Netgear R7000 or ASUS RT-AC68U

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#1823625 17-Jul-2017 09:47

michaelmurfy:

Well I am going to deviate from your two options to recommend a third - it is a touch more pricey, looks more shiny and can be placed in the centre of a room. Offers very good WiFi, simple to setup, secure and offers very good parental control including timed WiFi access (turn off WiFi to specific devices at bedtime) and many other neat things. You will love it. And if we're going by the pricing of the R7000 it isn't much more really.

And that router is the Ubiquiti Amplifi. It is available from a few places including PB Tech. You could either go for the full kit (with the 2 extenders) or just the base router and add onto it at a later date. The base router by itself will offer pretty good coverage around your home and comes in cheaper than your two options. If you grab the full kit you'll get full strength, fast WiFi across your whole house (and I mean this - it has impressed me).

I've been sent one from Ubiquiti to try out and so far it is an awesome router - I am yet to write a review (since I've only had it a few days) however I think it'll be perfect for you.

That looks like a tempting set-up.. a couple of questions:

Is a separate adapter required for the NZ style power connectors? (or does the kit include a range of "replaceable" plugs for each power connector?)
The user guide seems a little lightweight. Where is the VLAN (10) id configured?

thanks in advance

michaelmurfy

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#1823640 17-Jul-2017 10:06

kiwi_64:

That looks like a tempting set-up.. a couple of questions:

Is a separate adapter required for the NZ style power connectors? (or does the kit include a range of "replaceable" plugs for each power connector?)
The user guide seems a little lightweight. Where is the VLAN (10) id configured?
thanks in advance

VLAN is configured during the internet setup guide in the app (I've tested this with my UFB connection and it works great). The unit I've got has a US power plug as it came direct from Ubiquiti in the US (so just my unit) however the NZ versions do indeed have a standard NZ plug.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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Kookoo

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#1824109 17-Jul-2017 23:56

Batman:

I don't know if the engine is embedded in the firmware, but seeing that bad stuff mutate by the minute, it will be outdated by the time the router reaches your house don't you think?

If you care then go on and read these.

http://www.techworld.com/security/asus-rt-ac68u-router-its-fast-but-it-also-secure-3620280/3/

https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1012070/

Oh wow. Not cool.

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Kookoo

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#1824111 17-Jul-2017 23:58

michaelmurfy:

Well I am going to deviate from your two options to recommend a third - it is a touch more pricey, looks more shiny and can be placed in the centre of a room. Offers very good WiFi, simple to setup, secure and offers very good parental control including timed WiFi access (turn off WiFi to specific devices at bedtime) and many other neat things. You will love it. And if we're going by the pricing of the R7000 it isn't much more really.

And that router is the Ubiquiti Amplifi. It is available from a few places including PB Tech. You could either go for the full kit (with the 2 extenders) or just the base router and add onto it at a later date. The base router by itself will offer pretty good coverage around your home and comes in cheaper than your two options. If you grab the full kit you'll get full strength, fast WiFi across your whole house (and I mean this - it has impressed me).

I've been sent one from Ubiquiti to try out and so far it is an awesome router - I am yet to write a review (since I've only had it a few days) however I think it'll be perfect for you.

Good option for a larger house I suppose (with the 2 extenders), but we've got a fairly small place. How does the coverage of the base unit compare to the other two I've been looking at?

Hello, Ground!

michaelmurfy

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#1824132 18-Jul-2017 07:34

Kookoo:

michaelmurfy:

Well I am going to deviate from your two options to recommend a third - it is a touch more pricey, looks more shiny and can be placed in the centre of a room. Offers very good WiFi, simple to setup, secure and offers very good parental control including timed WiFi access (turn off WiFi to specific devices at bedtime) and many other neat things. You will love it. And if we're going by the pricing of the R7000 it isn't much more really.

And that router is the Ubiquiti Amplifi. It is available from a few places including PB Tech. You could either go for the full kit (with the 2 extenders) or just the base router and add onto it at a later date. The base router by itself will offer pretty good coverage around your home and comes in cheaper than your two options. If you grab the full kit you'll get full strength, fast WiFi across your whole house (and I mean this - it has impressed me).

