Best non-asus alternative to the RT-N66U?

[hungarianhc]

Hi All,

I've had enough of this router.. I know it has great reviews, and people seem to swear by it, but I've had nothing but trouble. I'm on my second device, and this one's running the most recent version of TomatoUSB, and it's just not stable for me.

With that in mind, can anyone recommend a good alternative? I'd prefer something that either has amazing firmware or something that will let me load tomatoUSB. I have a Synology NAS that is always moving large files around my network, and I want something to be STABLE when I'm downloading bittorrent, 10 devices on the wireless network, files moving across the NAS, gaming on my PS3, etc, concurrently. Thanks in advance....

 

[Grievous Angel]

I almost hate to say it.

My Airport Extreme (4th gen) was 3-4 years old. I just replaced it with the AC66U.

I'm hopeful I've worked out my one issue with the 5GHz signal drop (seems promising), so I think I'm going to be happy if so.

But Apple supported the 4th gen AE the whole time I had it--and I never had an issue with it. It was rock solid. I don't remember a time I ever had to restart it because of an issue.

If stability is your primary goal, the newest Airport Extreme is probably not a bad bet.

I'm not going to buy another one--I bought the Asus for speed and performance.

 

[hungarianhc]

Lol I actually had an AE before moving to the Asus. I agree that it's not a bad router. The issue is that I want to be able to get a DHCP list, set up advanced port forwarding, quality of service, FTP, etc... Apple doesn't let you do most of that stuff.

 

[hungarianhc]

Also, I'm on TomatoUSB Shibby Build 110, and I've had a lot of problems with it. Some people have suggested downgrading to 109. I'm going to do that. In the meantime, I ordered an Amped Wireless R2000G. If the firmware downgrade doesn't fix the router issues, then I'll just switch to the Amped Wireless router.

 

[sfx2000]

Lol I actually had an AE before moving to the Asus. I agree that it's not a bad router. The issue is that I want to be able to get a DHCP list, set up advanced port forwarding, quality of service, FTP, etc... Apple doesn't let you do most of that stuff.

Reserved DHCP - yes it does

Port Forwarding - yes it does

QoS - automatic and well done

FTP - why?

sfx

 

[remixedcat]

Also, I'm on TomatoUSB Shibby Build 110, and I've had a lot of problems with it. Some people have suggested downgrading to 109. I'm going to do that. In the meantime, I ordered an Amped Wireless R2000G. If the firmware downgrade doesn't fix the router issues, then I'll just switch to the Amped Wireless router.

How has the Amped Wireless R20G been for you?

Here's how it is for me:
http://remixedcat.blogspot.com/2013/03/amped-wireless-r20000g-wireless-router.html

Please let us know how it is for you and please don't hesitate to ask me for assistance!

 

[klas]

This site reviewer seems to be biased towards Asus routers, and I made a mistake owning one based on the review. I haven't been able to find more reliable and with excellent performance & range then R6300. I might give a shot RT-AC68U, but I think I will be disappointed, just like with every other Asus router. Also, tried Amped R20000G and Dlink DIR-868 and none are as good as my year old now R6300

 

[remixedcat]

Please tell us your experience with the Amped router Klas.

 

[hungarianhc]

The Amped Wireless router has been great for me so far. My issue is not that I need the signal to go that far, but more that I have SO many wifi signals in my building (apartment in San Francisco) that there's so much interference. I am noticing that I could connect at slightly higher bit rates with my N66U in the bedroom (farthest point from the router, through multiple walls, and lots of interference), but the instability of the N66U was too much. My "real world stress test" would bring the N66U down with most firmwares I tried. With the Amped Wireless R20000G, I can have my Synology NAS downloading bittorrents, I can have my MacBook Pro ripping a blu ray directly over the network via AFP to to the NAS, I can have multiple time machine backups happening concurrently, I can be copying a file over GigE, and I can have multiple machines all browsing the internet concurrently... and it just works. Port forwarding was a breeze to set up as well. I miss the advanced features of the N66U, and I wish I could set up things like Tor on the Amped Wireless router, but at the end of the day, it works... and it's stable... I'll move to an AC router in 6 months or so, and at that point, I'll give Asus another try, but I just don't feel like tweaking router firmwares / settings all day to get it perfect. I updated the Amped to the newest firmware, and other than that, it just seems to work just fine. Amped also seems to update their own firmware more often than Asus does.

Okay - that is my experience thus far!

 

[thiggins]

This site reviewer seems to be biased towards Asus routers,

Where are you seeing a bias? There is none intended, nor will there ever be toward any manufacturer's product.

