Having upgraded my fibre to 1 Gbps I want to buy a new router.
The only one i saw that does 2.5 GbE cheaply (see alternatives discounted below) is the upcoming OpenWRT One. So.....when is it out? I want to buy one. As it will support OpenWRT this is also a great bonus.
Alternatives discounted
Nanopi range - The R4S has no 2.5 GbE ports, the R5S/R6S has only two shared 2.5GBE ports on LAN (WAN is 1 GBE).
NanoPC TS6 has two 2.5GBE ports but is $130. Too much for a simple router upgrade.
Banana Pi BPI-M7 has two 2.5 GBE ports but is $150.
Banana Pi BPI-R3 mini has two 2.5 GBE ports but is $90.
Odroid boards are really pricey but are mini PCs (>$200)
Raspberry PI plus a 2.5GBE HAT is also pricey all in.
I can buy a dual 1 GBE router with two ports, etc all in for $50.
You have to check ethtool wan to see if your CPE port is 2.5Gbps capable at all, provider does not want to attend customer more than every 5 years, you can buy gigabit few-port router now, then demote it to extender in basement once your CPE is replaced.
I have done some speedtest with the cable modem as router and the R2S plus (my current OpenWRT box) as router and there is difference. I think its to do with maxing out the 1 GB ethernet on the R2S plus. The Virgin modem has a 2.5GB ethernet port and so i'm blaming the R2S plus 1 GB ethernet port.
Agree on futureproofing, thats why i'm trying to minimise spend. Its hobbyist fun for me to upgrade and see my speedtest lines go higher
The R2S, TR3000, WR3000, M3000 do not have 2.5GbE ports
The MT3000 does have dual 2.5GbE ports but has wifi (i have separate APs) and costs >$100
The MT2500A has one 2.5GbE port (the other is only 1 GbE [1]) but costs $60 so looks good. However support for the MT2500A is only in snapshot at present and reddit posts indicate hassles with OpenWRT.
I could go for the R5C or R6S but i worry about how the CPU will cope with the extra speed. I wish i could figure out what is the minimum grunt for a CPU to cope with 2.5GbE. I read a comment that the R5C does not have enough ooomph. And the R6S is >$100.
This is just me wanting my speedtest lines to go higher for <$60 (with no wifi) so i will keep looking. Appreciate the extra choices though, thank you.
[1] I only have a 1 GbE switch so it doesn't really matter but would be nice if I didn't have to upgrade the router when i upgraded my switch.
I don't get what you mean, R5S/R6S both with 2 x 2.5GbE + 1 x 1GbE, and you can use them in any arrangement you like (e.g. 1GbE for WAN, 2.5GbE for LAN, or 1 x 2.5GbE WAN, 1 x 2.5GbE + 1 x 1GbE for LAN
TR3000/M3000 both having 1 x 2.5GbE port, and MT3000 the same, only 1 x 2.5GbE
If you are only switching on LAN side, the traffic is not even going to the router, so 1GbE or 2.5GbE LAN side doesn't really matter.
You are right but my issue is that I think i am not getting full WAN bandwidth from the cable modem because I am at 1.0 GbE, this whole project is for me to speedtest correctly and upgrade cheaply because this number is really meaningless in real life. At home, I have three other users of HD Netflix and even with three streams and Steam downloading gangbusters its barely saturates my 500 Mbit/s connection. At the moment my speedtest is this graph and i want the line to be solidly at 1 GBit/s not 500 MBit/s. I am not willing to spend a lot of money to do this.
When i had my Virgin cable modem box (has a 2.5 GbE) running as a router it hit 1 gbit but using my R2S plus (only got 1 GbE) it just doesn't seem to hit the peak speeds.
These are my struggles, your help is gratefully received.
I think I'm hitting the edge of my tech knowledge here. On the R5S/R6S you can use the ethernet ports in any arrangement? I did not know this. The WAN and LAN labels made me think otherwise.
Apologies on the M3000/TR3000/MT3000 i swear i looked at a datasheet saying otherwise. However the M3000/TR3000 are only working on snapshot so I'll wait for it to be included in a release and MT3000 is > $100. However i am very tempted by a single M3000 once it gets in the next release. Thank you.
Router
Port Speed
CPU
Memory
Price
NanoPi R6S
2x 2.5 GbE, 1x 1 GbE
Rockchip RK3588S (4x Cortex-A76 up to 2.4GHz & 4x Cortex-A55 up to 1.8GHz)
Some ISPs advertise net throughput instead of gross rates. E.g. in Germany ISPs need to inform potential customers about the net rates only. Cable ISPs (and some FTTH) hence provision nominal 1 Gbps links such that the net achievable rate is around 1050-1100 Mbps, so speedtests tend to show >= the advertized rate.
But you need more than gigabit ethernet to be able to see that....
Personally, I would not bother to upgrade my gear just to see these additional 10 to 20% of throughput. But even I would probably take this in consideration when updating my router for other reasons....
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