I've been sent one from Ubiquiti to try out and so far it is an awesome router - I am yet to write a review (since I've only had it a few days) however I think it'll be perfect for you.

Good option for a larger house I suppose (with the 2 extenders), but we've got a fairly small place. How does the coverage of the base unit compare to the other two I've been looking at?

Well I've got a small 2 bedroom apartment style house and it covers that no problems with only the base unit. If you did end up with a low coverage zone then you could grab an extender for it.

bignose

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#1824500 18-Jul-2017 15:50

michaelmurfy:

Well I've got a small 2 bedroom apartment style house and it covers that no problems with only the base unit. If you did end up with a low coverage zone then you could grab an extender for it.

I've got a single afi-r covering an entire 4 bedroom house - helps that it's fairly centrally located, but it's wifi is strong all over the house - wheras the telecom provided hg659 was marginal in the most distant spots (think that was probably down to the hg659 only supporting the lower segment of the 5ghz band, wheras the afi-r will let you use the upper/higher power portion as well)

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#1824810 18-Jul-2017 22:05

michaelmurfy:

Well I've got a small 2 bedroom apartment style house and it covers that no problems with only the base unit. If you did end up with a low coverage zone then you could grab an extender for it.

It was a good idea. Was seriously considering getting it tomorrow, until I came across their Parental Controls page.

Not a lot there unfortunately, definitely not enough for my needs.

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michaelmurfy

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#1824841 18-Jul-2017 22:34

@Kookoo to be perfectly honest any router is not going to be enough for your needs if you're needing content blocking. My suggestion is to use OpenDNS combined with the Amplifi. Any solution is quite easy to get around.

LordFarthing

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#1825150 19-Jul-2017 13:16

michaelmurfy: @Kookoo to be perfectly honest any router is not going to be enough for your needs if you're needing content blocking. My suggestion is to use OpenDNS combined with the Amplifi. Any solution is quite easy to get around.

@michaelmurfy : Saw Amplifi routers at PBT recently and wanted to get a unit to replace the old Dlink for my folks. I'm their regular 24/7 IT support and reckon having the speed display is a plus for them to 'report' status. Any idea if this unit runs the same level of hardware as other Ubiquiti prosumer routers e.g. Erx or erl-3 ? Geeky but good point to justify the extra $ for them , besides looking pretty on the outside. PS: Don't really need the mesh function. Thanks.

bignose

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#1825186 19-Jul-2017 13:36

LordFarthing:

Any idea if this unit runs the same level of hardware as other Ubiquiti prosumer routers e.g. Erx or erl-3 ? Geeky but good point to justify the extra $ for them , besides looking pretty on the outside. PS: Don't really need the mesh function. Thanks.

no-one's done a full strip down so far, and the FCC internal pics are too blurry to say what specific chipset they're using (though from the logos it's obviously QCA based https://fccid.io/SWX-AFR/Internal-Photos/Internal-Photos-3028170.pdf )

er-x is mediatek based and the erl-3 is even older and cavium based

nitro

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#1825874 20-Jul-2017 13:35

ubiquiti amplify looks wicked!

however the two choices put forth are so alike, i'd choose one based on looks. to me, that'd be the R7000. features-wise, netgear genie is behind stock asus, but you can run merlin on it (R7000) if you like the asus interface... then there's tomato / advanced tomato to play with (both of which run on both these models).

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#1833801 30-Jul-2017 16:11

I ended up getting the ASUS RT-AC68U and it's driving me insane.

First, every setting change requires a reboot. How come such a simple thing as assigning a permanent IP to a network device requires a reboot?

And then, after every reboot it fails to reconnect to the internet, so I have to manually go through the quick setup guide and re-enter the Spark PPPoE details. Which it remembers, but doesn't use to connect automatically. Then it returns an authentication error, and asks to re-enter PPPoE username/password. I click "reconnect" without changing the credentials, and only then does it connect. What is going on here?