Just bought a R7000, What firmware?

[hyelton]

How is stock firmware holding up? I had an R6300v2 loved stock firmware but it seems the past 2 updates (Yes I have reset) have made web browsing sluggish no matter the DNS server I use. Download speed is fine etc. But pages at times including streaming youtube would stagger and then load. BUT I would load Tomato and it would work almost perfect! Granted its giving some heat issues lately but still tomato made it run perfect in that matter.

Also stock firmware QoS would only work if I lowered my upload WAY lower than it actually was for upload QoS to work.

Now on my R7000 I would love to run stock firmware, but sure if its something in the newer firmwares, BUT I do see that occasional lag in loading a webpage on all my devices wired and wireless. (Or I'm just being OCD!)

How is the Merlin firmware coming along? Anyone run it? How stable is it? Good enough to flash and leave it alone?

 

[netwrks]

The stock firmware seems to be ok, but moved away from it and running this on my R7000. You will see alot of people are running this firmware. The transition from stock, to this firmware, is very simple. All documentation on the first page. If you follow the instructions, you don't really need to do anything on the router, but let it run! Have a look for yourself.

http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/asuswrt-merlin-on-netgear-r7000.71108/

 

[hyelton]

The stock firmware seems to be ok, but moved away from it and running this on my R7000. You will see alot of people are running this firmware. The transition from stock, to this firmware, is very simple. All documentation on the first page. If you follow the instructions, you don't really need to do anything on the router, but let it run! Have a look for yourself.

http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/asuswrt-merlin-on-netgear-r7000.71108/

Thanks, Yeah that's mainly what I was asking about, how stable? I'm no where near noob when it comes to doing things like this, I'm just more of a I want to set it all up and not have to mess with it kind of person lol.

 

[netwrks]

I take care of two 7000's One in router mode, was up to for 81 days straight no issues. It has a mix of iDevices, Intel and an XBOX One that is on almost 24/7, plus being used with FaceTime some Skype, and Netflix. I had no complaints, and believe me, if there were issues I would have have heard about it! The only reason why I rebooted it, is I update to the latest version of the firmware on the site.

The other 7000 runs as an AP behind a UBNT router. It get's rebooted more, because I mess around with it..

Not running QoS (100mb service), no USB stuff, no VPN, no IPTV, but others are doing more with their 7000's.

 

[Wolf_666]

Using my R7000 as AP behind a pfSense router, I revert to stock firmware, satisfied with it.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[RogerSC]

Using tomato ARM firmware, myself. Currently using Advanced tomato v131, which is Shibby v131 with a more modern web admin GUI on it. Functionally, it is Shibby v131, but when administering it, you're using a more modern looking web admin interface. I've used a lot of different firmware versions on my R7000, stock, dd-wrt, tomato, and XVortex. I find that the tomato ARM, whether you use Shibby v131 or Advanced tomato v131, is the most stable, best performing firmware for the R7000. Robust, great wireless coverage, and IPv6 works well, also.

The main reason that I'm not using XVortex is that IPv6 doesn't work for me on it. It does work for others, but our little Comcast backwater here seems to be a challenge for firmware developers to get IPv6 support working well. XVortex is about the last holdout (other than WRT1900AC stock firmware, which is almost there, but not quite) for IPv6.

Anyways, I'd recommend trying either Shibby tomato ARM v131 and/or Advanced Tomato v131, and see what you think.

 

[Trip]

Yep. AdvancedTomato. Stability, usability and pretty robust feature set. An additional bonus is Tomato for ARM now includes working fq_codel-based QoS, so you can do speed-based smart queueing, for those that don't want to mess as much with classes, priorities, etc.

On the others -- I might take some heat for this, but screw it: I don't have time or patience to navigate through tens of DD-WRT sub-builds looking for stability of a particular feature because they break inexplicably across their lineages in inexcusable ways -- yes, I know this stuff is free so we have no right to complain, but the resurfacing of bugs in my experience has just been un-usably bad. For xVortex/Merlin, I'm sure it will come to parity soon (if it hasn't already in many ways) but for me, I'll fall back to Tomato 9 times out of 10.

