Any Reliability Ratings?

[phillipdhall]

Every router I consider has a host of 1-star ratings explaining that the router was amazing for the first (day/week/month), but then common issue X showed up, apparently the issue is super common and the vendor refuses to address it, and then going on about how they will never buy another router from that vendor.

With most products, I pass these reviews off as either incompetent users or just unfortunate lack of quality control. But with wireless routers, my experience has unfortunately been that features and theoretical speed are top priority, and no one even talks about stability, reliability, or longevity.

My question is: where can I get ratings, comparisons, or even impressions of wireless router stability, reliability, and/or longevity?

More detail:
I live in a 4500 sq ft home, on an acre of land, with a wife and 5 kids. Lots of devices:
- 5 laptops
- 2 desktops
- 4 TVs (smart or Roku)
- 3 wired + 2 wireless security cameras (wired ones behind a managed PoE switch)
- 7 Amazon Echos
- And maybe a dozen more smart bulbs, outlets, printers, or other IoT devices.

I currently run a Netgear R7500v2, and it meets my performance needs, generally (always room for improvement). It has started dropping wireless connections frequently. It has always required the occasional reboot to overcome sudden loss of internet bandwidth (will just drop to ~5mbps sometimes). And it feels like each firmware version has had its own set of issues that require workarounds. I would love to have it become a backup and buy a new primary. I tried a RAX50, but it had serious DNS dropout issues, was practically unusable for internet browsing, and after what seemed like a full-time job of troubleshooting for a week, it had to be sent back.

Is there a particular brand or model or chipset that has been identified as the workhorse of the industry? You know, like the Linksys WRT54G was in its day? Or is my impression that the consumer router market is has become 100% crap undeserved - created by a couple poor experiences (and a vocal minority of Amazon reviewers)?

 

[L&LD]

Welcome to the forums @phillipdhall.

RT-AX88U or RT-AX86U (or a pair) with RMerlin firmware is what I would suggest. Along with the setup suggestions below after flashing the latest RMerlin firmware available for the router you choose.

Features | Asuswrt-Merlin (asuswrt-merlin.net)

About | Asuswrt-Merlin (asuswrt-merlin.net)

Changelog | Asuswrt-Merlin (asuswrt-merlin.net)


[Wireless] ASUS router Hard Factory Reset | Official Support | ASUS Global

Best Practice Update/Setup Router/AiMesh Node(s) 2021

 

[thiggins]

My question is: where can I get ratings, comparisons, or even impressions of wireless router stability, reliability, and/or longevity?

Nowhere. Not even Consumer Reports rates wireless routers for reliability. It's not financially viable for any organization to do it, certainly not individual reviewers or even the "name" websites.

s there a particular brand or model or chipset that has been identified as the workhorse of the industry? You know, like the Linksys WRT54G was in its day?

Ah, the simpler times.

The WRT54G was a "workhorse" primarily because it was the only game in town for awhile. It also had the benefit of using a simpler technology and didn't really have to deal with the witches' brew of client devices routers have to deal with today.

The unfortunate truth is that new Wi-Fi technologies are pushed to market before they are ready. 802.11ax, aka Wi-Fi 6, routers started shipping more than a year before the standard was released. First 11ac, aka Wi-Fi 5, routers also started shipping under a draft status standard.

Today's technologies are hellaciously more complex than 11g was and routers now also have to contend with a mix of clients supporting standards all the way back to 11a and b.

It's a wonder Wi-Fi works as well as it does.

That said, if you want relative stability/ reliability, stay a generation back, which at this point would be 802.11ac/Wi-Fi 5. My go to router there is the NETGEAR R7800. It's a four stream 802.11ac router and doesn't have all the bells and whistles for controls and features the ASUS routers have. Those are great for router gearheads, but can end up messing you up if you screw with settings you don't understand. NETGEAR knows it has a good thing because it hasn't messed with the design since it was created.

 

[L&LD]

If NG hardware is to be used, @Voxel firmware is highly recommended. NG doesn't mess with the design because of millions of other reasons ($), not because it is good today, or even when it was introduced.

Old, past-due code and huge security issues are why I don't recommend anything but Asus/RMerlin routers today.

 

[phillipdhall]

Thanks for the welcome @L&LD , and for the recommendations both @L&LD and @thiggins !

I can very much understand and relate to the commentary on complexity, backwards compatibility, and rush to market. Consumerism has driven demand to the bleeding edge, and I hope I am not the only consumer ready for the entire tech industry to take a breath and start thinking more long term.

I will definitely look into both recommendations. I am a little nervous about the Netgear software, because the R7500v2 software has been largely unchanged as well, but like @L&LD suggests, not because it is good. Adequate, generally yes.

