Best routers for port forwarding

HI, can anyone provide details of the best routers for getting port open on storj, 90% of the time most peoples issues here seem to be just ports not being open. So maybe people could provide their router makes and models with port forward info just to help others. What do you think?

I use a Linux server as router. However, I understand that it can be difficult to configure etc, at least the way I do it.
I would recommend using pfSense on some PC or, if you want a small device, a Mikrotik router. I have found these to be reliable.

1 Like

There are no best or worst routers for port opening. Almost all routers have this function and once you configure it, you forget about it. The only difference - user interface.

Youtube is full of videos about it. Over there you will find much more different routers and configuration examples, then we could collect here with such a small community. As well use search engine and i believe you will find this information for almost any router on the market.

4 Likes

Sorry for such answer, but very router I’ve seen in years allows port forwarding :slight_smile:

3 Likes

The best router is one you provide yourself, and not one provided by your ISP in 99.9% of cases (in my experience). But even most ISP provided routers will allow the end user to configure port forwarding.

1 Like

Generally I recommend FritzBox routers. Always had good experience with those, hardware is good and software too. Sure it can’t compete with pfsense but it beats all the wireless routers I tried to buy…

2 Likes

pfsense and ubiquiti are both great products.

just using the router i got from my isp, been routing ports over my isp routers for like a couple of decades now, and really never had much trouble with them… across different isp’s and routers, ofc it’s not something i change to often… and often each router will have some quirks, but once configured it usually just runs and run and run and runs…

might need to turn it off and back on again if it is weird… which happens for most routers from time to time… atleast so long as it’s consumer grade stuff… one possible way to avoid stuff like that could be to simply reboot the router once a week or once a month or whatever… but in most cases thats often not even required…

they mainly act up when you are configuring them, so get that done and don’t tinker to much with it… or tinker until you know it’s quirks…

if a router gives you grief, get it replaced… it’s a simply rather cheap and a device your ISP is use to replacing from time to time… so it’s a simple process… ofc another few things to keep in mind is to make sure the device can get rid of the heat it produces and that it has stable power… aside from that have it sit some where people don’t need to disrupt it, if you want it to be stable…

in almost all cases it’s users or use cases / environmental effects that cause problems… not the gear itself, when it’s not total crap…

TL;DR
Best routers for port forwarding… 99% of them will work great, so don’t waste your time or money if a particular router doesn’t give you grief, and in most cases it will be the user that caused the issues.

I would look wider.

Good or bad does not makes any sense, unless you specify what is mainly used for. Is it for single person home usage (youtube+facebook) or is it for enterprise with hundreds users behind it?

If your ISP providing digital TV as well, capable of FullHD / 4K streaming, then their router will be powerfull for any home usage as well as storj project. As well there will be all needed functionality for home user or small business.
If you buy cheap own router, it will be less powerfull as the one from ISP dedicated for 4K TV. And of course enterprise cliens need different type of router.

If we are talking about security, then or course own router gives you much more security comparing with the one that ISP provides you. As ISP engineers in many cases can access their equipment remotely.

I’ve seen Storj running on very old (10 years or more) Linksys (100Mbps max) as well on very modern Mikrotik (Gigabit) as well on recent ISP router (Gigabit). We where comparing speed’s and traffic and there wasn’t any noticeble different at all. There might be some difference if storj networking will have high usage, old linksys probably would not handle it, but this is only guess as i haven’t seen it yet.

1 Like

Thanks all for your inputs.Was really looking at more of the ease of port forwarding. I.E interface. Some good suggestions. I am currently still using my ISP router. And old one too which utilises MAC addresses as apposed to IP. Which i find really easy to setup. Saves trying to find the exact IP especially if like me i am running my node on a virtual machine and if IP changes, no need to specify IP.
My current router is a HG633 which is so easy to use and works great. Only issue is when friends start adding their devices, it causes lag and slow connection/drop outs due to not being able to manage too many devices. so i have to flush the router every now and then.

You should not choose the product by the user interface. If you look at more advanced routers liek cisco or mikrotik you will find a maze in there. But they will perform uncomparable then any tp-link or asus with much more user friendly interface.

If you are looking for an easy to use home router (as OP does), you should absolutely choose the product by the user interface.

As mentioned in this thread, AVMs FritzBoxes are great devices for home users. Also Ubiquitis AmpliFi series comes to mind. Synology makes easy to use routers as well, but none of them offer integrated modems afaik.

But usually a cheap TP-Link unit does just about fine when it comes to port forwarding…

i’m using 3 old routers as 1gbit switches mainly because i’ve been to cheap to go out and actuall buy switchs for my network infrastructure… seems to run fine tho… so if nothing else they can be good for other purposes… ofc one has to have the option to turn off stuff like dhcp and what not to make them useful as switches.

want to get some 10gbit setup, but haven’t really had a real need for that yet…

@madbitz if you like it then keep it, maybe a managed switch might help with the issue, tho i think i would go with a pfsense vm on the storagenode host

if you got a half decent computer for storj, then putting in an additional nic and setup something like Pfsense on a vm to manage it… ofc it depends a lot of how your infrastructure looks…

but for home user levels most hardware should be able to run a pfsense vm pretty well, and since you host the storage node 24/7 anyways, it’s not really that bad an idea to atleast attempt to set it up…

and hell you don’t even need two nics you can simply create another network over a vm or using virtual nics and then let the rest of the network connect through that and let the storagenode host handle any communication with the old router…

thats basically a zero cost fix / upgrade, if you don’t mind spending the time on the setup…
and it would give you all kinds of interesting options when using pfsense

1 Like

There is that type of woman, who choose their car only by the color. And that’s ok, because they see it everyday, while the router configuration… you need to look at it couple if times per year.

But if for some reason you are playing there with settings every day, then any interface will become known any way :smiley:

1 Like

A good interface helps users like OP configure port forwarding once and be done with it. This convenience is worth quite something, even if you only do it once.

I agree with @node1 on that.

The router my ISP provides in quite bad when it comes to configuring port forwarding, but it works.

There is one particular thing that is missing from it that I would have liked: the ability to export/import configurations.
Which means that the day change the router or ISP, I’ll have to reconfigure all of them by hand.

But again, it really does not happen everyday… So I personally don’t really mind.

forward everything to a pfsense vm :smiley: and let the sn hardware do the routing for the network… that way you can always just upgrade it or move it as hardware changes… :smiley:
ofc there will be some pitfalls because the router essentially becomes a part of the internet, but not sure it really changes that much today, so long as other security steps are taken to ensure exploits of the router cannot / have great difficulty breaching your local network.

haven’t really finished the pfsense that part of my own setup yet.
so haven’t really gotten wise on all the concerns of doing something like this… ofc routing everything to the sn host is kinda extreme… one could ofc limit it for a segment of useful ports … the route all is … risky

I use mikrotik, its not the cheapest, but performance is amazing, it still got some glitches, but overall i can say it can manage all heavy traffic and it has bunch of features. If you need just for storj then you can use some cheap router too as storj is not making high load to router.

I had some problems with very cheap router. Storj does not makes a lot of traffic, but it makes a lot of queries (thats load for routers CPU). The situation was following:

300Mbps connection, Storj was utilizing ±20Mbps (it was testing time Jan or Feb), the rest devices on the network had a max only ±50Mbps speed. Once the cable from storagenode machine unpluged - all network had full ±300Mbps spees. Once the cable connected back to storagenode machine, all network again had a max up to 50MBps or so. After this, i also bought i Mikrotik, and the problem was solved instantly.

Could be that cpu was on roof and that was limiting traffic