WRT1900AC(S?) vs R7000

[xtremesniper]

I'd focus on whichever unit meets your wireless needs the most, and leave it largely at that. You can always offload routing and packet handling to a proper dedicated box to get the kind of features and reliability you desire in that department. I know that's not what you want to hear because everyone wants the silver-bullet to handle all services, but if it were me, I'd never leave the core stability of my network up to the latest consumer wifi box... for all the reasons we've hashed out so many times here.

And you don't have to get fancy/expensive right away, either; it could be something as simple as a $50 mass-market box running Tomato, DD-WRT, etc., which isn't too bad considering what the higher-end all-in-ones are costing. Just some food for thought there.

I would normally agree, but I think at the very least what I'm trying to do is just get an understanding of which high-end consumer router actually lives up to its promises and go from there.

Linksys' v1, v2, ACS nonsense is something they've been doing since the 54G days and frankly should not be tolerated. It alone makes me want to not buy their products because I feel like they are misleading me. I'm not inclined to pay ~$275 for a router that has been on the market for ages and has a 50/50 chance of running even older hardware. At least the R7000 is the R7000, no matter what. And I have a higher level of respect for them just for that alone.

I appreciate that I can have a separation of concerns but I'm confident that any router that has decent range will do fine for my usage. I'm just trying to do some digging to find out more about these two routers because I find that the information available online (like the SNB reviews) are old and outdated despite the 1900 series to still be the top recommended pick.

The R7000 is the test device that SNB uses to test other AP's...

So is that some sort of implied bias? I don't understand...

As an update, I've set up the R7000 with the latest stock firmware (actually came pre-installed, to my surprise) and here are my initial thoughts:

- Signal strength in my usual spot (two floors directly above the router) is slightly stronger for both 5 and 2.4 GHz
- Tx rate for 5 GHz is currently 351 Mbps (RSSI -60 dBm)
- Tx rate for 2.4 GHz is 176-195 Mbps (RSSI -60 dBm) although it seems to be connecting on AC, not N

Overall that's an improvement over the Hitron, but I have to still go across the house and check the signals over there where it's traditionally much lower. Will report back.

 

[htismaqe]

*sigh* This makes me wonder why SNB ranks the R7000 at the top of pretty much every metric in the Router Ranker. Seems like this stuff should be re-tested once in a while with updated firmware, no?

Well to be fair, he can't test every possible combination of hardware, software, and environment.

 

[xtremesniper]

Well to be fair, he can't test every possible combination of hardware, software, and environment.

Definitely, but for example if in the review there are some significant or concerning anomalies that could be sorted out with firmware updates, wouldn't it make sense to do a re-review maybe 6 months down the line? The initial reviews of these 1900AC routers are so old now and the firmware has changed a lot since then.

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Anyway, I tested the signal strength and ran some speed tests around the house and have concluded that all this stuff fluctuates so often that measuring any of it meaningfully is almost a crapshoot without a hardcore setup.

But, I did find improvements over the Hitron. I experimented with the Implicit Beamforming and Airtime Fairness settings and decided to leave them on. I also played with the 2.4 GHz channel and found that, despite inconsistencies with Tx Rate and speed tests run multiple times, I'm leaving it at channel 10 for now. I don't know much about 5 GHz channels so I left it at the default channel 153.

The RSSI fluctuates between -50 and -75 dBm depending on where I am, but I didn't see anything better than that. On the other side of the house, most of the Tx Rate was between 55 and 175 Mbps on both 2.4 and 5 GHz depending on where I was.

I'm not sure how or why a speed test in the same spot ran multiple times can produce different results, but for now I'll leave the settings alone and see what happens.

 

[xtremesniper]

So, just as an update to the thread:

I'm still using the R7000 and I'm still content with the performance and range. Since I am content, I'm not going to bother going through the hassle of finding the "correct" WRT version and testing the differences. I feel like the differences will be too little to be noticeable anyway.

So thanks for all the help everyone. The R7000 seems to be what I needed to give my home network a boost.

Similarly, I recommended the R7000 to my cousin who was having similar range and speed issues as me and he has been raving about how much better his network is with the new router. So overall, it seems to be a hit. It's just a shame that Linksys had to go and screw themselves up with their pathetic versioning convention.