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Tplink c9 or netgear r7000

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NbaFan21

New Around Here
What do you guys prefer as far as range and no dropouts and reliability. I have never heard of tplink and am new to wireless networking.Thanks for your help love the website!
 
I'm speaking from purely personal experience so you may have a better one

I own the R7000 and while it has great hardware and very good range, it's horrible on the firmware side. So much that it made me throw in the towel and go back to my older ASUS AC66U where everything works as expected. Also Netgear's firmware is designed for the clueless so there are not many options present like in ASUS or TP-Link routers

TP-Link is a major Chinese networking giant who recently (read: in the past 4 or 5 years) entered the global market so that's why you haven't heard much of it. I own 2 TP-Link routers, including the C7, and I must say that they offer a good balance between features and price. Never had issues with their firmware so far, but again, if you need knobs or VPN, SSH, telnet, etc, you can't beat ASUS' firmware

Also, do as suggested by stevech. Read the reviews on SNB

As a disappointed Netgear customer, I don't think I'll go with them in the coming years unless Netgear get its sh*t together and makes a decent firmware and stops dumbing it down, but as I said, this is a personal experience so you may have better luck
 
I'm speaking from purely personal experience so you may have a better one

I own the R7000 and while it has great hardware and very good range, it's horrible on the firmware side. So much that it made me throw in the towel and go back to my older ASUS AC66U where everything works as expected. Also Netgear's firmware is designed for the clueless so there are not many options present like in ASUS or TP-Link routers

TP-Link is a major Chinese networking giant who recently (read: in the past 4 or 5 years) entered the global market so that's why you haven't heard much of it. I own 2 TP-Link routers, including the C7, and I must say that they offer a good balance between features and price. Never had issues with their firmware so far, but again, if you need knobs or VPN, SSH, telnet, etc, you can't beat ASUS' firmware

Also, do as suggested by stevech. Read the reviews on SNB

As a disappointed Netgear customer, I don't think I'll go with them in the coming years unless Netgear get its sh*t together and makes a decent firmware and stops dumbing it down, but as I said, this is a personal experience so you may have better luck

I have two R7k's. I am currently running this Firmware. It has the ASUS look and feel, a whole lot more options than NG's stock FW, and, it's stable..

http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/asuswrt-merlin-on-netgear-r7000.71108/
 
I have two R7k's. I am currently running this Firmware. It has the ASUS look and feel, a whole lot more options than NG's stock FW, and, it's stable..

http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/asuswrt-merlin-on-netgear-r7000.71108/

Thanks, but I'm uneasy of loading third party fw not designed for the specific router. I've broken 2 routers in the past by loading 3rd party fw. Not saying I won't do it, just uneasy. Still thinking what to do with the R7000 here. I don't need APs as I live in an apartment and a single router covers it all...

I may just sell it to someone...
 
Thanks, but I'm uneasy of loading third party fw not designed for the specific router. I've broken 2 routers in the past by loading 3rd party fw. Not saying I won't do it, just uneasy. Still thinking what to do with the R7000 here. I don't need APs as I live in an apartment and a single router covers it all...

I may just sell it to someone...


It was a first time for me, loading third party firmware. The instructions are very clear, and, had absolutely no issues with the upgrade. I am still running the FW and, it is very solid.
 
It was a first time for me, loading third party firmware. The instructions are very clear, and, had absolutely no issues with the upgrade. I am still running the FW and, it is very solid.

I may try it tonight... maybe ;)
 
It was a first time for me, loading third party firmware. The instructions are very clear, and, had absolutely no issues with the upgrade. I am still running the FW and, it is very solid.

OK, so I took your suggestion and loaded up this FW. So far, so good. Seems to run very smooth and of course, everything works as expected, which I can't say from Netgear's stock.
 
OK, so I took your suggestion and loaded up this FW. So far, so good. Seems to run very smooth and of course, everything works as expected, which I can't say from Netgear's stock.

When I had R7000 I never used stock f/w. dd-wrt Kong's was my choice. I think by now stock f/w is settled and
they are talking about adding dynamic QoS. Old saying, "Poor crafstman always complain about their tool" whatever
I had I could manage it. Some are harder to tame, some are easier. That is only difference. Nothing is pure perfect in
this world. Even system on board space ship. Even god makes mistakes, LOL! If we only want every thing PnP, then
where will be the fun?
 
When I had R7000 I never used stock f/w. dd-wrt Kong's was my choice. I think by now stock f/w is settled and
they are talking about adding dynamic QoS. Old saying, "Poor crafstman always complain about their tool" whatever
I had I could manage it. Some are harder to tame, some are easier. That is only difference. Nothing is pure perfect in
this world. Even system on board space ship. Even god makes mistakes, LOL! If we only want every thing PnP, then
where will be the fun?

