WRT1900AC vs. RT-AC68U vs. R7000

[FattysGoneWild]

Sounds like you have a bad unit. As a few others. Mine is rock solid. Do what ever I want with in the gui for however long. Many devices with a 100mb/5mb cable connection. Complete work horse. Using both bands and all 4 wired ports in use as well. Uptime rock solid as well. Recently had a isp problem and that was resolved. Current up time is 18 days. Gone way beyond that before. I don't get the whole router fetish. I see others owning 2-3 of the top ones out as well. I guess for bragging rights and money to burn on something. Also gotta love the "testers" that abuse the return policy. I am sure many are on here.

I've also found that the WRT1900AC is unstable. I really can't stand using hardware that I can't do particular things with, like opening the admin GUI and changing a setting, or using wireless-AC. Although some people seem to do fine with them, mine is collecting dust while my R7000 just keeps on working.

Hoping that Linksys/Belkin will fix these problems in their next firmware release. Their last firmware release didn't seem to fix much.

 

[htismaqe]

Okay, different experience here, that's for sure. Glad that the WRT1900AC is working so well for you, wish it did that well here. I find the R7000 to be stable here, and have a choice of stock, dd-wrt, and tomato firmware. Both stock and dd-wrt firmware are very stable for me, tomato is a work in progress *smile*. R7000 was up for a month when I was on vacation and others were using my house, using dd-wrt firmware, and a couple of weeks more recently on the latest stock firmware. In both cases, I took the firmware down to try another version, not because of problems.

The WRT1900AC has under-performed the R7000 every time I've spent a few days with it. That's life.

What's the latest stock firmware on the R7000? I wonder if they finally fixed the packet forwarding issues between wired and wireless.

Of course, there's also the fact that large file transfers using AFP don't work either and I'm pretty sure they'll never fix that since they said they can't reproduce the issue.

 

[RogerSC]

What's the latest stock firmware on the R7000? I wonder if they finally fixed the packet forwarding issues between wired and wireless.

Of course, there's also the fact that large file transfers using AFP don't work either and I'm pretty sure they'll never fix that since they said they can't reproduce the issue.

I've had no issues between wireless and wired clients here.

Don't know about AFP, however Netgear spent a long time reproducing the issue that I had with Comcast IPv6 with the stock firmware as well. The latest stock firmware finally fully fixes it...took them 9 or 10 months to get there, but they finally did. Pretty happy with stock firmware at this point, although I miss having access to a real log without having to go to a debug version. On the other hand, with no problems currently, don't miss it a whole lot *smile*. If I start to have problems due to using a new feature or something, I can move to dd-wrt or tomato firmware.

Along these lines, at this point I'm pretty sure that that I'd not be interested in a router that won't have third-party firmware available...dd-wrt saved me a lot of pain early on with the R7000. The mfgr's seem to be good at producing hardware, but it can take them a long time to fix specific problems. Meanwhile, while the mfgr is trying to figure out how to reproduce and fix the router's problems, one still needs to have a router...which is where the third-party firmware can really contribute.

 

[htismaqe]

I've had no issues between wireless and wired clients here.

Don't know about AFP, however Netgear spent a long time reproducing the issue that I had with Comcast IPv6 with the stock firmware as well. The latest stock firmware finally fully fixes it...took them 9 or 10 months to get there, but they finally did. Pretty happy with stock firmware at this point, although I miss having access to a real log without having to go to a debug version. On the other hand, with no problems currently, don't miss it a whole lot *smile*. If I start to have problems due to using a new feature or something, I can move to dd-wrt or tomato firmware.

Along these lines, at this point I'm pretty sure that that I'd not be interested in a router that won't have third-party firmware available...dd-wrt saved me a lot of pain early on with the R7000. The mfg's seem to be good at producing hardware, but it can take them a long time to fix specific problems. Meanwhile, you still need a router *smile*.

No, I don't need a router. I have a fully functional WRT1900AC.

 

[Thoroughbred]

Can I throw the EA6900 into the pot guys?
WRT1900AC a little out of my price range would love one though.....
EA6900 is about £100 cheaper than the WRT1900AC.

I was running DD-WRT on the 54GL mainly to get more ports that I could open.
I also have my BB going into a Linksys modem then into the 54GL.
It wasn't straight forward,there was quite a bit of setting up to do which may also have been another reason for DD-WRT.

Mostly using hard wire,just have 2 phones and a wii nothing major going on for wifi,I do have an AC capable phone though.

 

[htismaqe]

Can I throw the EA6900 into the pot guys?
WRT1900AC a little out of my price range would love one though.....
EA6900 is about £100 cheaper than the WRT1900AC.

