Pros and Cons of building your own router?

[TheChodja]

A friend was talking about how his other friend was getting download speeds higher than he should be because he built his own router. Well, I what I wanna know is what are the benefits of building your own router?

And by building your own router, I mean getting a raggedy old PC and loading up a router OS on it, like Untangle, SmoothWall, or IPCop, making it a designated router.

I hear it's good for gaming?

 

[Yami]

We had an IPCop box at my house - it worked fairly good for a few years until we replaced it a couple months ago.

 

[Lexluethar]

Sorry but your friend is lying.

Building your own router will NOT increase your download speeds. Your download speed isn't held back by your router. This has everything to do with your ISP and what you're paying for. Unless you have a router that is 15 years old and only has 10mbps speeds, all routers today have speeds of either 100mbps or 1000mbps. Your IPS is probably giving you 3.5 to 5mpbs download speeds and probably like 512k upload (this all depends on what you are paying for). The modem which is usually provided by your ISP will also run at 100mbps.

Your ISP is the bottleneck, not your router.

Both your modem and router are capable of running far faster speeds than what you are paying for by your ISP, so you building your own router won't do any good unless you are paying for internet speeds far greater than 99% of the country.

 

[Yami]

Actually, that's entirely not true. We had an IPCop box - we replaced it with a decent $100+ router (some fancy Thompson gateway thing), and my download speeds doubled (upload tripled). Now we actually get the speeds we pay for.

If you already get the speeds you pay for, then I agree - the router isn't going to make a difference.

 

[KSoD]

This would only be true if you dont go cheap on the router. A $29.96 Walmart special is not going to net you the same speed you would get from a $100 router that gets high ratings on NewEgg. At that point yes you could have your speeds limited by the router, cause the Wlamart special is rigged that way. They have 3 different makes of routers and each make and several different models that range in price. So naturally these companies are going to hamper the cheap router so that you pay more to get more. That is their gimmick.

So yes in a way a router can have adverse effects on you, but only to the extent you go cheap. I know that when i jumped ship from LinkSys about 8 years ago and got my first D-Link router i noticed the jump instanly. The D-Link was far greater. Since then i have stuck with them and even though i only pay for 4Mbps down i have reached speeds of up to 20Mbps down on speed test.

 

[TheChodja]

Thanks guys, all the other forums I go to never get answers to my questions. I had already figured that it wouldn't be much different, if at all, but I just needed some reassurance.

By the way, KSoD, they still call it RoadRunner where you're at? Man, they dropped that title a long time ago here in Texas. =\

 

[Yami]

Since then i have stuck with them and even though i only pay for 4Mbps down i have reached speeds of up to 20Mbps down on speed test.

You lucky bugger That's brilliant

 

[KSoD]

Yeah it is still Road Runner here. Part of the Time Warner package.

 

[TheChodja]

Lol, Yami. I get the same speeds.
Though, I'm not paying for 4Mb/s, so kudos on that.
I've never really had any trouble with my router, but the thought of something a little more controlled and "faster" was nice to have.

Over here, they're calling themselves Comcast now and just call it Hi-Speed Broadband or something. I miss the RoadRunner icon. Btw, just to poke fun, I'm getting 4 Mb/s less than you are, but my ping was, like, 7.



It's definitely throttled at 22, though.

 

[Yami]

That's the internet at my grandparent's house, where I am currently on holiday. My home internet is only twice as good (though we're getting 40Mb fiber sometime in the next couple months).