Advanced Router - Power networking

I'm considering upgrading my current DD-WRT micro equipped router to something more powerful. I am interested in a router than handle atleast double the amount of connections my router can currently (4096) to better handle BitTorrent traffic when it's maxing out my connection bandwidth (16mbps/2mbps). On top of that I would want to create a gigabit lan for streaming 1080P video throughout my home.

For this type of situation would a higher end consumer grade router be able to fit this bill with DD-WRT on it for tweaking settings, would I be better off looking at a commercial grade router, or what about building a linux machine to act as a router and use a switch in combination with that instead?

I'm looking for the most bang for my buck, since I'm sure that there are plenty of $1000+ commercial routers that could do everything I want but be overkill for my application.

Chris Marisic

Posted 2009-07-20T04:38:29.123

Reputation: 1 123

Answers

Perhaps look into pfSense, m0n0wall, Smoothwall or Untangle - they are small router operating-systems, that run on regular (old/slow) PC hardware.

Any of these will handle a lot of connections, and can do pretty much anything you could wish from such a system (multi-connections with failover, QoS, intrusion detection, host/connection to VPNs etc etc)

dbr

Posted 2009-07-20T04:38:29.123

Reputation: 4 987

1Untangle looks very nice especially with the amount of work they've put into the UI instead of having to manipulate everything in .conf files etc. – Chris Marisic – 2009-07-31T14:45:41.887

You could try to find second-hand cisco routes on ebay?

A friend of mine used to find very good equipement sold there.

Just find a few models which meet your requirements and check their prices on ebay.

Davy Landman

Posted 2009-07-20T04:38:29.123

Reputation: 4 194

Do you or anyone have any opinions of the Cisco WRVS4400N, I attempted to find it's technical specifications on Cisco's website but couldn't so I sent them an email asking if it could support 20K connections. – Chris Marisic – 2009-07-20T13:18:47.513

@dbr

I agree with your answer, and would also like to add to your list:

Untangled - http://www.untangle.com/home

user3033

Posted 2009-07-20T04:38:29.123

Reputation: 193

The connection limit can be easily increased on your current DD-WRT. Did this myself - works on my Linksys WRT54-GS.

If you like DD-WRT, you could use the x86-Version on a small PC hardware (like ASRock ION).

PEra

Posted 2009-07-20T04:38:29.123

Reputation: 161

I already had increased it from the few 100 it is by factory to 4096. – Chris Marisic – 2009-10-07T19:04:47.010