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WRT1900AC vs. RT-AC68U vs. R7000

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tzhang4284

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From reading all the different threads about this, it sounds like the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. Hardware: Build quality of the WRT1900AC is the best, followed by R7000 and then 68U (USB shielding and Wifi interference issues - is this meaningful?)

2. Stock Firmware: WRT1900AC is the most stable, followed by AC68U (improved significantly) and then R7000 (borderline unusable). WRT1900AC has the least features relative to the other two.

3. Performance: R7000 is better than Asus 68U by a small margin and both are better WRT1900AC by a decent margin

4. Third party firmware support: AC68U with RMerlin's custom firmware seems to run better than R7000 with Kong's DD-WRT. WRT1900AC's Marvell chipset makes 3rd party support an issue.

Does anyone agree / disagree with these conclusions? Not a technical expert but trying to buy one of these and spent way too much time reading this forum to decide :)
 
4. Third party firmware support: AC68U with RMerlin's custom firmware seems to run better than R7000 with Kong's DD-WRT.

I would like to see proof of this one. I don't think that there's much interchange between people using the R7000 with dd-wrt and people using the Asus RT-AC68U with RMerlin firmware. Haven't seen a comparison that would show this, so wondering where it's coming from?
 
From reading all the different threads about this, it sounds like the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. Hardware: Build quality of the WRT1900AC is the best, followed by R7000 and then 68U (USB shielding and Wifi interference issues - is this meaningful?)

2. Stock Firmware: WRT1900AC is the most stable, followed by AC68U (improved significantly) and then R7000 (borderline unusable). WRT1900AC has the least features relative to the other two.

3. Performance: R7000 is better than Asus 68U by a small margin and both are better WRT1900AC by a decent margin

4. Third party firmware support: AC68U with RMerlin's custom firmware seems to run better than R7000 with Kong's DD-WRT. WRT1900AC's Marvell chipset makes 3rd party support an issue.

Does anyone agree / disagree with these conclusions? Not a technical expert but trying to buy one of these and spent way too much time reading this forum to decide :)

Lol. Sorry but your last paragraph made me giggle :) I was exactly the same but also trawled through CNet, PC Mag, Amazon user reviews before finding SNB.

Finally I went for the AC68 (after a one night stand with the AC66). One thing that twisted my arm was that Asus do update their FW regularly. The other was the feature set (VPN and Time Machine support).
 
I agree with all points, except, point #3. I've not used Asus 68R, but i have owned the R7000. Comparing the R7000 and the WRT1900AC is night and day difference in performance. The R7000 was great last year and the earlier FW where buggy, the latest one is very stable.

The WRT1900AC out the box, initial FW, then 2 more afterwards, have been rock solid stable. My USB 3TB external HDD is seen right from the get go and the router does not put the drive in sleep mode, unlike the R7000. I would have to unplug the the power on the HDD, then I could see it across the network...short lived till it puts it to sleep mode again.

Netgear Genie app is just broken, no better way of putting it. The Linksys Smart WiFi, just works. I can actually access the routers basic functionality at home or on the go (at work).

The Netgear software has more choices in config than the 1900AC, that is the only plus. I agree with the community at large the the 1900AC is lacking and hopefully either Linksys or OpenWRT will come out with a more configurable software for enthusiast tweaking

The Wifi on the 1900AC just gets better coverage on both 5 &2.4GHZ. This has always been a problem for all routers in my house. The neighborhood is flooded with 2.4 GHZ congestion on all channels. Both routers worked well, the 1900AC is just better. 5GHZ on the 1900AC once again has a better signal and throughput of bandwidth.

My opinion, the WRT 1900AC is a clear winner in performance.
-Stable FW
-Better WiFi
-better performance overall

For the $50 differential, piss on it, Ill pay it for a more reliable experience.


From reading all the different threads about this, it sounds like the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. Hardware: Build quality of the WRT1900AC is the best, followed by R7000 and then 68U (USB shielding and Wifi interference issues - is this meaningful?)

2. Stock Firmware: WRT1900AC is the most stable, followed by AC68U (improved significantly) and then R7000 (borderline unusable). WRT1900AC has the least features relative to the other two.

3. Performance: R7000 is better than Asus 68U by a small margin and both are better WRT1900AC by a decent margin

4. Third party firmware support: AC68U with RMerlin's custom firmware seems to run better than R7000 with Kong's DD-WRT. WRT1900AC's Marvell chipset makes 3rd party support an issue.

Does anyone agree / disagree with these conclusions? Not a technical expert but trying to buy one of these and spent way too much time reading this forum to decide :)
 
Any update on this guys?

I'm in the market for a new router,54GL wireless died,all the above plus the EA6900 are in consideration.

I'd like the option of installing 3rd party FW but it's not a deal breaker if the stock FW does what I need.
I run game servers and my website from my own pc so I need to open lots of ports.
I had DD-WRT on the 54GL with no problems.
 
If you want 3rd party firmware, the R7000 is your best bet.

Honestly, for the money, it might be your best bet either way, since I've heard that the latest firmware works pretty well.