I was running DD-WRT on the 54GL mainly to get more ports that I could open.
I also have my BB going into a Linksys modem then into the 54GL.
It wasn't straight forward,there was quite a bit of setting up to do which may also have been another reason for DD-WRT.

Mostly using hard wire,just have 2 phones and a wii nothing major going on for wifi,I do have an AC capable phone though.

I would still be using the EA6900 if not for 3 things:

1. I need 5Ghz performance in my office. The WRT1900AC gives me that, as did the R7000 and AC68U. The 5Ghz band on the EA6900 just didn't have the range of the other 3 - I was on the very edge and could only get 1/3 the throughput I'm getting now. FWIW though, I have a pretty big house so if you don't need extreme coverage, this might not worry you.
2. The EA6900 had to have feet added to it and a small fan placed on it because it got dangerously hot. I actually measured temps on the outside top of the case that were outside of the safe operating temps stated in the tech specs.
3. The antennas weren't very adjustable. If I tried to turn them clockwise, they would unscrew and fall off. In order to prevent this, I had to always turn them counterclockwise, which ultimately led to overtightening and a worry they were going to snap right off.

 

[Thoroughbred]

I would still be using the EA6900 if not for 3 things:

1. I need 5Ghz performance in my office. The WRT1900AC gives me that, as did the R7000 and AC68U. The 5Ghz band on the EA6900 just didn't have the range of the other 3 - I was on the very edge and could only get 1/3 the throughput I'm getting now. FWIW though, I have a pretty big house so if you don't need extreme coverage, this might not worry you.
2. The EA6900 had to have feet added to it and a small fan placed on it because it got dangerously hot. I actually measured temps on the outside top of the case that were outside of the safe operating temps stated in the tech specs.
3. The antennas weren't very adjustable. If I tried to turn them clockwise, they would unscrew and fall off. In order to prevent this, I had to always turn them counterclockwise, which ultimately led to overtightening and a worry they were going to snap right off.

#1 should be ok
#2#3 don't like the sound of them

Stock FW ok?

 

[htismaqe]

Stock FW ok?

The stock firmware on the EA6900 is what led me to purchasing the WRT1900AC.

It lacks a lot of advanced features, namely VPN support, but I like it because it's simple and straightforward. Pretty stable now too...

 

[CZKid]

I'm a little late to this thread (and this my first post), but I’ve been reading the informed commentary here for a couple years, but this is my first post. Here’s my situation and a couple questions:

My ISP provides 940Mbps symmetric (up/down) via fiber to my house, and their service is rock-solid. I have a Netgear R7000 (ISP-provided, I’ve cycled through three so far) that exhibits an annoying problem after 30-48 hours of use after a reboot/ power-up. Regardless of the stock firmware revision flashed into the R7000, after 30-48 hours of use, the data throughput (WAN to LAN, measured using the Ookla speed tool provided by my ISP, tuned for 1Gbit service) shows that my down/up speed goes from 896/927 Mbps down to 312/824 Mbps. When this occurs, I measure the rate from the OLT (optical line terminator) and I have a solid 940/940 Mbps down/up. The fix? Reboot/power-cycle the R7000, the data rate goes back to 896/927 Mbps, and all is well for another 30-48 hours. Lather, rinse, repeat; this behavior becomes rather tiresome after a while.

My question is this: Are there other folks here in the forum that have seen wired data throughput slowdown in the R7000 over time, or something similar?

Additional details: My R7000 is largely used to provide wired routing to a gigabit switch, which feeds the rest of the house via CAT5e cable. On the WAN port I have used both DHCP and static IP; I’m currently using a static IP due to a DHCP issue in the OLT. The wireless portion of the router is used to feed 5 old Airport Expresses which only support WPA/TKIP on 2.4GHz, and the 5GHz radio is set up with WPA2/AES for my iPad. I have disabled QoS, uPNP, don’t have any open ports, don’t use DMZ, no attached USB storage; all told, a very straight-forward system set-up. The wired devices on the network are a mix of 1000Base-T and 100Base-T, the usual stuff: computers, Roku boxes, TV, VOIP adapter, etc. (15 total).

My gigabit service was installed around 01Mar14, and I noticed this slowdown behavior within 2-3 days. In the intervening six months I have tried every version of the stock firmware publicly available, and after getting promoted to Level 2 tech support at Netgear, a few beta releases; all have failed to address this fundamental wired routing data slowdown problem. I kept detailed logs of data rates, firmware updates, and time to fail, and have forwarded these to Netgear, but they can’t/won’t replicate the failure, and ask me to run WireShark and generate more logs for them.

