Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 16:17 Post subject: Best powerhouse router for JUST routing (no WiFi)
I posted this first in the "Which Router" thread, even though I thought it was enough of a departure to warrant its own thread, but it got no responses so I'm trying again:
What router is the best if I want it to be high-powered but ONLY for ROUTING purposes. As in, I will be turning OFF the Access Point/Antenna functions and just using it to route.
Some back story: I had some serious network issues a few years ago and from a comprehensive article on smallnetbuilder I decided to separate out all the devices by function. Currently I have a Motorola SB6121 Modem going into a Netgear WNDR3700 running DD-WRT with the antenna turned off with one ethernet cord going into a Linksys 24port managed gigabit switch, out of which one of the ethernet out ports connects to a ASUS RT-N66U in Access Point Mode.
The jump in reliability when separating out these functions to dedicated devices was astonishing and I'd like to keep that mojo flowing. But recently I've been experiencing extremely slow speeds (wired and wireless). Though the Netgear WNDR3700v1 is a pretty capable device it's by far the oldest device in the hardware tree. It has 8mb of flash and 32mb of RAM but I seem to push that every now and then and I don't seem able to enable JFFS with the firmware version available for it.
I'd like something with an overkill amount of Flash/RAM and a great processor. And I'd like to make sure it can run the latest greatest DD-WRT (I know there are a lot of variants, but being able to flash Mega would be a good start). I have a LOT of devices wired and wireless and would like to run a comprehensive Usage Monitoring program (and maybe other things if things are running smoothly). But at the same time, for what its accomplishing, seems like I could very easily go WAY past overkill. I'd prefer to keep this under $100 but doing it right is more important than money and, again, have no need for the wireless functionality so would prefer no antennas.
You may take a look at WRT1200AC which is like a cost down version of WRT1900AC but with 2 antenna instead of 4. WRT1200AC has a powerful CPU, 128M of Flash and 512M of RAM.
As for jffs, suggest you use external USB thumb drive instead of using jffs with internal flash. Flash has limited write life so keep writing it with jffs is not a good idea. You don't want to kill the router flash as it is same as killing the router.
You may take a look at WRT1200AC which is like a cost down version of WRT1900AC but with 2 antenna instead of 4. WRT1200AC has a powerful CPU, 128M of Flash and 512M of RAM.
As for jffs, suggest you use external USB thumb drive instead of using jffs with internal flash. Flash has limited write life so keep writing it with jffs is not a good idea. You don't want to kill the router flash as it is same as killing the router.
Thanks @js1662! re running JFFS on an external USB drive, I'm trying right now, but having some issues. Could you point me to a how-to or provide just basic workflow for how that works please?
Lets say you have a partition /tmp/mnt/sda1
Use putty to ssh to the router and enter the following commands to create a directory called jffs and mount it as jffs
Code:
cd /tmp/mnt/sda1
mkdir jffs
chmod 755 jffs
mount -o bind /tmp/mnt/sda1/jffs /jffs
The new writable jffs directory on sda1 will then replace the jffs on the root directory.
Lets say you have a partition /tmp/mnt/sda1
Use putty to ssh to the router and enter the following commands to create a directory called jffs and mount it as jffs
Code:
cd /tmp/mnt/sda1
mkdir jffs
chmod 755 jffs
mount -o bind /tmp/mnt/sda1/jffs /jffs
The new writable jffs directory on sda1 will then replace the jffs on the root directory.
Wow, thanks so much for that! I experienced something weird though. Per the instructions on the wiki entry for USB (https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/USB_storage) I created 4 partitions on my USB drive:
(1) opt (2gb EXT4)
(2) lswap (256mb Linux Swap)
(3) jffs (2gb EXT4)
(4) storage (~9gb EXT4 - the balance)
When I click to enable the "Automatic Drive Mount" option in the DD-WRT->Services->USB section it looks like the first 3 "auto-mount" to the desired root directory and only sda4 (the storage partition) is available in /tmp/mnt. But it doesn't seem that those "mounted" directories (i.e. /jffs or /opt) are actually writable. And unclicking that automount option then doesn't seem to allow me to manually mount those partitions (at least not with any of the mount options I attempted, though I may have screwed that up). However, exercising the instructions you detailed on that automounted sda4 in /tmp/mnt seemed to work. What am I missing there? I've attached a dropbox screenshot of that USB mount option.
I'd love to understand this more so I can can more effectively take advantage of all 4 of these features on the external USB hard drive, but thank you so much for all your help so far.[/list]
- Enable "Automatic Drive Mount"
- Rename the partition volume name (Label) to anything other than opt and jffs for partition 1 & 3.
- Copy the UUID of partition 1 to the field called Mount this partition to /opt under USB Support
- Copy the UUID of partition 3 to the field called Mount this partition to /jffs under USB Support
Save and Apply and see if you can access and write to /opt and /jffs
If it doesn't work, may be you have to use my previous suggestion and combine /opt /jffs and storage in one partition and create corresponding directory for /opt and /jffs and mount them with the mount command. Place the mount commands in the start up command so that it will mount the drive during boot up.