For me, I'm sticking with the WRT1900AC, for almost all of the same reasons lexist2112 listed...
 
From reading all the different threads about this, it sounds like the following conclusions can be drawn:

Not sure where you did your reading. At the time I tested the 1900AC it was very buggy, and posts at linksys support forum clearly showed, that it is unstable as hell. There have been only a handful updates from linksys and they only resolve a small amount of the known issues.

1. Hardware: Build quality of the WRT1900AC is the best, followed by R7000 and then 68U (USB shielding and Wifi interference issues - is this meaningful?)

Absolutely agree.

2. Stock Firmware: WRT1900AC is the most stable, followed by AC68U (improved significantly) and then R7000 (borderline unusable). WRT1900AC has the least features relative to the other two.

Maybe for you, but not from my experience and I know several people that also tested the WRT 1900AC and no one told me that it runs for several weeks without a reboot.

4. Third party firmware support: AC68U with RMerlin's custom firmware seems to run better than R7000 with Kong's DD-WRT. WRT1900AC's Marvell chipset makes 3rd party support an issue.

You can't compare DD-WRT with RMerlin, DD-WRT has about twice as many features as Asus. Thus there are several features included in dd-wrt that asus does not have, if you need or want those features, than you have no alternative. The WRT 1900AC has about half as many features as Netgear and Asus fw. If I only need the basic featureset of a WRT 1900AC, then a router for $50 works fine.

Does anyone agree / disagree with these conclusions? Not a technical expert but trying to buy one of these and spent way too much time reading this forum to decide :)

The WRT 1900AC is a good piece of hardware, but there is no good firmware for it and if you look at the smallnetbuilder tests you will see, that it can't even keep up with the R7000/AC68U.
 
Not sure where you did your reading. At the time I tested the 1900AC it was very buggy, and posts at linksys support forum clearly showed, that it is unstable as hell. There have been only a handful updates from linksys and they only resolve a small amount of the known issues.

Never had a bug that cripples the WiFi stability/connectivity of my WRT1900AC

Maybe for you, but not from my experience and I know several people that also tested the WRT 1900AC and no one told me that it runs for several weeks without a reboot.

I had it for a month without rebooting then my cable modem needed a reboot which caused the router to reboot as well. It's been 17 days without reboot as of this time.


You can't compare DD-WRT with RMerlin, DD-WRT has about twice as many features as Asus. Thus there are several features included in dd-wrt that asus does not have, if you need or want those features, than you have no alternative. The WRT 1900AC has about half as many features as Netgear and Asus fw. If I only need the basic featureset of a WRT 1900AC, then a router for $50 works fine.

Agree but you pay the rest of money for hardware and network performance though

The WRT 1900AC is a good piece of hardware, but there is no good firmware for it and if you look at the smallnetbuilder tests you will see, that it can't even keep up with the R7000/AC68U.

It may had been back then but if you look at the charts now, WRT1900AC is #1 in average wireless throughput out of all in AC1900 class on all categories:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/rankers/router/result/1563-linksys-wrt1900ac

I only need basic features and extremely consistent performance and my WRT1900AC fits those bills perfectly.
 
I've had nothing but trouble with the WRT1900AC. Xbox live wouldn't work, router would reset.

I returned it for the R7000. I'm at 46 days of uptime now with 21 clients connected.
 
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.
 
It may had been back then but if you look at the charts now, WRT1900AC is #1 in average wireless throughput out of all in AC1900 class on all categories:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/rankers/router/result/1563-linksys-wrt1900ac

I only need basic features and extremely consistent performance and my WRT1900AC fits those bills perfectly.

The number you pick to make it look good is BS because it is unrealistic, that the user will test right next to the router in a test chamber.

It is more likely that the user will want good performance with some distance, and then it is important to look at the wireless range, and here it only comes in as 3rd.


By the way most people don't even know, that their router regularly reboots as the linksys has no way to check the uptime unless you look at a hidden webif page and since these reboots also happen when no one is conected it is possible that you have had reboots but didn't notice them.

Regarding network performance and money, if it comes to routing performance, it sucks badly, the WRT1900AC can only handle 600Mbps downstream, the others around 900Mbps, even if you don't have such a fast line it will still cause more load on the cpu and since there is no wireless offloading like on the new asus you will have a hardtime doing high performance wan-lan/wireless transfers.
 
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.

It doesn't?

I access the GUI all the time now and I'm at 22 days, 15 hours uptime.

This thing is rock solid and I'm getting sustained transfer rates of 150-160Mbps from the other side of my house.

It outperforms my old R7000 in pretty much every way.
 
Maybe for you, but not from my experience and I know several people that also tested the WRT 1900AC and no one told me that it runs for several weeks without a reboot.

I had mine up to 44 days but I updated firmware and had to reboot. I'm now at 22 days since then.

If I only need the basic featureset of a WRT 1900AC, then a router for $50 works fine.

There isn't a $150 router on the market that will provide the throughput at range that the WRT1900AC provides, let alone a $50. Nor do any of them have fully-functional USB3 ports.


