Nighthawk

I purchased this router to replace a old Apple Airport that I have had since 2008 to be able to take advantage of the 802.11ac that my mobile devices and laptop are able to use. I am an IT Pro by day but never got around to replacing the AirPort as it did what it needed to do and did not want to spend the money on something new just yet. However, now that all of my mobile devices and work laptop can use 802.11ac, I decided to go ahead and purchase something to replace it as I wanted to get the most out of my network and because of the 1TB HDD bundle that the Nighthawk included.Background on Network -My home was wired with Cat6 drops in every room of the house by myself and tested to insure connections were solid. The cable modem is a ARRIS SB6121 that I purchased from Amazon to replace a older DOCSIS 2.0 modem that could not longer handle the DL speed from my ISP.Reason for Purchase -After reading many different reviews on Amazon and Newegg on many different routers my choices were the TP-Link Archer C7, Asus RT-N66U, Asus RT-AC68U, and Netgear Nighthawk. I chose the R7000 based on the reviews online, the constant support by two devs on the DD-WRT forums, and because of the 1TB Toshiba HD bundle.Setup/Configuration -I ordered it on Friday (7/3) and received it at my door on Sunday (7/5). It was set up later that night and I began to upload the custom DD-WRT firmware by Kong that I got from the DD-WRT Forums. Once uploaded, the setup was a breeze and after following a few guides from the forums, I had the Wireless setup for 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz with two separate SSIDs for both and optimized for maximum speeds.It got to be to late and I stopped for the night, the next night I got back into performing setup and configuration of the DD-WRT software. I optimized QoS for it as we do streaming and gaming in our household on both LAN and WLAN. I then used a 2GB USB flash drive formatted with ext2 to install YAMon2 which is "Yet Another Monitor". This allows me to see a breakdown on bandwidth usage monthly, daily, and hourly along with overall network and per device on both LAN and WLAN. As my ISP has a Usage meter and I am charged if I go over 350GB of data in a billing period, this gives me an extra way to monitor the usage and make sure I am not going to go over. This USB Drive was plugged into the back USB port of the router as the USB 3.0 is not needed for it.As I had also received a 1TB Toshiba HDD with this purchase, I wanted to have it set up as a NAS for backups and storage for my desktop and laptop computer. This was as easy as plugging the hard drive into the USB 3.0 port on the front of the router and setting up the SAMBA server through the DD-WRT software. Was able to connect to it and transfer data within 15 minutes of plugging it in.There is more to do as far as the DD-WRT firmware is concerned, but for the moment, it is working very well and is doing what I need it to do. I plan on setting up a VPN with this, and the DD-WRT can do that, just have not had the time to set it up yet.Pros -1. Overall design is very sleek and would look nice out in the open. I have this placed in my networking closet in the middle of my house and heat is not an issue.2. 802.11ac is fantastic after unlocking more settings using the DD-WRT firmware, have great signal coverage throughout my house and outside. I have a 75Mbps DL from my ISP and after running multiple SpeedTests on both my iPhone 6 and Desktop computer, I average about 78Mbps DL on both devices. I have Beamforming running on the firmware, but have not fully tested it yet, so cannot report on it.3. Stock firmware looked easy to use if you are just wanting to use it to set up your network, did not mess with it much, but for someone that does not have experience with networking, custom firmware's, and in-depth configuration. The Factory Firmware would work just fine for doing what you need to do.4. If you purchase this router and want to have some fun with it, there are many guides on how to install DD-WRT onto your router. I had looked at both Tomato by Shibby and the DD-WRT by Kong, I went with the DD-WRT by Kong as it is in constant development and new builds are always being released.Cons -1. Right now I have not found any major fallback on this router apart from the two Ethernet cables were Cat 5e, but I keep a box of Cat 6 on hand and made a few patch cables for it.

Netgear really churned out an awesome piece of high tech equipment with R7000.Setup: It was supposed to be easy but the blame was not on the router. It took 2 hours for me and Netgear to figure out why a fully configured router was losing internet access. So, the initial setup takes less than 10 minutes if at all. I have to give 5 stars to Netegar. Now the problem I faced - The router is physically placed near the home theater equipment I can connect a lot of devices using hard wire method. One of the devices turned out to be culprit for my connection woes - and that device is Comcast's HD cable box. When connected (either directly to the router or through a Gigabit network switch which in turn connected to the router), the default IP address would change from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.100.1, thereby causing all devices to lose connection. Netgear and I spent time trying to pinpoint the problem and eliminating one device after the other. We then entered in the browser the auto-modified ip address and it was populating a window showing "Pace Micro Plc" username and password. Anyway, to cut short the story, we removed Comcast box from connecting directly to the router or to the switch and instead connected to the back of another device which has LAN ports. Problem solved. Netgear customer support from Philippines is simply superb. They are patient, pleasant, very courteous, and most importantly, they know their stuff and even if they don't, they will get the answer quickly for you. And when they say, they will call - they surely will.Connectivity: Once the problem mentioned above was resolved, everything else was a breeze. The router interface page is great. I put the primary 5 and 2.1 is hidden mode which is working with all my devices. The guest accounts are visible. The devices are connected without a drop in connection, granted this has only been a day since I fired up the device and more updates will follow in the months to come. At this point, I don't have any AC devices. Only N devices and they all work fine. I have at least several devices connected to it.Signal Strength: Strong signals anywhere in the home. Speeds are very good no matter where I am in the home. I heard that 5 ghz signal weakens the farther the distance and I experienced that problem with my Cisco EA4500 but this one seems to beam the 5 ghz signals to the far end of the world and perhaps other planets too (if the antennas are any bigger). 5 stars here. Thanks to mega-sized antennas.Features: QoS automatically identified my streaming databases on multiple devices and is now configured. No buffering issues in the limited testing I have done. Other standard set of features you would expect in a router are all there. One annoyance is the bright LED lights that a lot of people complained about. I spoke with Netgear and there is no way to disable them. I used, like others, black electrical insulation tape to cover them. So much for spending $200 and taping the damn thing. I am not impressed with it. But, I am not reducing any stars for this and am hoping that Netgear will add this feature in the next firmware. Between Asus and this one, I went with Netgear because it has been in industry building networking products only. Asus on the other hand has its finger in every pie you can possibly imagine so I am not sure that their heart is focused solely on building the best networking products. In addition, I've read that Asus does only downstream internet speed optimization where as R7000 does upstream as well as downstream but if you don't game this might not make a lot of difference I suppose. See this:[...]Footprint: Contrary to a lot of people citing it to be huge and stuff, I don't find it any larger than other standard routers I have seen. Yes, with those lights it can be in your face though. Yes, it is a tad bit bigger than others but I don't care so long as it performs well.Conclusion: I will be adding a couple of laptops the AC network cards and will report the speeds, signal strength and other attributes at that time. For now, I am quite pleased with my investment.Update Nov 2014With over 12 devices connected so far, the router has had ZERO downtime or dropped connections since the past 11 months. Speeds are consistent and terrific. Need I say more?