Yea, the stock fw of the R7000 is stable. That was not my problem, which were

1) Dumbed down, ugly and confusing interface. When I first got the router, I spent almost 10 minutes looking where they've put various stuff. The organization it very poor and sometimes doesn't make sense to be in a specific place.

2) WAN drops out and back on for no apparent reason, regardless of which fw version I tried

3) The issue that did it for me was when my ISP gave me an IPv6 address. ICMPv6 is still filtered out despite it being known to the Netgear "engineers" (yes, in quotes ;) ). Then, I need for my LAN to use stateful DHCPv6. No problem, I thought. But then every time one of my computers renews its IPv6, the dhcp6s server of the router crashes. So I go sleep, wake up and find all my computers have lost their IPv6 addresses. I telnet into the router and there's no dhcp6s server running. So I have to babysit it constantly. Not gonna happen.
 
What is the ISP? Ballsy move on their part...

Interesting that they've gone IPv6 only - most are using IPv4/IPv6 transition mechanisms as either dual-stack or 6 in/over 4...
 
No, no. My ISP also gives me an IPv4 but they've gone dual stack now and give IPv6 too.
 
I have a C7 which is a good basic router. I've had the R7000 but didn't like the dd-wrt when I loaded it on. Just didn't find it particularly friendly so I returned it and got a Asus AC-68U which with Merlin's firmware is perfect for me.
 
No, no. My ISP also gives me an IPv4 but they've gone dual stack now and give IPv6 too.

So what happens if you disable IPv6 in the stock Netgear firmware? That should be fine, IPv4 should work just fine on it's own. Just because they're offering dual-stack doesn't mean that you have to use it *smile*.

As far as that goes, I've found that Shibby's tomato ARM v129 on the R7000 does correct ICMPv6 packet filtering. Works well for me on the R7000, including IPv6. RMerlin/R7000 does not work with IPv6 for me, though, if that matters.

My ISP is Comcast, by the way.
 
So what happens if you disable IPv6 in the stock Netgear firmware? That should be fine, IPv4 should work just fine on it's own. Just because they're offering dual-stack doesn't mean that you have to use it *smile*.

As far as that goes, I've found that Shibby's tomato ARM v129 on the R7000 does correct ICMPv6 packet filtering. Works well for me on the R7000, including IPv6. RMerlin/R7000 does not work with IPv6 for me, though, if that matters.

My ISP is Comcast, by the way.

IPv4 works without IPv6. But I wanted to make my internal network dual stack, and that's where the problem started. Been fighting with it for some days then gave up and installed the Merlin mod for the R7000. So far so good :)
 
IPv4 works without IPv6. But I wanted to make my internal network dual stack, and that's where the problem started. Been fighting with it for some days then gave up and installed the Merlin mod for the R7000. So far so good :)

Glad that worked for you. I've tried that firmware on my R7000 twice now, and IPv6 didn't work for me with it. But IPv6 with tomato ARM firmware on the R7000 does *smile*. At the moment I'm using the RT-AC68P with RMerlin firmware, and that also supports dual-stack well.
 
I still use IPV4, and, a pretty vanilla router config, but what I do like like about this FW, is that there are more configuration options to set. Some basic stuff like WIFI antenna radio settings, and an NTP service! I wish NG would get on the ball with their FW. Their router web presentation is ugly, and way too basic, for the price point of this device. (R7K).
 
I still use IPV4, and, a pretty vanilla router config, but what I do like like about this FW, is that there are more configuration options to set. Some basic stuff like WIFI antenna radio settings, and an NTP service! I wish NG would get on the ball with their FW. Their router web presentation is ugly, and way too basic, for the price point of this device. (R7K).

I agree completely. I can't believe that a company like Netgear with a 1 billion dollars market cap can't get people who can create something decent. It's not just the ugly looks of the stock fw but also the way it's organized. As I said previously, when I got the router, I spent at least 10 minutes clicking through all the menu's to see where they stuffed this or that. I didn't had that issue with ASUS or TP-Link fw as both are well organized and obvious

Also this whole dumbing down of the fw is taking the wrong road, imho. I understand that they want to make it easy for people who don't know much of the stuff, but dumbing down is not the only option. Design a decent, clear and attractive interface and offer enough, well documented options and people will find their way. Don't underestimate people. Easy to use does not equal removing or not offering options. For example, when I bought the router, its then loaded fw didn't even offer a setting for IPv6 DNS servers. I had to wait for two more fw updates before I could set Google's IPv6 DNS. That's a pretty core and basic setting and I have no idea why they didn't add it from the start.
 

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