- Enable "Automatic Drive Mount"
- Rename the partition volume name (Label) to anything other than opt and jffs for partition 1 & 3.
- Copy the UUID of partition 1 to the field called Mount this partition to /opt under USB Support
- Copy the UUID of partition 3 to the field called Mount this partition to /jffs under USB Support
Save and Apply and see if you can access and write to /opt and /jffs
If it doesn't work, may be you have to use my previous suggestion and combine /opt /jffs and storage in one partition and create corresponding directory for /opt and /jffs and mount them with the mount command. Place the mount commands in the start up command so that it will mount the drive during boot up.
So I mispoke the first time. the auto-mounted jffs partition (mounted to /jffs) seems to be writable. Just the auto-mounted opt partition (mounted to /opt) doesn't seem writable. It only contains a /lib folder and 'touch test' does not show up with an 'ls' Does that make it easier to diagnose? I'm still going to text manually mounting opt tonight, just wanted to correct that inaccuracy first...
- Enable "Automatic Drive Mount"
- Rename the partition volume name (Label) to anything other than opt and jffs for partition 1 & 3.
- Copy the UUID of partition 1 to the field called Mount this partition to /opt under USB Support
- Copy the UUID of partition 3 to the field called Mount this partition to /jffs under USB Support
Save and Apply and see if you can access and write to /opt and /jffs
If it doesn't work, may be you have to use my previous suggestion and combine /opt /jffs and storage in one partition and create corresponding directory for /opt and /jffs and mount them with the mount command. Place the mount commands in the start up command so that it will mount the drive during boot up.
Stupid me. I forgot to get back here with the results of this! Since I last posted I feel like I've tried a million different iterations to get this to work. When I do the above suggestions, that is, name the partitions something other than opt and/or jffs and then put the UUID from the Disk Info box in the appropriate text box above, upon reboot, the Disk Info box informs me that the appropriate partitions mounted to /opt and /jffs respectively.
However, when I ssh in and navigate to /opt i notice that the default lib folder is still in there and it is NOT writable (touch and mkdir don't give an error, but also don't create any files/folders) meaning its not actually mounted. When I run the 'mount -o bind /tmp/mnt/sda5 /opt' command the lib folder in opt disappears and enacting touch and mkdir actually result in files and folders appearing.
Now if I put that mount -o bind command into the Administration->Commands and save it as a Start Script it appears to actually mount upon reboot. But still nothing that I actually put into the folder /opt saves after a reboot (but the lib folder doesn't appear either). And all this ignores that I probably need that lib folder right?
One last weird thing. If I DON'T enable automount in Services->USB then nothing seems to be able to manually mount the partitions. Maybe I have the command wrong, but without error messages (which is something I can't understand in itself) I really don't know. This is the command I'm using 'mount -t ext4 /dev/sda5 /tmp/mnt/sda5' is that wrong?
Seems like you are trying to use optware on your router and your issue is getting router specific now, so I moved your other post to the Atheros forum.
Please note that enabling automount will mount your USB drive to sda and the partitions to sda1, sda2 ... respectively during bootup. Hence, you need to enable it if you want to use USB drive.
I have no idea why labeling the drive to opt or putting the UUID under the opt field can't mount it to /opt. Anyway, seems like you need to use the manual way that I explained on previous post. It is how the optware guide suggest to use too. One of those guide for Atheros is: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=177532
Seems like you are trying to use optware on your router and your issue is getting router specific now, so I moved your other post to the Atheros forum.
Please note that enabling automount will mount your USB drive to sda and the partitions to sda1, sda2 ... respectively during bootup. Hence, you need to enable it if you want to use USB drive.
I have no idea why labeling the drive to opt or putting the UUID under the opt field can't mount it to /opt. Anyway, seems like you need to use the manual way that I explained on previous post. It is how the optware guide suggest to use too. One of those guide for Atheros is: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=177532
Yeah, i've tried that. Looks like manual mounting is what I'll need to do, but it still doesn't save anything that I put in there? i.e. if automount is enabled and I 'mount -o bind /tmp/mnt/sda5 /opt' I CAN touch and mkdir inside the new /opt (and the default lib folder is gone), but any newly created files do NOT survive a reboot.
You are absolutely right, sorry for hijacking this thread, even though I started it. Getting off track def killed any possibility more people are gonna come by and chime in on the best none WiFi router
I'm also about to turn my Archer C7 to a router-only device and deciding between DD-WRT and OpenWRT.
Has anyone observed noticeable increase in performance between stock firmware and DD-WRT if used for routing only? I know it's hard to answer this specific question as stock firmwares differ in performance in each machine.... but interested in anecdotal stories nonetheless.
I'm after raw routing performance. Not interested in QoS or any other features apart from DHCP.
I'm also about to turn my Archer C7 to a router-only device and deciding between DD-WRT and OpenWRT.
Has anyone observed noticeable increase in performance between stock firmware and DD-WRT if used for routing only? I know it's hard to answer this specific question as stock firmwares differ in performance in each machine.... but interested in anecdotal stories nonetheless.
I'm after raw routing performance. Not interested in QoS or any other features apart from DHCP.
