A router from the operator? - No thanks!

MT7621A, two core MIPS 1004Kc / 880MHz. 256MB RAM. The 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio unit on the MT7602E and MT7612E.

Everyone already has a prevailing opinion on the equipment provided under the operator's brand. Someone praises, someone scolds, someone prefers to stay aside when making decisions depending on the situation, without engaging in controversy. There is no unequivocal answer to the question “What is better?”.

If you think that we are not facing the same question here, then you are deeply mistaken. We must choose from a variety of offers, weed out junk under the guise of another innovation, think about what our customers will like and at the same time provide the income necessary for further development.
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Each update of the default router begins with the thought: “Well, now we will make the perfect product!”. And then the rake begins. About those we walked on, I'll tell you.

Technology, in theory, allows you to immediately and immediately close all the "Wishlist". The truth then it turns out that the world is not perfect, the sky is not so blue, and a rake can hide in the grass.

In the process of developing branded subscriber equipment, we have collected a huge amount of exp. And the expo gave us bumps. But still, we go into each new project with the thought: “Well, here it is, here it is, finally!”.

Do you have an ancient RJ-45 port?

As soon as broadband Internet access began to spread actively throughout the country, it was used not for scientific purposes, but for entertainment for some reason. In our case, it all started with a single ethernet cable, a VPN and a large computer cracking the hard drive. That seemed to be enough.

Then there was a boom in the proliferation of Wi-Fi networks, or rather gadgets with the support of this nice technology. Their number has grown exponentially - smartphones, tablets, televisions, consoles, and others, everyone wants access to the Internet. Even a teapot, but it is not necessary to start it up, it only sends spam. And the ethernet cable in the apartment is one. I still remember the tragedy of one of the subscribers who appealed for support regarding the fact that the first iPhone does not have an RJ-45 port at all.

Then this port began to be thrown out of laptops, immediately along with the CD-ROM. Naturally, the subscriber wanted Wi-Fi. In the chain needed a Wi-Fi router. Naturally, the geeks had their way through, and so, but Uncle Vasya, who wants to call his relatives in Perm on Skype, watch football and various films in general, didn’t want to score a head with the technique. Something like this, we began to provide our subscribers with routers in addition to the wire to the apartment.

Wi-Fi router, I repeat, was at first a geek toy, then it was cheap and convenient to give a Wi-Fi subscriber without a technical education, and only then a really unique offer.

About rake

Back in the days of Corbin, we started selling the Zyxel P-330W-EE router: this was our first experience. Many of you probably remember that this miracle device was famous for its unprecedented stability, which resulted in pleasant evenings of communication with technical support. And pleased us almost as much as you. But these were harsh years, and we gave the Internet as best we could.

Next was the Asus 520 series and the Dlink 615/320. Then we did not think about the development of our equipment, and business plans of this kind were not taken seriously. We are a provider, not a factory. They took what was on the market, chose, passed on to our subscribers. Basically, for those who had a laptop and a stationary PC, then there were no tablets at all, and Wi-Fi phones were not very much requested.

By the time Wi-Fi became widespread, it was necessary to change something in this approach, and we began to think about providing a device already optimized for the network. And at least with controlled filling.

As in any large company, we also have a bunch of procedures related to the purchase and selection of suppliers. You can’t just come to the management and say “This router is better than others”, it’s necessary to explain why it’s better (there are no problems with it), everything depends on the final purchase price for the company. It would be desirable, of course, an expensive solution, but there is no charity. So, it is necessary to organize a tender. This is the answer to the frequently asked question: “Why do you not sell the routers of manufacturer X?”. According to the results of the contests, we then chose the TRENDnet 432BRP router and branded it, it turned out “Wi-Fi router from Beeline”. There were, of course, sores and shoals, without this, nowhere, but by its results we understood that this direction can and should be developed. Sooner or later, all providers would come to the conclusion that they would become responsible for client equipment.

According to the results of another tender, we began to provide new routers Beeline D150L and Beeline N150L. These devices were needed, because Wi-Fi speeds were getting more and more, and our previous router supported a maximum of 802.11g, and the firmware needed to be optimized for our network more scrupulously. We got a lot of experience with these routers. Beeline D150L (aka D-Link DIR300B1-B5) at first glance was a fairly balanced model, but it was only at first glance. In the process of testing the device there were all new and new bugs, critical and not very, as well as outright jambs. Some went on production. In total, approximately 50 firmware releases were released (only a few reached the masses, the rest did not come out of beta), and only then it began to work as it should.

Having gained a lot of experience with devices from the retail market, we decided to attract ODM manufacturers to our competitions for new models of routers. And that's why:

• The ODM manufacturer makes the devices on order: you can buy a router from a well-known brand, or you can buy a router from a factory that makes this well-known brand. This made it possible to bring down the price enough to put more powerful hardware “in the same set”.
• Factories more quickly put into operation new technologies. We could get everything new half a year earlier than it appeared in retail.

