Netgear R7000, a few complaints, any reason to upgrade?

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y0bailey

Gawd
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Mar 31, 2003
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There is my current "home network' setup. We built a house about a year ago and this is where I stand. Upgrades from the picture are just AT&T fiber, 300up/300 down.

The nighthawk does a good job, a bit crappy upstairs in the attic (but I'm not there often, just a PITA when I'm trying to aim my antenna with a smartphone cutting in and out o f my HDHOMERUN app) and outdoors (cutting in and out 100 times while I work on the lawn).

So, reasons to upgrade would be

1) Range increases. All my important devices are Cat6 (server/gaming PC near router) or Cat5 (in the walls to HTPCs). Wifi devices do mostly well, but I would like a bit more range.

2) More wifi deviecs. I am nearing 15 DHCP reservations and I'm 90% convinced I get drops from so many wifi devies despite clearing everything and starting over.


This has been a great router. I improperly made a cat6 cable and ruined one of the in-ports...cut open a switch, stole a port, desoldered the R7000, and threw in the stolen port. My blood, sweat, and tears are in this thing. Is there any real reason to upgrade it even though its 3-4 years old? I don't think I'm interested in going the unify firewall/access point route...a lot of work compared to my setup that is done and 95% acceptable.
 
Disable wireless and run 2 unifi AP's only and keep the R7000 as your main router, DHCP etc... Use existing cat5/6 runs or do new ones for AP drops and use POE injectors that are free. If this helps Unifi has in wall A/C APs that also have to built in gigabit ports. The unit fits into a standard wall jack. I use 2 on the standard A/C units(not Pros) and they cover my whole 2500 sqft house, my whole backyard and driveway. One on the first floor and one on the second on either ends of the house. Seamless 2.4 and 5GHZ SSIDs, easy guest access with options to wall off guests from your network, etc...
 
yeah, you need distributed access points, ideally.

A compromise would be getting your WiFi out of the basement and relocate it centrally in your home.
 
I was planning on going Unifi, but eventually wussed out and went with Netgear Orbi. I just checked and I've got 96 active DHCP leases right now as well as a few static IPs.... the R7000 I had previously began to struggle after around 50 clients, but the Orbi (base+2 sats) has been solid. No a single dropout with my lifx bulbs, sonos, etc. Wifi speeds and coverage is drastically better despite having even more clients. If you're looking to tinker unifi is the shit, but if you just want something that's braindead easy and works out of the box, I've been quite happy with the Orbi.
 
Vengance_01 said:
Disable wireless and run 2 unifi AP's only and keep the R7000 as your main router, DHCP etc... Use existing cat5/6 runs or do new ones for AP drops and use POE injectors that are free. If this helps Unifi has in wall A/C APs that also have to built in gigabit ports. The unit fits into a standard wall jack. I use 2 on the standard A/C units(not Pros) and they cover my whole 2500 sqft house, my whole backyard and driveway. One on the first floor and one on the second on either ends of the house. Seamless 2.4 and 5GHZ SSIDs, easy guest access with options to wall off guests from your network, etc...
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Alright, I did it...this is the route I'm going.

Keeping the R7000 for routing, disabling wifi, and adding an AC PRO upstairs and an AC LITE in basement. This should cover everything, offload some of the work from my struggling R7000 wifi, and let me dip my feet in to the thought of going full Ubiquiti setup in the future.

Dumb question inbound.

I'm out of ports on my R7000....will I have any management issues if the AC's go through my TPlink smart managed switch, then into the R7000? I doubt it, but I honestly haven't messed with my switches configuration even a bit. It just works.
 
y0bailey said:
Alright, I did it...this is the route I'm going.

Keeping the R7000 for routing, disabling wifi, and adding an AC PRO upstairs and an AC LITE in basement. This should cover everything, offload some of the work from my struggling R7000 wifi, and let me dip my feet in to the thought of going full Ubiquiti setup in the future.

Dumb question inbound.

I'm out of ports on my R7000....will I have any management issues if the AC's go through my TPlink smart managed switch, then into the R7000? I doubt it, but I honestly haven't messed with my switches configuration even a bit. It just works.
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no as long as everything is on the same vlan then your good.
 
the only upgrade i would do is to the firmware, http://xvtx.ru/xwrt/index.htm
that solved a lot of my issues. also, i added some higher gain antenna and that solved my other issue.

with that firmware i have about 50 DHCP devices and a truly mad amount of traffic going through one and no issues, uptime measured in months.

i actually am going to a Unifi set up, with 48 port POE switch, and until i order a USG the R7000 with xwrt is still the core router.
 
Alright, Ubiquiti access points installed. Super easy, super slick looking. Everything is up and running, R7000 no longer handling wifi. My wife hasn't complained about a single drop thus far.

The Ubiquiti setup was way easier than I thought...mostly just named my SSID, put in a password, and things are just working. Is it supposed to be that easy? Any settings people would recommend changing?
 
y0bailey said:
Alright, Ubiquiti access points installed. Super easy, super slick looking. Everything is up and running, R7000 no longer handling wifi. My wife hasn't complained about a single drop thus far.

The Ubiquiti setup was way easier than I thought...mostly just named my SSID, put in a password, and things are just working. Is it supposed to be that easy? Any settings people would recommend changing?
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not really. They work pretty well out of the box. I would just download and install the latest firmware. You can do this using the controller software. Btw it easy for anyone in the IT field not so much for your standard user
 
Vengance_01 said:
not really. They work pretty well out of the box. I would just download and install the latest firmware. You can do this using the controller software. Btw it easy for anyone in the IT field not so much for your standard user
Click to expand...

Yep...I updated both of them to latest firmware.

I also made the mistake of installing the controller software on my gaming PC not my always on Server, so I had to factory reset them and re-install on the server so I can VNC in to manage them from anywhere.

I thought they would be like most any router in that I could just 192.168.x.x login from within the network..I was wrong. No harm, no foul.

About to start spending more money and go full Ubiqiti soon...kinda wishing the R7000 would finally die.


MORE QUESTIONS.

1) Would getting the Ubiquiti USG really provide me anything over the R7000 in pure router mode? Realistically I'm just looking for "max speed" for file transfers in the network....and I think hard drives are my limiting factor to that not my network.

The R7000 isn't short on processing power, and I don't use many advanced features, so I'm thinking I'm just doing this because I like to tinker not because of any real benefits?
 
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i am just going to a USG over my XWRT R7000 because i want the DPI section in the ubiquiti console to not be blank. webfilter is actually easier on the R7000, everything else is pretty much a draw. VIA command line the USG can webfilter categories, that is a debatable plus i guess.
 
Zedicus said:
i am just going to a USG over my XWRT R7000 because i want the DPI section in the ubiquiti console to not be blank. webfilter is actually easier on the R7000, everything else is pretty much a draw. VIA command line the USG can webfilter categories, that is a debatable plus i guess.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by webfilter? I'm guessing since I don't know what that is, I don't use it. LOL
 
blocking websites based on things like keywords, not just the typical blocking based on URL. I mostly use that feature for ad blocking though.
 
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