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New Router: AC87U; AC68U; R7500 or Synology RT1900ac

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xiaokai

Occasional Visitor
Hi All

I had a Netgear R7000, and I sold it.
I am now in the market for a new router.
My aim is to connect my PIA VPN to the router so that I dont need to have individual connections to each device. I couldn't do this with the R7000, and I tried DD-WRT but I find this difficult to use.

On my network I have:
LAN: Synology NAS
VoIP box

WLAN: ChromeCast
FireStick
Sky TV media box
IPCan on 2.4ghz (soon adding 2 outdoor so need range)
3x 2.4gHz clients
7 to 8 5gHz clients
sometimes i get guests who connect to guest network

What's important for me: Range, due to my plans on adding outdoor wireless IP cameras.
Also speed, as we transfer a lot of data on WLAN. We use the NAS as a hybrid cloud for our home business, that's backed up to googles cloud storage. So stability is also important.

Currently I am looking at the
Asus RT-AC87U - whats concerning me: Price (not cost but value), could I get something better value that gives me similar results?
Asus RT-AC68U - I sold my R7000 to get something similar? Maybe I should get an upgrade. MU-MIMO would be nice, which I think this router does not support.
Netgear R7500 - Will feel like I sold the R7000 for no reason just to upgrade to a R7500. Plus I sold the Netgear because I found the firmware a little limited.
Synology RT1900ac - Should I wait a few months for this? I use Synology NAS already. I love the UX!!! Love the firmware - especially if they allow modules to be installed. But hardware seems limited compared to the ones mentioned above. I am not very keen on waiting too, but will if this is the best choice.

Thanks
 
Specific recommendations are a bit hampered until we know: your internet speed and how much VPN throughput you want (ie. max out the WAN speed, or a certain Mb/s minimum). Thanks.
 
Specific recommendations are a bit hampered until we know: your internet speed and how much VPN throughput you want (ie. max out the WAN speed, or a certain Mb/s minimum). Thanks.

So my WAN speed is quite slow.
I am getting 17Mb
However in 2 months my contract comes to an end, and I am thinking of upgrading to "Fiber" Which could be anything from 38Mb if I go with SKY or upto 152Mb with Virgin media, depending on the service we get.

In terms of VPN throughput I am not sure. :/
 
Thanks xiaokai. I'm not sure how much knowledge you're coming in with, but the highest OpenVPN throughput you're going to get on a consumer box will be around 50-60Mb/s with the 1Ghz+ ARM models (R7000, AC68U, etc.). Whether it's multi-core or not doesn't matter so much, as OVPN doesn't really draw increased utilization across multiple CPUs all that well (to the best of my knowledge) -- rather, it's the baseline CPU architecture and clock speed that matter more. MIPS is actually more efficient, but it's a platform that seems to have died off a bit, at least in the consumer space. So the short of it is that one of the units you're thinking about should be fine for the connection you've got now, and most likely for the entry-level tier of whatever you may purchase down the road. For anything over 60-75Mb/s, you'll need a PPC or x86-based solution from the "prosumer" market, at least as of right now. Also, I hate to break it to you, but the R7000 you had would have worked perfectly fine for 17Mb/s using Tomato, or my personal favorite AdvancedTomato (Tomato with a much better user interface). Anyways, hopefully that sheds some light on things. :)
 
Thanks xiaokai. I'm not sure how much knowledge you're coming in with, but the highest OpenVPN throughput you're going to get on a consumer box will be around 50-60Mb/s with the 1Ghz+ ARM models (R7000, AC68U, etc.). Whether it's multi-core or not doesn't matter so much, as OVPN doesn't really draw increased utilization across multiple CPUs all that well (to the best of my knowledge) -- rather, it's the baseline CPU architecture and clock speed that matter more. MIPS is actually more efficient, but it's a platform that seems to have died off a bit, at least in the consumer space. So the short of it is that one of the units you're thinking about should be fine for the connection you've got now, and most likely for the entry-level tier of whatever you may purchase down the road. For anything over 60-75Mb/s, you'll need a PPC or x86-based solution from the "prosumer" market, at least as of right now. Also, I hate to break it to you, but the R7000 you had would have worked perfectly fine for 17Mb/s using Tomato, or my personal favorite AdvancedTomato (Tomato with a much better user interface). Anyways, hopefully that sheds some light on things. :)

I dont have much knowledge of VPN.
But I am sure that R7000 would have been good enough. I just didn't like the stock firmware and I found DD-WRT too difficult to use.
I didn't try tomato, I guess i should have.

Looking around on this forum, i think R7500 does not seem worth it.
So I guess it will be AC68U vs AC87U :)
I am guessing they are more user friendly and maybe Tomato will work with them both too?
 
Did you try the XVortex fork of RMerlin's firmware before you sold it?