We sat with the designers, formulated the exact task - and so the first Beeline Smart Box appeared. At the time of his release, he had really impressive features for his class: a powerful Realtek RTL8197D processor, 64MB of RAM, 16MB flash, support for fast Wi-Fi - 802.11 2x2MIMO, TR-069. This router really supported 100Mbps tariffs in L2TP. We guessed with technology: only a year and a half after its release, routers built on the same platform began to appear on the market.

Smart Box had weak spots that eventually became more and more noticeable. One of the main problems is the clutter of the 2.4GHz band over Wi-Fi. Plus, we were able to get down to the apartment almost gigabit (physically) and 200-400 Mb / s at the rate (this is the story ). We didn’t want to continue making glands, although powerful, but medium in comparison with the flagships of other manufacturers, so we decided to go for an experiment. We have long had the idea to make a router that would not be inferior to solutions from the upper price range. But for a more affordable price. And so it appeared ...

Smartbox pro

Here is a new piece of hardware, which will now be defaulted for DC / DC2, and then for the rest of Russia. First show, then analyze.



The case is black plastic, the top panel is made using a soft-touch cover, under it the device status indication is hidden (on / off and there is a network connection / no connection). Design to the subscriber is important, we have already figured out.



They say that the build quality of a laptop can be judged by how the bottom panel is made. We are thinking about the same routers:



The size is 175x130x30 mm. On the back and side of the USB 2.0 ports, switch LAN ports, WAN. Work at speeds of 10/100 / 1000Mbps is supported, two LEDs are displayed above each of the ports, indicating connection and traffic status, the power button and the WPS button, the Router mode switch <-> Wi-Fi Repeater are located nearby.

Look inside

The router is built on the SoC from MediaTek - MT7621A, two cores with the architecture of MIPS 1004Kc, operating at a frequency of 880MHz. The amount of RAM is 256MB, and 256MB is also allocated for storing the firmware. The radio unit is built on a pair of MT7602E and MT7612E chipsets, the first is responsible for operating on the 2.4GHz frequency band and the second on 5GHz. For each of the frequency bands, two internal antennas are used, with a gain of 3.2dBi for 2.4GHz and 4.5dBi for 5GHz.



This configuration corresponds to the 2x2 MIMO scheme: 2 - up to 300Mbps for the 2.4GHz range in the 802.11n mode and 867Mbps for 5GHz in the 802.11ac mode, there is still support for Beamforming. On paper, the characteristics are quite impressive, but I prefer to look at the practical side, and therefore we go to see how fast and stable our new router works.

We are testing.

As usual on field tests, Barbara helps me, having met a new router with a skeptical look, we began to look at how much megabits can be passed through this wonderful box.



Testing one piece of iron is boring and not interesting, it will be much more fun if you immediately compare it with other suitable routers:
• Asus RT-AC68U
• Buffalo WZR-1750HP
• D-Link DIR860L rev. A1
• Totolink A2004NS
• TP-Link Archer C7 v1
• Zyxel Keenetic Ultra



The company was selected worthy, each of these models, in principle, is worthy of being installed in the house and please its owner with a quality connection. I don’t see the point of describing the capabilities of each of the testers, I’ve done this more than a dozen times already, so I’ll give you only a comparative table of key parameters.

	Asus RT-AC68U	Buffalo WZR-1750HP	D-Link DIR860L rev. A1	Totolink A2004NS	TP-Link Archer C7 v1	Zyxel Keenetic Ultra	Smartbox pro
CPU	Broadcom BCM4708A	Broadcom BCM4708A	Broadcom BCM47081A0	Realtek RTL8197D	Qualcomm QC9558	Mediatek MT6856	Mediatek MT7621A
Ram	256MB	512 MB	128 MB	128 MB	128 MB	256 MB	256 MB
Flash	128MB	128 MB	128 MB	32 MB	8 MB	16 MB	256 MB
Wi-Fi	802.11ac 1900Mbps	802.11ac 1750Mbps	802.11ac 1200Mbps	802.11ac 867Mbps	802.11ac 1750Mbps	802.11n 450Mbps	802.11ac 867Mbps
USB	1xUSB2.0 1xUSB3.0	1xUSB2.0 1xUSB3.0	1xUSB3.0	1xUSB2.0	2xUSB2.0	2xUSB2.0	2xUSB2.0
Fw ver.	3.0.0.4.374_5656	2.10	1.04	TOTOLINK-A2004NS-IP04227-8M128M-V1.0.0-B20140923.2001	3.15.1 Build 141204	2.03.0.c.4-0	2.0.12

The router connects to our gigabit link, the maximum speed of which via L2TP is 700Mbps. Opposite the router in 4 meters of direct visibility is a computer with an installed Wi-Fi card Asus PCE-AC63 (driver version 6.30.233.228), Beamforming support is pre-enabled in the Wi-Fi adapter settings (for some reason, this function is disabled by default), more no manipulations were made. The entire test script can be described as “Enabled-Connected-Measured indicator”.
So let's go. We start in alphabetical order.

