[kwlug-disc] Router dying?

[William Park]

It could be that TP-Link is playing bait-and-switch game, ie. make good product for the review and then produce cheap ones. 

My TP-Link lasted for awhile, so no complaint there. It's just that, had I bought Asus (I forget the model), I wouldn't have to buy router twice. :-)
-- 
William 
‎
Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Rogers network.

  Original Message  
From: Jeff Smith
Sent: Thursday, July 9, 2015 11:59 AM
To: KWLUG discussion
Reply To: KWLUG discussion
Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] Router dying?

Here's a new update to my router issues..

As you may recall I bought a TP-Link N-750 router a couple of weeks ago to replace my ailing Netgear WNDR3700.

After some install issues I got the TP-Link up and running and set up all my DHCP reservations, port forwards, etc.

In the last few days I noticed that my network would drop (both wired and wifi were unresponsive; I couldn't get anything to talk to anything else).  I had to reboot the router to get everything working again.  Yesterday this happened three times in one day.

So I did a factory reset, threw it all back in the box and took it back to Canada Computers.  They gave me a full refund.

I walked out with a new Netgear AC1900 Nighthawk (the 2 year old model, not the latest and greatest).  This is a big router, but it got great reviews in 2013.  It dropped in and set up without any issues.  From what I can see after one night of playing with it, it runs well and has a decent wifi signal.  Yes, it's $180 which is more than I wanted to spend but I just got burned by buying what was cheap, and my last Netgear lasted several years without any issues.

I'm running the stock firmware right now as there seems to be some debate as to whether or not openWRT works on the AC1900.  I'm waiting for an "all-clear" from the forums before I try installing openWRT on this box.  I will say, though, that the firmware on the Netgear is much more user-friendly than on the TP-Link.  One weird thing; there's no way to set DNS in the DHCP setup.  I haven't checked but I think all DHCP clients get their DNS from the AC1900, which in turn gets it from the DNS set in the internet setup portion. Usually I can specify what DNS servers I want my DHCP clients assigned.

Jeff