Granted, with most of these you lose hardware acceleration compared to OEM but for baseline functionality in simpler topologies and WAN links of, say, less than a couple hundreds Mb/s, Tomato on ARM should be fine. If you're looking to do hundreds of Mb/s with a whole bunch of services turned on and do so reliably, then you should be looking at x86/PPC black-box or purpose-built SMB/enterprise gear instead.

 

[RogerSC]

Granted, with most of these you lose hardware acceleration compared to OEM but for baseline functionality in simpler topologies and WAN links of, say, less than a couple hundreds Mb/s, Tomato on ARM should be fine. If you're looking to do hundreds of Mb/s with a whole bunch of services turned on and do so reliably, then you should be looking at x86/PPC black-box or purpose-built SMB/enterprise gear instead.

Actually, there have been several reports that CTF works fine on Shibby tomato ARM (and therefore with Advanced Tomato as well). Speed reports near 1Gbps. Dd-wrt doesn't have this working yet, however. There was also a report recently that CTF is working with XVortex firmware on the R7000.

 

[microchip]

Actually, there have been several reports that CTF works fine on Shibby tomato ARM (and therefore with Advanced Tomato as well). Speed reports near 1Gbps. Dd-wrt doesn't have this working yet, however. There was also a report recently that CTF is working with XVortex firmware on the R7000.

CTF has been working in XVortex from day one, IIRC.

 

[sfx2000]

Now on my R7000 I would love to run stock firmware, but sure if its something in the newer firmwares, BUT I do see that occasional lag in loading a webpage on all my devices wired and wireless. (Or I'm just being OCD!)

How is the Merlin firmware coming along? Anyone run it? How stable is it? Good enough to flash and leave it alone?

If it works, leave it alone... seriously...

I've seen on the forums that Netgear has pretty much sorted out the R7000 line - was a bit spooky early on, but reports have settled down.

I don't think Merlin's builds officially support anything outside of the Asus devices..

 

[oldthor60]

Ran Asus routers for years with Merlin firmware and it was awesome. Recently picked up a Netgear R7000 and have tried various custom firmware such as DD-WRT and Xvortex with it and to be honest have gone back to stock. While I appreciate all the effort put into the after market firmware I haven't found any that allow the router to operate with better performance and each had minor bugs that caused problems like missing LEDS or wacky wifi. I honestly believe for most home users at this point the stock firmware is the way to go. If you like to experiment or your running something exotic them maybe aftermarket is the way to go. Why live with any bugs? In my case all I need is strong, reliable wifi for my roku, boxes, tablets and laptops with really good thruput especially when streaming and stock firmware has been superior to the aftermarket offering at this point. Your experience may be different but this has been my results

 

[pgkool]

Honestly the stock firmware is pretty rock solid in my option, never had it crash in the 2 years iv owned the router, and is pretty feature rich. I finally bit the bullet and installed AsusWRT-Merlin v378.54_2 because I had a niche requirement. The stock firmware does NOT support NATing of different subnets. I have a switch behind my router with multiple VLANs. AsusWRT does support NATing of any subnet, but quite frankly I like the stock interface better and I dont think the performance is any better. I haven't doen any exhaustive tests. I may try advanced Tomato next, because the AsusWRT interface is a bit lame and its lacks QoS capability per device, which the stock firmware had.

 

[Mordred]

Ran Asus routers for years with Merlin firmware and it was awesome. Recently picked up a Netgear R7000 and have tried various custom firmware such as DD-WRT and Xvortex with it and to be honest have gone back to stock. While I appreciate all the effort put into the after market firmware I haven't found any that allow the router to operate with better performance and each had minor bugs that caused problems like missing LEDS or wacky wifi. I honestly believe for most home users at this point the stock firmware is the way to go. If you like to experiment or your running something exotic them maybe aftermarket is the way to go. Why live with any bugs? In my case all I need is strong, reliable wifi for my roku, boxes, tablets and laptops with really good thruput especially when streaming and stock firmware has been superior to the aftermarket offering at this point. Your experience may be different but this has been my results

If stock is ok, then there is no need to put something else on it, risk warranty etc.
But the large user base of some of these alternatives tell a different story.