Asus RT-AC68U

L2TP - connection to the router via cable


Wi-Fi 2.4GHz


Wi-Fi 5GHz

The results primarily affected by the lack of optimization for L2TP, 250-280Mbps ceiling.

Buffalo WZR-1750HP

L2TP


Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz


Wi-Fi 5GHz

This router is quite powerful in terms of stuffing, but the problem is the same as that of the previous participant - there is no optimization.

D-Link DIR860L



With this router, it was possible to manage to measure the speed only by cable, during tests the router was constantly tearing up the L2TP connection. Perhaps the situation will fix other versions of the firmware.

UPD. A new version of the firmware quickly came from D-Link, the router began to work stably.

Totolink A2004NS


L2TP


Wi-Fi 2.4GHz


Wi-Fi 5GHz

A good result, especially given the fact that the router is built on an already aging platform, which we used in the previous generation of our routers - not for nothing, I mention optimization, the results are decent.

TP-Link Archer C7 v.1


L2TP


Wi-Fi 2.4GHz


Wi-Fi 5GHz

I think you start to guess why such results.

Zyxel Keenetic Ultra


L2TP


Wi-Fi 2.4GHz


Wi-Fi 5GHz

Already an old man, but demonstrates the muscles, optimization + a wide range of functionality. Very very strong router, albeit without 802.11ac support.

Smartbox pro


L2TP


Wi-Fi 2.4GHz


Wi-Fi 5GHz


...
... ...
... ... ... We had no choice but to optimize the performance of our router with our L2TP.

Download	Upload	Download	Upload	Download	Upload
Asus RT-AC68U	273.98	209.88	97.42	105.7	224.38	178.14
Buffalo WZR-1750HP	151.07	168.38	143.82	98.01	167.58	141.48
D-Link DIR860L rev, A1	297.56	141.44	-	-	-	-
Beeline SmartBox Pro	808.98	380.06	174.48	145.38	443.99	274.36
Totolink A2004NS	353.9	268.1	121.93	133.56	263.86	254.29
TP-Link Archer C7 v, 1	168.76	162.01	113.94	113.21	145.54	119.07
Zyxel Keenetic Ultra	302.19	272.35	71.18	54.62	211.2	201.77

We continue to test

The results of performance testing in L2TP have put a very good piece of hardware in an awkward position. Therefore, we decided to compare the performance of wireless modules. Data exchange within the local network is the most common use cases in addition to downloading content from the Internet. The IxChariot utility with installed Endpoints on the measurement points was used as the traffic source. The High_Performance_Throughput.scr script was launched, the total number of pairs is 4, the type of TCP traffic, the test time limit is 1 minute.

We chose two scenarios for data exchange between a client connected via an Ethernet cable and a client connected via Wi-Fi in two bands (WLAN-LAN) as tests.

In the second scenario, we drove traffic between two wireless clients, one of them is a regular IPhone 5, and in order not to narrow the channel between them, the second wireless client was connected to the router via Wi-Fi in the 5GHz band. (WLAN-iphone).

Both scenarios emulate data transfer in everyday situations - from a computer connected by cable to the router to a laptop (transfer film, photo), from laptop to phone (synchronization, backup).

Asus RT-AC68U
Having connected to the router, the Wi-Fi adapter utility reported a high-speed connection, 1300Mbps. Feel the power of 802.11ac?



Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How LAN <-> WLAN traffic chased




Felt, thank you, we continue.

Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased





2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How LAN <-> WLAN traffic chased




2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN-IPhone traffic chased




Buffalo WZR1750HP
Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> LAN traffic chased




Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased




2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN <-> LAN traffic chased




2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased




Totolink A2004NS
Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> LAN traffic chased




Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased




2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN <-> LAN traffic chased




2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased




TP-Link Archer C7 v.1
Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> LAN traffic chased




Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased




2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN <-> LAN traffic chased




2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased




Zyxel Keenetic Ultra
Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> LAN traffic chased





Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased





2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN <-> LAN traffic chased





2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased




Smartbox pro
Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> LAN traffic chased





Wi-Fi 5GHz connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased





2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN <-> LAN traffic chased





2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection
How the WLAN <-> IPhone traffic chased

	WLAN-LAN		WLAN-iphone
	WLAN <-> WAN 2.4GHz	WLAN <-> LAN 5GHz	WLAN <-> I P hone 2.4GHz	WLAN <-> I P hone 5GHz
Asus RT-AC68U	94	553	72	70
Buffalo WZR-1750HP	152	402	29	68
Beeline SmartBox Pro	141	397	72	119
Totolink A2004NS	50	279	66	66
TP-Link Archer C7 v, 1	34	123	44	47
Zyxel Keenetic Ultra	140	152	7	51

results

The performance results that SmartBox Pro showed are due to the optimization of the firmware for a particular network and the use of advanced hardware. Initially, we wanted to make a router that works fast in our network and, regardless of the data transmission medium, also quickly gives content to its owner. How successfully we coped with it, you can evaluate yourself, as soon as the router goes on sale.