Most Reliable AC1900 Router?

[tzhang4284]

Hi,

First time posted to this forum but been an active SNB reader. Currently looking to buy an AC1900 router because my apartment complex has webpass (200mbps+ internet) and need a router that can handle all that bandwidth. Between the Asus AC68U, Netgear R7000 and the new Linksys WRT1900AC, which has been the most reliable out of the box. Using third party firmware to enhance performance is great, but want something reliable without tickering. I would say how I'm evaluating is the following:

1. Reliability (no down-time and everything just works)
2. Performance (fast - hence why I've excluded the Apple Time Capsule)
3. Features (would like to have time machine but not as important as #1 or #2)

Appreciate any insight anyone might have to the above.

Thanks,
Tony

 

[htismaqe]

If you're #1 criteria is stability/reliability, I cannot recommend the Netgear R7000. I had a really horrible experience and it was made a million times worse by Netgear's lack of good support.

It's very fast and the range was the best I've really ever seen. But even that wasn't enough to overcome the nagging little issues I had with it (I've detailed some of them elsewhere). Having to reboot it every 2 or 3 days just got to be too much for me to deal with.

That being said, a lot of people are reporting really, really good results with DD-WRT on the R7000. Performs very well and apparently much more stable. However, like you I'm put off by the amount of information available in DD-WRT. I wanted simple and straightforward.

I don't have any experience with the other models. I just got a Linksys EA6900 today.

 

[Pierino]

My rt-ac68u is great. You have the option of using stock fw , dd-wrt, tomato and RMerlin's, which is stock on steroids. Which is what I use.
If to get the wrt1900ac you are limited to stock only.
I know you said you were only interested in stock but why limit yourself fir the future.

 

[chadster766]

My rt-ac68u is great. You have the option of using stock fw , dd-wrt, tomato and RMerlin's, which is stock on steroids. Which is what I use.
If to get the wrt1900ac you are limited to stock only.
I know you said you were only interested in stock but why limit yourself fir the future.

This is not true about the WRT1900AC. OpenWRT is working on the firmware and Attitude Adjustment and Barrier Breaker are available. Keep in mind that the OpenWRT firmwares are still initial releases.

https://github.com/wrt1900ac/opensource/releases

https://github.com/wrt1900ac/opensource

 

[jlake]

Whichever AC router you decide on, you're probably going to have to disable the 2.4 ghz radio since you live in a crowded apartment/condo building. And you'll possibly run in to interference on 5ghz too depending on how large your apartments are. 5ghz interference will come from your neighbors and DECT 6 phones etc. So try to use the lower channels if you can or change channels til you find what works best.

Hopefully you have good luck with whatever you buy, but apartments, lots of close neighbors, and wifi are a ripe cocktail for problems.

 

[tzhang4284]

My rt-ac68u is great. You have the option of using stock fw , dd-wrt, tomato and RMerlin's, which is stock on steroids. Which is what I use.
If to get the wrt1900ac you are limited to stock only.
I know you said you were only interested in stock but why limit yourself fir the future.

I've read a lot about random reboot issues and slow USB 3.0 transfer issues (don't care as much about this one but still worth asking). Have you experienced any of that? I'm not opposed to playing with 3rd party firmware but my main goal is for it to just work. Was there a noticeable difference switching from the Asus firmware to the RMerlin firmware? Also, how come the RMerlin firmware is that much better? Does Asus just have incompetent engineers or something?

Given the prior post, I've crossed the R7000 off my list. The time machine backup capability, 3rd party firmware supoprt and lower price are major selling points but I'm def wary of the reliability issues discussed on the board. Appreciate any more background on that.

Thanks

 

[jlake]

I've read a lot about random reboot issues and slow USB 3.0 transfer issues (don't care as much about this one but still worth asking). Have you experienced any of that? I'm not opposed to playing with 3rd party firmware but my main goal is for it to just work. Was there a noticeable difference switching from the Asus firmware to the RMerlin firmware? Also, how come the RMerlin firmware is that much better? Does Asus just have incompetent engineers or something?

Given the prior post, I've crossed the R7000 off my list. The time machine backup capability, 3rd party firmware supoprt and lower price are major selling points but I'm def wary of the reliability issues discussed on the board. Appreciate any more background on that.

Thanks

You have to be cautious when you see reliability issues posted on the forum. Some are valid. Many are user error. Trust me, there's lots of user error on this forum. Some people have problems with every router they use.

 

[htismaqe]

You have to be cautious when you see reliability issues posted on the forum. Some are valid. Many are user error. Trust me, there's lots of user error on this forum. Some people have problems with every router they use.

While this is very, very true, I can assure that the issue I had with the R7000 was not user error. I didn't post full details here because I've already done that in a couple of other threads and didn't want to come off as spammy. There were 3 or 4 of us on the Netgear forums that were testing it. This wasn't a case of wireless settings being wrong, channel interference, or anything like that.

After 24-36 hours of runtime, the forwarding table in the switch would get screwed up and suddenly all wireless devices were considered "wired" according to the R7000 GUI. At that point, wired devices could no longer communicate at all (not even ping) with wireless clients until the router was rebooted.

