Advice on Asus router

[TomT]

Hi

I used to have an Asus rt-n65u which worked fine, until the day it died.

I'm now looking for a new router and am considering one of the following.
RT-AC66U
RT-N66U
RT-AC68U

One thing that annoyed me about the 65u was that any changes to the router resulted in a WAN restart. Bit of a pain when all I'm doing is updating dhcp, guest WiFi etc.

Do any of the above routers suffer from this ?

Would you recommend one over the others and what firmware would you suggest ?

Bit of info on what it will be used for.
I work from home full time and have multiple devices online all day. Macs, Linux, windows, cabled and WiFi.

VPN termination is need on the router, I can get away with pptp.
Gigabit, guest WiFi etc are used, as it port forwarding etc.

It would be nice if I could plug my nexus 5 in and use its 4G if the fibre was to go down.

Should also say WiFi range is important.. Nexus phones and tablets, laptops and a sip WiFi phone, think the most they support is 'n'

Many thanks
Tom

 

[sm00thpapa]

I would wait for the AC87U or AC3200. AC68U will be old news after July.

 

[TomT]

Hi
Thanks for the suggestion.

I need to sort something soon as my current router is going back as it's not working correctly.

Are there any known issues with the wan restarting when other settings are changed ?

Thanks

 

[microchip]

I don't have an experience with the routers you asked about, except the AC66U. It's been rock solid for me. But I've seen quite a few people having issues with all three. I guess I must be lucky with my AC66U as since I've bought it, I haven't had a single issue with it. It's my main workhorse router and I've stressed it quite a lot in the past few months. Always been reliable

 

[TomT]

I don't have an experience with the routers you asked about, except the AC66U. It's been rock solid for me. But I've seen quite a few people having issues with all three. I guess I must be lucky with my AC66U as since I've bought it, I haven't had a single issue with it. It's my main workhorse router and I've stressed it quite a lot in the past few months. Always been reliable

Thanks for the reply.
Have you noticed the WAN interface restart when changing Guest WiFi, DHCP, Port Forwarding etc ?

thanks again.

 

[drabisan]

Thanks for the reply.
Have you noticed the WAN interface restart when changing Guest WiFi, DHCP, Port Forwarding etc ?

thanks again.

It's an expected behavior caused by "NAT Acceleration". It is the way Broadcom chipsets are "offloading" some of the tasks.
It isn't as annoying as it sounds. None of the actions triggering a reload are not something you will change too often.

Asus manage to have a stable and fast firware for RT-AC68U few months ago, but this model it's still a pricey one. If you don't need an AC router, you can buy N66 as it's cheap but still fast. AC66, in my opinion, is also a good choice if you are not ready to pay for AC68 but you need higher speed than N.

 

[TomT]

Thanks - Only device I have that support AC is my Nexus 5, all the rest are N.

I'm returning a Billion router and that cost as much as the AC68U, so I'm not losing any money.

Do you recommend Merlin's firmware over the stock ?

Thanks

 

[sm00thpapa]

What do you mean by the WAN restarting by other changes? I have a RT-N66U and RT-N66W and when rebooting the WAN goes out for a few seconds. That's normal.

 

[TomT]

What do you mean by the WAN restarting by other changes? I have a RT-N66U and RT-N66W and when rebooting the WAN goes out for a few seconds. That's normal.

Hi
I understand that is normal, but what I had was having issues with the WAN restarting when changing DHCP, Guest Wifi or Port forwarding.

If I was using a SIP phone and on a call, I may change the Guest Wifi settings, click apply and the settings would be applied and the call would drop.

Checking the logs, I could see the WAN had restarted when I made the Guest WiFI change.

Thanks

 

[sm00thpapa]

When you make a change on a radio the radio shuts off for a sec and turns itself back on. Making a change on guest network will do that to a radio. Not sure if that causes the WAN to disconnect for a few seconds. Don't make changes when you're on the phone. LOL!

 

[microchip]

Thanks for the reply.
Have you noticed the WAN interface restart when changing Guest WiFi, DHCP, Port Forwarding etc ?

thanks again.

Not really payed attention to this, but from what I've read in a few posts, this seems normal. It could be worse. I have a TP-Link Archer C7 router as my second, and if you make changes to DHCP, Guest WiFi, etc, it needs to be rebooted to apply the changes. This is very annoying as it takes up to 30 seconds for it to come back. That's the only thing I dislike about the Archer C7. Otherwise, it's a great router (use it as AP currently) but the WiFi range is weaker than the AC66U.

 

[sm00thpapa]

I have a TL-WR842ND and with every change the router needs to be rebooted. I think this is with all TP-Link firmwares.

 

[drabisan]

Thanks - Only device I have that support AC is my Nexus 5, all the rest are N.

I'm returning a Billion router and that cost as much as the AC68U, so I'm not losing any money.

Do you recommend Merlin's firmware over the stock ?

Thanks

I'm using my router as a pure router&AP. No additional services, nothing
And I'm happy with AsusWRT. I admit I'm keeping a close eye on every Merlin's release notes and I try it for few weeks in the past. But for the simple services I'm using, I'm keeping AsusWRT.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Merlins firmware is excellent. Don't hesitate to try it out.

 

[TomT]

Thanks.

Think I'll get this ordered this afternoon.
Should have it to play with tomorrow

 

[speedingcheetah]

Unless you want to use USB dongles, or can upgrade the wifi card in your wireless devices ....buying top end AC wifi routers, the ones that do 1gbps and higher, is kinda pointless as you really can't make any use of the new wifi speeds with older adapters.

I am limited with 2 antennas in my laptop, so MAX AC wifi I can use is AC867.

Laptops with 3 wifi antennas built in, hard to find these days. And now, with 4 stream AC coming out, I doubt we will see laptops with 4 antennas anytime soon, if ever....imo. Manufactures seem to be skimping out on wifi cards/antennas these days, just to save a few bucks.

 

[sm00thpapa]

AC68U just dropped to $179.99 on Amazon.

 

[TomT]

I've got it, upgraded to the latest Merlin and all seems well

Thanks

 

[sm00thpapa]

Congrats and enjoy.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[AudiTuner]

AC68U just dropped to $179.99 on Amazon.

Thank you for the heads up sm00thpapa. I had just ordered a RT-AC68U from Amazon four days ago and just saw your post this morning. Amazon offers price matching on price changes for items sold and shipped by Amazon within a one week period. Thanks to you I was able to get $40 refunded towards this awesome router!