Spent much of yesterday playing with this.
I never used tubes before, they are pretty awesome. They are much smarter then pipes. If you put them on an invalid input/output they don't connect at all. I could get rid of all the iron pipes if pipes did that. On the other side, there is no way to maintain order. If I run out of an item, the next item item being sorted may take the blank. And since I am doing barrels, there are not enough colors in the world to using sorting machines. If there was something like a sorting tube similar to a diamod pipe, that would be awesome.
Routers have the same problem as above, but are less predictable. Even with the thoroughness upgrade it will fill multiple chests; at least one barrel per level. There is also no way to have a default chest at the end only for items that didn't have a place to go. Routers also have an extremely long setup time. Dark iron isn't in NEI because it isn't craftable, so you actually have to research how to get it out of the game. Not to mention that it requires a block of diamonds. And the wrath igniter seems like the ultimate greifer tool. One spark, and destroy a great work. I may want to ban that tool on my server. That has the side effect of banning all machines that use dark iron.
Logistic pipes I was sure would be the answer. They don't obey the sides, so I can pull items out of any side. They are fairly cheap, 64 basic pipes only costs two diamonds. But they won't put something in a barrel unless its requested. So close.
Anyway, I suppose the fact that I want so much control means I am doomed to it this way. Its a little odd that routers are also from factorization and can do whatever they want. I don't understand why he would make barrels more restrictive then chests. For this base, I will continue with this complicate pipe setup. It is the only way to ensure absolute order. For the next base I will use tubes and logistic pipes to chests. I can then hide everything out of the way and request things at will.