with low latency under load increase up tp ~1Gbps gross rates.
What you wrote read to me that you are explicitly claiming other members on this forum are knowingly telling false or misleading facts about raspberry pi's, which might be a misunderstanding on my side.
Regarding your CS:Go claim, I think the easiest test would have been, after making sure the pi's configuration is correct, to see what happens when shaping the access speed down to 100Mbps (which a pi certainly can manage) and then slowly increase the shaper speed... (on-line games, if rendered locally rarely need more that 1Mbps, so shaping to 100Mbps will not cause problems for playing by itself).
Maybe we do not understood each other, Sorry if i insult you, i didn't meant to do this, i just think, people should not use rp4 as a router in any way but pihole, i just had awful experience with that, after people got hyped rp4 routers and projecting onto this.
If that is your point all along, than I certainly misunderstood your post. So please accept my apology. Disclaimer, I operate two raspberry pi's but none as OpenWrt router (the pi400 does duty as light desktop, where it is a bit on the slow side but still bearable, the other a rpi4 B 4GB serves as my local GPS-trained NTP-timesource*) so will not be able to give any first hand experience report one way or the other.
*) This is still really amazing, we managed to place atomic high precision clocks in orbit around the earth and can use these to synchronize time measurements to a few microseconds essentially all over the planet. Sometimes the future has arrived already and we just take it for granted and stop seeing how "science-fiction" that actually is, but I digress.
I'm confused. Were you playing the video directly on the RPi4 or were you having issues when using the RPi4 as a router?
You are one data point amongst many. I accept you've clearly had issues when you've tried to use an RPi4 as a router, but that does not mean that people are lying about it. I use a RPi4 (and UE300 dongle) as a router and have done for over 18 months. I play a wide range of online games and have not experienced any issues with ping or latency. Nor have we had a large number of people posting about issues with RPi4 setups and latency which would suggest there's not a wider issue with their performance.
RPI4 user here for half a year so far. Half of that was with a UE300 dongle, rest of it, using an Archer C7 v4's own switch + VLANs. Never had any latency related problems with either setup. I play some csgo, no issues there either.
You should start a thread so we can help you diagnose whatever is wrong with your setup.
You wouldn't see people recommending such a setup out of their own experience if it was prone to what you're experiencing.
Yes, there is latency issues with your setup. Look, In my country (Russia), avg cs:go ping is 12, for example for USA above 40, for Germany and France little above 10, when you play ping 19, because usb-dongle transofrmations, all other on server play 12 ping, you just simply would not kill anyone, but if you play ping 50, and all other 40, there will be no difference at all because game mechanics.
I am using a RPi4B as the primary router (UE300 dongle for WAN side as I recall) with 1000 down/25 up connection. Using SQM for it and getting excellent results. For WiFi, I have a R7800 as a dumb AP.
Another kid that don't get that he is bad and blames the internet for just 7ms...
I wish that people who have high interest in csgo / fps gaming in openwrt would make the effort to build a GCC optimized kmod-usb-net-rtl8152 (ethernet dongle driver)...because i feel that processor speed alone would not be enough...in my experience router should be at least a 1.6ghz Atom N270 to be decent for csgo
An Atom N270 won't give you much more than 600 MBit/s routing throughput.
Because if you understood gaming its all about response speed (especially processor speed) rather than bandwidth
Correct, for gaming alone, an Atom N270 is still unsuited to cope with 800/18 MBit/s as required by the OP's WAN connection.
Yes, you can restrict your throughput into areas that an Atom N270 can cope with (my ~600-650 MBit/s figure was measured on real N270 hardware (Intel D945GSEJT, r8168 (LAN) + r8169 (WAN)), without SQM, expect a significant further performance drop with SQM enabled) and get a responsive internet connection that way. Good enough for gaming, but you'll waste more than half of your WAN speed that way - which won't help you for concurrent internet usage. It doesn't make sense at all to use inadequate hardware in this case.
I appreciate everyone's replies. However I'm still at lost on what hardware to go with. I did recently discover mini pc's being used as a router. This video is about pfsense but the hardware he used is what I was considering. I also stumbled upon HP T620 Plus and similar thin clients/sff pc but I'm not really sure what specs to look for since I'm going to need something that can shape gigabit speed in the future(what makes it difficult for me to pick one is power usage and correct me if I'm wrong, but if a device needs more power then it has a greater potential to fail with regards to power related issues?). I'm aware of capable hardware that is much affordable such as the nanopi r4s but those things are rare nowadays and I prefer something that I can just get sooner.
That is indeed one of the major things to look at, idle power consumption in particular. Even in a busy household your router will be semi-idle most of the day, so that's the figure that matters - the few busy minutes per day won't show up in the tally.
Most of all, two or more 1000BASE-T ethernet ports (well, 2.5GBASE-T, 5GBASE-T, 10GBASE-T, …) - and 'enough' CPU power for your needs.
I wouldn't call there to be a direct relation here, unless you go to the extremes.
In general, you want a rather targeted device - 'small' helps in a way, because small implies there being less optional fuzz drawing power (dedicated graphics card, +20 to +30 watts idle power, more PCIe slots -even if left empty- more waste in the power converters, fewer ports might even allow getting by without a south-bridge (AMD SOCs), etc.), but 'larger' eases the cooling (quieter, even without going fanless).
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Forget about adding wireless to the mini-pc, very few mainboards have the mini-PCIe/ M.2 slots to begin with (at least two needed, three for wifi 6e) - even less to cope with the cooling/ power requirements of high-end wifi 6 cards. Even a high-end wifi 6e wireless router will end up being cheaper than trying to force it into the mini-pc (because of the costs of the wireless cards alone, ignoring the additional issues with antennas, feed cables and the big metal chunk they're attached to, but is always in the way).
That Beelink with the J4125 looks attractive. Everything is a bit expensive because of pandemic related inflation issues, that box was $195 a while back according to comments. People mention in the comments installing Linux with no problems. It's got Realtek ethernet but that's not really a dealbreaker on linux. I hear the BSD drivers are a lot worse but I know several people who report realtek working for them at gigabit routing (zotac boxes)
Any merit to this? Wouldn't a device capable of high bandwidth also not introduce latency? Is this about dealing with chunks in low latency way?