Who makes a router that actually works as advertised?

[James S.]

So I'm a little bit frustrated, and looking for advice. Previously I had an Asus RT-N66U, and it was horribly unreliable. Once you started pushing large amounts of data, the 5GHz band would freeze up and you couldn't connect to it until you rebooted the router.

Then recently I got upgraded to 300Mbps on Time Warner, and needed to buy a newer modem to be compatible with the new service. I took this opportunity to buy a Netgear C7000, since it seemed like a good combo modem/router unit. People seemed to love the R7000, so I thought my experience with the C7000 might be similar. Well, yeah it's yet another pile of junk. It randomly will just drop packets for 30-60sec at a time, effectively making my internet unavailable. Basically a few times a day this will cause my work VPN and work VoIP calls to drop, which is massively bad.

So my question is this... What's a good AC dual-band router to get that actually delivers on everything that's promised? Something that doesn't have buggy firmware, or drop packets, or freeze up. About the only solidly reviewed product I see is the Apple Airport Extreme, so I'm tempted to just buy one of those. I know it's far from being the best, but it apparently just works, and works well.

Needless to say this is frustrating being someone who worked at Cisco (not Linksys/consumer) for a decade, where we'd have customers beating down our door if we dropped a single packet, let alone 60 seconds worth.

Thanks!

 

[L&LD]

You're asking a lot from your (consumer) routers, it seems.

The latest seem to give the best experience yet (RT-AC3100, RT-AC5300, RT-AC88U), but will still need testing in your environment to see if your network loads and expectations can be met with one of those.

The apple ae is something I dropped years ago for an RT-N66U and never looked back. Lack of performance (even wired), configurability and security updates to the firmware is not what I would classify as a 'solid' product. The lack of regular development and at least security updates on the Netgear products is also an issue that I'm relieved of after donating my WNDR-3700 to less demanding users than myself at that time.

What firmware were your running on the RT-N66U? Did you ever reset it to factory defaults and do a minimal and manual install?

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/no...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573


With any supported Asus router, I would recommend the RMerlin firmware or the forks thereof (john9527's and hggomes).

If you were running with stock Asus firmware (and hadn't updated it as needed, with a reset), I would not be surprised that you are having issues.

 

[James S.]

You're asking a lot from your (consumer) routers, it seems.

The latest seem to give the best experience yet (RT-AC3100, RT-AC5300, RT-AC88U), but will still need testing in your environment to see if your network loads and expectations can be met with one of those.

The apple ae is something I dropped years ago for an RT-N66U and never looked back. Lack of performance (even wired), configurability and security updates to the firmware is not what I would classify as a 'solid' product. The lack of regular development and at least security updates on the Netgear products is also an issue that I'm relieved of after donating my WNDR-3700 to less demanding users than myself at that time.

What firmware were your running on the RT-N66U? Did you ever reset it to factory defaults and do a minimal and manual install?

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/no...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573


With any supported Asus router, I would recommend the RMerlin firmware or the forks thereof (john9527's and hggomes).

If you were running with stock Asus firmware (and hadn't updated it as needed, with a reset), I would not be surprised that you are having issues.

In all honestly I don't believe it's asking "a lot" for a consumer-class router to be able to maintain a VoIP call, or a low-bandwidth VPN tunnel, or not to crash when I drag a file to my Synology. Those seem like pretty simple tasks, and a product that can't support them is just half baked IMO.

It's been awhile since I had the N66U but I did try the Merlin firmware, and all sorts of official firmware versions. Feature wise and performance wise it was always great, but 5GHz always froze. :/ And you shouldn't have to hack a product to make it achieve basic functionality.

 

[coxhaus]

If you worked for Cisco what about Cisco products. You seem to need a small business kind of setup. I have TWC 300 megabit connection using a Cisco RV320 router and a Cisco SG300-28 layer 3 switch in L3 mode. I have created an isolated VLAN for the router and it seems to work well. I am getting 358 down and 24.79 up. I am not running what you are so I don't know if it would with everything. I know the switch has voice support built in and QOS in the switch. I run 3 older Cisco WAP321 on 5 GHz using one point setup for roaming. I have friends which have used internet phones. Most of them have issues. TWC offers their VOIP for $10 bucks extra. If you are using it for business it might well be worth it for $10. I have it and it works well maybe not quit as well as AT&T but it is only $10.

Maybe just move your VOIP off your current router and get TWC VOIP.

 

[James S.]

No...a small business setup is not what I need. When I say VoIP, I don't mean anything complicated and integrated with the router. I just mean plugging in a SIP phone or ATA, and letting it register with Callcentric or one of the many DIY VoIP providers. I just need a router that doesn't drop packets in large quantities, even when idle.

I have probably $75k worth of ISRs and access points here at the house for lab work, but I'm done with using that stuff for running my home. When I first bought the house I had a full Cisco VoIP deployment with touch screen IP phones in each room, and a couple of WiFi phones. Then I realized it was more of a pain in the butt than it was worth. I just want something I can plug in and get on the net with now, haha.

 

[L&LD]

In all honestly I don't believe it's asking "a lot" for a consumer-class router to be able to maintain a VoIP call, or a low-bandwidth VPN tunnel, or not to crash when I drag a file to my Synology. Those seem like pretty simple tasks, and a product that can't support them is just half baked IMO.

It's been awhile since I had the N66U but I did try the Merlin firmware, and all sorts of official firmware versions. Feature wise and performance wise it was always great, but 5GHz always froze. :/ And you shouldn't have to hack a product to make it achieve basic functionality.

Didn't answer if you had performed a proper reset to factory defaults.

But, it also seems like the issues may have been with your setup or devices too. No issues with the RT-N66U with any RMerlin firmware and proper reset for years now.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Has to be something in your set up the N66 is a rock solid performer on the 5 ghz band.

 

[System Error Message]

you could always go with non consumer and just use the wifi router as a wifi AP. Its what i did and x86 based routers or even mikrotik never drop packets unless the CPU is overloaded or if you tell it to. Some of the more recent routers seem nice but the price compared to what you can achieve by building your own it may be better to spend more effort in building and configuring your router than getting a consumer one.

 

[RMerlin]

If different routers both show issues on the 5 GHz band, then I would start looking at a root cause in your environment rather than in the routers themselves. 5 GHz is working flawlessly for me, I even frequently stream 2+ hours videos between my laptop (on the 5 GHz band) and my Chromecast, without a single hiccup.

If you have an Intel NIC in your affected client, start by looking there. Some of the NIC's settings in Device Manager can create problems if not properly configured (there was one or two of those settings that I had to change over time to stabilize performance).

 

[System Error Message]

RMerlin has a point there, see if it is a problem for other clients. Some settings on the router itself i noticed makes wifi freeze such as power savings as not all clients properly support the features.

 

[stevech]

So I'm a little bit frustrated, and looking for advice. Previously I had an Asus RT-N66U, and it was horribly unreliable. Once you started pushing large amounts of data, the 5GHz band would freeze up and you couldn't connect to it until you rebooted the router.

Thanks!

I have "just" 110/12Mbps on Time Warner cable. I lease their Arris modem (no fingerpointing) and use, currently, a low cost ASUS RT-N56 WiFi router, dual band. I get ISP's speed on my Samsung S6 phone one room away on 5GHz. And on my desktop using wired. That WiFi router has never hung up. Just runs. No need for more than stock firmware.