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Jethro86
join:2005-05-27
Winchester, ON

Jethro86

Member

Recommended Router for 20-30 "clients"

I am the volunteer IT guy for our small private school and am looking to upgrade our old router which may have died.
I am using an older Linksys WRT54G which I put DD-WRT on to connect wirelessly to another WRT54G. That main router also connect to the office and staff room for 4 devices and to the computer "lab" with 20 old desktops. Last school year they also added some smart boards and laptops in some rooms that connect to the WRT54G access point.
I think it was too much heavy lifting for the router and the DSL connection as they complained about Internet being so slow. It's is also with Primus which I hope to change. :-\

Any suggestions for a good solid inexpensive router to handle the load?

Thanks.

damir
join:2013-12-12
CANADA

damir

Member

What is your budget?

Jethro86
join:2005-05-27
Winchester, ON

Jethro86

Member

Seeing as it is a private school about $0.
I don't have a budget and anything I will probably have to pay out of pocket unless I can get a charitable receipt. This is a small school and we don't have a lot of resources. That's why it's all volunteer.
HELLFIRE
MVM
join:2009-11-25

HELLFIRE to Jethro86

MVM

to Jethro86

Re: Recommended Router for 20-30 "clients"

said by Jethro86:

Seeing as it is a private school about $0.

Given you've got $0 as your budget :

- Pull an old PC (P3 / Athlon or up) from the scrap pile or an ewaste recycling center, get a 2nd NIC, put on a*nix based
router/firewall distro, or something like Astaro Security Gateway, Untangle or Vyatta.

- buckle down and get ready to learn the nuts and bolts of the HOWTO via late night Google-fu seance or similar.

IF the school could break loose $100USD, my next suggestion up in price would've been the Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite.

I DO hope you're not daisychaining a bunch of WRT54Gs for expandability, or they won't give you a few bucks to get a
16 or 24port switch?

My 00000010bits

Regards

smogers
@108.170.167.x

smogers to Jethro86

Anon

to Jethro86
I am running 50-80 clients at any given time off this »www.asus.com/Networking/RTN66U/ running Tomato RAF. Also have the same one at home and I love it.

I thought private schools had all kinds of money.
mr weather
Premium Member
join:2002-02-27
Mississauga, ON

mr weather

Premium Member

Upper Canada College and the like have lots of money. Smaller private schools not so much.

Jethro86
join:2005-05-27
Winchester, ON

Jethro86 to HELLFIRE

Member

to HELLFIRE
said by HELLFIRE:

- Pull an old PC (P3 / Athlon or up) from the scrap pile or an ewaste recycling center, get a 2nd NIC, put on a*nix based
router/firewall distro, or something like Astaro Security Gateway, Untangle or Vyatta.

- buckle down and get ready to learn the nuts and bolts of the HOWTO via late night Google-fu seance or similar.

I did try that in the past. I personally use IPCop on an old PC and attempted that before at the school with poor results. Maybe more so my choice of hardware wasn't reliable and we had so many problems that I dumped it to go to a small residential router to eliminate the issues.
But now they had exceeded the capabilities of going with a old cheap router so I want to upgrade.
Jethro86

Jethro86 to smogers

Member

to smogers
said by smogers :

I am running 50-80 clients at any given time off this »www.asus.com/Networking/RTN66U/ running Tomato RAF. Also have the same one at home and I love it.

I thought private schools had all kinds of money

I was hoping someone was suggest that router as that was the one router that I had looked at and read some good reviews on it. Not too bad price wise for $150 I guess.

MacGyver

join:2001-10-14
Vancouver, BC
·TELUS
Actiontec T3200M
Arcadyan WE410443-TS
Sipura SPA-2102

MacGyver to Jethro86

to Jethro86
Jethro, I'd recommend the Asus RT-N16. It is a wireless router with plenty of processing power and RAM and it supports Tomato or DD-WRT firmware. It will be able to handle the school needs with ease.