 

[avtella]

All I can add is that wait 6 months to a year from product release if you want a relatively stable product. Especially when a new standard is out. Other wise you’re mostly going to be shelling out extra $$ to be beta tester. Especially if you’re working from home or have a family stability might be more important than having the latest toy. That extra wait would also often get you lower prices in addition to stability.

Consumer router side Netgear and Asus are decent and both offer intermittent patches for security issues, with Asus offering more fine tuning controls and add on features. But regardless both can and do release pretty unstable products at times on launch which no third party firmware might be able to immediately fix, especially if it’s part of the non GPL code or wireless binaries which the likes of merlin and voxel can’t do much about, this assuming a third party firmware is available that quickly in the first place. Some of that is also due to the actual chipset manufacturer not having fully sorted out issues.

Having said that, at the moment the AX86U and AX88U are probably the best buys in regards to price/features vs their NG equivalents.

Pure wireless and storage performance wise the RAX120 in my tests is better and among the best but it’s also a steep price difference and you don’t get as much software features. The RAX120 is a Qualcomm chipset router unlike the others and usually also means it will eventually get OpenWRT support. Additionally in my experience since the AC Wave 2 era (ie Netgear R7800) Qualcomm chipsets were more mature in regards to extras like MU-MIMO actually working in a proper manner.

 

[degrub]

I’ve had rock solid stability with my cisco rv325 and wap371 APs running vlans. These are marketed as SMB type gear, a step up from consumer gear. There are newer versions available with updated wireless standards.

Two working from home adults and two college kids attending remotely. Some gaming, several TVs, bunch of I things. All worked adequately with a 33/4 Mbit/s dsl connection but had to keep the gaming to outside business hours .Now works great with 1 GBit/s symmetric fiber connection. Probably don’t need more than 100 Mbit in reality.

 

[Killhippie]

If NG hardware is to be used, @Voxel firmware is highly recommended. NG doesn't mess with the design because of millions of other reasons ($), not because it is good today, or even when it was introduced.

Old, past-due code and huge security issues are why I don't recommend anything but Asus/RMerlin routers today.

Its not like Asus are great on security either, it was only 2019 that Asus update servers were hacked and spewing malware updates to one million computers I believe. I dont think Asus are better at security than Netgear or TP Link Ubiquiti etc.

I think most home/soho routers use are in a grey area so Merlin and Voxel make them much safer tbh and you pick what you want for either plug in and update as needed with factory resets and leave well alone in between, which my RAX120 has been doing fine up to the last firmware as did the R7800 with Voxels firmware, where as the Asus routers give users lots of things to tweak, both are legitimate uses but my days of playing with routers is gone, I want to set forget and let it run. 'You pays your money and you takes your chances' as the old saying goes.

As to recomending routers, that depends on the user as much as the hardware. I would say some would be blinded and could mess up with an Asus because of all the options, and some would be bored to death with a Netgear. Recommending hardware I feel has to take the user into account as much as what they really need not what they think they need based on manufacturers speal or a big number on a box.

 

[phillipdhall]

Any insights on how freely downloadable aftermarket firmware manages to get better support than official versions backed by teams of paid developers? I'm not opposing the truth of it, just trying to rationalize it.

 

[RMerlin]

Any insights on how freely downloadable aftermarket firmware manages to get better support than official versions backed by teams of paid developers? I'm not opposing the truth of it, just trying to rationalize it.

Community support is a big difference here. The community is made of actual users who know first hand how these things behave, and many of them are fairly advanced users, while the manufacturer`s tech support is generally a group of first line representatives who are trained to handle only the most common issues , and for a wide range of products. And third party firmware tend to attract more expert users than the stock firmware.

This changes a bit when dealing with pro-sumer manufacturers like Ubiquiti or Mikrotik, as their line of business is more focued on advanced networking products, therefore their tech support reps are generally (I assume?) better trained to handle advanced requests, rather than focus on making sure dad who wants to connect to his Facebook hasn't accidentally tripped on his router's power cord.

Also, users can sometimes receive answers from the actual programmer who wrote the target code, while large companies will put quite a few layers of isolation between end-users and the R&D team. (note that in Asus' case, I know for a fact that tech support does escalate some issues to the R&D team, I don't know if it's the same case for Netgear/TP-Link/etc...). While personally I'm less actively involved in providing technical support to the user, I still do field a few questions now and then.

As for reliability, I second avoiding brand new products. Let them mature, and let people experience them for a few months. Then, check the various discussion forums to gather the community's feedback, and ignore feedback posted on the reseller's website (Amazon and Newegg reviews are generally useless). See what are the common issues, and also see the discussions around these - that's the big difference between a one-time feedback post on Amazon, versus a 5 pages long thread on SNBForums or Netgear's support forums.

