Best router / router firmware to use with cgminer

[jjiimm_64]

You're most likely seeing problems with open connections / NAT tables rather than bandwidth. I'd just configure a few of your miners to act as routers as well. How many machines do you have running Linux? Linux is dead simple to configure as a router. Only a few commands and config so it starts on boot.

If you config'd one machine out of 8 to be a router then the NAT tables for that group would be reduced to only one entry on the "master" router. The master router can just aggregate the Linux routers.

Anyway, if you want something independent - I set up a miniITX board as an Ubuntu router with  Gigabit ports. It can handle huge amounts of traffic with thousands of open connections without problems. Much more than eg. my Linksys WRT54GL, which can only handle 100-200 open connections before bogging down (tested with BitTorrent).

Any spare board and an extra LAN card can be setup as a router this way.

Hey BkkCoins, I have 18 rigs right now running linux. I have two switches, which each have a port going to the router.

I also think you are correct on the open connections.

jimbit recommended tomato on a compatible router. Per the FAQ, it can handle 4096 open connections. I think I'll be doing this.

actually, it will handle more..  this is my current status from tomato.

Code:

Connections
Maximum Connections [8192]	  (3841 connections currently tracked) 

[singular]

dd-wrt is also very good firmware for compatible routers.. makes a $50 router giving a lot of bang for the buck

[MiningBuddy]

I run WRT54GL's with DD-WRT firmware, I have about 8 across my house, from router modes to wifi extenders and even vpn client/server. Works wonders and very cheap, you can also overclock their cpus 

[jamesg]

I run WRT54GL's with DD-WRT firmware, I have about 8 across my house, from router modes to wifi extenders and even vpn client/server. Works wonders and very cheap, you can also overclock their cpus 

Funny you should mention that. I just ordered this one off of amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BTL0OA/

Gotta love their prime program!

[jjshabadoo]

I'd also go for a better internet plan if it's available. I get 35-40 meg down and 7-8 up from comcast in my cable package. Also, if you go cable internet, don't use their modem, buy a motorola surfboard with docsis 3.0 It gives you faster speed even though they say it won't. They still use docsis 2.0, but the router they had set up for me was doing 20 meg down and 4-5 up.

Just make sure if you buy your own modem you make sure it is compatible with our carrier, some are not.

[jamesg]

I'd also go for a better internet plan if it's available. I get 35-40 meg down and 7-8 up from comcast in my cable package. Also, if you go cable internet, don't use their modem, buy a motorola surfboard with docsis 3.0 It gives you faster speed even though they say it won't. They still use docsis 2.0, but the router they had set up for me was doing 20 meg down and 4-5 up.

Just make sure if you buy your own modem you make sure it is compatible with our carrier, some are not.

I checked on my internet plan. It's 3Mb down and 450k up. I am on a business plan so the rates are a little higher as they provide same day service if something goes wrong. I'll look into the modem more.

[BCMan]

I run WRT54GL's with DD-WRT firmware, I have about 8 across my house, from router modes to wifi extenders and even vpn client/server. Works wonders and very cheap, you can also overclock their cpus  

Funny you should mention that. I just ordered this one off of amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BTL0OA/

Gotta love their prime program!

Wireless G. Ouch.   Pretty bad choice imo, even for a pure WAN router, because it's pretty unstable with high load and stops working after some time even with 5 mbit fully loaded connection, not to mention it's a dinosaur. Why not D-Link?   Rock solid stability even with 100 mbit download/upload and also support custom firmware, DD-WRT as well. And even cheaper, if talk about DIR-615. WRT54GL (200 mhz & 16 mb ram) = $49.99 vs DIR-615 (400 mhz & 32 mb ram + wireless N+ 300 dual band) = $38.21.

[grue]

dd-wrt is also very good firmware for compatible routers.. makes a $50 router giving a lot of bang for the buck

dd-wrt is mostly bloat. tomato is leaner

I run WRT54GL's with DD-WRT firmware, I have about 8 across my house, from router modes to wifi extenders and even vpn client/server. Works wonders and very cheap, you can also overclock their cpus 

Funny you should mention that. I just ordered this one off of amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BTL0OA/

Gotta love their prime program!

make sure it's the "linux" version. otherwise, you're getting a neutered version with a shitty cpu + low ram.

[jake262144]

make sure it's the "linux" version. otherwise, you're getting a neutered version with a shitty cpu + low ram.

Yeah, he got the right device.
There's OpenWRT too, another great distro.

[jamesg]

make sure it's the "linux" version. otherwise, you're getting a neutered version with a shitty cpu + low ram.

Yeah, he got the right device.
There's OpenWRT too, another great distro.

jimbit uses the tomato usb router firmware and runs 40Gh so I'm going to stick with what he is doing. 

[jake262144]

NP, all those firmwares bestow industrial-grade capabilities on the cheap, plastic router.
Best of luck, Giga, and do be careful not to brick your router by accident.

