R7000 Overkill For streaming 1080p Blu Ray Rips?

[bsod]

First want to say thanks for the website and community, its amazing such a wealth of information is available and it has been interesting reading through the detailed and accurate test reviews/forum posts.

I was so close to pulling the trigger on the R7000, but I am worried it may be a bit of an overkill for what I need.

I live in a small bungalow and the router will be situated in the centre. Through a door/wall will connect a PC over a space of approx 6m(birds eye) and through another door/wall will connect my television, about approx 8m (birds eye) away. Each walls are thin and luckily not dreaded brickwork or anything like that. One doorway is glass, the other wood. Here is the floorplan. - Green is router position, Red Television, Blue is my PC.

Apart from this, I will be using my Phone around the house, as will guests. I sometimes also use my laptop which only has a 2.4ghz dual band WiFi Card.

I want to be able to attach a USB Drive to the router to store my Blu Ray rips to stream via a built in media server on my television or PC, some of which will reach peaks of around 48Mbps(bits, not bytes), ideally I want to also be able to game and run bittorrent on the router(pref transmission), simultaneously. I will also need to file transfer too and from occasionally via Samba.

Other devices are 5ghz compatible, including my T.V and my Phone, so I don't have to worry too much about 2.4ghz any more, having said that, I have had a bit better success streaming to my laptop computer connected to my television compared to directly. If this is a bottleneck I can always upgrade the card to 5ghz, but I want to be able to stream directly anyway.

I started trying this with an RT-N16 but had to return it due to a fault. It never did work with Transmission, use to reboot often, but I wasn't sure if it was just a broken router, or if my torrents were causing the problem in the end. I tried tomato and merlins firmware.

Anyway, my experience of the RT-N16 was pretty negative, so I am reluctant to trust an Asus product again, but I want to try my best not to let that sway my buying decision.

With the RT-N16 I found that large rips of my Blu Ray discs were halting, in fact sometimes also were some lower quality 720p ones. I always thought this must be because the network wasn't running fast enough. Could I be right? I also had hiccups streaming some superHD films on netflix.

My internet connection is around 70Mbps so that is a non-issue.

Do I really need to pay for a 5ghz setup or will 2.4ghz suffice? Should I go for one of the cheaper 5ghz routers like the Archer C7, or spend extra and go for the r7000 or AC68U? At first I was drawn to the transfer speeds of the r7000, but as I understand, wireless will be the bottleneck anyway, so that doesn't matter. There will be no wired setup here.

I am guessing due to living in a small-ish property range isn't going to be an issue and only having one or two people using the router at once total throughoutput shouldn't come into play? There may be someone watching a film on the television and torrents downloading, maybe some gaming, but I don't expect to be able to also to stream two films at once and a file transfer at the same time. I am also open to the idea of having a separate NAS, if there are any recommendation for a solid router that will do the business, but not cost as much with the addition of a NAS separately.

Oh something else I forgot to mention is the area is a "little" 2.4ghz overcrowded. But not much. I can just about fit in 40hz bandwidth without overcrowding other peoples channels.

On a separate note, I read that hardware acceleration is coming to the r7000 with DD-WRT? Is this right? I thought it was proprietary only, although I understand it shouldn't effect the performance unless you have 600mb+ WAN.

I appreciate the time anyone has taken to read all my gubbins, sorry to make it long. I don't want to make another mistake and have to return another product.

 

[thiggins]

To get the higher throughput from 11ac, you need to use AC adapters and 5 GHz. So you may need to get an AC bridge for the TV.

That said, have you considered using a pair of powerline adapters to stream to the TV? Cheaper and more reliable than an AC bridge.

The best pair I have tested so far is the TP-LINK TL-PA6010KIT

 

[bsod]

Thanks for the reply. The TV has built in dual band 5ghz AC. Checked that out already.

Do you think that wireless will be too unreliable to do what I need? What about the media streaming/torrent questions?
I fear if I go the power line route I won't be upgrading my laptops or phones connection, despite needing to buy a wireless router anyway.

And is the r7000 going to have hardware acceleration available in dd-wrt in the future or is that just a myth?

 

[thiggins]

I can't speak to the DD-WRT hardware acceleration question.

