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Goodbye WRT1900ac - comments below

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Well, FWIW, Marvell up to the point of Linksys announcing, post Belkin purchase, OpenWRT stuff...

Marvell, in my experience, always had closed source drivers - they were good, very good, but not GPL friendly, and definitely not anything that OpenWRT would be likely to use...

I don't think Marvell ever expected that to happen during early development with Cisco/Linksys on the WRT1900... as such, with all the press, negative feedback, they were totally put on the spot, and Belkin/Linksys kicked them to the curb, shifting all the blame to Marvell... to their credit, Linksys did assign a guy to kick sources over to the OpenWRT community and get feedback - actionable or not, not much action was taken there.

The wireless driver for Marvell - they basically had to rewrite a lot of things to make it work - heroic effort on their part, as Linksys, now part of Belkin, was their customer...
 
Imo. I invested to much into the router to move on until it dies. A few months after it came out. I have V1 btw. I paid full price for the router, extended antennas, and the switch. While I am more or less some what of the luckier ones. I don't have to many issues or a really solid issue with it. My home network gets hammered a whole lot as well. Gaming, streaming 4k, voip, downloading full retail games etc. At the same time and to be fair. I have had to read about tips and some work a rounds for current bugs that Linksys has not yet fixed.

I also cannot get 30+ of up time with this router. At most. I always get about 20-22 days and its time for a reboot. The 5GHz band craps out like clock work around that time and a reboot is needed. Now to this day. Across the whole WRT recent line. Random reboots are still happening. Causing lots of people to return them because of it. Linksys STILL has not addressed the problem. My Intel Wireless AC 7260 card would cause the router to reboot. Others have had the same issue. But, I am using a wired connection now.

Has me wondering if it would still do it. I am sure it would since no new firmware released coming up on a full year now in June.
 
Last edited:
FattysGoneWild said:
Imo. I invested to much into the router to move on until it dies. A few months after it came out. I have V1 btw. I paid full price for the router, extended antennas, and the switch. While I am more or less some what of the luckier ones. I don't have to many issues or a really solid issue with it. My home network gets hammered a whole lot as well. Gaming, streaming 4k, voip, downloading full retail games etc. At the same time and to be fair. I have had to read about tips and some work a rounds for current bugs that Linksys has not yet fixed.

I also cannot get 30+ of up time with this router. At most. I always get about 20-22 days and its time for a reboot. The 5GHz band craps out like clock work around that time and a reboot is needed. Now to this day. Across the whole WRT recent line. Random reboots are still happening. Causing lots of people to return them because of it. Linksys STILL has not addressed the problem.
Click to expand...

FWIW - not sure what happened with Linksys SmartWiFi, as it used to be fairly robust, but seems like things are not so good there - at least with their cloud - and with the factory firmware, there's no way to get around it... even if you do not set up a SmartWifi account, the factory firmware phones home, and if home doesn't answer...

You'll get an error 2118 - and I've pretty much confirmed this by putting a WRT1900acV2 inside my LAN, and deliberately dropping traffic (actually just letting it die) to simulate what will happen if Belkin/Linksys pulls the plug, and it ain't pretty...

Anyways, it's really good hardware - it really is, and I can only suggest that you investigate 3rd party firmware - it's a bit interesting that Linksys firmware needs to phone home, even if it's not enrolled within their ex-Cisco ConnectCloud infrastructure... see below:

bad_linky_WRT1900.png


Again, look at the details above - it's phoning home - are you sure you want this to happen? If it phones home, that pipe goes both ways, do you want someone to "reach out and touch you" in the private side of the LAN - I think not...

So, consider 3rd party firmware to;

a) Protect your privacy
b) Future Proof yourself when Belkin decides it's time to pull the plug, because when they do, all the SmartWiFi routers will be essentially bricked...

As for me at the moment... not perfect at the moment, but it works...

Code: 
DD-WRT v3.0-r28788 std (c) 2016 NewMedia-NET GmbH
Release: 01/13/16
root@192.168.1.40's password: 
==========================================================

     ___  ___     _      _____  ______       ____  ___ 
    / _ \/ _ \___| | /| / / _ \/_  __/ _  __|_  / / _ \
   / // / // /___/ |/ |/ / , _/ / /   | |/ //_ <_/ // /
  /____/____/    |__/|__/_/|_| /_/    |___/____(_)___/ 
                                                     
                       DD-WRT v3.0
                   http://www.dd-wrt.com

==========================================================


BusyBox v1.24.1 (2016-01-13 04:14:12 CET) built-in shell (ash)
 
Now that is interesting. I have never used any Linksys smart wifi crap. I have always setup my router manually using the web page. Had no idea it phones home to them regardless. I hear good things with Kong's latest version of DD-WRT. I have never used it before. I have in the past used Tomato 3rd party firmware and loved it! I am really chicken flashing to Kong's DD-WRT or any version for the matter. Reason being. I cannot afford it to brick, have poor performance or be unreliable. We depend on our home network big time. With those reasons. I don't think DD-WRT is where it should be at for prime time with these routers???

