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Linksys - WRT or not

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DaveSPE

New Around Here
Buying wireless router for home use. Connections include an N connected laptop, two ethernet PCs (via hub), ethernet HP mfp printer, Vonage via ethernet, two iPods, two iPhones (4 & 6), Samsung S3 and Samsung tablet. The iPhone 6, S3, laptop and iPod can be busy in the evening. ISP is 'medium' speed Comcast cable. Looking at Linksys products. Range shouldn't be an issue b/c current older N300 router shows decent signal all over house.
Why would I go with WRT1200AC versus the EA6350? Will not use open source upgrades (don't have time to learn, too darn busy). Seems WRT has better processing capacity and ESATA port. What other benefits might WRT add, or not? $ difference is non-issue.
 
If your coverage is ok with current router, the EA6350 will do you fine.
 
For typical home use like I described, would I see any speed benefit from the dual core CPU? Or is the home system speed limited by the ISP and devices? Would the WRT1200AC eSATA drive show noticeable performance difference for backup vs USB 3.0 backup on the EA6350?
 
You're likely to see improved wireless throughput from the move to most any AC router from an N router.
is
The Charts tell the tale for USB 2.0 and 3.0 storage performance. The review shows eSATA performance similar to USB 3.0.

If you don't care about price, buy the WRT1900ac. Or buy both and test for yourself.
 
I bought the EA6350. I have a NetGear N300 and an N600 wired as repeaters thru a NetGear 10/100 switch which is run to the LAN on the EA6350. (Don't ask why yet.) My Vonage, HP Printer and Desktop PC connect to the other three LAN on the EA6350. Backup Toshiba on USB, works fine. BUT, why in the heck would the N600 show wireless speedtests on my HP laptop at or near comcast rated speed (20/5 Mbps) and the EA6350 can't even get my laptop above 1 Mbps on upload or download in wireless. Something ain't right. EA6350 signal is the strongest of all three (per WifiInfoView). There is nothing else connected wireless to the EA6350 during speedtest. Thoughts?
 
I tested the WRT1900AC against the EA6900. There really wasn't much of a comparison, the WRT is a beast.
 
I tested the WRT1900AC against the EA6900. There really wasn't much of a comparison, the WRT is a beast.

Unfortunately, its price is also a "beast" ;)
 
True but none of the AC1900-class routers are really cheap anyway...

True, I got my R7000 for about 160 euro's and I'm sticking to it for the time being. All that touted MU-MIMO, TurboQAM and what not doesn't benefit me atm
 
I originally bought the R7000 when it first came out and had horrible issues, followed by a 4-week support nightmare with Netgear. I eventually ended up repurchasing it a year later and running some controlled tests against the Asus RT-AC68W and Linksys WRT1900AC. I ended up going with the Linksys, it performed the best overall in my environment.

The funny thing is that I'm now running DD-WRT on my Linksys. If I had done that in the very beginning, I would have probably stayed with the R7000 and saved myself a lot time, money, and blood.
 
The funny thing is that I'm now running DD-WRT on my Linksys. If I had done that in the very beginning, I would have probably stayed with the R7000 and saved myself a lot time, money, and blood.

Maybe, but the WRT1900acV1 on DD-WRT is a pretty strong device, eh?
 
I tested the WRT1900AC against the EA6900. There really wasn't much of a comparison, the WRT is a beast.

I considered the WRT1900AC but for home network figured the EA6350 would get it done. The WRT1900AC is working like a champ at the church network - good signal strength all over. BUT... that won't explain why my home EA6350 is a dog when the N600 and N300 both thumped the EA6350 on speedtest in a wifi connect with my HP laptop.
 
Maybe, but the WRT1900acV1 on DD-WRT is a pretty strong device, eh?

Yeah, I like it quite a bit actually. Right now they're still working out a few things with the wireless drivers. 2.4Ghz is a little worse on DD-WRT but 5Ghz is better than stock, so it's a trade-off there.

It's rock solid stable though. My AirPrint issues are completely gone - all of the iOS devices find the printer in milliseconds now. Despite not having a graphical representation like Network Map, the diagnostics in DD-WRT completely blow away stock obviously and all without any instability. Having SSH access - well I forgot how important that can be sometimes.

It took me a few days to figure out how to create a single guest network SSID for both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz (all the tutorials were for single-radio guest networks) but there are some really cool people over at the forums that helped me out. Now that I understand the UI better and have a pretty solid grasp of iptables concepts, it actually takes me about 10 minutes less to configure DD-WRT from scratch than to configure stock (primarily because of how stock firmware handles DHCP reservations :eek:).

I'm not one of those that installs every new release (Brainslayer literally releases a new build every couple of days) so I'm still running Kong's 28320 build and I'm up to 18 days of uptime without a single hiccup. I probably won't flash again until they get all the wireless drivers completely sorted out. The nice thing about it is that you know they're actively working on things. DD-WRT has as many releases in the last WEEK as Belkin/Linksys has released in the last YEAR.
 
New wireless drivers can improve (or degrade) performance of the hardware. We're not talking about software enhancements...
 
New wireless drivers can improve (or degrade) performance of the hardware. We're not talking about software enhancements...

The whole WRT FOSS driver with *WRT has been a train wreck...

Imagine mid-2013 - conference table - Linksys (as the customer) and Marvell (as the vendor)

Linksys - we need a solution that gives us AC1900 class for delivery

Marvell - umm - 5Ghz, we can do it, we've got an awesome 4*4:3 solution that works well - it'll give you great range and performance...

Linksys - cool - that's awesome, what about 2.4GHz?

Marvell - we'll, we can get you 450Mbit there, and it'll be cool...

Linksys - not good enough, what about doing VHT in 2.4GHz, 40Mhz gives us 600Mbit there, so do the math...

Marvell - well, that's not standard... we're not supposed to do that...

Linksys - Broadcom is doing this, and the folks over at QC/Atheros say they can deliver at well

Marvell - ummm.. turning to the side (engineer guy) - can you do this?

Marvell - ok, we can do this - sign the check...

Linksys - scribble, signed...

(two months later)

Linksys Biz Guy - hey, awesome progress - we're naming Mamba as the WRT, it'll be awesome!!!!

Marvell Biz Guy - umm... ok, so how does this affect us, we're doing pretty good, P1 dev boards were clean, we're going ok, that 2.4GHz thing, we're still working on...

Linksys Biz Guy - WRT is totally cool with Free and Open Source - hippy love and all - Cathedral and the Bazaar...

Marvell Guy - hmmm, that's a problem...

OpenWRT guys - hellya, that's a big problem... stinkers on you Linksys

Linksys Guy to Marvell Guy - now it's your problem...

Marvell guy rolls eyes...
 
So Linksys guys - press release already out - has a problem, as the OpenWRT guys are like, WrT? over? why you using our name to sell your problem?

Linksys guys gets worried - talks to accounting - stop payments...

Marvell - oh, you were serious eh?

Linksys - you betcha... wanna get paid?

Marvell - spews forth some kind of driver - works ok for the most part...

OpenWRT - yay! Innagaddadavida, bro, high fives!

OpenWRT - yow! doesn't work...

Marvell - spin, spin, spin the development wheels, as we didn't ever intend this driver to be GPL3, yo...
 
Believe it or not, this is how things work, it's been an awesome 20 years in the business.. players change, but the story generally plays out the same...
 

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