I may soon be upgrading to 2.5Gbps internet, however all the routers that support said speed seem to be expensive. Is there any that cost less than $100?
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If it’s basic routing and NAT, https://mikrotik.com/product/l009uigs_rm might work? It’s listed as $119, so just outside your budget.
If you start using a lot of firewall rules that can’t fastpath, that performance will dip significantly. And if it’s lots of tiny little packets (Ie 64 bytes, even 512 bytes instead of the full mtu 1518 bytes), that will also hit performance.
Check the test results.Otherwise, you could repurpose an older computer, put a 2.5g NIC pcie card in, and run opnsense. Although, finding a reliable 2.5gbps network card is going to eat into your budget.
I presume the router will hand off to a 2.5/5/10gbps network? Or does the router also need to be a switch and have multiple 2.5gbps ports?
Unfortunately, consumer “cheap” is only just catching up to 1gbps. Which is a huge amount of bandwidth for regular consumers to actually be able to fully use.
2.5gbps+ is still in the niche/specialist/hobby range with prices reflecting that.I am pretty happy with a Dynalink WRX36 Wifi 6 AX3600 router which has a 2.5 Gbps capable WAN port and 4 * 1 Gbps ports for LAN. I replaced the vendor firmware with OpenWRT which is working well nowadays, you just have to follow the install instructions closely. It can be had for $79.
You should add another zero to your price.
$100.0 🙏
Maybe, depending on your requirements:
- L009 - $120 - 2.5gbps SFP uplink for fiber, but only 1gbit LAN
- unmanaged switch w/2.5gbps ports - ~$95 - just a switch, but if you’re looking for sending data between machines on the same network, this should do it
- TP-Link ER707-M2 - ~$200 - about the cheapest with two 2.5gbps ports, so you could have a 2.5gbps vlan and uplink; lots of options if you can go $200+ (see also Mikrotik RB5009)
You might get lucky finding a device with two SFP 2.5gbps ports.
If you’re looking for something consumer grade with Wi-Fi integrated, I recommend not bothering. Get a great Ethernet router and a separate access point. Anything inexpensive is either going to suck, or it’s going to be in separate pieces (router and access point).
When my ISP finally upgrades to multi gig, I’ll be buying something like the ER707-M2 and a 2.5gbps switch. I wish I could find a simple router with like 3-4 SFP (e.g. the CRS305; has RouterOS, so maybe it’ll work?) and get an SFP switch or two.
