Return Nighthawk and buy Asus AC68U

[drmtesta]

Hi all
I bought a Netgear Nighthawk r7000 about two weeks ago and while the speed is good, it eliminates Airplay at the moment and I'm still getting stuttering steaming 1080 movies from my WD MyCloud with Twonky server.

I'm wondering if I would get better performance and my Airplay back if I swapped it out. My AC bridge is a Trendnet TEW 800. . .I also have a WD My Net AC bridge.

Any thoughts would be helpful.
Thanks!!!

 

[drabisan]

You don't need a huge amount of bandwidth for a 1080p movie. Around 50mbps for a 1080p with DTS sound (though if you are streaming with a media server I can't say if DTS is part of the picture).

Both r7000 and r68u are powerful routers with good wireless and I doubt swapping one with another will make any difference in your case.

I can assume you are using lots of wireless and you need to make sure you are reaching good N speeds. Even better, AC speeds (over 300mbps).
Though wireless has evolved a lot, stability is not a the strongest point. You may get different results on conditions that you may consider as identical.

Try having your storage wired and only tv or laptop on wireless at minimum 200mbps on 5GHz and check the stability of your streaming.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Most of movies we stream to our 7.1 HT system is off the Internet directly from web sites originating from my old country. My wife streams this movies, soap operas real time without any issues with R7000. At the same time there are at least 5 PCs connected, WiFi printer, NAS surveillance station with 3 cameras running 24/7, No problem. F/W is latest dd-wrt. B4 I used RT-N66U/RT-AC66U which worked just fine too.
My ISP provides 50/3 speed.

 

[KGB7]

You wont get better anything. Find the actual culprit of your issues instead swapping our routers.

 

[reallynotnick]

My guess is however you are streaming this isn't over your LAN. Like you have local content and you are uploading it in real time to the internet and then downloading it with an upload speed of only 3mb/s you would for sure have some problems. Check to make sure your server and everything is setup properly to stream over your local area network and not over IP.

 

[Jaded]

Had same issues on r7000...'ac68u and no hd video or airplay problems. Airplay is completely broken on the r7000 in bridge mode. It's a known issue and their most recent beta didn't address or fix the issue. Asus firmware is much more stable as well. I only reboot every 2 weeks and the ac68umhas been problem free.

 

[Preskitt.man]

On my older Netgear WNDR4000, I connect it over the 5GHz channel to my Samsung 7100 (model year 2012). Stream HD Netflix and other HD media from Mezzmo media server without any issues.

Did recently purchase and started using AC68U, primarily in anticipation to move to new house which is now spread out over one story instead being more compact and router will be about 50 feet and several walls away from TV.

 

[admiral2145]

I stream 50 gig 7.1 DTS-ma BluRay with wireless ac with no issues.. Anything lower than ac will not stream well for some reason.

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

[drmtesta]

Thanks so much for the replies. Very helpful. I'm curious about what you are using as a bridge? Trendnet TEW 800 AC bridge is does not have the same speed as the R7000.

I'm ok if Netgear will fix the Airplay eventually, but I'm seriously thinking about just running wire. It sounds like I should be able to make this work with what I have however.

Are there any settings that are really important on the router (QoS) or on the media server? I'm streaming to a Freeagent Theater HD " media player if that helps.

Thanks again. . .starving for information!

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Some how I stumbled upon latest Netgear beta f/w which I am running on now. Lot has improved. Maybe release version even better. Also Kong's latest dd-wrt is according
to him reached mature stage.(except IPV6 which dd-wrt is yet to implement). OP,
instead of trying different routers, spend some time experimenting to gain some
own valuable knowledge and experience. I am not at your place, so it is next to impossible to advise you what's best course for you. Not only a router, if I get hold of some thing in my possession I try my best to make it work for me to my liking. Even if
I have to change/mod. software, hardware, f/w. As retired I have lots of spare time, LOL!