moving on from the Linksys WRT54G

RKS

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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It been a great decade or so and the Linksys is starting to need reboots. We do a lot of streaming to the WD TV and the kids are starting PC and Xbox gaming. It would be great if we could share our Apple music as well. I am also planning on adding a 4TB external HDD to the router. I want to future proof as much as possible and have narrowed it to the Asus ac68U or the Netgear r7000. As always, there are mixed reviews and pro/cons of each. Any suggestions in choosing the one best for us? Thanks.

Edit: I have seen the smallnetbuilder comparison. I was leaning to the Asus but it seems like the Netgear may be better for our purposes.
 
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JoeMcJoe

Senior member
May 10, 2011
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Asus I have found to have better firmware support than Netgear by far.

Don't expect super fast HDD file sharing from a router, it will work, just not as fast a dedicated NAS device.
 

s44

Diamond Member
Oct 13, 2006
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If you're coming from the 54G, I'd prioritize what made that such a stalwart for so long: the rock-solid third-party firmware support. This will probably arrive on the AC68u, but isn't here yet, so I'd probably stick to the AC66u (which all the major Tomato builds now support) for now.

Mind you, for your uses the N66u should be fine too. You can always upgrade the radio with a new AP...
 

Lat

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Feb 18, 2012
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I was thinking about picking up the Netgear R7000 as well, and throwing an external USB 3.0 drive for video/file history storage.

For me, it was a decision between better hardware (R7000) and better firmware support (RT-AC66U) - I'm leaning towards the better hardware, as there is full DD-WRT support for the Nighthawk already and devs are working on Tomato support.

It also looks like the USB3.0 port on the AC68U is not as fast as the Nighthawk's, and the AC66U doesn't even support USB3.0.

We'll see how it goes, but I'm definitely very close to picking up the R7000, the Rosewill RX-358 enclosure (w/ fan), and a WD Red 3-4TB drive.
 

Lat

Member
Feb 18, 2012
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I was thinking about picking up the Netgear R7000 as well, and throwing an external USB 3.0 drive for video/file history storage.

For me, it was a decision between better hardware (R7000) and better firmware support (RT-AC66U) - I'm leaning towards the better hardware, as there is full DD-WRT support for the Nighthawk already and devs are working on Tomato support.

It also looks like the USB3.0 port on the AC68U is not as fast as the Nighthawk's, and the AC66U doesn't even support USB3.0.

We'll see how it goes, but I'm definitely very close to picking up the R7000, the Rosewill RX-358 enclosure (w/ fan), and a WD Red 3-4TB drive.

Grabbed the R7000. The range is phenomenal over my old [DIR-825] router. Threw DD-WRT on there and it's running great.
 

RKS

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Grabbed the R7000. The range is phenomenal over my old [DIR-825] router. Threw DD-WRT on there and it's running great.

Thanks for the update. Have you tried a USB 3.0 device yet?
 

Lat

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Feb 18, 2012
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Not quite yet. I'll go test a USB 3.0 hard drive later on tonight and see how it goes.

Okay, I've verified that the R7000 (<Kong>'s build 23265 of DD-WRT) works with my USB 3.0 drive on the USB 3.0 port w/ a Samba share to my desktop.

Speeds are 14.5MB/s write and 20.3MB/s read via Gigabit Ethernet (onto a 2.5" enclosure with a 1TB HDD, powered via USB).

YMMV with various enclosures though. I read on the R7000 DD-WRT thread that some enclosures may not work.
 

Scarpozzi

Lifer
Jun 13, 2000
26,389
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I have a WRT54G 2.0. It has been rock solid for me with DD-WRT for years.

I'm adding more space onto my house and will likely be switching to N and a Gig network with a PoE vlan for surveilance. (a few pieces of equipment in my new server room) I like what I've read about the ASUS stuff. It's definitely going to be at the top of my list.
 

Lat

Member
Feb 18, 2012
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ASUS Dark night, best router ever.

Both the Netgear R7000 and the ASUS RT-AC68U will be excellent, but the article and testing in the smallnetbuilder review of both (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...1900-first-look-netgear-r7000-a-asus-rt-ac68u) seems to favour to the Netgear Nighthawk
...I'd have to say the NETGEAR is the better choice. But that's mainly because its (slightly) faster processor has more power to handle heavier simultaneous routing, wireless and storage loads, with significantly higher storage performance being the real benefit for your $200.