I think the router can handle the load you describe, assuming you are not trying to do everything over wireless connections. But someone else will need to chime in with their experience running torrents.

The TV's AC connection is likely AC580 (1x1). But it should be sufficient for HD streaming, again, assuming you are using 5 GHz.

 

[bsod]

It's so difficult to make a decision with all the possibilities. I may have to jump the gun and order from a legitimate retailer that will give me no trouble returning the product if something doesn't work. I am sick of using my isp's router. Hard to believe there will be a cheaper option using seperates if I am buying a router anyway.

 

[mdgm]

Buying from a retailer that accepts returns if it doesn't work in your environment is a good idea. If it doesn't work you could return it and try the powerline option (or maybe try that first).

Personally I use a wired network, but that's the most expensive option, but also the most likely one to work.

Your old router was an 802.11n one.

802.11ac is faster, but still the less obstacles in the way the better. You might have to experiment a bit with how you position antennas to get things right.

An advantage with a NAS is that with several different brands you can run a torrent client e.g. Transmission. With the NAS connected via ethernet to your router you can keep that traffic off your Wi-Fi.

Though you may wish to test if you can do what you want with what you have now + a router that has 802.11ac, then if it struggles, try turning off Transmission and if that fixes your issues then a NAS to run Transmission sounds like a good option.

I would recommend avoiding entry level NAS models when running a BitTorrent client and getting something with an Intel CPU, especially if you want to use the NAS to stream Blu-Ray rips at the same time.

You should also think about how much space your video collection takes up, how fast you expect it to grow, and how annoying it would be if you were to lose that data (disks can and do fail, devices can and do fail). You may wish to backup some/all of your data.

From a brief search I found a post from April indicating that there is work being done on hardware acceleration for DD-WRT but that won't come fast: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=889985

If the hardware acceleration is proprietary and the DD-WRT has to develop their own or hunt for code they can port then you could expect any DD-WRT efforts to add hardware acceleration would take a long time if they can find a way to make it work. I certainly wouldn't expect them to add that soon unless you can find a post where they say so. Even if they are able to add it, it may take some time before it is stable.

 

[Scooterit]

I just installed a R7000. When ran speed test from 2 laptops simultaneously it could handle only one...

 

[bsod]

Thanks. That's the big question really. To bother with just an ac router or also try to use integrated nas. I think I'll purchase the r7000 and test, fingers crossed and thanks all.

 

[techguy888]

I use an R7000 running Kong DDWRT for precisely this purpose, though my layout is of course different. I stream from Plex on my HTPC to my Apple TV (gen 3) which is connected as follows:
Netgear 8 port GigE switch (Cat 6 all the way)
Asus N56
Netgear R7000
wifi to ATV (5GHz)
Using a well known hack to allow the trailers app to acces the Plex server, I am able to achieve approximately 20Mb via transcoding with consistent playback (no pausing or stuttering)
40Mb unfortunately does induce pausing every couple minutes but I have not yet determined why. I tried the same thing with a WDTV (newest model) over 2.4GHz and it would only play for a few seconds at a time and then either pause or start stuttering horribly with no audio.

 

[bsod]

I use an R7000 running Kong DDWRT for precisely this purpose, though my layout is of course different. I stream from Plex on my HTPC to my Apple TV (gen 3) which is connected as follows:
Netgear 8 port GigE switch (Cat 6 all the way)
Asus N56
Netgear R7000
wifi to ATV (5GHz)
Using a well known hack to allow the trailers app to acces the Plex server, I am able to achieve approximately 20Mb via transcoding with consistent playback (no pausing or stuttering)
40Mb unfortunately does induce pausing every couple minutes but I have not yet determined why. I tried the same thing with a WDTV (newest model) over 2.4GHz and it would only play for a few seconds at a time and then either pause or start stuttering horribly with no audio.

Thanks for posting. It's strange isn't it, theoretically there shouldn't be a problem playing video of 40Mbps when the average throughoutput via AC is 180mbps, but when put into practice there are hiccups.

I'm not sure about the apple tv, but my guess is it is equal, if not better than my television in terms of the built in WiFi. Is it capable of receiving a dual band signal?

How far away is the apple TV to the r7000?