I sent Netgear several hundred megabytes of packet captures and spent 5 weeks troubleshooting with them. The lack of telnet/SSH into the router while using Netgear stock firmware limited any real detailed troubleshooting. My suspicion is that it was some sort of memory leak since it happened like clockwork after a reboot. However, I finally gave up and returned my unit.

 

[Pierino]

I've read a lot about random reboot issues and slow USB 3.0 transfer issues (don't care as much about this one but still worth asking). Have you experienced any of that? I'm not opposed to playing with 3rd party firmware but my main goal is for it to just work. Was there a noticeable difference switching from the Asus firmware to the RMerlin firmware? Also, how come the RMerlin firmware is that much better? Does Asus just have incompetent engineers or something?

Given the prior post, I've crossed the R7000 off my list. The time machine backup capability, 3rd party firmware supoprt and lower price are major selling points but I'm def wary of the reliability issues discussed on the board. Appreciate any more background on that.

Thanks

I don't use the USB on the router. RMerlin will incorporate fixes in the firmware a lot quicker than asus does. Sometimes asus even takes some of his fixes and incorporates them in their releases.
As to netgear, I really am unsatified about their customer support as htismaqe said.
I'm joecop67 on the netgear forums. I along with other owners of the netgear r6300 have bad experience ith customer support.

 

[Pierino]

If its ok I would like to tell my experience with asus and netgear customer support.
I had a netgear r6300 that was still under warranty but it was given to me, I wasn't the original buyer. It, along with many other r6300's have a problem with corrupted firmware. Out of the blue the router goes into recovery mode. Ping responses oh ttl=100. You have to tftp the fw to fix it.
I contacted netgear, even though it was still under warranty they would not replace it or help me because I didn't have a receipt.

I purchased an asus rt-ac66u from eBay. When it arrived it would not power on.
I sent an email to asus asking how much it would cost to repair it. I was willing to pay.
Their response was: it won't cost anything. It's under warranty.
I explained I was not the original owner, that I bought it in that state from eBay.
They said it didn't matter. The warranty followed the router. For the price of one way shipping, they fixed it. Sent me another unit.

That forever turned me away from netgear to asus.

 

[RogerSC]

If you're willing to use dd-wrt, I'd go with the R7000. I don't find it a problem to just configure what I'm using in dd-wrt, and love the monitoring information that's available. Tomato firmware is also coming along for it, but isn't there yet. But that's your choice.

If you want to go with OEM firmware, the WRT1900AC firmware seems solid. It's missing things that I'd like to see, some features that you expect in a $250 wireless router, and monitoring capability. However, when you get the limited settings set up properly for wireless-AC, it works fine, and seems stable so far. I'd say that the OEM firmware for the WRT1900AC is more solid than that for the R7000, but that may change as more features are added, that remains to be seen.

Haven't used the RT-AC68U, just read about it. So I can't really comment, other than to say that I'd be using RMerlin firmware on it if I was using it, which isn't really OEM firmware. But much closer to that than dd-wrt.

My last comment is that when I buy a router, I make sure that I can return it for a refund, in case it becomes obvious early on that it won't fit my needs in one way or the other. So do make sure that you can do that, no matter what you end up getting.

 

[sfx2000]

Hi,

First time posted to this forum but been an active SNB reader. Currently looking to buy an AC1900 router because my apartment complex has webpass (200mbps+ internet) and need a router that can handle all that bandwidth. Between the Asus AC68U, Netgear R7000 and the new Linksys WRT1900AC, which has been the most reliable out of the box. Using third party firmware to enhance performance is great, but want something reliable without tickering. I would say how I'm evaluating is the following:

1. Reliability (no down-time and everything just works)
2. Performance (fast - hence why I've excluded the Apple Time Capsule)
3. Features (would like to have time machine but not as important as #1 or #2)

Appreciate any insight anyone might have to the above.

Thanks,
Tony

Your requirements are a bit at odds with each other... you want to run 3rd-Party firmware, but you want reliability... hmmm... you want to run time machine, but on a 3rd party, which is not formally supported by the folks up in Cupertino.

All of your choices are fairly new in the market, and they're going to have some stability issues perhaps...

Airport Extreme, R7000, AC66U, WRT1900AC, all have WAN/LAN performance that is better than 200Mbps. jPerf performance on all three, again, about the same - every environment is different.

Stability - I've found that the Airport tends to be more stable, less features perhaps than the WRT1900AC.

 

[Pierino]

He said he did not want to run third part fw.

 

[sfx2000]

He said he did not want to run third part fw.

Yes he did as an option... see below

Using third party firmware to enhance performance is great, but want something reliable without tickering

sfx

 

[thiggins]

What if the question were about the most stable AC1750 router? While the more powerful processor does improve 5 GHz throughput a bit, the 256 QAM implementation in 2.4 GHz (the thing that can provide 600 Mbps link rate) has been shown to cause problems.

 

[Pierino]

Yes he did as an option... see below



sfx

Lol, I read as meaning he doesn't want to tinker with third party.

 

[htismaqe]

I wouldn't blame him if he didn't.

I'm pretty technical but I also have OCD.

DD-WRT, for me, ends up being a week-long exercise of endless tweaking and more tweaking.

I need a stripped down GUI to bar me from obsessing about settings!