The RT-AC68U may be similar hardware-wise, but it will guarantee the longest compatibility with the excellent and highly recommended RMerlin firmware now and into the future over the Netgear R7000 fork.

Something that is truly above that level of hardware currently is the RT-AC3200, but depending on your particular environment, may not be as reliable as you require.

The only way would be to test in your environment for a week or more, both routers, and return the one that performed worse.

Hi All

I had a Netgear R7000, and I sold it.
I am now in the market for a new router.
My aim is to connect my PIA VPN to the router so that I dont need to have individual connections to each device. I couldn't do this with the R7000, and I tried DD-WRT but I find this difficult to use.

On my network I have:
LAN: Synology NAS
VoIP box

WLAN: ChromeCast
FireStick
Sky TV media box
IPCan on 2.4ghz (soon adding 2 outdoor so need range)
3x 2.4gHz clients
7 to 8 5gHz clients
sometimes i get guests who connect to guest network

What's important for me: Range, due to my plans on adding outdoor wireless IP cameras.
Also speed, as we transfer a lot of data on WLAN. We use the NAS as a hybrid cloud for our home business, that's backed up to googles cloud storage. So stability is also important.

Currently I am looking at the
Asus RT-AC87U - whats concerning me: Price (not cost but value), could I get something better value that gives me similar results?
Asus RT-AC68U - I sold my R7000 to get something similar? Maybe I should get an upgrade. MU-MIMO would be nice, which I think this router does not support.
Netgear R7500 - Will feel like I sold the R7000 for no reason just to upgrade to a R7500. Plus I sold the Netgear because I found the firmware a little limited.
Synology RT1900ac - Should I wait a few months for this? I use Synology NAS already. I love the UX!!! Love the firmware - especially if they allow modules to be installed. But hardware seems limited compared to the ones mentioned above. I am not very keen on waiting too, but will if this is the best choice.

Thanks
 
Did you try the XVortex fork of RMerlin's firmware before you sold it?

The RT-AC68U may be similar hardware-wise, but it will guarantee the longest compatibility with the excellent and highly recommended RMerlin firmware now and into the future over the Netgear R7000 fork.

Something that is truly above that level of hardware currently is the RT-AC3200, but depending on your particular environment, may not be as reliable as you require.

The only way would be to test in your environment for a week or more, both routers, and return the one that performed worse.

No I did not try any other FW apart from DD-WRT. But I dont think about it now, its sold :)

And the main reason i sold it was because it did not have this feature:
Capture.png


I been playing with the firmware here: http://ec2-54-202-251-7.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com:8080/Advanced_VPNClient_Content.asp
Someone put a demo on AWS.

Does AC68U also have this feature to connect to a OpenVPN client through the official firmware?

The other feature I really liked on the AC87U is the Traffic Analyzer
If i get that on the AC67U, i think I have a winner. :D

AC87U is £50 more costly but might not be worth the money for my needs.
 
Per this Reddit post, I'd say yes, OpenVPN is definitely there in Merlin for the 68U. And from personal experience using AdvancedTomato, I know it's present there as well. :)
 
This subject was touched on the other day. R7000, R7500, in this link.
http://www.snbforums.com/threads/r7000-or-r7500.25997/#post-193857

Regarding new hardware, it's usually a good idea to allow new to market devices some time to mature. You see alot of flaky firmware, and not so solid hardware.

Also, it's easier to tell where the router roadmap deadends are if you wait on newly marketed hardware for a while. If you jump on new hardware, you may be buying something that is going to be unsupported soon, so firmware will be hard to get for it. That includes stock firmware as well *smile*, manufacturers move on, too. In fact manufacturers typically stop supporting products before third-parties do.
 
Hey All

Thanks for all the help and advice.
I got the Asus RT-AC68U on Saturday. Installed the latest Merlin FW on it.
Connected it to PIA VPN and it works great.
I have a feeling that the range is not as great as the R7000, but its just a feeling and its not much a difference, just notice it a little bit.

One thing I have noticed is, it assigns IPs randomly, I think. Some are 192.168.1.2/3/4 etc some are .171 / 158 etc without being in order and contining the number sequences. This is not an issue but I have this OCD (not really but cant think of a better way to describe it) thing that I want things in order.
Without Client names showing up properly its hard to assign static IP. Client names come up most of the time as MAC addresses only, or * or -, so its hard to tell what is what unless i go look at the MAC address on the device.

I am not on the verge of getting better internet maybe 50Mbs from the current 17Mbs.

And hopefully I will get rid of my really bad Sky SR101 router. (Sky is my ISP, they have their own generic router with the model name SR101)
I cant put the ISP router in bridge mode there is no option to do this or to use it as a modem only. So the Asus WAN shows as 192.168.0.2, and the DDNS keep updating to 192.168.0.2.

I will also be now looking into the fun things i can do with Merlin :).

Thanks
 

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