P2P may have have unsavory connotations now, but the technology will probably be soon incorporated into HD video distribution. Tim Higgins turns up the heat on seven routers to see if they have what it takes.

It would be very interesting to include some homebrew routers in this test, especially concerning p2p and simultaneous connections. Although I have never analyzed it scientifically as you guys do, it has been my anecdotal experience that old computers running open source router software such as IP-Cop or Smoothwall handle the load much better than commercial solutions. I'm in college and live in a "cluster" of rooms with 12 other guys. 5 of us share a cable internet connection because we feel it to be superior to what the school provides. We are all heavy bittorrent users and bandwidth hogs in general. We initially were using a wired linksys router, then a wireless linksys router, and both of them frequently caved in to the load we created and needed to be power cycled almost daily. I think we wore one out completely. So, we paid $5 for an old computer from the school's auction, added some ram and some nics, and installed IPCop on it. We haven't had any problems since and we've been doing this for 2 years now. Our machine is 200Mhz with 192mb of ram and a few 3com 3C-905C's in it. Homebrew routers are definitely not a silver bullet, as they can be tricky to set up and consume more electricity on a daily basis, making their cost-savings dubious, but it would be interesting to see how they compete with the latest commercial solutions.

How about letting us know which cable modem reigns supreme?

Afterall. Your router doesn't get to do anything until it get's it's signal from the modem.

That is also a great question. In the same situation, we discovered that the linksys cable modem also just doesn't cut it for lots of simultaneous connections. I think they have fixed this in later hardware revisions, but ours would need to be power cycled after less than 30 minutes of torrenting.

I noticed that firmware version was not reported. This can make a difference with features and performance.

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2006 [...] page4.html

This might not be the cable modem's fault. It could be that the ISP shut down the connection and restored it upon reboot. At any rate, cable modem (like DSL modem) testing is beyond the capabilities of our labs.

I have a Linksys WRV54G, the VPN router. It would complete locks up and I would have to push the power button to power cycle it almost everyday during heavy bittorrent/emule use. I bought it because I wanted VPN access to my own home; however, it's a nightmare trying to set it up. And I ended up using port-knocking and iptables in NSLU2 to get my remote access. So it ended up that I've never actually used the VPN feature of this router. Can't believe Linksys makes sh**ty products like this!

On the other hand, my D-Link DGL 4300 works great handling all my bittorrent/emule traffic. I've never had the slightest glitch using it up till now (for about 1 year).

My network setup is:
internet <-- dsl router <-- Linksys WRV54G <-- D-Link DGL4300 <-- PC running BT/emule.

Bos

I have similar troubles. On one system I had to always power recycle the modem and the router (linksys) every so often. Up until recently I blamed it on the router, now I'm not so sure. On my newly built system that has yet to have a router on it I'm resetting my cable modem. Which is why I ask for a review of cable modems. I've looked around the net and have not been able to find a comprehensive review of modems. There are many models out there, they're all different somehow. I want to know how.

Who's your ISP? Mine is RR, and I'm located in upstate new york. I called their tech support on it a few weeks back and they told me their modem was fine. It most certainly isn't, as resetting it is the only thing that gets me back on the net.

They've asked me to callback when next I'm disconnected, which has happened quite a few times since but I've always been in a situation I've not been able to call them.

I'll be very interested to know what they tell me when next I call. I actually suspect them of purposely shutting me off, as it usually happens when I'm downloading files or playing games over the net, but not always.

This might not be the cable modem's fault. It could be that the ISP shut down the connection and restored it upon reboot. At any rate, cable modem (like DSL modem) testing is beyond the capabilities of our labs.

In this case it was definitely the modems fault. The moment we got a new one (d-link dcm-202) the problem went away and it's been smooth sailing ever since. I also looked at reviews of the linksys modem at the time and about 1 in 3 people complained about this. Now if you look at reviews it seems the latest hardware revision has fixed this issue.

Why no reply to my question about including homebrew routers in the test? I bet many of us would be VERY interested to see how they compare in a truly objective test.

I'm in Califirnia, and I use SBC Global/AT&T as my isp. SBC shipped me the DSL modem when I sign up for their service, so I don't need to buy any off-the-shelf dsl/cable modem. My linksys router make connection to the modem via PPPoE.

I still think this is the Linksys router problem because when it locks up, I cannot get into the router via the web interface. If it is just my ISP/dsl modem problem, only the WAN access would be effected, not my LAN. Also, I never have to reset my dsl modem to get the connection back tells me that my isp is working fine.

Bos

Im a little confused here as to what does a router has to do with P2P and Torrents.

I am using Netgear WPN824 and according to Utorrent I connect to 600 plus sources at once with out a problem maxing out my bandwidth via 8Mb Cable. Heck, I can even run P2P as well if I have any bandwidth left.

As far as I know, it is NIC that makes the final connection and handles all the network and not the router, and router is there to share Cable with the rest of household, as well as distribute traffic accordingly.

As I have discovered through trial and error, most NIC’s aren’t able to handle that many connections at once on their own, thus more then one NIC has to be used in my case. And I have tried most major brand PCI NIC’s.

And if you are using onboard NIC, then forget it, CPU usage goes sky rocket to the point where you can’t even use word document with over 200 connections. Further more, depending on the NIC, some cant handle more then 50 connections, thus totally rendering your PC useless to the point of no response. Hard reset is required to get things working again.

The solution I have came up with that works for me, is to Bridge both on board NIC’s on my motherboard. Thus the load is distributed to both NIC’s and lowering CPU usage, as well as enabling me to make many more connections at once. And according to Network Bridge, I am connected at 3.3Gbps to my router.

As far as I know, SP1 is much better then SP2 for P2P and Torrents. Perhaps a retest should be done.

So if any one can enlighten me what does Router has to do with P2P and Torrents in this article, I would more then appreciate it.

quote from the uTorrent FAQ

although Linksys are not the only ones affected.

found here:
http://utorrent.com/faq.php#Specia [...] GS_routers

I myself loaded up the Hyper-WRT in my Linksys WRT54GS, and no longer had the problem of having to reboot my router.

Heres a screen shot of UTorrent after about 20-25Min. CPU usage is 4%.




Ill admit, the newer firmware V2.0.15 is much worse resulting my Netgear WPN824 router to freeze up, thus im still using V2.0.11 firmware with out any hick ups.

This is after 5 days, as i recall, the tests in the article were done for few minutes and not days.

Perhaps a retest for a much longer period of time should be completed of the same routers for better results.