Since link speed doesn't necessarily correlate with actual performance, especially interference, it makes it that extra bit difficult to troubleshoot when things aren't working right. You could well be connecting at well over a 40mbit link, but something may be causing the problem. I did read a few users had luck repositioning antenna and/or changing the channel. Some even found a speed boost disabling the legacy g and b modes too.

Anyway I hope you find a solution, you have definitely helped me.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
My wife streams HD soap opera and old country movies, etc. real time. Heck, I don't even use Synology NAS I have for this. With R7000, had no problem. When signal level is <60dbm always it was OK in my case. Doing the same thing with R7500 now, signal level is low 50-some compared to high 50-some with R7000. This is priority no. 1 job for a router in my house, LOL!

 

[Stanton]

Hey bsod,

I would agree with mdgm on a separate NAS. I use a 2 bay Synology in RAID-1. It has a built in torrent client that is just Transmission rebadged. It works great, I can pass it links logged in via a web browser directly or on my Android tablet with a dedicated app. The NAS is connected via wired GigE and the files are directly downloaded to the RAID volume. Everything is all wired in that process.

When it comes to streaming blu-ray video level bit rates, you need to keep the *entire* playback chain in mind- from the moment it leaves the harddrive/flashmedia, out the network card, probably touching a local processor, over the air, in the network card, may touch another local processor, feeds into the media playback hardware chip/software. You want to make sure all of those are capable of handing video bit rates in the 30-50 Mbps range.

Attached is a screenshot from my WiFi AP. I'm streaming a raw rip of my Avatar blu-ray which hits peaks of 45+ Megabits per second. Playback is fine. I'm connected at an MCS 7 65Mbps link rate (20Mhz single stream on .N). It goes NAS-->8 port Gig-E switch-->WiFi AP-->Laptop or Desktop WiFi NICs. My desktop is about 20' straight from the AP but has to punch through a Refrigerator/Stove, bathroom, and 3 regular drywall house walls I'm using XBMC as my playback software via Windows File Sharing (or SMB protocol). NFS can be more efficient so it may be worth testing. Most of the time I'm just using WEBDAV over HTTP as I don't typically stream raw rips via WiFi. Usually what I'm streaming is 20Mbps or under. As you know it's also worth checking your airwaves to see what other APs are nearby and hopefully find a less crowded channel. I used my AP's spectrum analyzer and showed a lot of traffic on channel 12+ which was crowding me on channel 11. So I shifted down to channel 10 and my connection got better. Signal strength went up and so did link rates.

I've been shopping for an AC router to do desktop to NAS stuff with big files. The R7000 is one of the ones that caught my eye. I just thought I'd show you don't necessarily need an AC router to stream video up to 45Mbps or so. Avatar is a pretty beefy movie, most other blu-rays I could also stream Netflix to my 8" tablet and a 720P youtube video on my desktop. On a 65Mbps link using 802.11n.

 

[bsod]

Wow thanks allot guys. The irony is, if at the moment I had already a half decent router I could look toward a nas without worrying about AC at all. The fact is, I'm not sure what my current ISP router is capable of, what I do know is my old Asus RT-N16 performed better, minus the fact it was actually broken! The router I'm stuck with now isn't even a rebranded one under a different name. Everything about it is pretty much proprietary. It's supplied by BT here in the UK.

Having said that, like your AP Stanton, it's running only in 20mhz. Compared to you though, the problem is, I have no way to measure bandwidth streaming directly to my television. Previously, even with my RT-N16 it didn't work with high bitrate rips, similar to your avatar one but I never worked out why, perhaps it was another fault in the router, I don't know.

I can measure too and from my desktop>router>laptop at same distance. But this is almost void compared to only router>laptop/TV.

I'm stuck in a situation where it seems the only way to find out what's best is just to try and return if it doesn't work. Right now Netflix is slow, as is catch up TV. They take ages to load even though technically they are so small in bandwidth (Netflix super HD is about 6mbps).

I have made sure that I'm on the least used channel by using insidder and WiFi Analyser (including overlaps) and signal is always at least 4 bars. 144mb link on my desktop all the time, not so sure about the link with the TV.

 

[Stanton]

I don't want to derail this thread too much but it sounds like you have a couple of things you need to figure out:

-How fast and consistent is your Internet?
-What is the max stable speed of your WiFi at the location of your television?
-What media types is your TV capable of playing?

