Hey community, over the weekend I setup a WR1043ND with OpenWrt 12.09 on it to completely replace my Google Fiber network box. It's fully functional but the WR1043ND can't anywhere near route at the line's full 1Gbps capability. I expected as much, but the WR1043ND is what I had available to work with. Now that I have a fully working setup though, and know it can be done, I'd like to replace the WR1043ND with an OpenWrt router with better wired throughput.

So, main question: Are there any docs or records on the routing throughput capabilities of various OpenWrt compatible devices?

I've seen some links in the forum to a smallnetbuilder page -- http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/view -- but I don't find that particularly helpful since those results appear to be based on OEM firmware which may be using proprietary hardware capabilties that aren't readily available to OpenWrt on the same platform. So I'm looking specifically for an OpenWrt table of throughput for various devices, or even just an outright recommendation of an OpenWrt device with fast wired routing throughput. Wireless capabilities are completely  secondary, I am only interested in wired routed throughput for the role I have in mind.

Thanks for any thoughts

(Last edited by knetknight on 26 May 2015, 16:00)

Do you have WR1043NDv1 (white) or WR1043NDv2 (black)? The v1 has just one eth-interface, which is split into LAN and WAN just by VLAN-tagging. The v2 has two dedicated eth-interfaces for LAN and WAN and I would expect a better throughput.

Maybe Attitude Adjustment (12.09) is a little dated. On both models Barrier Breaker and Chaos Calmer RC1 can be installed.

just my 2 cents

There's a big difference between switched LAN throughput and NAT/firewall throughput (WAN-to-LAN).  If you're trying to use OpenWrt for WAN-to-LAN with fiber speeds then you'll be disappointed.  There are several threads about this.

@Hank - I've got a white v1. I would indeed expect the v2 to perform a bit better, but I'm looking for some hard numbers as I'd like to do better than just "better", and get something that gets me as close to 1Gbps wired routing as an OpenWrt device is currently capable of.

Yes, I can and likely will eventually upgrade the WR1043ND to a 14.07, but unless that significantly improves throughput as pertains to this discussion it's not a priority for this device at this time.

Thx

(Last edited by knetknight on 26 May 2015, 17:55)

@tmcg - Yes, I've read many of those threads so I understand and expect  that I'll  take a hit. I'm personally way more interested in flexibility and control than in raw performance, so I'm good with a hit -- I just want to reduce that hit to the degree possible while retaining the freedom, power, familiarity, and affordability I'm accustomed to with OpenWrt. Thanks.

(Last edited by knetknight on 26 May 2015, 18:15)

According to your signature you already have a few devices that would be a bit better than the WR1043v1, but none of them would be able to hit the wirespeed. Your best bet is a device like a WRT1900AC (check the lengthy thread here in the forum) or a x86-based solution with more CPU power. For the latter I don't have suggestions ready.

@SCF. Yessir, I do indeed have quite a pool of devices overall, but most of them are in production at remote sites so I only get to experiment with the few spare devices that I actually have on hand. Right now that amounts to a WR1043ND, a WDR3600, and WDR4300 but those represent all of my gigabit capable devices anyway, and I think the WDR3600 and WD4300 are, for purposes of wired performance, identical. So I do have a lot of devices, but when you boil the list down it comes to just three that are gigabit capable, and only two that are meaningfully differentiated.

I tested the WR1043ND against the WDR4300 earlier this morning and the results were surprising because the old WR1043ND was consistently faster on a series of simple wired routed+nat speedtests.

WR1043ND running AA - I consistently get about 200Mbps up/down. Not great but it is about what I expected.
WDR4300 running BB - I consistently get "only" about 150Mbps up/down - This was slower than I expected.

Surprising, to me, because the WDR4300 is better spec'd and is running a pristine BB install with no special services running. The WR1043ND on the other hand is semi-production -- running several OpenVPN daemons, Quagga, and IGMPPROXY services -- yet still outperformed the WDR4300. I'm gong to break out one of the WDR3600's and see if I can determine if the performance difference is AA vs BB, or something else. I do recall reading on the forum yesterday that in at least some cases BB was shown to be slower than AA on at least some platforms, but I thought those were early problems that had been worked out later. So, I don't know what the issue is, but despite its age and the spec difference my WR1043ND is so far proving to be the fastest wired routed OpenWrt device I have.

Mind you, I'm only testing these because they are what I have on hand. If someone can vouch for an OpenWrt device that gets better wired routed+nat performance I'd be glad to purchase something different (I'll look into the WRT1900AC you mentioned) I honestly thought the WDR3600/4300's would be my next step forward with OpenWrt production deployments, why I bought several as prototypes, but I'm less than impressed with it now that I'm actually doing some performance tests.

Appreciate the feedback, will post back my results with the 3600's and AA vs BB

(Last edited by knetknight on 27 May 2015, 14:48)

BB does not have the Routing Cache Patch that caused the performance regression.
And you can overclock the WDR3600 for better performance.

Thanks alphasparc, I may try giving one of your builds a try on the 3600/4300 series, looks like they help the routing quite a bit.

So, if I understand this right, the route cache patch is absent in the standard BB builds, and this is why high performance routing in BB has regressed? So I need to either run AA, CC, or download/build one of your custom BB images to get route caching back?

