Hey r/homelab. I am in need of ya’ll’s advice about Edge Routers. Here is my conundrum (properly formatted wall-of-text incoming):

Currently I have symmetrical Gigabit FTTH internet, handed-off from single-mode fiber to copper (Ethernet) on the wall; with CAT-7 Ethernet run, from the demarc-point, into an ASUS ROG Rapture AC5300. With that device handling all traffic and routing to the various devices in my network. However, due to the high-density of devices on my network (wired and wireless) and I am going to be splitting the network into multiple segments for ease of management and security. One segment being IoT, another home-lab related items and the final one being general everyday things including streaming and such (so laptops, consoles, etc).

To do this, I was thinking of getting either a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter-4 or EdgeRouter-6P as they have the features I am looking for at a price that doesn’t require me to sell-a-kidney (looking at you Cisco). Before I take the plunge and buy one, I need to know if they can handle the WAN speeds I have without a significant performance hit to L3 routing or CPU utilization on device. Obviously, if I were to enable the full suite of DPI, IPS, QoS, etc. the LAN --> WAN throughput will be much, much lower. However, since the network segments’ security will be handled by different gateway devices on each (A FortiGate, SonicWall, CheckPoint and an F5 Load-balancer) I don’t need to have those features enabled at the edge. However, I do need a device with a good set of tools built-in for monitoring (and/or the ability to integrate home-brewed tools) and receive device firmware/device OS updates free, without a service contract or the like (a nice feature of Uniquiti).

In all my research, I know that the Ubiquiti ER-4/6P/8 are more powerful than their ER-Pro counterparts as they are newer(ish). However, what I can’t find is any good information on their real-world performance - other than 4/6/8Gbps line speeds and 3.4m PPS handling capability and their differing packet routing sizes. Additionally, all I have seen on forums is very unhelpful, as no one seems to agree on anything and/or don’t have the same capabilities I have. I should also note here that all data lines from the edge will be run at full-duplex speeds over CAT-7, CAT-8 or single-mode fiber.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks guys!

(Mods: is this is the wrong place to post this, please point me in the right direction [I already posted this to r/homenetworking]).