There is a bright side to all this: I have become an Asus fanboi. An engineer at my ISP, after looking at my logs and having a couple long discussions (I’m a retired engineer from the semiconductor industry, and we had some engineering experiences in common), loaned me an RT-AC68R, and that has been a revelation. Despite having a 200MHz slower routing core (BCM4708 vs BCM4709), the RT-AC68R provides better data throughput (929 Mbps down/940 Mbps up), and has been brutally reliable. As I said before, I don’t focus on wireless, but on wired routing, so I have been less sensitive to wireless throughput issues. I run on the Asus router when I’m not trying out new firmware on the R7000.

You might ask, “Why are you still fooling around with Netgear when you have a working Asus solution?” I thought I would stick with the problem until my warranty period expired, or Netgear L2 support folks gave up. I think the R7000 could be a dandy router (the BCM4709 certainly has the chops) if it just had decent firmware. Having gone through three R7000s, it’s not a single-unit hardware issue. I think this also points out that there aren’t many folks in Netgear’s user community that are routing gigabit data, or they would have fixed this by now. Also, if I was running under 300Mbps down/up, I would never have seen this issue pop up. At the end of the day, I can return the R7000 to my ISP and save the $5 a month rental fee, and in the mean time I have a relatively low cost toy to play with. I'm easily amused by these things.

With regards to the wired slow-down problem, I suspect there is an internal resource (register or software queue) that is not getting reset/cleared properly, and it takes 30-48 hours for it to fill up or get stuck, and that jams the little CTF packet accelerator state machine, dropping the data rate. When the code to drive the BCM4708/BCM4709 got written, the Asus guys got it right, and the Netgear guys didn’t. This really makes me wonder about the state of router testing at Netgear; you would think the high-end product would be throughly wrung out prior to shipping, at least when it comes to a basic function like wired routing. I have to say, this has really been an educational experience! Engineering truism: You don’t learn anything when things work correctly.

BTW, if anyone knows where I can find the detailed User’s Manual for the BCM4708/4709, please let me know. It looks like this is an NDA item from Broadcom, as all I have been able to find via Google is a block diagram and some marketing material. I’d like to see what’s inside the SOC, and get some idea about how it works.

That's my $0.02 worth on the R7000 vs. RT-AC68R opinion-fest. Thanks to all for any insight they can shed on this somewhat obscure and vexing problem.

 

[RogerSC]

CZKid,

You might keep an eye on dd-wrt firmware for the R7000, since HW NAT ddtb (dd-wrt turbo boost, their re-implementation of CTF/hardware acceleration) has been added to it. You can read varying results with it in the dd-wrt forum. Kong is now on a sabbatical of some kind, so he most likely isn't working on it at the moment, but over a period of time I hope to see this working well. Since my download speed (28.8Mbps *smile*) doesn't even start to engage it, this is all academic for me *smile*.

Just saw a note in the source control logs for dd-wrt build 24960 that ddtb has been "removed for now until it works", could be related to Kong's absence, so not clear when this will reach maturity *smile*.

We'll see, I guess.

 

[HanSabaacSolo]

NightHawk Isn't Improving My Home Network Snafu

Hey all,

So, in a short synopsis, I had a 4th Gen Airport Express for many years (purchased at initial release). Here lately, the router has been crapping out on me, so I decided to make the plunge and future-proof with the Nighthawk. After going through the initial setup, then going a bit deeper with some more technical tweaks, I am not seeing much of an improvement...

I have our iPhone 5's connected to the 5GHz band, as well as two Mac Pro's. As far as the 2.4 band is concerned, I have the PS3, Vita and PS4 connected.

We have 60 Mbps with Charter Spectrum however I am only getting speeds of 14 Mbps on the consoles, and around 30 Mbps on the Mac Pro's and iPhones.

Any advice would be excellent because I feel like I didn't necessarily need to spring for the Nighthawk.

 

[RogerSC]

Sounds like you have a bad unit. As a few others. Mine is rock solid. Do what ever I want with in the gui for however long. Many devices with a 100mb/5mb cable connection. Complete work horse. Using both bands and all 4 wired ports in use as well. Uptime rock solid as well. Recently had a isp problem and that was resolved. Current up time is 18 days. Gone way beyond that before. I don't get the whole router fetish. I see others owning 2-3 of the top ones out as well. I guess for bragging rights and money to burn on something. Also gotta love the "testers" that abuse the return policy. I am sure many are on here.

Interesting reaction *smile*. If a router doesn't work as well as others do in my environment, I must have a bad unit. I don't think so, I was experiencing the same thing as many other people that posted about. If there are that many bad WRT1900AC's out there, Linksys must have some really interesting quality control problems.

