New Asus AC2400 router vs Netgear Nhawk x6 HELP

[ejp]

Hello Small Net Builder community,

As a recent graduate, I have purchased a few new computers all with new AC NIC's for a new residence I will be staying at and now I need to purchase a new router. In the past I've always loved the ASUS and Linksys web UI over netgear and their products generally look more sturdy/higher quality, however I would be forever grateful if I could get one of most most well informed communities on the nets' opinion on this.

The two new routers I'm looking at is the just released new ASUS AC2400 router and the new Nhawk x6. Given the $ is not a factor and that comps will be hard connected and many wireless devices will be used on it, which would you guys choose?

I primarily stream HD videos, play games, DL vid files, and would love to future proof my purchase + I'm ok with a few minor bugs here and there. I previously owned the first version of the Nhawk and often had frequent connectivity issues/drops with wireless devices.

When a spare moment arises, would the wonderful community weigh in and care to share their thoughts to help guide my purchase. Thanks so much in advanced :>.

 

[thiggins]

Both these routers are relatively new with firmware still being tweaked. Buy at your own risk at this point. If you want ASUS, the RT-AC68U is a better bet.

 

[Trip]

Hi ej. Since you've already experienced some compromises of rushed-to-market consumer stuff, you might want to step up to more business-level gear. Many here may disagree and say a single plastic monster with whatever flavor of firmware will suffice. And I've certainly found decent combos in the past, but overall I'd say most of that stuff is just too unsupported/flaky for anything beyond a certain level of personal use. Your mileage may vary, though.

Now, if money really is no object and you're skill level is up to it, then a Cisco 1941 and an Aironet or two would pretty much settle things, but I'll assume $5K is probably an order of magnitude beyond reasonable. Understandable. You could look to MikroTik or Ubiquiti + a gigE switch for your wired needs. Then wire in the best AP (standalone or mesh) that you can afford. With a setup like that, you'd get all the performance gains, along with way more reliability, and better ability to upgrade wifi in the future without having to scrap your entire routing/nat config for an entirely new "all-in-one" model.

What do you think of that approach?

P.S. Aside from gear, QoS and at least some light traffic shaping will probably be of interest to you to read up on (forgive me if they're old-hat, just not sure of your knowledge there).

 

[ejp]

First, it's prudent for me to thank you for taking the time to reply and refer me to some resources I myself was unaware of as options. Unfortunately, business level gear is a bit out of my price range but I learned a great deal out networking from your suggestions.

Although I am aware of rush to market new products having firmware that's a bit buggy, I really like the idea of future proofing my purchase and taking advantage of the new features available with both the new Nhawk and the asus (better beam-forming, wireless range, etc). I'm really leaning towards buying the new asus router because in the past their routers have had better build quality compared to the rickity plastic netgear typically uses. I also like the new Linksys router because of the build quality but I'm unsure how they stack up to the competition?

Moreover, does anyone know why ASUS decided to put less antenna's in their new router vs they new netgear NHAWK?

 

[thiggins]

First
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...32183-5-tips-for-buying-a-future-proof-router

Buying either of these now is foolish. More choices will be coming within a few months. But both NETGEAR and ASUS will be happy to take your money.

The designs of both are described here http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...s-xstream-the-coming-battle-for-wi-fi-airtime

 

[Trip]

A note on outward-facing "build quality" - this is quite a subjective and often misleading aspect of so many types of products, routers being no exception. The real meat and potatoes are almost always *internal* -- ie. capacitor quality, board/chip quality, cooling design, wifi radio quality, etc. Cheap capacitors, for example, often make for a short and erratic lifespan (perhaps explaining so many "it was great for a year, then died 1 day after the warranty was up..."-type of reviews) and plenty of brands have gone cheap on numerous model series. So try not to let the "look" of any one of these persuade you too much.

If you can live with the initial expense, why not buy two or three models from a place with a good return policy, test for a week and return the lesser performers?

 

[azazel1024]

I very much agree with those sentiments.

A bit like cars, outward apperances are no indicator of actual performance or reliability. Test driving can help a little, but you still don't necessarily know how it'll perform in the long run, but test driving and sitting in the thing is going to be the best way to know if it car is likely to met your needs and desires.

Same goes with a router/AP.

In all cases, none of it will tell you how reliable they will be. Though with cars, people at least tend to track things like reliability figures. Not so much with routers other than anecdotal personal experiences shared on the internet. I don't think I've seen any kind of database with "rate of return", warranty claims, or typical life span for wireless gear anywhere.

Wireless is always some limited amount of a crap shoot. Its is cheap consumer electronics gear that sells for a very small profit margin, even on a $150 router. There is not a huge ton of QA, especially not once things get the Alpha test stamp of approval. If you are lucky, the company has a decent beta test program to at least fix the biggest firmware bugs and maybe catch any show stopper hardware issues before it rolls out the door for consumers.

None of that is going to catch any issues with hardware defects that take 3 months, or 6 months or a year to crop up.