You can pick up a new router from Canada Computers for $100: »www.canadacomputers.com/ ··· d=027834

Or you can snag a used one from kijiji here for $50 asking price: »www.kijiji.ca/v-computer ··· 04625430

If you are REALLY on a budget, then you might want to try picking up a refurb RT-N12 from nmicrovip.ca for $16. Although not as powerful at the RT-N16, you can't beat the price. This is what I'm using at home without complaint and it's running Tomato. And you can avoid shipping by picking it up in Ottawa for free. »www.nmicrovip.ca/asus-wi ··· rbished/
koreyb
Open the Canadian Market NOW
join:2005-01-08
Etobicoke, ON

koreyb to Jethro86

Member

to Jethro86
PfSense has been great for me.... IF you can get a hold of an old PC, and put 2 nic cards in it, that's all you need. I've found it able to handle loads of traffic including VOIP and IPTV without an issue.

Consumer routers in my experience haven't been able to handle things correctly at times... and normally causes issues with VoIP audio quality no matter if QoS is setup or not.

elwoodblues
Elwood Blues
Premium Member
join:2006-08-30
Somewhere in

elwoodblues to Jethro86

Premium Member

to Jethro86
It's really about the NIC, not the PC, I've always been a fan of Intel Nics, they have their own processors on board.

As for a 'nix router/firewall, I can heartly recommend Endian, used it for years, works like a charm and is very very easy to setup.

HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON

HiVolt to Jethro86

Premium Member

to Jethro86
I have an Asus RT-N16 running an office of perhaps 50 ethernet devices, running Tomato Toastman firmware. Doesn't skip a beat on a 60/10 cable connection, with usage of 500-600gb per month...

As for the internet being slow, how fast is your DSL connection? WIth that many people online, a 5-6meg connection is not enough, doesn't matter the router you have.

Guspaz
Guspaz
MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC

Guspaz to Jethro86

MVM

to Jethro86
The RTN66U is a fantastic router which can easily handle the load of 20-30 users (in fact, it could handle many times more than you could ever stick through a DSL or cable line). The only problem is that it sounds like you don't need wireless at all, and with the N66U, you're paying a bunch for a very high-end (and very good) wireless functionality.

Jethro86
join:2005-05-27
Winchester, ON

Jethro86

Member

I do need wireless as I created a wireless bridge to another WRT54G to extend the wireless range through the school. As after I set it up to run a laptop they added more Smartboards and laptops into classrooms. It is just a one level school with a middle hall way but it is all concrete block walls.
HELLFIRE
MVM
join:2009-11-25

HELLFIRE to Jethro86

MVM

to Jethro86
HiVolt See Profile mentions a pretty good point... I sincerely hope no one's using the school connection as their own personal torrent/youtube/web2.0 pipe.

Regards

Jethro86
join:2005-05-27
Winchester, ON

Jethro86

Member

Thanks for all the suggestions. Looks like the consensus is Asus RTN16 or Asus RT-N66 depending on how much money I can squeeze out of the budget. Neither are outrageously priced and both can take Tomato or DD-WRT.

Thanks all for your input.

Guspaz
Guspaz
MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC

Guspaz to Jethro86

MVM

to Jethro86
I suggest you stick to Merlin if you must have something custom. The stock firmware in Asus routers isn't all that bad, and Merlin (which is based on the stock firmware) makes lots of improvements without breaking support for any hardware acceleration or anything. It does focus on increasing reliability and usability, though, rather than adding tons of new features.

EDIT: It's worth pointing out that Asus's stock firmware (AsusWRT) started out as a fork of Tomato-RT/Tomato-USB.

nitzguy
Premium Member
join:2002-07-11
Sudbury, ON

nitzguy to Jethro86

Premium Member

to Jethro86
said by Jethro86:

I do need wireless as I created a wireless bridge to another WRT54G to extend the wireless range through the school. As after I set it up to run a laptop they added more Smartboards and laptops into classrooms. It is just a one level school with a middle hall way but it is all concrete block walls.

Smartboards are pricey....perhaps they could have busted into the money they paid for that and purchased 1 less Smartboard and actually upgraded the backbone that they are using for their network.

And by pricey I mean $1K+ Per Smartboard.

MacGyver

join:2001-10-14
Vancouver, BC
·TELUS
Actiontec T3200M
Arcadyan WE410443-TS
Sipura SPA-2102

1 edit

MacGyver

Smartboard is based in Ottawa and I understand they were giving schools a good deal. My kids' public school now has one in every classroom.

Back on topic, Tomato firmware will quickly identify any bandwidth hogs, and between QoS and bandwidth limiting features it offers, should be able to get a bit better performance out of whatever connection they are stuck with using.