I read their forums and some what try to keep up. Reading about development, bugs etc. I also think the flashing is a bit tricky and extra work. Flashing to DD-WRT itself seems fine. But, since 2 partitions exist. One of them having stock firmware. If you don't want it over written. One must flash back to stock firmware. Then flash back to DD-WRT again when upgrading DD-WRT to new versions. If not. The stock partition will be over written and you cannot go back to it. I have read you can recover some how from it. But, not 100% guarantee it seems. Have also read.

The cpu fan is constantly running when using DD-WRT. I find that annoying and just another part that can break. Along with the router itself running hotter then what it should. The stock firmware does not do this. My fan has never kicked on once. I understand though it will under very hot circumstances what ever they might be.


sfx2000 said:
FWIW - not sure what happened with Linksys SmartWiFi, as it used to be fairly robust, but seems like things are not so good there - at least with their cloud - and with the factory firmware, there's no way to get around it... even if you do not set up a SmartWifi account, the factory firmware phones home, and if home doesn't answer...

You'll get an error 2118 - and I've pretty much confirmed this by putting a WRT1900acV2 inside my LAN, and deliberately dropping traffic (actually just letting it die) to simulate what will happen if Belkin/Linksys pulls the plug, and it ain't pretty...

Anyways, it's really good hardware - it really is, and I can only suggest that you investigate 3rd party firmware - it's a bit interesting that Linksys firmware needs to phone home, even if it's not enrolled within their ex-Cisco ConnectCloud infrastructure... see below:

View attachment 6081

Again, look at the details above - it's phoning home - are you sure you want this to happen? If it phones home, that pipe goes both ways, do you want someone to "reach out and touch you" in the private side of the LAN - I think not...

So, consider 3rd party firmware to;

a) Protect your privacy
b) Future Proof yourself when Belkin decides it's time to pull the plug, because when they do, all the SmartWiFi routers will be essentially bricked...

As for me at the moment... not perfect at the moment, but it works...

Code: 
DD-WRT v3.0-r28788 std (c) 2016 NewMedia-NET GmbH
Release: 01/13/16
root@192.168.1.40's password:
==========================================================

     ___  ___     _      _____  ______       ____  ___
    / _ \/ _ \___| | /| / / _ \/_  __/ _  __|_  / / _ \
   / // / // /___/ |/ |/ / , _/ / /   | |/ //_ <_/ // /
  /____/____/    |__/|__/_/|_| /_/    |___/____(_)___/
                                                  
                       DD-WRT v3.0
                   http://www.dd-wrt.com

==========================================================


BusyBox v1.24.1 (2016-01-13 04:14:12 CET) built-in shell (ash)
Click to expand...
 
FattysGoneWild said:
I read their forums and some what try to keep up. Reading about development, bugs etc. I also think the flashing is a bit tricky and extra work. Flashing to DD-WRT itself seems fine. But, since 2 partitions exist. One of them having stock firmware. If you don't want it over written. One must flash back to stock firmware. Then flash back to DD-WRT again when upgrading DD-WRT to new versions. If not. The stock partition will be over written and you cannot go back to it. I have read you can recover some how from it. But, not 100% guarantee it seems. Have also read.

The cpu fan is constantly running when using DD-WRT. I find that annoying and just another part that can break. Along with the router itself running hotter then what it should. The stock firmware does not do this. My fan has never kicked on once. I understand though it will under very hot circumstances what ever they might be.
Click to expand...

Actually, the fan thing with dd-wrt surprises me. There are two things that you can do about that. First off, make sure that you're using Kong's firmware. I've never had that problem with Kong's dd-wrt firmware for the WRT1900AC v1. The fan doesn't run all the time. The other thing that you can do is go to the "Services" tab, set the fan on/off to 85/80 degrees, and it is very unlikely that it will go on. Note that after you "Apply" the new fan on/off temperature settings you need to reboot the router for the new temps to take effect. If you leave it at 65/60, yes, it will be on a lot, but the resting "normal" (fan off) temperature of my router is around 76-79 degrees, which should be fine for a router. However, if the fan is trying to keep it between 60 and 65 degrees, yes, it will be on a lot to keep the router temps in that range. The fan is very quiet, though, since it's running at less than half speed unless dealing with extreme heat. I can just barely hear the fan on my router when it is doing normal cooling, but I'm concerned with noise from long term fan use, so would like the router to cool itself if possible.

Anyways, the above works for me. Also, having two firmware partitions is one of the few things that I like about the WRT1900AC. If you do keep stock firmware in boot partition 1, and you brick your router flashing dd-wrt from there (into boot partition 2), then you can get back to the stock partition (assuming a soft brick) by simply using a series of on/off switches with the power switch. That has saved me doing full un-bricking several times now. I've found when you flash a router a lot, that sometimes, rarely, the act of flashing it bricks it, even though the firmware that you're flashing is fine. It is really nice having an easy way to get back to stock firmware when that happens...on the other hand, I've had to use a serial port adapter a couple of times, too. That's really no fun with this router, hard to take it apart.