While asus firmware is very feature rich it is buggy too.
Just look at their changelog everytime they release a new build.

I don't like netgear fw because you hardly get any updates, they react very slow if there are security issues and they even hide security holes:

http://www.synacktiv.com/ressources/TCP32764_backdoor_again.pdf

I'm very happy with an alternative fw on the R7000.

 

[cc666]

If stock is ok, then there is no need to put something else on it, risk warranty etc.
But the large user base of some of these alternatives tell a different story.

While asus firmware is very feature rich it is buggy too.
Just look at their changelog everytime they release a new build.

I don't like netgear fw because you hardly get any updates, they react very slow if there are security issues and they even hide security holes:

http://www.synacktiv.com/ressources/TCP32764_backdoor_again.pdf

I'm very happy with an alternative fw on the R7000.

And what firmware is your choice? DDWRT, Tomato, Xvortex?

CC

 

[RogerSC]

Currently using Kong's dd-wrt 28600 build on my R7000, and it is working really well. I wouldn't use it if I had over about 500Mbps download, but at the speed that we have here (nominally 150/12), I don't see any effect of not having hardware NAT or CTF or FA or other acceleration. Wireless is great, very fast and stable. I'm really liking it. The wireless looks better than XVortex or tomato on this build.

And not seeing these messages that I used to get all the time:

kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address

In fact, no errors in log, just working, and working well.

 

[avtella]

Tomato does support NAT/CTF and I have heard the QoS/traffic monitoring features are better than DD-WRT and stock. However as sfx2000 said Netgear has improved the stock firmware a lot so unless you have some special needs it should be good as is.

 

[RogerSC]

Tomato does support NAT/CTF and I have heard the QoS/traffic monitoring features are better than DD-WRT and stock. However as sfx2000 said Netgear has improved the stock firmware a lot so unless you have some special needs it should be good as is.

My problem with the stock Netgear firmware (aside from never getting the IPv6 functionality to where I'd like to see it) is the lack of monitoring tools. Dd-wrt includes full syslog, and much better status pages for looking at what's going on with your network. Haven't used it for a while, but I have used XVortex and tomato, and at the moment dd-wrt has the performance edge among alternative firmware on the R7000 with the build that I mentioned above.

Personally, I have no desire to go back to the Netgear stock firmware...it has been dumbed down so much (like the WRT1900AC firmware) that there's very little information available in case of network and client problems. It is true that tomato or XVortex is a better choice for those that have internet speeds more than about 500Mbps, but that's certainly not an issue for most of us (I think).

 

[avtella]

My problem with the stock Netgear firmware (aside from never getting the IPv6 functionality to where I'd like to see it) is the lack of monitoring tools. Dd-wrt includes full syslog, and much better status pages for looking at what's going on with your network. Haven't used it for a while, but I have used XVortex and tomato, and at the moment dd-wrt has the performance edge among alternative firmware on the R7000 with the build that I mentioned above.

Personally, I have no desire to go back to the Netgear stock firmware...it has been dumbed down so much (like the WRT1900AC firmware) that there's very little information available in case of network and client problems. It is true that tomato or XVortex is a better choice for those that have internet speeds more than about 500Mbps, but that's certainly not an issue for most of us (I think).

Interesting I didn't know Linksys cut down on features my last one was very old a 2.4Ghz N so I can't comment on Linksys or Asus as it been a while.

 

[RogerSC]

Interesting I didn't know Linksys cut down on features my last one was very old a 2.4Ghz N so I can't comment on Linksys or Asus as it been a while.

Take a look at the web admin GUI for a WRT1900AC or sibling router. Really stripped down.

 

[kiripe]

Bringin up an old thread, but what FW do people use for their R7000's ? xwrt-vortex? is it really safe? I mean, I know it's based on Rmerlin's work, but as far as I understand it's source code isn't public and whatever exploit could be coded in?