Getting ready to buy Netgear R7000. Not sure about...

[Q-BZ]

The USB Adapter.

Netgear's closest companion for its AC routers is a USB 3.0 AC1200 adapter. That's as high as any of that goes at present.

I'll likely go for that unless I get shot down and re-directed here by the experts.

I am aware of a PCI-E AC1900 adapter from Asus off the top of my head.

I have been doing my homework and if I understand correctly if I put an AC1200 device in that food chain it essentially takes everything down to AC1200. As always, the network is as good as the weakest link in the food chain.

I can live with that if that's the way it's going to be.

It's still going to be a nice upgrade off of north of 5 year old and now dead D-Link DGL4500 that I bought back in November 2008 (hard to believe) and its DWA 160 USB adapter from back then. This combo performed surprisingly well most of the time across a two story situation so I know I'm looking at a appreciable upgrade in any event.

I don't want to overthink things or pull unnecessary hairs but I figured before I moved forward on this I'd check in with you all to make sure I have myself set right and I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[microchip]

I can recommend the R7000 for the hardware, but not for the stock firmware. Personally, and this is really PERSONALLY, I had numerous issues with its stock fw and at one point I said that's enough and put XVortex's mod of the ASUS Merling fw. Been up over 60 days now without a single issue. Granted I only need a router for its core networking/routing/switching capabilities so I have no idea how well the VPN, Dual WAN, USB, etc work.

 

[Q-BZ]

I can recommend the R7000 for the hardware, but not for the stock firmware. Personally, and this is really PERSONALLY, I had numerous issues with its stock fw and at one point I said that's enough and put XVortex's mod of the ASUS Merling fw. Been up over 60 days now without a single issue. Granted I only need a router for its core networking/routing/switching capabilities so I have no idea how well the VPN, Dual WAN, USB, etc work.

Noted.

If I gather correctly there are three leading third party firmwares that work with the R7000. You named one of them, I know DD-WRT is another, and then the third one slips my mind.

 

[microchip]

Noted.

If I gather correctly there are three leading third party firmwares that work with the R7000. You named one of them, I know DD-WRT is another, and then the third one slips my mind.

I think the third one is Tomato. Never tried it myself and if this is correct from what I read at few places, it also supports hardware acceleration (CTF) as does the XVortex fw

 

[htismaqe]

Do you only have one client?

 

[Q-BZ]

Do you only have one client?

At present yes.

Past that would be possibly a Roku device that will come into the house and one or two other stray items past that. Nothing gigantic.

 

[htismaqe]

If you only have one device then I can certainly understand the rationale of wanting to max your client.

 

[bobsilver]

For the client side be sure your laptop supports USB 3.0 as the USB speed is the bottleneck with AC adapters. If you have a USB 2.0 laptop then your max speed will be limited by the 480mbs of USB 2.0.

Bob Silver
Netgear Advisor

 

[thiggins]

For the client side be sure your laptop supports USB 3.0 as the USB speed is the bottleneck with AC adapters. If you have a USB 2.0 laptop then your max speed will be limited by the 480mbs of USB 2.0.

Sorry, Bob. But our tests didn't support that.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32271-ac1200-usb-wireless-adapter-roundup

 

[thiggins]

If I gather correctly there are three leading third party firmwares that work with the R7000. You named one of them, I know DD-WRT is another, and then the third one slips my mind.

http://myopenrouter.com/download?field_download_category_tid=3

 

[Trip]

I think the third one is Tomato. Never tried it myself and if this is correct from what I read at few places, it also supports hardware acceleration (CTF) as does the XVortex fw

Indeed it is, along with the nicely-skinned and organized AdvancedTomato. I've found myself defaulting to Tomato for its stability advantage versus DD-WRT over the years... that changed somewhat when moving from MIPS to ARM, on which Tomato has only recently become stable (since shibby's 129 or 130 version, can't quite remember which...), but nevertheless Tomato is now quite stable there as well. Additionally, the Tomato subversions have been quite a bit easier to manage and fall forward/back to than the DD-WRT sub-releases and sub-flavors, which can quite often be a mess in terms of stability and bugs. YMMV of course.