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Author Topic: EdgeRouter X or EdgeRouter Lite 3 ?  (Read 1822 times)

hushcoden

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EdgeRouter X or EdgeRouter Lite 3 ?
« on: April 04, 2020, 11:28:29 PM »

I was thinking to get a decent firewall and specifically either the EdgeRouter X or the EdgeRouter Lite 3, is there anyone who's got experience with any of those?

I'd use my Netgear router in AP mode, which means I would connect one eth port of the EdgeRouter to the modem (VMG1312-B 10A) and another eth port to the WAN port of the Netgear + I will still connect my NAS and the PS4 to the Netgear LAN ports: would this configuration work ?

Tia.
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LinuxPhil

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Re: EdgeRouter X or EdgeRouter Lite 3 ?
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2020, 12:25:53 AM »

Hi,

I have an EdgeRouter Lite 3 and would thoroughly recommend it if it meets your needs. It essentially implements a fully fledged iptables based firewall with QoS and hardware acceleration capable of gigabit throughput in a £100 box. It's definitely not a product for a beginner, and takes a fair bit of knowledge and time to configure, but once configured it makes an extremely powerful firewall with decent throughput (note you will not get gigabit throughput for VPN usage). Mine has been extremely reliable and stable, and never requires a reboot. To say I have been impressed would be an understatement. I specifically bought mine for it's high throughput when switching to a fibre connection - I had been using older Netgear firewalls which were no longer capable of handling increased fibre speeds.

The 3 ports on the EdgeRouter Lite 3 can be configured any way you like, but the most common configuration would probably be to connect one port to the WAN (modem), one port to the LAN (maybe to a switch to further distribute) and the 3rd port could be connected to the wireless AP (so 1 x WAN, 2 x LAN). This type on configuration allows you to fully separate the LAN (wired) and wireless portions of your network, if that is important to you. Particularly useful if you want to grant guest wireless access to your network.

I personally use the 2 LAN ports to fully separate my son's Windows PC from the rest of the network (Linux) so that when he inevitably gets infected he is not a risk to the rest of the network. I can also use the QoS features to cap his bandwidth if his usage is impacting upon the rest of the network and the firewall to block traffic during hours he should be sleeping  ;D

There are quite a few technical differences between the two models. The ER-X model contains an internal hardware switch for all 5 ports whereas the Lite does not, and the ER-X supports PoE if that is a consideration for you. Other than that, the main difference is in performance - the ER-3lite has true gigabit throughput maxing out at around 1300Mbps, whereas the ER-X will max out around 600Mbps according to user reports (it will only achieve gigabit throughput at very small packet sizes).

Please do also check out the Ubiquiti support forums as they really are excellent with some very knowledgable users there.

« Last Edit: April 05, 2020, 02:19:20 AM by LinuxPhil »
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hushcoden

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Re: EdgeRouter X or EdgeRouter Lite 3 ?
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2020, 01:17:08 PM »

Many thanks, very helpful !

So, am I right to think that considering my Internet speed is 80/20 Mbs then I can go for the cheaper ER X ?

Also, is that true that for connection up to 150 Mbs, if you enable QoS the ER X performs better than the ER Lite 3 ?
« Last Edit: April 05, 2020, 01:20:05 PM by hushcoden »
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LinuxPhil

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Re: EdgeRouter X or EdgeRouter Lite 3 ?
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2020, 07:49:09 PM »

The ER-X should be just fine on an 80/20Mbps connection.

With QoS enabled on my ER-3L I was able to achieve around 120Mbps throughput:

https://community.ui.com/questions/EdgeRouter-Lite-NAT-Firewall-performance-tests/ce36aba5-ad41-4ec8-8fa2-b28e695aa9ca

With just hardware offloading disabled the max throughput was around 160Mbps, but as seen above real world usage will see that figure drop slightly when enabling features that do not use hardware offloading. The ER-3L should be adequate even with features enabled which do not support hardware offloading (e.g, QoS) for a typical 80/20 connection but would be limiting for anything much above that. However, you can use the 2 x LAN ports to split functionality. For example, in my setup I enable QoS on one port to limit bandwidth usage but have hardware offloading enabled on the other LAN port giving full throughput on that port. I don't think you can do that on an ER-X as the ports are switched.

I have no direct experience with the ER-X so can not give you a definitive answer on that.

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hushcoden

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Re: EdgeRouter X or EdgeRouter Lite 3 ?
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2020, 09:08:54 PM »

So, I guess I've to consider if I want something future-proof and in case have to spend a more money, £50 vs £100...  :baby:

FYI, I found an interesting post: https://community.ui.com/questions/Smart-Queue-slowing-down-connection-speed/89dc31a5-fbc4-4321-a50f-54023447ab2c
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meritez

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Re: EdgeRouter X or EdgeRouter Lite 3 ?
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2020, 11:14:22 PM »

Many thanks, very helpful !

So, am I right to think that considering my Internet speed is 80/20 Mbs then I can go for the cheaper ER X ?

Also, is that true that for connection up to 150 Mbs, if you enable QoS the ER X performs better than the ER Lite 3 ?

My Edgerouter X quite happily copes with my 80/20 FTTC, though I'm running Openwrt on mine.

Links discussing flashing Openwrt on the ER-X and recovering EdgeOS if needed below:
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/ubiquiti-edgerouter-x-loading-openwrt-and-performance-numbers/27470
https://an.undulating.space/post/181228-erx_install_openwrt_recover_edgeos/
http://sector5d.org/openwrt-on-the-ubiquiti-edgerouter-x.html

Hardware flow offloading gives up to 900Mbps+ throughput, which was my main reason for flashing OpenWRT.
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chenks

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Re: EdgeRouter X or EdgeRouter Lite 3 ?
« Reply #6 on: April 06, 2020, 12:58:06 PM »

i used an ER-X with my 200/20 connection and it was just fine.
i didn't have any QoS features enabled though, as i believe it wouldn't be able to cope with 200Mbps with it enabled anyway.
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