First one, I'm not sure if you are on a metered service with BT still but file downloads or a speed test web site should tell you what your actual Internet speeds are. A continuous ping to your external gateway public IP address should give you a basic idea of your nearby Internet stability.

http://speedtest.net.uk/sh/

Second one using your desktop-->WiFi-->laptop you should be able to test transferring files or something like iperf to get a sense of your WiFi speed at say 2-3 meters from your AP in the same room vs in a location near your TV. This won't tell you what the TV is capable of playing, but it's a good approximation of the speeds you can get in the same physical location.

Third, look in your TV manual or online to see if it lists what type of media it's capable of playing. It could be that it only supports certain profiles or audio/video codec types. Blu-rays can be encoded in MPEG-2, VC-1, or H.264. It's possible your TV only supports H.264. Also, it might only be rated up to a certain profile. If the TV only supports up to 4.0 Profile for H.264 the max video bit rate allowed is 25Mbps. Blu-rays are encoded at 4.1 which can max out at 62.5Mbps (the Profile). I believe the max is usually set for 40Mbps or lower with a little bit of peak headroom though for Blu-rays. This thread explains it some along with some other info you may find useful:

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/329723

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Profiles

For example, my little Raspberry Pi with XBMC loaded as a media playback device will never play a raw blu-ray rip because it doesn't have the horsepower, it just can't do 1080P at peak bit rates up to 45Mbps over a 100Mbps wired connection. More realistically it will play a 1080p stream in h.264/x.264 probably up to 25-30Mbps on a well encoded file. I know everything in the chain is capable of blu-ray play back speeds except the Pi.

Hope some of this info may help you find a direction.

 

[bsod]

Well right now my measly BT home hub is producing Max 20mbps between desktop and laptop. Moving the laptop right next to it produces the same result as when it's in position next to the TV. I also tested my phone, both next to the TV, router and next to the desktop. All produced 22mbps Max!

This is downlink btw, not dual direction throughput.

So much for my 70mbps fibre internet connection!

All in all it seems as if the bt home hub is tremendously poor compared too even my RT-N16. At least that got around 50mbits when doing an internet speed test. Alas I wish now I tested when I had the router with iperf like I just did now.

Here's my channel usage BTW :

I know the key shows my network: Gartopia as green, its not, its the orange in the graph. I changed the channel afterwards you see.

Not much room, but mostly my channels are clear apart from the occasional 80db network towards one side of the house. In fact I experimented with different channels too, there wasn't much difference in performance.

Looking at the average downlink in the downstream charts the RT-N16 ranked only 30mbps, so if I was able to speed test back then at 50 it shows how relatively small the range I need is. In fact the review of the RT-N16 on here by Tim measured 57mbit in location A right next to the router.

So realistically I only need a router like I had before to stream higher bit rate files over the network, but wanting to fully utilise my internet connection and taking into consideration room for margin I probably need one that can produce at least 70mbps in location B, given I seem to be comparative between A and B. Even the N66U dark knight didn't manage that in the tests, some come close but it's a risk I'm not sure is worth taking compared to paying a bit more for an AC router.

As far as my TV is concerned, the manual states it supports Base,main and high profile in different containers for h.264, but no mention of 4, 4.1 etc. I know though, already from using servioo that the profile for my TV converts anything higher than 4 too mpeg 2. I can always avoid this by converting my rips to level 4 if it causes a problem. I think though, the limitation is only in some files and may be bandwidth limited. Some people with profile 5 rips were able to play without problem, perhaps because overall the avg bit rate was lower.

The only thing left to do I guess is connect my laptop wired to my modem and if not router. That should give me an accurate reading of my actual internet speed, although I'm not completely sure if I have to wire into the home hub if I should even trust it's supported wired speed.

My ISP is a reputable one and the speed/Service I get is good. They do use traffic shaping when it comes too p2p at peak times but I've never noticed it before and it doesn't apply to catch up TV or Netflix. I'll give that speed test a go though.

Thanks for you time and wonderful help. It certainly makes my decision making easier.