The WRT 1900AC is a good piece of hardware, but there is no good firmware for it and if you look at the smallnetbuilder tests you will see, that it can't even keep up with the R7000/AC68U.

In my environment, the WRT1900AC doesn't just keep up with the R7000/AC68U, it clearly outperforms both.
 
The number you pick to make it look good is BS because it is unrealistic, that the user will test right next to the router in a test chamber.

You told him that the WRT couldn't keep up with the other 2 routers and CITED the Smallnetbuilder tests as proof. When he tells you that the Smallnetbuilder tests show the WRT as the clear winner, you say the tests are "BS"?

Come on, man. Don't be like that.

By the way most people don't even know, that their router regularly reboots as the linksys has no way to check the uptime unless you look at a hidden webif page and since these reboots also happen when no one is conected it is possible that you have had reboots but didn't notice them.

If the syslog.cgi says the router has been up for 22 days, it hasn't rebooted in 22 days. Simple as that.

Regarding network performance and money, if it comes to routing performance, it sucks badly, the WRT1900AC can only handle 600Mbps downstream, the others around 900Mbps, even if you don't have such a fast line it will still cause more load on the cpu and since there is no wireless offloading like on the new asus you will have a hardtime doing high performance wan-lan/wireless transfers.

It is wholly unfair to compare the WRT, or any other AC1900 router for that matter, to the new AC3200 routers. They're a completely different architecture and the addition of CPU offloading is part of that.
 
You told him that the WRT couldn't keep up with the other 2 routers and CITED the Smallnetbuilder tests as proof. When he tells you that the Smallnetbuilder tests show the WRT as the clear winner, you say the tests are "BS"?

Come on, man. Don't be like that.

Because he picked one test result and not overall test result and he picked one of the tests that are not as relevant to end users as other test results, so it is obvious you are a fanboy, probably because you got the router for free. If you look at amazon reviews you will notice most positive reviews are from people that got it for free e.g. vine testers or they just praise the router in two sentences, the critical reviews actually mention the problems.

By now everyone should have realized, that paid trolls try to make the WRT 1900AC look good after they failed to deliver the promised openwrt support.
Linksys/Belkin was so confident, that they could come up with an openwrt release, that they did not spend a lot of time on their own firmware and that is why it is in such a bad state. It does not come with defacto standard features you now find in asus/tp-link and other firmwares.
 
Because he picked one test result and not overall test result and he picked one of the tests that are not as relevant to end users as other test results, so it is obvious you are a fanboy, probably because you got the router for free.

ROFL

I paid full price for the router and I like it because it works, unlike the R7000 or AC68U that I purchased. So no, I'm not a fanboy and certainly not because they gave me a router for free.

What is obvious here is that you are extremely disappointed in Belkin's lack of ability to deliver on their OpenWRT and rightfully so. They failed on that point.

That certainly doesn't excuse deliberately spreading misinformation in an effort to taint other people's opinions of what is otherwise a very solid and well-performing device.

By now everyone should have realized, that paid trolls try to make the WRT 1900AC look good after they failed to deliver the promised openwrt support.
Linksys/Belkin was so confident, that they could come up with an openwrt release, that they did not spend a lot of time on their own firmware and that is why it is in such a bad state. It does not come with defacto standard features you now find in asus/tp-link and other firmwares.

It works absolutely perfectly for me. Sorry it doesn't for you. I like the fact that I don't have to reboot it every 2 days (like the R7000) or SSH into the router and modify files by hand to get guest network isolation to actually work (like the AC68U). Not only that, but it outperforms both of them in range and throughput in my setup.
 
Mine had an uptime of 37 days till someone plugged the shop vac into the UPS, rebooting my router and switch in one shot...:( Cablemodem has it's own internal backup battery.
 
By now everyone should have realized, that paid trolls try to make the WRT 1900AC look good after they failed to deliver the promised openwrt support.

Not a lot of paid trolls out there...

I think Linksys underestimated the challenges and needs of the OpenWRT community in providing code and drivers that were compatible with GPL - and then failed in how to manage that problem - OpenWRT is not in the business of trying to reverse engineer WiFi chipsets - their focus is more on portability and the routing core.

Linksys/Belkin was so confident, that they could come up with an openwrt release, that they did not spend a lot of time on their own firmware and that is why it is in such a bad state. It does not come with defacto standard features you now find in asus/tp-link and other firmwares.

Current FW is stable - was a bit buggy at first, but the most recent spin has been fine according to many on the board here.

The "defacto standard features" are there with the WRT1900ac - some of the advanced settings that Asus/TPLink and others provide aren't needed for most use cases - some of those settings can actually harm performance rather than improve things - Linksys/Belkin has defaulted things where it hits 99 percent of the use cases out there for the general population.

There will always be the corner cases - and Asus (along with rMerlin's efforts) are appreciated.
 
They screwed up royally on the OpenWRT stuff, no question about it.
 
It doesn't?
I access the GUI all the time now and I'm at 22 days, 15 hours uptime.

This thing is rock solid and I'm getting sustained transfer rates of 150-160Mbps from the other side of my house.

It outperforms my old R7000 in pretty much every way.

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.
 
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