Argh looking for a good modem+router

looks good

was this price a few weeks ago , also, had mine a good 6 months now and rock solid , way better than the SH3

I've bought the netgear d7800 and can I heck get the hdd connected to it to be picked up anywhere other than on the home WiFi network. The Asus one I had before was easy, just getting old. :disappointed:

I have a few of these dotted around, superb Routers

SH3 needs to be turned to Modem Mode only and then connect Ethernet cable to/from ASUS to SH3 , all the other cables for your devices connect to the ASUS, your Tivo will be connected to the ASUS.

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. Would the Ethernet cable from the SH3 to Asus go in the WAN port or one of the LAN ports?

goes to the WAN port , have a look at the images on amazon

SH3 is doing ok for me but signal strength is not good. i will give this a try. beat added :smiley:

I've had one of these since December 2015 and it's been fantastic. Through a set of bizarre circumstances I got it brand new for £106, but I'd still be happy to pay £128 for a fast, reliable router.

Was cheaper at the in-store deal in Currys iirc but I think that was a one off clearance.

Anyway the router is decent for most things but I mainly bought it for its advertised QoS features back when I had terrible broadband. Quite frankly these features were useless no matter which way they were set up. So if that's important to you I would brace for disappointment. Otherwise it's a decent router.

Does it worth to upgrade to this from Asus AC56 if you have only 76mb fiber broadband?
I'm getting the same wifi speed even with 56 model.
I know it's more powerful and bigger range but what else?

I have used a few Asus expensive routers including this ASUS RT-AC87U and a ASUS DSL-AC68U, they all have little but frustrating issues, things like taking ages to reconnect after re-boot, all show as working & connected but no internet, all cable connected devices work but not the wifi...which eventually put me off

I agreed Asus's routers look cool and they are good spec hardware-wise, but I think their software are too complicated and unfinished which makes the devices are so unstable, on top of that, they are more expensive than the others.

I recently switched to TP-LINK Archer, much happier with it.

ASUS makes top notch routers. I use the AC87U myself with Merlin WRT firmware. It handles all my devices and even runs OpenVPN which is nice...

Have had this for over a year and has been flawless. Regular firmware updates keep this beast happy! The 66U I had before this was also flawless. What you get for your money is incredible.

I like this firmware: https://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/download Normally has a few extra features, optimisations and some security patches

Does that have built in modem too

No, you need a separate ADSL/VDSL modem with bridge mode. If you're on cable I believe the cable can be directly connected to the router.

i bought one of these when they were £250. 6 months ago
It has since gone back. There is a wierd 5ghz chipset with this model. Tomato doesnt work. DDWRT is working.
There is an exteneded 3-4 minute boot up process also becuse of teh 5ghz.
It got hot.
lockups were common too.
Also, the one thing I wanted it to do was Universal repeater, merlin didnt support it.)

Looks like the ASUS RT-AC3200 Tri-Band is also heavily discounted. Anyone any thoughts on which is better value?

I'm a noob, what is the benefit of me getting this. I have Virgin Media and am currently using the Super Hub 2ac.

Marty: Doc you built a time machine....out of an Asus broadband router
Doc Brown: Marty, where we're going we don't need roads....it's the information superhighway

Same set up here. Is it just a case of using this as your WiFi point, disabling WiFi and DHCP on the Virgin hub, and running an Ethernet between the two?

My plan is to make something like this the permanent fixture in my house whilst I chop and change the provider.

Just stick the SH in modem mode, then run an Ethernet cable from the SH to this and you're good to go. It's the same setup I have and it works perfectly. :smiley:

Somebody enlighten me please:

Say I have this in one room and want my laptop to be able to achieve the speeds this is capable of (1Gb HyperOptic broadband), won't I need a special dongle? Or is the speed largely dictated by the router more so than the receiving wifi chip? (my laptop has 802.11ac)

(I can not believe it, but I'm humbled by how my parents must feel when technology advances and you don't keep up! I used to be all over this sort of stuff, now I'm clueless :stuck_out_tongue:)

I don't have such a high bandwidth connection to test with (220mb/s here), so the best I think I can do is a file transfer from a PC connected via Gigabit Ethernet to the router to my laptop, which has an Intel AC-7260 Wi-Fi adapter. Both computers have fully solid state storage, so there's no slow, mechanical drives holding anything back.

I got transfer speeds of ~58MB/s (~464mb/s). I have no idea if that's good, bad or somewhere in the middle when it comes to both the capabilities of the router and the capabilities of the Intel AC-7260 Wi-Fi adapter. I also have no idea if network file transfer speeds are a reasonably indicator of maximum download speeds from the internet. I don't usually do network file transfers, so generally as long as my 220mb/s connection can be used to its full potential on my laptop via Wi-Fi (which it can), I'm a happy bunny.

If you want any more info I can try and help, but networking isn't really my forte and I'm generally satisfied as long as my router isn't "bottlenecking" my download speeds via Wi-Fi and everything is nice and stable.

Odd how it didn't get heat at £72! I snapped one up back then. Great router.
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/asus-rt-ac87-router-71-97-pc-world-instore-2421149

this any good for BT fibre?

Wow, it was £72?

I have this router and the range is phenomenal.

I must admit it's not a router for the faint hearted, there are a number of tuning options which will boggle the average user. Unfortunately, you have to know what you're doing to get the most out of it.

If anyone wants a google onhub for the same price, I'm selling mine... https://on.google.com/hub/ the TP-Link one...

Which ISP are you on?

Word of warning to anyone on Sky Broadband (ADSL), if you are looking to have a separate dsl modem + Wifi Router like this one as your configuration, most standalone DSL modems will not work in bridge mode with a Wifi Router.

This is because Sky only seem to allow PPPoA connections (unlike BT which allow both PPPoA & PPPoE). I found this out the hard way after reading forums for several hours on end. Therefore you cannot put the modem in bridge mode and end up with double NAT. The closest you can get to bridge mode at that point is to put the Wifi router into the DMZ of the dsl modem to avoid it.

The forum posts were a bit old in date (1 or 2 years) but apparently the only way to achieve this setup with the dsl modem in bridge mode on Sky is to buy either a Draytek Vigor 120 or 130 dsl modem which supports PPPoA to PPPoE bridging. Not sure if they are any *other* dsl modems so far that support this yet...?

Needless to say the draytek modems are more expensive than your average dsl modem. £50ish for the 120 and £80ish for the 130, I think....

They have half a dozen or so "used like new" warehouse deals for 122.87. One of them reads "Item is in original, pristine packaging. Products that have been water tested may contain residual water or water marks. Products that have been factory tested may contain traces of coffee in the mill.". I find that covering my router in coffee and submerging it in water helps boost performance.