Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The EdgeRouter X (ER X) has great functionality and flexibility, especially at a near $50 price point. There is a bit of a learning curve to configuring it, especially if you aren’t a network pro (I’m not, though I’m a system/software architect with basic network knowledge). Fortunately where Ubiquiti’s documentation falls short, reviews on the Internet (including at Amazon) can be quite helpful. I had trouble using the WAN+2LAN2 wizard (I couldn’t get anything but ICMP to route between the LAN and the WAN), but the WAN+2LAN wizard worked. The one big issue I have with the ER X is with performance in my situation. I recently moved to Cox GigaBlast, with brings fiber to your home and offers 1 Gbps up and down. The service includes a Netgear R6300 router/switch with nice Wifi capability. Though I need a couple of switch ports near where the optical modem was placed, I don’t need another Wifi access point there, so I bought the ER X to place there so that I could relocate the Netgear unit where the WiFi would be beneficial. Before installing the Edge Router, I ran some speed tests using the Netgear router as my gateway interface. The results were pretty impressive: 890 Mbps down & 920 Mbps up (a giant leap from my old DSL connection). I thought the ER X might do a little better given the accolades from the pro reviewers. But alas, this was not the case. With the ER X configured with switched LAN ports, the test results measured downloads 40% lower and uploads 75% lower that the R6300! While this is still impressive for a residential connection, it’s significantly slower than with Netgear R6300. I suspected that the lower speed was due to implementation of the switch in ER X software, but testing with a non-switched LAN port gave only slightly better download speeds and upload speeds that were twice as fast, but still about half the rate of the R6300. So for now, I’m reverting to the Netgear, but with the WiFi disabled. I was curious how the ER X would compare with the ER Lite, and was able to borrow one for some brief testing. The ER Lite can be configured with two LAN ports, which can be either independent (i.e., in different subnets), or bridged (effectively providing a 2 port switch on the same subnet). In the non-bridged mode the ER Lite was even faster than the Netgear R6300, but in bridged mode it yielded the worst results of all the test configurations. The attached table shows a summary of the test results. The tests were done using the Ookla speedtest.net site with many repeats all using the same server, from a computer connected to one of the router’s ports. All results with each of configurations were very close (within 2%), except for the ER X non-switched download test results which were within 10%. So, in summary the EdgeRouter X is a great router for most applications today, but it apparently can’t process data at gigabit data rates.