One example here: when the Asus RT-AC68U launched, there were a fair number of issues related to its wifi stability. Today, that router is considered Asus' best router in a long time in terms of stability and reliability, thanks to fixes and polishing to its firmware.

 

[phillipdhall]

Well holy crap, I just got a response from @RMerlin in a few hours to a question I didn't even mean to ask you! I'm sold

 

[thiggins]

Any insights on how freely downloadable aftermarket firmware manages to get better support than official versions backed by teams of paid developers? I'm not opposing the truth of it, just trying to rationalize it.

Depends on what you mean by support. Any product or company that doesn't charge for support is not going to devote expensive resources on it. This is true for any technical product. You get what you get. Fortunately, with the internet, users can help each other.

For wireless routers, community "support" is provided through forums, reddit and other platforms for both factory and alternative firmware.

Alternative firmware tends to attract avid fans because they feel more ability to influence the people writing the code, and in some cases, contribute to the code base. As @RMerlin said, companies keep developers well insulated from the user base, which is necessary. They are a finite, expensive resource, so can't be off getting dragged into problems that in many cases are due to cockpit error.

If a company has its act together, it has a way of separating out the significant few events that indicate bugs or problems that need solving.

 

[L&LD]

Nobody is great at security in this online world.

But Asus sure is leading the others by a mile.

With RMerlin showing Asus the way for almost a decade now.

 

[thiggins]

What do you think does more harm to average users? Security issues in router code? Or the stuff people download / click on that deliver malware payloads?

 

[phillipdhall]

What do you think does more harm to average users? Security issues in router code? Or the stuff people download / click on that deliver malware payloads?

Fair question, and I'd say it depends on the user. I happen to work in information security, so I hope I'm more likely to get pwned by reliance on insecure vendor products than through user error

And, as the recent Solarwinds breach demonstrates loud and clear, the widespread nature of potential impact is really scary when major vendor products are weaponized against us.

Taking a step back to thank @degrub , I liked your thoughts and reached out to a neighbor who works for Cisco. He recommended Meraki line and the Advanced Security license, which definitely adds up in cost. I'm definitely considering that option, as I'm willing to pay more for better security and stability.

 

[avtella]

That's (Cisco) an option and another is that you could get a $150-350 appliance or computer and use pfSense, OPNSense, IPFire, OpenWRT or any other free firewall/router distro which likely get faster CVE patches than any consumer router and have better reliability. I personally have relegated my consumer routers to being used as APs, I don't think I'd ever go back to using them as routers. If you wan't something more than basic wireless function and internet and have some advanced needs, this maybe something to look into.

In regards to consumer routers I agree @RMerlin and @Voxel definitely do a great job and deserve a lot of credit for improving both security and the feature set over the stock firmware on Asus and NG respectively.

Edit: Try OpenWRT on the R7500v2 being a Qualcomm device it's well supported, maybe it maybe good enough to prevent the issues you are facing and may save you from buying another device.

 

[RMerlin]

What do you think does more harm to average users? Security issues in router code? Or the stuff people download / click on that deliver malware payloads?

As the saying goes, the weakest link that gets most regularly targeted by hackers isn't code, it's users...

 

[RMerlin]

With RMerlin showing Asus the way for almost a decade now.

Actually it's more the FTC who did that, not me...

 

[L&LD]

@RMerlin, you're too modest.

Features | Asuswrt-Merlin (asuswrt-merlin.net)

Some features first debuted in Asuswrt-Merlin and were eventually implemented in the official firmware:​

• HTTPS configuration interface
• Persistent JFFS partition
• LED control - put your router in Stealth Mode by turning off all LEDs
• Turning WPS button into a radio on/off toggle
• Clicking on the MAC address of an unidentified client will do a lookup in the OUI database.
• WakeOnLan web interface (with pre-configured targets)
• Display active/tracked network connections
• VPN Status page
• DualWAN and Repeater mode (while it was still under development by Asus)
• Basic OpenVPN (client and server) support
• Configurable IPv6 firewall
• Improved compatibility with 3TB+ and Advanced Format HDDs
• SSH access
• Disk spindown after user-configurable inactivity timeout
• Updated Samba version (3.6), with SMB2.0 support
• TLS 1.3 support for some services (OpenSSL 1.1.1)
• Modern DDNS client (In-a-Dyn), with https support

 

[avtella]

I think he was referring to when the FTC sued Asus:

ASUS case suggests 6 things to watch for in the Internet of Things

The router is Grand Central Station for home technology.

www.ftc.gov

ASUS Settles FTC Charges That Insecure Home Routers and “Cloud” Services Put Consumers’ Privacy At Risk

Taiwan-based computer hardware maker ASUSTeK Computer, Inc. has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that critical secur

www.ftc.gov