I really wish that Marvell would just fix the ping times for wireless devices. I have two different wireless clients that have internet ping times around 38ms on this router (Nexus 6P and iPad Air 2), that run more like 15ms or less with my other routers. I also find that I'm liking openWRT firmware and their web admin GUI more these days. I think that it must be an acquired taste, but this one is pretty good:

http://luci.subsignal.org/~trondah/mvebu/
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=50914

A bit of a learning curve there, but nice once you get up on it *smile*. Same network latency (ping time) problems, of course, same wireless driver as dd-wrt.

Still very happy I didn't pay for this router, though *smile*.
 
Last edited:
I got the WRT1900 ACS a while back, and while the storage performance was great, the web UI was a pain to use ( not intuitive at all), and it offered very few settings, and the QOS was unreliable even when you set the rules properly.

Though WiFi was decent on the 5GHz band.
Though I never have much luck with 2.4GHz in in an urban area.

From a hardware standpoint, the spacing of the pin header was annoying, as I cold not use the standard jumper wires, and I had to get really ghetto with it.

While DD-WRT works okay with it, the storage performance is not as good, and it is not as reliable when copying over a large number of files compared to the stock firmware, though I have not used dd-wrt on it in a long time.

I wish netgear could have given the R7800 the same storage performance on the WRT1900acs.
 

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If the USB performance is good then maybe use it as a file server inside your network. Sounds like it would be a lot cheaper than building a server. What do you think?
 
coxhaus said:
If the USB performance is good then maybe use it as a file server inside your network. Sounds like it would be a lot cheaper than building a server. What do you think?
Click to expand...

The WRT's always had decent storage performance, including both USB 3.0 and eSATA - stock Linksys firmware was limited on configurations for shares/permissions, but read/write performance for all the Marvell based WRT's is a strong point for all of them.

I think much of this is due to the Armada XP/38x chips, not to anything that Linksys added...
 
Razor512 said:
Though WiFi was decent on the 5GHz band.
Though I never have much luck with 2.4GHz in in an urban area.
Click to expand...

The 2.4GHz performance can be better with the factory firmware - just need to sort the settings - the defaults for 2.4 aren't the best - configure for narrow channels, b/g/n only, and 2.4GHz can really surprise with range and speed.

The Marvell GPL drivers have their own challenges there, but there are private DD-WRT builds that pull in the NDA drivers, but that build has not been maintained for some time now (Kong's semi official fork).
 
Razor512 said:
I got the WRT1900 ACS a while back, and while the storage performance was great, the web UI was a pain to use ( not intuitive at all), and it offered very few settings, and the QOS was unreliable even when you set the rules properly.

Though WiFi was decent on the 5GHz band.
Though I never have much luck with 2.4GHz in in an urban area.

From a hardware standpoint, the spacing of the pin header was annoying, as I cold not use the standard jumper wires, and I had to get really ghetto with it.

While DD-WRT works okay with it, the storage performance is not as good, and it is not as reliable when copying over a large number of files compared to the stock firmware, though I have not used dd-wrt on it in a long time.

I wish netgear could have given the R7800 the same storage performance on the WRT1900acs.
Click to expand...

I don't use the linksys guide I use ddwrt so I can't speak on those features.

But I'm getting good performance with ddwrt
2.4ghz I'm getting 217mb output and 5gz I'm getting a astounding full output 1.3 Gigs! Now this all shows through my Mac Network utility. Which program did you use to measure?

Transfer speed with hard drive connected to the router usb 3.0 port I'm getting 14 to 19 MB better then my asus 68u which I was only getting about 7MB

My internet speed is 100. Tested 5ghz internet speed on my phone and it jumped quickly to around 150

Router is a beast for me I love it
 
MatrixGeeker said:
I don't use the linksys guide I use ddwrt so I can't speak on those features.

But I'm getting good performance with ddwrt
2.4ghz I'm getting 217mb output and 5gz I'm getting a astounding full output 1.3 Gigs! Now this all shows through my Mac Network utility. Which program did you use to measure?

Transfer speed with hard drive connected to the router usb 3.0 port I'm getting 14 to 19 MB better then my asus 68u which I was only getting about 7MB

My internet speed is 100. Tested 5ghz internet speed on my phone and it jumped quickly to around 150

Router is a beast for me I love it
Click to expand...

What you are seeing is the PHY rate and not the real world throughput. To see the real world speed, you need to run a network benchmark like https://iperf.fr/ which has a mac client.

Basically you run 1 copy on a wireless client and another on a system connected to an Ethernet port, and then benchmark the throughput between them.
 
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