 

[remixedcat]

The Amped Wireless router has been great for me so far. My issue is not that I need the signal to go that far, but more that I have SO many wifi signals in my building (apartment in San Francisco) that there's so much interference. I am noticing that I could connect at slightly higher bit rates with my N66U in the bedroom (farthest point from the router, through multiple walls, and lots of interference), but the instability of the N66U .... <SNIP>

Thank you very much for the data! My Amped R20G can pull off a lot as well!!!

 

[Mike_G_D]

Just a note here concerning perceived "bias" in this site's reviews.

Firstly, all human beings have opinions and personal experiences that color those opinions. Such can be hard to completely omit when writing extensively about many subjects including product reviews. That having been said, I think the reviewers on this site, including Mr. Higgins, do a very good job at attenuating their personal feelings towards various manufacturers in favor of as objective a review as possible.

Sometimes I think the perceived "bias" comes from other factors such as product availability for review and work load on the part of the reviewers. I think that reviewers on this site use a combination of personally bought units as well as units provided for review by manufacturers - sometimes, for whatever reasons, manufacturers may either be slow to provide review units or have other reasons that they do not provide a review unit to a particular reviewer while they do for another (maybe limited availability or ??). Then, too, these reviewers also have a workload which includes many different products, NAS's, routers, media streamers, switches, etc. All of this can mean that some products seem to get reviewed more frequently than others (for example, it may simply be that Asus is more accommodating in providing review products and/or related correspondence).

Reviewing specialized technical products especially to the degree that is done on this site is not easy and is time consuming. It's one thing to share one's personal experiences with a product in a particular case while it's entirely another thing to come up with a standard procedure which tests a set of features and operational modes across various conditions in as subjective and reproducible a manner as possible. I think Mr. Higgins and others on this site have done a remarkable job in this sense especially given their workload. Even so, my experiences may not match their experiences for a given product under a particular case but their reviews are as good a baseline as one can reasonably expect. It's completely possible for one reviewer to get different results from another especially when dealing with complex systems involving wireless (radio, "RF") testing. I know this from much personal experience professionally. The best you can do is set up as controlled an environment as possible with the ability to change portions of the environment in a controlled manner (such as signal path loss) within whatever budget and time constraints you are forced to work under.

Also, it is near impossible for a reviewer working under the conditions of dealing with "quick to market" consumer gear and doing so in as timely a manner as possible so as to be relevant (i.e. not reviewing "yesterday's product") to include long term reliability in their product review conditions. Electronic systems can and do change over time due to many factors including component aging and tolerances and temperature variations and the interaction of all of those factors. This is just something that cannot be accounted for in a short (relatively speaking) and timely review.

This got long winded and off topic so I'm sorry - I just wanted to step up and defend the SNB folks a bit given my professional background and experiences and note why some bias may be perceived where there really is none.

-Mike

 

[sfx2000]

Where are you seeing a bias? There is none intended, nor will there ever be toward any manufacturer's product.

For the record - I'm saying no bias in the reviews that is Pro-ASUS.

I think that ASUS has gained a higher level of attention as the informal support board for their products (dedicated forum as an example) - but I see this as a community service, and one that many ASUS customers appreciate. I certainly hope that ASUS is footing part of the bandwidth bill

sfx

 

[thiggins]

Thanks Mike and sfx.

A few other points about ASUS:
- They do not pay for the subforum, nor does any other manufacturer. - They are a regular advertiser, but there is no quid pro quo.
- A lot of attention is due to RMerlin's hard work.
- ASUS is actually slow to provide review product, preferring to hold off until a few firmware revs are out, a technique I have out them in notice for. If a product is good enough to sell, it's good enough to review.

 

[klas]

Where are you seeing a bias? There is none intended, nor will there ever be toward any manufacturer's product.

If I look at 5 top ranked routers and first three are AC66, N66, N56. I've tried/owned all three based on reviews here and had nothing but frustration with Asus firmware and their range. This site might not be paid by Asus, but I don't understand why Asus is constantly rated on top. They may offer more features then any other router, but that's about it...

 

[thiggins]

If I look at 5 top ranked routers and first three are AC66, N66, N56. I've tried/owned all three based on reviews here and had nothing but frustration with Asus firmware and their range. This site might not be paid by Asus, but I don't understand why Asus is constantly rated on top. They may offer more features then any other router, but that's about it...

The ranking is based strictly on test data and on relative comparison to other products within their wireless class, i.e. N600, AC1750, etc. There are no subjective observations included in the ranking.

Wireless performance varies a lot. Our new test method tends to present a best-case view of performance. But it is the same method applied to all products.

The main weakness of the Rankers right now is that they contain a mix of old and new test methods. Unfortunately, that can't be helped.

Firmware problems don't figure in the rankings. They are performance based only.