[BkkCoins]

I have both of those routers (WRT54GL and DIR-615). Both work fine with ddWRT. That DIR-615 was ultra-cheap for me and I use 2 of them as a Wifi bridge to get the net 200 meters to my house (with simple parabolic mesh behind antenna).

I hope Tomato has better efficiency than ddWRT because both routers, for me, could not handle lots of open connections well. They have the code smarts but seem to not have enough oomph speed wise. Hopefully Tomato will work for you as I haven't used that one. It could also be a combo problem for me as with BT there is not just open connections but lots of BW at same time (though I'm only on a 5 Mbps link here).

...

If not, then a $5 LAN card into one of your miners will work better than either router. Your miner probably isn't using more than a few % cpu and the router layer (iptables etc) won't use more than 1% even fully, fully loaded. The setup is simple enough. You group 8-9 miners on one switch and choose one of them to be router. Put the extra LAN card in that machine. Install dnsmasq (apt-get install dnsmasq), which gives you both DHCP and DNS forwarding, make a few cfg edits (many tutorials around). Connect first LAN to switch as usual (no change). Connect second LAN card upstream to outbound router/modem. Enable tcp forwarding, add a gateway route command, and it should work (again lots of tutorials around on this). You can add extra firewall rules and stuff but it's probably not needed if you're already behind another router.

I just mention this for anyone needing a cheap/powerful solution. With so many machines doing very little CPU work there's plenty of untapped potential there.

[AniceInovation]

Was using a Asus WL-500gP v1 with tomato, it was fine but the internet was a bit sluggish (14Gh).
I had this old P3 with 512mb ram, tried pfsense. Never went back.

[floeti]

If you want to be future proof, take this one: Buffalo WZR-HP-AG300H. Has plenty of RAM and fast CPU (680MHz). Comes preinstalled with DD-WRT and is supported by OpenWRT, too.

The WRT54's CPU (200MHz) is not even able to route more than 30Mbit/s.

[JWU42]

I have far less than 32 GH/s but will say I'd imagine no problem with a http://pfsense.org/ box.  My old P4 1.8 lappy has been running it for 3 years.

[jake262144]

Even a P2 would of been fine. The only issue is energy usage. I seriously doubt your lappy is satisfied with 5 Watts of power which is plenty for the plastic routers.

Floeti, you are absolutely right with that Buffalo monster, except it's a total overkill as no mining farm will ever come close to such network utilization.
It's a great choice for a power user consuming sick amounts of bandwidth, no doubt about that.

Let's try not to get overboard guys, Gigavps has been running his massive farm over a lowly 6Mb/3Mb pipe.

That cheap WRT flashed with DDwrt/OpenWrt/Tomato will easily take care of all his badwidth and will be able to host a secure VPN server as well.

Gigavps, just be sure to turn the radio off if you're not using it, or at least tune the TX power down, lest your Wi-Fi should present a target.
Even if unable to breach the properly secured WiFi, some tenacious attacks are able to peg the CPU at 100% or even take the whole device down.
Don't ever use the WPS feature, a protocol weakness poses a serious security liability.
Neither is there any reason to choose the ancient and horribly broken WEP encryption.
Just tossin in my 2 Bitcents

[DeathAndTaxes]

jimbit uses the tomato usb router firmware and runs 40Gh so I'm going to stick with what he is doing. 

Did he say what hardware he runs it on?  I also am looking for recommendations.  I haven't run into any problems but I know insufficient simultaneous connection issues do exist and can create weird and hard to troubleshoot slowdowns.  Worse no company advertizes supported # of connections.

Would rather move to tomato now.

[jake262144]

DAT, unless you need to constantly route >10Mb of traffic over the WAN interface, any cheapo plastic router will do.

My old WRT54GL reflashed with DD-WRT is supposedly able to take care of 4k simultaneous connections...
The Buffalo mentioned recently is a beast. Were I to choose a new router today, I'd choose it over the old WRT routers for its Gb-E and N Wi-Fi.
Still, I've got a hunch that the elderly Linksys ain't going anywhere any time soon.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I heard you but routers are horribly under documented.  They are like toasters given the amount of useful specs they provide.  Plus they have all kinds of hidden gotchas and traps.  My DIR-615 doesn't route multicast from the WAN side (which is necessary to convert WOL to WOW).  No documentation, no warning.  It lets you set it in port forwarding and then silently drops the packets.  Nothing in the log either.

"is supposedly able to take care of 4k simultaneous connections"
and it may or it might not.  It might hit some hard limit at x connections (where x < 4096) due to some undocumented hardware limitation.

So if someone has a major farm and is using X I would rather just use X given how pitiful documentation on routers is.

[jake262144]

supposedly
1653 active WAN connections brought the WRT's CPU usage to 57%...
I'll do something more drastic when I have some time to spare. Stay tuned.