What router can handle constant 5mbps 24/7 usage?

[sumyungai]

My friend is downloading torrents 24/7 with an average load of 5mbps. He is on his second router and only after 2 months its beginning to act up, its a gear 614. What router do you guys recommend for him in this situation?

 

[gamefreakgcb]

This one. Flash it with DD-WRT to make it even more useful. I had the 614 and it sucked.

 

[imported_lavalamp]

Personally I'm a fan of linksys, however any router should be able to handle 5Mbps 24/7 without a problem, because it's actually pretty damn slow compared to LAN speeds, and 10/100/1000 switches rarely have problems. If he's had two bad units that's unlucky, all manufacturers make a bad unit once in a while, it's bad luck to get one, worse luck to get two in a row, but it's gotta happen some time, laws of probability and all.

 

[ktwebb]

I don't believe in luck/chance but if I did I'd say your lucky to get a sub 100 dollar SOHO routing device that works for more than a few months rather than unlucky for getting one that doesn't. These are ridiculuosly cheap devices and are basically disposable for the price you can get them.

With that said I had a budget router that lasted a couple of years before I replaced it with a 200mhz very old tower running Smoothwall. If he really wants something he can rely on then throwing a linux distro, typically something you can virtually load on a floppy (or jsut a very small disk footprint) is probably the best solution.

 

[bluestrobe]

I prefer an enterprise level router for that kind of usage. I've ate through WRT54GS's when I had my connection hot for several months at a time (small business FTP storage/backup). With the money your "friend" is saving by using torrents, he should invest in a enterprise/commercial router/firewall. Here are a few. I would try the old PC/software firewall bit but these have less of a foot print and are reliable.

http://www.safeatoffice.com/landing/
http://www.dlink.com/products/category.asp?cid=9&sec=2
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=2&pid=512
Linksys Model

Some software firewall solutions if you have an old rig are:

http://freesco.org/
http://m0n0.ch/wall/
http://www.smoothwall.org/
http://firewall.dubbele.com/


A good beginner's guide:

http://www.pozadzides.com/firewall/

 

[nweaver]

the best router is the "Bars v1.0" that he gets behind for pirating all this stuff....

Really, right or wrong, it IS illegal. Perhaps you should tell him that? Or maybe he is a huge linux nut? yeah, that must be it....then he would know how to build a linux router, that would handle the load.

 

[Viperoni]

Dlink gaming router. Handles 180 concurrent connections, the most of pretty much any router out there, which is exactly what you need for torrents.

 

[sumyungai]

I appreciate the feedbacks. This is really for my "friend". I'm currently using an old PC PII 400mhz running m0n0wall and its been great. However, my friend isn't advance in networking nor computers in general so I don't want to go over there everytime the power goes out or if he needs to reconfigure something so going the linux distro is a no go. The Dlink gaming router and other commercial router is something that I'll recommend to him as well as not to pirate stuff.

Thanks again guys...

 

[Pabster]

Frankly a Linux-based firewall solution like M0n0wall or Smoothwall is going to be superior to any off-the-shelf router, especially for torrents.

 

[azev]

get a cisco pix, they are in the $300 used (pix501) and you will have enough horsepower to eat through all the torrents you throw at it.
Most of the sub $100 routers cannot handle the constant pps that torrents needs, which is why you've keep hearing people complaints that their router crash/hang and have to reboot so many times in a day. I personally shell out the big bucks for a real router/firewall hardware for my home, and never have an issues what so ever. My pix firewall have been up for over 3mo now, and my mrtg shows that I averaged 7Mbps download on my fios with lots of peak of over 10Mbps download.

 

[sumyungai]

Originally posted by: azev
get a cisco pix, they are in the $300 used (pix501) and you will have enough horsepower to eat through all the torrents you throw at it.
Most of the sub $100 routers cannot handle the constant pps that torrents needs, which is why you've keep hearing people complaints that their router crash/hang and have to reboot so many times in a day. I personally shell out the big bucks for a real router/firewall hardware for my home, and never have an issues what so ever. My pix firewall have been up for over 3mo now, and my mrtg shows that I averaged 7Mbps download on my fios with lots of peak of over 10Mbps download.

My buddy has a thing against buying used product. How would this do?http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833120011

 

[imported_SuperVixen]

It would probably do. What you need to look at in the specs is the "concurrent connections". I couldn't find the info for this one.
Actually, for less money you can get the Safe@Office from http://www.safeatoffice.com/landing/buynow.htm . I know for a fact it supports 8,000 concurrent connections. I've got one of these at home and I am running BitTorrent and eMule and the uptime may not be 3 months, but that's because it automatically restarts every time there's an automatic software update. I can't be bothered to disable the automatic updates.

 

[bluestrobe]

Originally posted by: SuperVixen
It would probably do. What you need to look at in the specs is the "concurrent connections". I couldn't find the info for this one.
Actually, for less money you can get the Safe@Office from http://www.safeatoffice.com/landing/buynow.htm . I know for a fact it supports 8,000 concurrent connections. I've got one of these at home and I am running BitTorrent and eMule and the uptime may not be 3 months, but that's because it automatically restarts every time there's an automatic software update. I can't be bothered to disable the automatic updates.

I recommended this up above and will probably be buying one myself here later this month.

I would avoid PIX if your friend isn't network savvy. As I recall they are command line configuration that can turn into an instant headache for the beginner or even novice.

Looking at the con reviews to the newegg Cisco router, I would avoid it. The greatest security threat to nice security hardware is misunderstandings or improper usage.

 

[sumyungai]

Great advices guys. I think I will ask him to try the safeatoffice router. I'm sure the cheapest one at $215 will suffice.

 

[azev]

I think that checkpoint appliance would be a good choice. I've worked with a much bigger checkpoint firewall (hardware wise) before and they were great. As what bluestrobe said, although pix is a great firewall, they are pretty hard to setup, and troubleshoot.
Let us know if you've decided to get that checkpoint fw, and write a quick review for it