Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X

or search for the optimal price / quality ratio

For several years now, Ubiquiti has not ceased to amaze us with new products, each quarter offering something new: either the airFiber 5U, which is specific for the RF range 6-6.4 GHz and half a gigabit capacity, or the available switches to power 802.3at EdgeSwitch access points.
But yesterday, the manufacturer remembered about the price category of “up to $ 100” and announced EdgeRouter X. You can even say that abroad the younger EdgeRouter falls into the category of “less than $ 50”, although, of course, customs payments will change the situation somewhat. What does he do for this money?

So, first consider the new product.
In fact, two devices were announced at once, in the price range of “up to $ 80,” that is, inexpensive, and even cheaper.
Both models are built on the same hardware platform, but have a different cable configuration.
The most budget model is equipped with 5 Gigabit Ethernet ports, the first of which ports can be used to power the device (though not from 802.3 af, but from traditional 24 volt for the manufacturer), and the latter can power the consumer, again with 24 volts.
A small disadvantage is the lack of a local power supply or injector in the EdgeRouter X kit, it is assumed that the consumers of this device have a source of the required voltage.
A more expensive device is powered by an external power supply and does not have PoE in, but it does have an SFP slot, which allows it to be connected via optical fiber, regardless of the distance limits of the twisted pair.
Please note that the SFP port is independent here, that is, the six-port device can simultaneously operate both a copper port and an optical transceiver.
All copper ports can supply standard Ubiquiti consumers with a voltage of 50 volts, the total energy budget of the device 50 watts allows you to connect to all its ports any 24 volt consumers, except maybe Rocket 5X. The power supply in the device is.
Technically, the device is very similar to the older models of EdgeRouter: the Vyatta operating system allows you to implement various network functionality: implement Nat, filter traffic, prioritize data.
What made this solution so affordable?
First of all, we see a decrease in the amount of internal data storage in the device; now its volume has been reduced from 2 GB to 256 MB and is equal to the amount of RAM.
The second limitation is that the total capacity of the router does not exceed one Gbit, which makes it possible to make some assumptions about its architecture, however, this is sufficient for most tasks.
Even assuming the connection of 4 sectors of the Rocket AC in the 40 MHz bands - this is 800 Mbit traffic in total with the full load of the sectors, the work of subscribers on maximum modulations and, in fact, the presence of such an amount of air.
The solution for re-subscription of ports on access devices is rather standard, it was tested both on EdgeRouter POE and on equipment from other manufacturers.
The next simplification with respect to the older models of EdgeRouter is the packet performance, it fell 8 times, which indicates the absence of a hardware acceleration module for processing traffic.
In the form of compensation, in addition to size and cost, we can note an increase in the frequency of the processor system from 500 to 880 MHz.
This somewhat smoothes the difference in performance, and on functions that do not support hardware acceleration, the new model may turn out to be even more productive.
We present in the table the parameters of new products in comparison with the next solution in the line and the flagship EdgeRouter.

Equipment	EdgeRouter X / EdgeRouter X SFP	EdgeRouter Lite	Edgeroke pro
Number of ports	5 (1 Poe in, 1 Poe out) / 6 (1 SFP and 5 Poe Out)	3	eight
SFP	No Yes	Not	Yes
RAM / Permanent Memory	256/256	512/2048	2048/4096
CPU	2 nuclear 800 MHz	2 nuclear 500 MHz	2 nuclear 800 MHz
Traffic Accelerator	Not	Yes	Yes
Packet performance per second	130,000	1000 000	2,000,000
Processor architecture	Mips 1004Kc	Mips 64	Mips 64

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Summarizing the table, I can say that in the new model they sacrificed performance and capacity in favor of cost, number of ports and Poe Out.
In fact, EdgeRouteX SFP is a kind of hybrid of the router and switch Tough Switch 5 ports.

Actually, the manufacturer and it is positioned as the basis for building a base station.
An advantage here, regarding the use of the switch, is the presence of an SFP slot for connecting the base station directly to the trunk fiber, and the router's functionality, which allows to flexibly filter traffic and ensure its limitation, depending on the type, quickly rebuild the network topology.
The younger EdgeRouter X is positioned mostly as a client device.

Installing such a router on the client, from the operator’s point of view, has several advantages:
The ability to monitor the communication channel is not up to the radio device - but to the end port of the computer or access point.
The possibility of applying traffic limiters and filtering traffic before traffic enters the radio channel.
Building a multi-functional network on the equipment of one manufacturer.
In both cases, the gigabit capacity of the device will not be a problem, and 256 MB of memory will be enough for almost any real task.
In fact, the main disadvantage of the EdgeRouter X, relative to older models, is the lack of hardware-based traffic processing.
This will be most pronounced when using VPN tunnels.
If EdgeRouter Lite can provide 80-110 Mbit IPSEC duplex, then for younger models I would not expect results of more than 30 Mbit.
That is, these devices are not very suitable for connecting remote offices.
findings
We considered a very interesting budget product that can significantly expand, in my opinion, the use of EdgeRouter.
Ubiquiti confirmed that, despite the recently proposed solutions for the middle price segment, it has not forgotten how to make budget equipment.
In conclusion, I will give a comparison of new products with the most budget routers that have previously been on the market:

Model	Ports	Poe out 24 volt	SFP	CPU	Memory	cost without VAT
Edge router x	5 Gigabit Ethernet	1 port, 12 watts	Not	2 nuclear 800 MHz	256	49
EdgeRouter X SFP	6 Gigabit Ethernet	5 ports, 50 watts	Yes	2 nuclear 800 MHz	256	79
RB750GL	5 Gigabit Ethernet	Not	Not	1 nuclear 400 MHz	64	59.95
RB2011UiAS-IN	5 Gigabit Ethernet + 5 100 Fast Ethernet	1 port, 12 watts	Yes	1 nuclear 600 MHz	128	119