Edit#

Speedtest.net test on laptop (only 100mbit interface though) connected via ethernet to the router = 61mbps. Much better than 33mbps max from wireless clients. Makes me wonder if a gigabit connection would reach even further.

iperf test between laptop connected via ethernet is 37mbps, much better than 22mbps from wireles, but naturally this was going to be better.

Need to make my mind up soon, seems a bit of waste for my internet at the moment.

Additional screenshots: http://speedtest.net.uk/sh/

Wireless

Wired

 

[Stanton]

"First want to say thanks for the website and community, its amazing such a wealth of information is available and it has been interesting reading through the detailed and accurate test reviews/forum posts."

I feel the same. Tim and his site has contributed much towards my personal and professional education. So I'm happy to give a little bit back if I can.

As you see it can be useful to measure what the max capability is at each stage of the link. The bandwidth test from the Sheffield web site shows you are near your subscribed line rate when using wired. Keep in mind time of day the tests are run can affect results and that web site is probably a few hops away from you and more importantly, outside of BT's network infrastructure. My subscribed line rate is 50Mbps down 10 Mbps up from my cable provider. Using a speed test utility that is hosted by the cable provider and hence inside their managed infrastructure and not too far away. My speed tests are usually around 55Mbps/12Mbps. So if my laptop is plugged in via wired and gets 55/12 and then I immediately switch to WiFi (good signal in the same room about 3 meters away from the AP) and I get 55/12 when connected at 150Mbps link rate, it's easy to see and confirm. Honestly most of the time I run the AP at a 20Mhz MCS7 65Mbps link rate as it can't do Auto 20Mhz/40Mhz switching. It allows compatibility with most smart phones and tablets. It caps my throughput at about 45Mbps but that works out kind of nice because it leaves a 10Mbps buffer for the wired streaming appliances and NAS (downloads). And right now I'm mostly only using WiFi for internet access or streaming multimedia at rates generally below 30Mbps. When running at 40Mhz 150Mbps link rate I get 100Mbps throughput when transferring large files from my NAS via windows file sharing (SMB).

Your AP looks like it has plenty of signal vs noise floor or other APs, so there shouldn't issues. Unless one of the neighboring APs also uses 40Mhz interval and stomps on your signal I don't think it will be an issue. Or a nearby phone, microwave, etc (standard disclaimer). I'm guessing the AP itself is slowing you down (CPU, whatever). When running a wired test you saw 61Mbps down and asked if a gigabit network interface vs a 100Mbps would make a difference. Most likely not in this case. If you are only using Internet via WiFi, and 70Mbps is faster than your WiFi is capable then you're probably right- you can lower your Internet connection speed and save money.

As for the rest, I'm old school I.T. and generally prefer dedicated devices. Hence why I have a separate firewall/router, switch, AP and NAS. Multi-role devices can most definitely work, you just have to make sure there are no compromises made to usability and performance. At least your personal definition of performance and usability. ;-) And how much $ vs performance you're will to spend.

When it comes to the video stuff, I don't want to get into to much more out of respect of the thread and sub-forum we are posting in. The short version is multimedia obtained from the wild is commonly poorly encoded. Profiles don't necessarily equal the actual video content, there's no reason I know of to encode anything at a profile above 4.1 for consumer level video/audio. You generally have to know the encoding parameters, do a bit rate scan of the media, make sure the file was properly muxed, ensure header compression isn't an issue on the media playback device etc. That's why it's generally better to use your own media (raw rips, no transcoding or compression) or encode your own files using something like Handbrake. Dedicated hardware players like TV or set top boxes generally can only play media that has been encoded to a known standard (profiles). Stray from the standard or get media poorly encoded and commonly hardware playback devices can barf. Software decoders that use a general purpose CPU don't usually have this problem *but* the trade off is you usually need a faster CPU vs dedicated hardware.

 

[ml70]

My home setup is physically quite similar to yours, what I have is an Asus AC66 with two WD 2TB 2.5" hdd's connected to it. I've reripped my bluerays to h.264 with 10-20 Mbps variable bitrate (10-12 GB for an average movie) and use 2.4GHz channel for streaming to tv only, as our 2.4 is very congested. All other devices use 5 GHz.

Works perfectly and the router can download torrents with Download Master/Transmission while watching movies but depending on effective internet speed just 1-3 at a time, the single core cpu is just too slow for more. AC66 is an old router today and limited to usb 2, you might have better luck with AC68 or AC87 with their usb 3 support and dual core cpu's.