It isn't business gear and it ain't milspec gear. There are no "slow" engineering time frames on this. They are all trying to beat the other guys to market and if they aren't, they are trying to shave all margins to get a budget product on the market at some point.

Its not a motherboard where the manufacturer might have 6-12 months (possibly more) with engineering samples from Intel/AMD to work with for chipsets, possibly CPUs to go with as well and all have the same product to market date initially (IE when the new processor/chipset is approve for market release by Intel/AMD). Same with video cards and others.

Wireless products is a whole lot more of Broadcom/QCA/Marvel/Raylink/etc. going "hey, look at our nifty new radio/SoC. Here are samples and Alpha firmware for it. If you want it in your new product, put in your order and we'll have the final to you for manufacturing as quick as possible so you can try to beat your competitor to market". Sometimes you can get true decent engineering time, other times you've got a matter of weeks from inception to product design, maybe a few weeks with engineering samples and alpha/beta firmware from the radio/SoC manufacturer to develop your own firmware, then you get final hardware from the radio/SoC manufacturer and you might have a few weeks to try to finalize the product and firmware and get it out the door.

There is a reason that business WiFi gear typically trails consumer WiFi technology by months or even sometimes a year+. Burning a customer on a bad piece of gear, or the fact that a lot of times warranties and FIRMWARE support are guartaneed for YEARS, not 12 months (and firmware support isn't guaranteed at all with consumer routers) means that the business guys must invest a lot more in components and testing. Even if they went cheap on the parts, it'll cost them so much more due to warranty and support down the line that it makes sense to use much higher quality components, much longer development times and much better QA/Validation of it all before it ever ships. All of that of course means much more expensive gear, but it also is much higher quality gear with much less need for that warranty/support, even though they provide it (because businesses require it).

 

[azazel1024]

Sorry. Long rant.

The TL;DR version is, don't buy on the bleeding edge in wireless (generally any technology) unless you don't mind getting cut sometimes. Also, especially with Wifi gear, it is a disposable consumer electronics product. It is not something you should ever expect to last a life time, or even a decade.


The longer, rant continued version; yes, some people still use ancient 11g Linksys routers with DD-WRT on them and thing they are the awesomest thing. This people are either ludites, have very, very limited wireless needs/slow internet connections or else have their head buried in the sand. Even if they are still working fine, the current state of the art wireless just in a not a-typical configuration of a new high end router to laptop with a higher end wireless card in it is EASILY 15-20x faster. Even a lower end configuration with a fairly new router and a newer phone (I am assuming 11ac 433Mbps adapter in the phone) you are still talking easily 4-8x faster. Yes, it means your facebook can load really fast on your phone with newer stuff

Stuff is not manufacturered to last anymore. This applies to most things. I do feel like some industries have actually gotten better recently. Cars being one. I feel like from the mid 1970's to mid/late 1990's quality/durability had dropped off a lot, but has picked up since then (in general, exceptions of course are prevelant). Appliances and especially electronic appliances need not apply though. They are generally not meant to last for a huge variety of reasons.

Moore's law still applies, as does planned obselence and even just simply really bright people figuring out how better to use the air waves, push electrons, etc. Also changing regulatory environments. All this means that even if something CAN last, it will be "out dated" no matter what you do, and buying the bleeding edge does not necessarily mean you get something that is going to "last" significantly longer, either due to the product physically dying, or technology advancing so quickly.

In a lot of ways like a car, you are better off buying last year's model, saving a bunch and keeping it for 3 years instead of 4, and then buying last year's model when you go to buy another one (I speak to wifi routers, not cars. I'd hope you are only buying a car every 7-12 years, though if your thing is a new one every 3, I guess more power to you).

Just looking at Wifi routers, within general reason, if you buy something that is "a year old", give or take a bit, you might be looking at $50-80. Something in that range possibly/probably (exceptions of course). If you then kept it for 2 years, and then bought another "last years model" and kept that up (IE slightly outdated every 2 years) for a decade, you'd be looking at around $250-400 spent over the course of a decade to have slightly outdated wireless gear, but probably not anything obselescent.

If you bought bleeding edge, but kept it for 3 1/3 years instead (make example easier), you'd probably be looking at spending $150-300 each time you upgraded. That ends up being $450-900 over 10 years, to temporarily have the "best of the best" and keep maybe on average slightly better technological edge over the time period involved with updating every 2 years, but with slightly more mature Wifi gear. If you upgraded every 2 years to stay resonably well ahead of the "one year back" route instead of a bleeding edge, but longer upgrade route, you'd be looking at spending $750-$1500 over the same 10 year period of time.

That is all assuming you can get by with only a single router. I personally can't as I need one router and two APs (for now, with addition I am planning I'll probably need a third AP), so bleeding edge every 2 years would mean probably >>>$3000, even every 3 years would be super expensive. I go the route (generally) of just replacing my router every 2 years or so with something just a little back from bleeding edge (example, I have an AC1750 router that I got recently, that is a newer model, but AC1900 and now AC2400/MU:MIMO/XStream is the bleeding). The old router generally becomes my access point inside and my AP inside becomes my garage/outdoor AP. Cycle of wireless life for my stuff. It still ain't super cheap, but it keeps everything vaguely update, at least enough for my needs, and in the grand scheme, ~$100 every 2 years isn't that terrible (considering I have 3 wifi routers/APs that have to get replaced with some periodicity).

