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| NetGear WNDR3700 |
My ISP upgraded my internet connection, and lowered the price at the same time. My initial tought was ofcourse "Fantastic! Woot!!1". And it looked quite good, except I didn't manage to get full download speed on my new connection with my current router, the NetGear WNDR3700.
Don't get me wrong, its a pretty decent piece of hardware, but as most appliances meant for the mass market, it isn't really designed to handle a 60 Mbps fiber connection. My peak download speed was about 5.85 MB/s or about 50 Mbps.
So, out with the old, and in with the new. This time I wanted to be sure my router/firewall would handle the load I put on it, and preferably handle a couple of OpenVPN connections as well. After a shopping spree I ended up with the following hardware purchases:
I will follow up this post with information about software and performance experiences later on.
Don't get me wrong, its a pretty decent piece of hardware, but as most appliances meant for the mass market, it isn't really designed to handle a 60 Mbps fiber connection. My peak download speed was about 5.85 MB/s or about 50 Mbps.
So, out with the old, and in with the new. This time I wanted to be sure my router/firewall would handle the load I put on it, and preferably handle a couple of OpenVPN connections as well. After a shopping spree I ended up with the following hardware purchases:
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| ZOTAC FUSION350-A-E |
- Main board: ZOTAC FUSION350-A-E
- NIC: Intel Pro/1000CT PCIe
- Memory: Kingston ValueR DDR3 SO-DIMM 1066MHz 2GB
- SSD: KINGSTON SSDNOW V-SERIES 30GB
- Cabinet: ANTEC ISK 300-150 EC Mini-ITX
All in all it set me back about 3000 NOK (including P&P), a bit expensive for a router, but with the load this should be able to handle I should hopefully not need to buy a new one for a few years!
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| ANTEC ISK 300-150 |
I must say I was very impressed by the Antec ISK 300-150 when it arrived. It is one heavy, solid piece of work weighing in at almost 5 kg!
It has room for two 2.5" HDD/SSD drives, as well as a slimline 5.25" CD/DVD ROM drive. Lots of open vents on the side and above the expansion slot and the 80mm fan has 3 adjustable speed settings though a small switch on the rear of the cabinet. Mine is running fine at the slowest setting, and is barely audible.
The mainboard comes with an Atheros based wireless mini-pc-express card for b/g/n networking in addition to the gigabit integrated NIC. Adding the Intel NIC completed my networking requirements with a total of three physical zones (wan, lan and wlan).
I will follow up this post with information about software and performance experiences later on.