 

[bsod]

Thanks guys, believe it or not I haven't made my purchase yet. I think though I am going to buy a r7000. It is a tough decision because the support for custom firmware for the ac68 is better with merlin and 2.4ghz performance is better. But from my experience with my n16 I prefer tomato firmware and shibby has now released an r7000 branch! That and the superior AC/USB performance swayed me.

I have been looking at the single drive nas' from qnap and synology. They look excellent. But I'll try this path first and if I don't like how much I can throw at it, I can buy a nas and/or return the router depending on cost.

I did debate getting an ac1750 router or waiting for the archer c8 but I don't want to wait much longer and don't really think I can rely on tp link for a good experience. Not to mention being locked to only ddrwrt or openwrt. Also, after reading about the better AC performance and the small price increase for an AC1900 it swayed me.

I want to thank you guys for your help. This site is an incredible source of info, not only because of the excellent reviews, but the user base too. So thank you all!

 

[bsod]

Well, my R7000 arrived the day before yesterday. Together with my PCIE AC68. Delightful performance and I'm now able to stream both on the AC and N bands, also whilst downloading which is what I wanted.

Stock firmware the router seems by far the fastest. Constant link at 1300 in the bedroom.

First of all i tried using shibby's tomato USB release, but it was complicated and a lot went wrong. Firstly the router wasn't able to reboot/reset to factory settings without a power cycle and secondly, I had problems with the wireless AC not appearing on my desktop - Shibby himself said it only worked with Singapore selected, but either singapores channels werent compatible here in the UK, or the firmware was broken for me. When i did get it working (sometimes) even though 80mhz was selected, I was only receiving 20mhz 5ghz signal. I think the open source wireless driver isn't up to scratch compared to the licensed one on stock/dd wrt I may go back to tomato in the future, but this was a complicated and not a very nice experience! Still, I can't thank shibby enough for making the firmware available.

I then moved to DD-WRT and found it to be rock solid (apart from a strange issue where I can't seem to use channel 64 with my PCIE AC68). Channel 48 works and you do have to select the specific channel in the interface. Since Auto doesn't work at all.

A bit of a steep learning curve for me, but with my limited experience, high computer literacy and web searching skills, I managed to format my external HDD with a swap partition and a data partition for tranmsission downloads and media streaming/samba shares. Most of the info is available on the web, so theres not really any need to ask for help.

What can I say? It works flawlessly. 168mb reads and 100mb writes from my bedroom computer to the disk drive whilst also downloading multiple torrents on transmission. 50mbps test videos playing without a glitch on both bands and low pings whilst gaming. Jeez, the router isn't even using 70% of its total memory and CPU usage is low.

Could I ask for more? It would be greedy. But if something needs improving it would be getting the wireless range and transfer speeds up to stock levels. Somehow it doesn't perform quite as well. But still, it doesn't really matter. My link rate is usually at 1300mbps, sometimes goes as low as 875mb, but thats it. Full signal strength around the bungalow on both bands, you can't really argue with that!

For those in need of long range without a wireless repeater/bridge/access point I don't think the r7000 would be suited, speeds do drop a long way away. But for speed in an average/small sized property its brilliant. Also, I am sure most people wouldn't bother with custom firmware, so probably they would find range and speed slightly better even in a larger house.

I have to say this is probably the best £150 (£210 incl PCIE AC68) I have spent. I look forward to tweaking with DD-WRT and hopefully using more features such as adblocking. (Thanks Kong)!

I am begining to wonder how much of advantage a NAS would be to me, considering I am only a single user and don't really require the security of an advance/integrated solution.

I can now sleep safely at night knowing that the next day I won't suffer any random reboots or problems..touch wood (it is still early days)!

Thanks for everyone for helping me make my decision. I hope this thread can help others. I can't stress how much of a excelent place smallnetbuilder is!

 

[fistv]

To get in at the tail end of this, you say the house is a bungalow, can you get access or does it have a crawl space under it or is it built on slab. If crawl space you could always just invest a couple of hours and pull some cable down there from the devices to the router. Just a thought. If it's on a slab never mind.