 

[andykn]

First
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...32183-5-tips-for-buying-a-future-proof-router

Buying either of these now is foolish.

But is it that foolish if, like me and my partner, you've just upgraded your broadband from 7 Mb to 76 Mb and both your main wireless clients to 2x2 AC and now find your router is the weak link in trying to access your office remotely?

I'm still researching but it does appear this (foolish, Tips 1 & 5b) would be true for the Asus RT-AC87U but I'm thinking the dual 5GHz channels of the R8000 would be useful for example.

 

[thiggins]

But is it that foolish if, like me and my partner, you've just upgraded your broadband from 7 Mb to 76 Mb and both your main wireless clients to 2x2 AC and now find your router is the weak link in trying to access your office remotely?

I'm still researching but it does appear this (foolish, Tips 1 & 5b) would be true for the Asus RT-AC87U but I'm thinking the dual 5GHz channels of the R8000 would be useful for example.

Depends on what your current router is and what sort of stability / reliability you want from the router you buy.

All you need for 2x2 clients is an AC1200 class router.

 

[andykn]

Depends on what your current router is and what sort of stability / reliability you want from the router you buy.

All you need for 2x2 clients is an AC1200 class router.

Thanks for the reply, current router is a Linksys n610, the odd drop out I can handle.

I was tempted with the two 5GHz radios on the R8000 so that my partner's office VPN connection won't be affected if I start to move gigabytes of virtual machine files to or from my NAS box.

 

[azazel1024]

Depends on what your current router is and what sort of stability / reliability you want from the router you buy.

All you need for 2x2 clients is an AC1200 class router.

More or less true. Just to point out though, that with explicit beamforming, there are advantages to having a router/access point with more spatial streams than what your client has.

With general MIMO WITHOUT beamforming, the potential signal strength gains are roughly limited to the maximum number of spatial streams supported by the lowest spatial stream count device (client or basestation). With beamforming, at least explicit beamforming and possibily implicit beamforming as well, the greater the number of spatial streams that the basestation has, the higher the potential signal strength gain from beam forming is.

So a 3:3 11ac basestation MIGHT under some circumstances be able to generate greater gains in signal strength through beamforming to a 2:2 client than a 2:2 11ac basestation can do. A 4:4 might be able to do better than the 3:3 or 2:2 11ac basestation and so on (and of course an 1:1 11ac basestation cannot perform beamforming at all).

However, that probably wouldn't be a matter of consideration as you'll likely pay a lot more for that 3:3 or 4:4 11ac router/access point than you would for a 2:2 AC1200 router/access point, for what might be modest gains and under only a few circumstances.

 

[thiggins]

azazel: Those are a lot MIGHTs.

A lot of things are theoretically possible, sure. But on a practical basis, few people are going to experience the gains you are citing.

 

[andykn]

However, that probably wouldn't be a matter of consideration as you'll likely pay a lot more for that 3:3 or 4:4 11ac router/access point than you would for a 2:2 AC1200 router/access point, for what might be modest gains and under only a few circumstances.

Here in the UK a cheap TP LINK Archer C5 AC1200 will cost me 80 pounds, [EDIT: the TP LINK AC1750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router - V2.0 is 86 pounds with Open WRT support] the Netgear N7000 around double that at 160 pounds and I'd be very surprised if they try and get 200 pounds or more for the N8000 so that will prob be 199.

Perhaps I'm better off getting the cheaper option and repurposing my old 610n as an access point for my partner, that might be a cheaper way of getting two 5GHz radios.

 

[bobsilver]

But is it that foolish if, like me and my partner, you've just upgraded your broadband from 7 Mb to 76 Mb and both your main wireless clients to 2x2 AC and now find your router is the weak link in trying to access your office remotely?

I'm still researching but it does appear this (foolish, Tips 1 & 5b) would be true for the Asus RT-AC87U but I'm thinking the dual 5GHz channels of the R8000 would be useful for example.

As a user of the R8000 with updated firmware it has been quite stable. As a Netgear advisor I get the gear prior to launch and live through the firmware issues. I have had the R8000 running for quite a while with the firmware V1.0.0.102_1.0.45 and have not had issues.

The dual 5ghz bands just by their nature provide a 2x amount of bandwidth. Given your situation this would be quite handy. Sure Netgear will enhance the Smart features of this (placing fast devices on 1 side and slower on the other) but you have control of this now. Point being while it is early in its life there is a lot of development support being applied to this product. It will only get better.

And the R8000 sales have been strong with a large user base now. Look at Amazon ratings on the router as a measure. Many reviews and it has a 4 star rating which for a new router is pretty good IMHO.

And as others suggest buy from a vendor with good return policies. But I think you will be happy with the R8000.

Bob Silver
NETGEAR Networking Assistant