Question Netgear informs me of terminated support for my router . . .

[BonzaiDuck]

I had been planning to upgrade my household router for at least two years now. Suffice it to say, I had a Nighthawk X4S R7800. I believe we acquired that Nighthawk almost ten years ago.

The router was installed on the second floor, consequence of a time when all the computers were on the second floor. My retired tel-co internet-focused brother gave us a cable-drop with CAT-5 more than 22 years ago -- supporting computers added to the first floor.

So the plan up to this point is to first replace the old router, and then re-install it downstairs -- eliminating the need for an Ethernet cable-drop. Wireless networking has been great for us, incorporating tablets, cell-phones and my laptop and Smart TV. Coax connection to our IP and TV provider -- Spectrum -- is also available at two locations of the first floor. Leaving the cable-drop in place, if there is ever a new need for a PC with wired connection on the 2nd floor, the cable-drop in the wall makes it easy and possible.

So now, as explicit in my subject title-line, NetGear his "informed" me of "support termination".

They recommend THIS MODEL -- the RS700S. We had previously spent, for each of maybe three previous routers, less than $300.

I observe that the second-tier in the NetGear lineup is the RS500 for $250 less, or about $350.

Anticipating future developments -- we're not likely to get fiber-optic internet delivery here anytime soon -- What will I miss in purchasing the RS500? What do YOU recommend?

 

[Ken g6]

DD-WRT seems to support your router. So you could "upgrade" your firmware for free.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I was going to mention that. The R7800 is still considered the best supported router for DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and other third party firmware. Many people are paying a premium just to still purchase these. The newer Wifi standards have very little added benefit and/or require essentially all wifi devices within range to support the latest features in order for those features to actually provide a benefit (something that will be almost impossible since all the IoT devices almost universally do not have modern wifi cards, and items like TV's that have 10 year life expectancy will likely not be replaced to have a newer wifi, with legacy items such as old game consoles will never receive updates).

 

[BonzaiDuck]

After hearing a few here on this forum, I'm glad I held off upgrading the router for two years, because I can wait a bit longer, I should hope.

I SHOULD consult with my brother as well as the tech-veterans here. He's a networking and router expert. I would have done better to go to him before bothering the rest of you all.

 

[mindless1]

Another vote to put DD-WRT on it, though if you are allergic to DD-WRT (??? just leave everything at the defaults besides what you know you need to change such as login and wifi parameters), then as Fallen Kell mentioned, it is a desirable model and you should be able to sell it if you wanted to recycle the funds into something newer.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Discussed with my brother. We THINK that the RJ-45 input capability of the old router pulling a signal from the cable-modem limits the speed of incoming signal.

However. I could be all wrong about this, and y'all could be totally right. BUT! I had accumulated cash-back rewards at Amazon and reduced the outlay from ~ $600 to $150+, so I pulled the string.

Let me say this, though. I'm still like Rip Van Winkle. My sense of installing a router is 10 years old, as if I'd been asleep all that time. Today, they want you to scan a QR Code and download an App on your Android phone.

I'm taking time to collect all the information available from the currently-working NightHawk so that I can set up the new one and don't have to go through the hoops of reconnecting devices. Network Name. Passwords.

I hate this shit. Pardonnez moi -- my French. But I never had a good time setting up a new router.

I'm going to take the time to carefully study their Effing YouTube Video. I HATE learning new stuff on YouTube videos -- I want to READ. In the 20th century -- we READ STUFF!

Like Arnie the Terminator said, "Ah'll be back! . . . . " and "No Problemo" so far, that is. . . .

I can see that if I'd followed advice, this would've likelly been a whole lot easier . . . . But . . . here we are . . .

 

[mindless1]

Discussed with my brother. We THINK that the RJ-45 input capability of the old router pulling a signal from the cable-modem limits the speed of incoming signal.

Let me say this, though. I'm still like Rip Van Winkle. My sense of installing a router is 10 years old, as if I'd been asleep all that time. Today, they want you to scan a QR Code and download an App on your Android phone.

If your ISP plan is 1Gb, the 1Gb wan port on the 7800 will be a slight bottleneck - mostly with speed tests.

If your ISP plan is higher than 1Gb, the 1Gb wan port on the 7800 will be much more of a "potential" bottleneck (assuming your modem has at least a 2.5Gb port as it should with a >1Gb ISP plan), but besides downloading large games (or linux distros lol), it would likely need multiple concurrent high bandwidth activities to get hit by that bottleneck - few everyday activities are going to saturate 1Gb for a low # of users, home internet use. Most wouldn't be bottlenecked by 400Mb, except that if the ISP is using coax cable instead of fiber, then their own congestion might be an additional factor and bursts of 1Gb when their bandwidth allows, would be better than bursts of 400Mb, either of which averaging out to lower than those totals.

I hope I explained that well, though if you don't have a lot of high bandwidth activities, then I would wonder why pay more for > 1Gb internet service when you don't have a lot of concurrent high bandwidth activities - unless heavily doing P2P or you're a content creator that also needs a higher upload bandwidth and that from your ISP, the higher upload bandwidth comes from a higher download plan tier to get that.

Although the router may have newer generation configuration options, I'd expect that it can also be configured like a traditional router would - hook up direct to a PC that is set to same IP range, login on a browser and change what needs it. You didn't mention the make/model of router.

I had mentioned previously the option of selling the router, but I like to have a backup router - I have a backup Nighthawk 6700 running DD-WRT, already configured as a drop in replacement, should my primary use router fail - up and running again in a couple minutes (if I'm on-site to make the swap.). If it were mine, I'd consider putting DD-WRT on the 7800 and doing the same with it.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Well, you already bought it I guess today... The R7800 under DD-WRT with proper settings would get about 940 Mbps routing performance from WAN <-> LAN. You won't get better than that with gigabit class hardware.

I can personally understand wanting faster routing if your provider has it and you have paid for it. I have a dedicated system running PFSense with 40 gigabit network connection setup as a "router-on-a-stick" doing my routing to/from the internet (the router-on-a-stick is a way to route between multiple networks using VLANs so only a single physical connection is needed to this particular system, but you need other network gear that supports VLANs to do this). My core network switch is a RUCKUS/Brocade ICX 6610, which has support for several 40gigabit connections and 16x 10gigabit connections as well as 24x 1gigabit. It is a full layer 3 switch (meaning it is also a router, and supports full wire speed bandwidth routing to all ports). It is my internal router between the VLANs I have made (one for IoT devices that are just local, one for IoT devices that need internet connectivity, one for my production network, one for my service/administration network, one for my guest network, a trans-lan VLAN (a VLAN that used to route to the internet), a WAN VLAN (i.e. it is the VLAN that the cable modem connects on my switch and the route-on-a-stick routes between it and the trans-lan VLANs) and one for my security camera network).

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I probably would've decided more wisely without the cashback-rewards to pay for it.

We have a lot of streaming to at least a few TVs. It may be that that sort of traffic is nothing compared to what I'm paying Spectrum for. I'm not sure.

But it's OK. The Cash-back rewards. I actually have to re-arrange our networking hardware in the house, so this is just part of a "bigger" project. Maybe I won't have the type of trouble with these matters as I did when I spent a whole day getting an earlier router to connect. That's the main thing.