Glad the WRT1900AC is working so well for you, though. Enjoy it! The R7000 is performing really well here, totally stable also. I hesitate to repeat this because I know who I'm going to hear from *smile*, but my R7000 has always outperformed the WRT1900AC that I have, and neither is a "bad unit" *smile*.

 

[FattysGoneWild]

Maybe they did have some QC issues and more got through that should not have. I don't get it. If you was having that many problems initially like others. Why would you not take it back for another? You have more happy people with it then disgruntled. Or you would see it all over the internet and Linksys would practically have to offer a recall. I was aware of the issues and read about them. I still pulled the trigger regardless. At worst I take it back for another and if that did not work out. Then I would get a refund. The chances though getting 2 bad units in a row. Man you would have to have extremely bad luck. The glowing reviews far out weigh the bad ones.

 

[Christopher]

... Also gotta love the "testers" that abuse the return policy. I am sure many are on here.

Abuse? Abuse would be using the box from one product to return a different older version because you want to upgrade. Finding out that a product does not live up to your expectations, then returning it to try another is not exactly "abuse":

I'm about to return the second router I've bought this week. The first one I returned because the guy at MicroCenter told me the router was supported by DD-WRT, but it's not. The second router I'll return tonight or tomorrow is because the product web page claims it has QOS, but, when I looked at the web interface I couldn't find QOS settings, so I emailed TP-Link tech support and they reply "I am sorry TL-WDR4300 is no QoS function. We only have bandwidth control."

I want a router that: 1) doesn't drop connections. 2) doesn't have to be power cycled frequently (which to me would be more than say, a couple times a year) 3) gives me good range with my 2.4 Ghz devices but also has reliable 5 Ghz (by good range I mean I would like a more reliable connection for the PC in my detached garage) 4) performs well as a NAS - if I need to access a file while I am out of the house I would like to know that I don't have to go back home to unplug/replug the drive to "wake it up". 5) runs cool 6) QOS that lets me set it up so that I can minimize lag for my FPS games while still giving other users decent bandwidth.

Bonus features: 1) good DD-WRT type open source alternative firmware available 2) no serious security holes (that's probably wishful thinking, dunno).

I thought I had narrowed it down to either the Netgear R7000 or the Linksys WRT1900AC so I came to read this thread. I think this thread has made the choice less clear, rather than more clear. So, I will go off in search of more recent discussions comparing them?

 

[sm00thpapa]

Stay away from the WRT1900AC nothing but problems for me. Go with the RT-AC68P from best buy.

 

[Christopher]

Stay away from the WRT1900AC nothing but problems for me. Go with the RT-AC68P from best buy.

But this is disappointing for the Asus RT-A68P vs Netgear R7000:

I don't even care about "AC" wireless, just good "N" support, but, I do want my router to replace my old, and very slow NAS.

 

[L&LD]

A router with an external USB or eSATA drive attached is far from a NAS.

A newer AC1200 or higher class router gives the best WiFi performance even with older N Class clients. A true NAS (QNAP or Synology) will offer performance and features many times better than any router can. Especially true for multi-user environments or high demand single user workloads.

If by NAS you simply mean some type of storage directly attached to the router, you're using the wrong terms. In that case all such offerings are essentially at USB 2.0 levels and lower (especially for smaller files). And the only benefit is that you don't need the USB stick or drive nearby to share the files it contains when on that network.

A NAS on the other hand is a file server / computer first and foremost. With additional capabilities added as the performance level of the hardware platform it is based on increases.

The current router attached drive you're using now may be much slower than the R7000 on the chart you show. But attaching it to the R7000 or an even higher performing drive will not turn your drive into a NAS.

Small point to you perhaps, but still wanted to make this distinction.

 

[Christopher]

A router with an external USB or eSATA drive attached is far from a NAS.

A newer AC1200 or higher class router gives the best WiFi performance even with older N Class clients. A true NAS (QNAP or Synology) will offer performance and features many times better than any router can. Especially true for multi-user environments or high demand single user workloads.

If by NAS you simply mean some type of storage directly attached to the router, you're using the wrong terms. In that case all such offerings are essentially at USB 2.0 levels and lower (especially for smaller files). And the only benefit is that you don't need the USB stick or drive nearby to share the files it contains when on that network.

A NAS on the other hand is a file server / computer first and foremost. With additional capabilities added as the performance level of the hardware platform it is based on increases.

The current router attached drive you're using now may be much slower than the R7000 on the chart you show. But attaching it to the R7000 or an even higher performing drive will not turn your drive into a NAS.