Jethro86
join:2005-05-27
Winchester, ON

Jethro86 to nitzguy

Member

to nitzguy
Yes that's is true and most were donated and such. But to them, they just add what they need as I am supposed to magically know what is added and make it all work remotely. :-\
I don't get to be proactive I just hear about what is broken eventually.

TOPDAWG
Premium Member
join:2005-04-27
Calgary, AB

TOPDAWG

Premium Member

they really can't make any demands being as you're doing the work for free.

I'd say you get what you pay for.

Jethro86
join:2005-05-27
Winchester, ON

Jethro86

Member

That may be true but as a parent with kids in the school all costs affect the tuition I have to pay so we run on donations and volunteers. We all need to chip in and help where we can and as the resident IT guy, I get to do it all.
I used to have to go in many nights to fix all the PC's in the computer lab that broke through the week but it's much better now.
prairiesky
join:2008-12-08
canada

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Member

to Jethro86
I'm with koreyb.

Old PC, Pfsense (easy to learn and works pretty much out of the box). You can rate limit each device (probably very important so no one can hog it).

I use this setup on an old p3 866 with 256meg ram at the local yacht club load balancing 2 7.5 meg dsl lines and they've been working great. I'm sure you can get a machine like that for free.

Then for wireless, use ubiquiti unifi LRs. You can do wireless uplinks on them.
I've used this setup in small hotels, and again at the yacht club except with the outdoor units. We generally have 50-75 devices on each during the weekends and no one has any issues.

Guspaz
Guspaz
MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC

Guspaz to Jethro86

MVM

to Jethro86
The "old PC" approach definitely works, but they're horrendously inefficient in terms of power consumption.
prairiesky
join:2008-12-08
canada

prairiesky

Member

said by Guspaz:

The "old PC" approach definitely works, but they're horrendously inefficient in terms of power consumption.

they're actually not terrible. I have some older ones that are drawing ~35 watts at the wall. That's 7x worse than the 5 an alix board draws. But at 0.065 /kwhr. It works out to less than $1.50/month. at 5 watts, that would be less than 0.25$/month.

Guspaz
Guspaz
MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC

Guspaz to Jethro86

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Dunno, a first-gen P3-866 has a TDP of 31W all by itself, let alone the rest of the parts in the system. Not nearly as bad as a later P4 or Pentium D, of course.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

said by Guspaz:

Dunno, a first-gen P3-866 has a TDP of 31W all by itself, let alone the rest of the parts in the system.

For many people, a Core2 would also qualify as an old-ish PC.

Using an IGP to save power and cost, all the power-management stuff turned on, maybe a USB stick or 32GB SSD to boot the router OS and store config files to shave 5-8W over a modern conventional HDD... you might be able to get away with ~25W idle at the wall.

Guspaz
Guspaz
MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC

Guspaz to Jethro86

MVM

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Even worse, Core 2 Duos had a TDP of up to 65W. They draw far more power than the P3 ever did.

rustydusty
join:2009-09-29
Red Deer County, AB

rustydusty to Jethro86

Member

to Jethro86
+1 for pfsense.

You can get alix boards shipped with pfsense loaded and ready from netgate. Little on the pricy side, but like others have stated it's beautiful and works wonderfully.

I use pfsense across my hyper-v and vmware environments. Pfsense virtualizes very well to.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError to Guspaz

Member

to Guspaz
said by Guspaz:

Even worse, Core 2 Duos had a TDP of up to 65W. They draw far more power than the P3 ever did.

Try making a Core2Duo actually draw 65W. That is only a worst-case maximum under full load across both cores. This is never going to happen unless you are attempting to route something like 1Gbps sustained through that computer.

In a relatively low traffic router application though, the CPU will be idle something like 99% of the time and the Core2Duo has much lower idle power draw than the P3s thanks to more advanced process technology, speedstep, clock gating and deeper sleep states. Then you have all the lower platform power draw from lower voltage DRAM and IOs operating and using more advanced manufacturing process.

If you look at Core2Duo reviews, you see 60-80W idle power but that inculdes a HDD, DVD, GPU and likely 50% if not worse PSU efficiency... so if the PSU outputs ~40W (being optimistic with ~70% efficiency), you have ~10W for the HDD, ~10W for the GPU and 20W left for RAM, CPU, motherboard, fans, etc.