If I could get these to 400Mbps+ I'd be very happy with that.

Thanks

(Last edited by knetknight on 27 May 2015, 17:30)

I got 500Mbps + Overclock to 730MHZ, if you activate SQM will be around 300Mbps
My BB build backported the routing cache.

Does vanilla CC have the patch applied already?

Yes it does.

I suggest an Ubiquiti Edgerouter lite (about $100) with stock firmware (not Openwrt) for your wired
router and use another box for wireless.  You may also need a Gigabit switch.

https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-lite/

Exactly what I'm planning when my ISP rolls out Gigabit later this year.  I'll run OpenWrt on LAN as wireless access point but with no NAT/firewall, let OpenWrt handle DHCP/DNS/etc and just have the Edgerouter or other OEM-NAT-accelerated router handle NAT/firewall only.

I am impressed that you get 300mbps with SQM on that hardware! The CeroWrt community using the WNDR3700/3800 peaks at around 50-60mbps. That hardware is not substantially different, but they are using a build closer to Barrier Breaker (and probably without the patch you referenced).

My testing methodology may be wrong don't quote me on that.
What I did was I enable SQM, Reboot then set the bandwidth to 500Mbps on eth0.2 (which is the WAN).
Then use jperf in client and server setup then start transmitting(using this http://wiki.openwrt.org/inbox/benchmark.nat), so base on the jperf display  the line  shows around 300Mbps average, so I just conclude it can do 300Mbps.

Of course this is with overclock I never underclock the SOC after I got my stable overclocks.

Anyone who has a very high bandwidth ISP who can attempt to refute/agree with my conclusions is welcomed since all my test are done on jperf it might not be reflective of real world scenario.

(Last edited by alphasparc on 28 May 2015, 04:04)

Yeah, I've really been mulling over the EdgeRouter Lite myself. I keep putting one in my shopping cart but just haven't quite convinced myself to click the checkout button just yet. I think It'd be fine though since I'm already willing  to  split wifi and routing in this case anyway.

I'll still do some fiddling with my OpenWrt options, but the ERL has been on my radar for awhile too.

Thanks for the thoughts guys.

I have the ERL and if you enable SQM/fq_codel from the latest 1.7 beta to combat bufferbloat, you will max out long before you hit gigabit down. Nice hardware otherwise though.

Which particular router (WNDR4300?) are you able to get 300 down with SQM enabled? I am looking for just such a router.

Hey, I just found and realized that OpenWrt can be installed on the ERL, anybody know if it's stable and performs well?

If it works well, OpenWrt on the ERL may be perfect for me.

Specifically, to support my ISP (Google Fiber) I need VLAN tagging, egress pbit tagging, IGMP snooping, and igmpproxy.

Thoughts?

(Last edited by knetknight on 28 May 2015, 17:29)

What if you run a speedtest on dslreports.com? Does your ISP actually support 300+mbps?

My WD N750 topped out at around 90mbps with sqm-scripts QoS. There's an AR9344 can shape 300mbps of traffic, no matter how much you overclock it.

I run OpenWRT x86 in a VM in order to shape my 80/90mbps connection.

(Last edited by linuxman5 on 28 May 2015, 23:51)

I have this dual core Intel Atom x86 http://smile.amazon.com/Mitac-PD12TI-In … atom+d2500

and it's performing really well with OpenWrt latest 64bit build - Chaos Calmer.

Here is a quick how-to installing OpenWrt on Atom x86
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 31#p277331

And if money is no issue, then you could always go for Core i7 4790S

http://smile.amazon.com/Jetway-NF9QU-Q8 … 50+core+i7

Overkill, but you could run OpenVPN at the full throughput of your current (and future) home connection with this one.

(Last edited by h7 on 29 May 2015, 01:03)

@h7
That atom box looks great, though I'd probably end up going with a full Linux distribution instead of OpenWrt with that hardware.

Any idea of the lan/wan wired throughput?

@all
I tested my WDR3600 with CC last night and it still barely managed 200Mbps for wired routed throughput, not any better than my old WR1043ND on AA is already doing. I didn't expect full line speed throughput but based on the conversation here I expected the WDR3600 to at least do noticeably better, it didn't. I haven't tried CC on the WDR4300 but since it's essentially the same network hardware as the WDR3600 I'm not expecting any better results. It stinks that I'm currently losing 800Mbps of potential bandwidth, but it's awesome that I live in a time and place where my ISP isn't the bottleneck.

So my best options so far appear to be:
1. An ERL, running either stock or OpenWrt
  Can anybody testify to the ERL's routed throughput with OpenWrt?)
2. The Mitac PD12TI, running either OpenWrt or a full-blown distro.
  Same thing, any hard throughput numbers?

Thanks

With fq_codel enabled, I was only about get around 60 down with the ERL. This was with the 1.7beta2 firmware from Ubnt. Did not flash it with openwrt since it would be the same QoS code. So that's a data point for you.

Without QoS, it's easily able to handle more than that, I was able to max out my 120 down connection... but my latency was total shit without QoS, like spiking to 300-400ms from 10-15 without load... just unacceptable. I don't know how people tolerate that shit now. I never knew what it was that was causing all my connection lag during downloads. Now that I know I can fix it easily, I just can't go back to being without QoS.

(Last edited by fawbaw on 29 May 2015, 15:58)