NAS = Network Attached Storage.

I'm NOT interested in those routers which offer only "USB 2.0 levels" - I'm trying to narrow my choices to those which have greater than USB 2.0 transfer speeds through either a USB 3.0 or eSATA port.

I do have an "actual NAS" (according to your definition) - a purpose built small rectangular miniature PC running the manufacturer's custom Linux based firmware, with multiple hot swappable 3.5" SATA drive bays. It has a pair of 2 TB SATA drives which I have configured to be mirrored (RAID 1) through the NAS' web GUI interface.

It's been running for a couple years now without any crashes - the only times I've needed to restart it are when I update the firmware. I've had one drive fail, which I replaced with an identical spare I had on hand, it re-built the mirror and is still running 100% uptime with a new identical spare drive standing by. I keep it in my basement in the hopes that it is least likely to be affected there in case of a fire, home invasion, etc.

But, the Netgear R7000's performance as a NAS is at least 4x faster than my NAS.

I do not want to spend hundreds of dollars to purchase a new NAS, particularly when I am considering routers with that function integrated. The only thing missing from the Netgear is the multi-drive bay. That is actually an option with the Linksys WRT AC1900 So, if I added some type of mirrored hard drive to the Netgear, or if I purchased the Linksys and the drive bay accessory, I would actually have a BETTER NAS than my curent "actual" NAS.

That is, if I can find a router which doesn't have to be rebooted periodically due to some glitch where it starts slowing down, or dropping WiFi connections. So far, it seems that ALL of the WiFi routers I've tried over the past decade or so have required being rebooted/power cycled once in a while - not sure if it's because of Chinese hackers, or just flawed hardware/software.

 

[L&LD]

Network attached storage is not router attached storage. No matter how you try to define it.

As I already mentioned, with small files (large files transfers are not crippled to the same degree) there is no solution effectively faster than at USB 2.0 levels currently available on any consumer / prosumer router than I know of today.

If you are achieving less than 7MB/s reading small files on your current hardware... how is this connected? USB? This is not a NAS.

Neither is hooking up an external drive to a router a NAS.

You can keep thinking you have one, but join the rest here and call it what it really is.

Network Attached Storage is something else than what you're defining.

And the performance of even the R7000 is nowhere close to the levels of even an inexpensive midrange NAS can sustain. By midrange, I am looking at 4 Bay devices and higher.

NAS = Network Attached Storage.

I'm NOT interested in those routers which offer only "USB 2.0 levels" - I'm trying to narrow my choices to those which have greater than USB 2.0 transfer speeds through either a USB 3.0 or eSATA port.

I do have an "actual NAS" (according to your definition) - a purpose built small rectangular miniature PC running the manufacturer's custom Linux based firmware, with multiple hot swappable 3.5" SATA drive bays. It has a pair of 2 TB SATA drives which I have configured to be mirrored (RAID 1) through the NAS' web GUI interface.

It's been running for a couple years now without any crashes - the only times I've needed to restart it are when I update the firmware. I've had one drive fail, which I replaced with an identical spare I had on hand, it re-built the mirror and is still running 100% uptime with a new identical spare drive standing by. I keep it in my basement in the hopes that it is least likely to be affected there in case of a fire, home invasion, etc.

But, the Netgear R7000's performance as a NAS is at least 4x faster than my NAS.

I do not want to spend hundreds of dollars to purchase a new NAS, particularly when I am considering routers with that function integrated. The only thing missing from the Netgear is the multi-drive bay. That is actually an option with the Linksys WRT AC1900 So, if I added some type of mirrored hard drive to the Netgear, or if I purchased the Linksys and the drive bay accessory, I would actually have a BETTER NAS than my curent "actual" NAS.

That is, if I can find a router which doesn't have to be rebooted periodically due to some glitch where it starts slowing down, or dropping WiFi connections. So far, it seems that ALL of the WiFi routers I've tried over the past decade or so have required being rebooted/power cycled once in a while - not sure if it's because of Chinese hackers, or just flawed hardware/software.

 

[RogerSC]

I agree that if you want decent NAS performance, even a low-level NAS will be better than a router used for that. My experience tells me to select a router based on routing/wireless performance, and then get a NAS if I want to use one. The usual problem with multi-function devices is that the performance and functionality of multiple devices in one box is usually compromised to combine them into one box. It's nice if the router that you want also has great USB 3.0 performance (not necessary for routing, though), but if you're really looking for a NAS, then buy one.

In any event, do yourself a favor, get the right router for your routing and wireless needs, and then shop for a NAS *smile*. Or vice-versa *smile*.