[q3k]

>I'm always amazed people think a SOHO device doing WiFi, NAT, DHCP, DNS, etc. on gimped hardware is "fast".

I'm a big fan of my TP-Link WDR4300. I can easily max out my 250/60Mbps uplink while it's also doing NAT and some light firewalling, in software. It also runs all of my IPAM (DHCP/DNS). Additionally, it also runs OpenVPN (and can do ~20Mbps of encrypted bandwidth) and a BGP session (using Quagga) over that VPN to my local hackerspace. All in a single OpenWRT device that's sub $70.

Is it equivalent in performance to a hardware router? Of course not. But these start at a few thousand dollars (even Cisco ASA and Juniper SRX class hardware does its routing in software...).