Linksys EA8500 Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Smart Wi-Fi Router Reviewed

[chadster766]

I've seen two good use reports so far.

 

[psychopomp1]

I've upgraded to fw 170630 and it works like a dream on my EA8500. Its as good as 168206

 

[Hydro]

I updated to 630 last night - so far, so good!

 

[ddarko]

Given that it took about a week after I updated to 169978 before the disconnect bug surfaced, I think I will let others be the guinea pigs. The release notes for 170630 states in part that it "[a]ddressed 2.4GHz disconnection issue in noisy environment" which worries me because devices on the 5Ghz band also disconnected for me with 169978. I'm concerned I'll discover 170630 doesn't fully solve the disconnect bug but I won't be able to revert back to 168206 afterwards. Last time, the only way I was able to go back to 168206 was with the built in revert functionality; trying to manually revert with a saved copy of 168206 didn't work. I'm interested to hear people's experience with 170630 but at this point, I'm leaning toward just staying with 168206 regardless.

 

[dfran1]

I am having problems with the latest 170630 with my NVR
I can not use my external IP on WIFI, my phone app won't see it.
On cell it works fine and also WIFI to local IP works.
I have tried 2 reset methods to make sure and all the same.
I don't think I have had any wifi drops (think!)
I would recommend you stay on 168206 as it is a crap shoot to go back for me now.
Hopefully the next version fixes all issues, but the latest like I stated seems ok besides that one issue for me.
I have also moved my work EA8500 to latest 170630 firmware when it was released and have not heard any complaints from anyone yet (the 169978 did drop WIFI for this one). SOOOOOOOOOO??????????..........
I did do a factory default and input all settings like new on the work EA8500 (as I always do) as I always do after a firmware install.

 

[crashnburn]

Some edge ISPs use the CCR1036 with thousands of QoS and firewall rules for their users which they generate automatically using scripts

If you need Cisco features at the highest speeds than there is no other choice than to go with cisco even though mikrotik routerOS have cisco features they do not perform as well compared to cisco IOS. It also doesnt help that cisco doesnt share their technology properly or charge such a high price for licensing their networking protocols.

If you dont need cisco features at the fastest speeds than mikrotik is a better choice. Thats not to say that pfsense would be nicer to use with multi core, multi CPU xeons but theres also the cost of the NICs and electricity.

I use the CCR1036 at home

I think that's addressing two different markets - the Linksys EA8500 is a soho Router/AP targeted perhaps towards the high end consumer market. It's a plug-and-play performance solution.

The MicroTik boards, along with RouterOS - A very powerful platform... and targeted towards a very different audience - e.g. Network Pro's and developers... and to enthusiasts that like to tweak things to the nTH degree.

All the playing around and time/ cost of messing with DD WRT & Tomato and my discovery of Mikrotik HapLite at 22 USD starting. Has made me change tracks..