Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X

A few months ago we upgraded to Charter’s Business-class internet - basically the same 60Mbps residential service but with a static IP.

When the tech finished the install, I plugged my laptop into the cable modem and was pulling down almost 70Mbps! I powered everything down and put my hodgepodge of network stuff back into place. Everything was A-OK, or so I thought.

A couple months pass… While troubleshooting some slow download speeds for work, I stumbled upon the fact that my home Firewall/VPN appliance (the FVS336) was choking my internet speeds down to ~25Mps instead of the 60-70 that I’m supposed to get. Thinking back, I should’ve re-run that speedtest right after I wired everything back together…not months later

I recalled a conversation I had with the tech…he suggested I pick up this tiny little router called the EdgeRouter X because it supported a “million packets per second” and would work well for me. I had no idea if 1,000,000 PPS was good or not, so I started doing some research. It turns out this EdgeRouter thing is actually a beefy little device cloaked in a $50 price tag. I pulled the trigger.

This is not your run-of-the-mill consumer grade device. I expected DD-WRT on steroids, but it’s WAY more than that. When it comes to technology, I can talk the talk, and occasionally even walk the walk, but I’ll be the first to admit - I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with this router. There’s knobs for things I’ve never heard of. I resorted to Google-Fu to get the port forwarding setup (I was making it overly complicated, but also didn’t know what “hairpin NAT” was, or why I needed it). I haven’t setup the VPN yet - I’ll tackle that some other time (when it’s not 1 in the morning).

**Update: OpenVPN works great :)