Are two devices better than one?

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greens

greens

Splendid
Jan 27, 2012
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Hey guys, came across a few pieces of decent hardware at a garage sale, and now it has me thinking about performance.

I already got the Arris DG1670A hooked up and activated with my ISP. It is currently acting as the gateway, router, and dual band access point. It uses wireless N. It was actually better than the piece of crap TWC sent me.

I also got a Linksys EA6300. This has wireless AC which I would like to use. It would just be an access point I guess.

My question is... would it be a decent idea to spread responsibilities between the two devices?
Right now it is:
ARRIS: GATEWAY, ROUTER, FIREWALL
LINKSYS: DUAL BAND AC

But what if i switched it up a bit, and activated both firewalls?

ARRIS: GATEWAY, FIREWALL
LINKSYS: FIREWALL, ROUTER, DUAL BAND AC

I guess that would put more load on the linksys and less load on the Arris. Would it be of any benefit? How could i measure performance?

But is there any real point or benefit? I like the idea of having two stage firewall, they must use different techniques being from different manufacturers. I do miss having my own hardware firewall with pfSense.

TLDR: Should I use the Linksys for the Dual band AC only, or should i take some load off my gateway and have the Linksys handle the routing too?

 
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B

boosted1g

Titan
Jun 12, 2013
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Typically the ISP provided modem/router combo devices are not that good.

The router is what needs the most processing power so having one device to be the modem and the other to do the router functions is ideal.

Just put the ARRIS in modem only mode (may be called "bridged mode"), no need for firewall on the modem itself as that will now be your WAN connection and pre-NAT.
 
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greens

greens

Splendid
Jan 27, 2012
3,773
7
26,965
Great, that went well!

There is one thing that is odd though.

I have a small 5 port gigabit switch and any devices connected to it are significantly slower.

A PC plugged into the router tests about 210mbps consistently.
Two PCs plugged into the switch a few meters away from the router both test as low as 140mbps and as high as 160mbps - much lower.
 
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B

boosted1g

Titan
Jun 12, 2013
14,846
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74,965
Probably just the switch then.
Should see only 2-5 more ms of ping time to go through a switch and no actual download speed difference.
And computer to computer trasnfer if anything should be marginally faster as it is not having to use router resources to send the traffic.

 
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greens

greens

Splendid
Jan 27, 2012
3,773
7
26,965
I replaced my Trendnet with a Rosewill, I'm sure that is the problem. The Trendnet never had this problem before.

The Trendnet didn't turn on though, might need to be replaced, or possibly just needs a new power supply.
It was a nice one too, full metal and all that, but it must have had a fall or something while i was moving things around.

That linksys router is really nice actually. The UI is a bit bulky, designed for laymen for sure, but it has a lot of features for a home use router.

One thing i was curious about is how i would access the Arris now that it is set up to be a gateway only.
I would need to reset the device using a physical button in order to gain access to it if i ever wanted to enable its routing functions again, right?
 
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