NetGear Nighthawk X10 As A High-End Home Router

[ellisgl]

Afaik the people on that device didn't complain about lack of ipv6.(LEDE=future of OpenWRT since most devs migrated there)

I've tried LEDE (And DD-WRT) on my TP-Link WDR3600, but IPv6 support isn't full. On ATT, It's RD6 based, and it would get an IP, but wouldn't dish out the ips to the clients, so you got an private ipv6 address, but it wouldn't route. The Turris Omnia had this problem too. I ended up picking up a ASUS RT-AC3200 and it just works. Of course the firmware is lacking some feature that would be nice haves.

[ellisgl]

So when people review a wireless router, they never test the LAN / WAN throughput. Sure there might be a gig port on the WAN side, but can it really route (NAPT) near line speed?

[Geopirate]

Personally I've never been a fan of these all-in-one devices. Aside from the fact that they're very expensive for what they do, they never have the configuration flexibility or the long term support that individual components do.

For example, I use a pfSense APU1D2 firewall, a Ubiquiti Unifi Pro wireless access point, and a Netgear 8 port gigabit switch. The three components together cost slightly less than this $450 Nighthawk device. If I want to upgrade from 1Gb to 10Gb switching, I only need to replace the switch. If I want to upgrade the Wifi to some newer future standard, I only replace the access point, etc. With the all-in-ones, you have to discard the entire $450 machine to upgrade any one capability. Not to mention that if support ends for the Nighthawk (and these consumer devices always have abysmally short support life) and some vulnerability is discovered, you have to replace the whole $450 device. And lastly, the all-in-ones mean you have to co-locate the three functions, firewall, wifi, and switching. If you want the firewall in a closet with your cable modem, the switching in your home office, and the wifi device in the living room, you simply can't do that with an all-in-one.

Don't even get me started on the hideous alien spacecraft appearance of these all-in-ones. Only a millenial living in his parents basement wants to look at something like that in a living space.

I couldn't agree more. You can even substitute the APU1D2 firewall with running your pfSense on older hardware you have laying around and save yourself $250. The Ubiquiti Unifi Pro wireless access points have dropped down to about $130 on Amazon now.

[bug77]

So when people review a wireless router, they never test the LAN / WAN throughput. Sure there might be a gig port on the WAN side, but can it really route (NAPT) near line speed?

One does not need concern themselves with such trivialities

[uid313]

Too expensive.
Does it even run Linux?
Does it even have open source?

Does it have backdoors? Does it have security vulnerabilities that will go unpatched?
Can I run Tomato, OpenWRT, DD-WRT, pfsense, m0n0wall?

[bug77]

Too expensive.
Does it even run Linux?
Does it even have open source?

Does it have backdoors? Does it have security vulnerabilities that will go unpatched?
Can I run Tomato, OpenWRT, DD-WRT, pfsense, m0n0wall?

This almost sounds like trolling.

If you've already deemed it too expensive, then you're unlikely to care about the answer to the rest of the questions. And yes, this is very expensive. But not "too expensive", otherwise nobody would buy it.

But to answer a few: virtually all commodity routers run Linux and I've already posted about how some critical flaws were patched rather quickly.
And if you really want to know if you can run custom firmware, I believe you can always consult said firmware's supported devices list (fwiw one of the developers of DD-WRT actually owned an earlier Nighthawk so they used to be supported).

[starshipeleven]

I've tried LEDE (And DD-WRT) on my TP-Link WDR3600, but IPv6 support isn't full. On ATT, It's RD6 based, and it would get an IP, but wouldn't dish out the ips to the clients, so you got an private ipv6 address, but it wouldn't route. The Turris Omnia had this problem too. I ended up picking up a ASUS RT-AC3200 and it just works. Of course the firmware is lacking some feature that would be nice haves.

Did you install 6rd package in LEDE? Should work automatically after that. https://lede-project.org/docs/user-g...pv6_transition
Most IPv4/v6 transitioning stuff like 6RD is not installed by default as it would conflict with others, but it is available.

No idea about dd-wrt.

[starshipeleven]

This almost sounds like trolling.

He is right on the price, it's plain worse than a switch, a router and 3 access points that would cost around the same. The fact that people buy overpriced crap too (not that this device is crap, far from it) does not mean that when something is overpriced it isn't overpriced.

He is also right on asking information that would matter for the Phoronix readers. A proper article on a linux-oriented news site would list that info, this isn't Tom's Hardware.

[Michael_S]

I have two Netgear R7000 wireless routers, which don't have the new 802.11ad but do have 802.11ac. I have DD-WRT on both.

Once every few weeks I will get an unexplained wifi drop on some device or other, but every single time restarting wireless on the client fixed it. So I'm not sure if those were failures on the server side or not. Once I had to power-cycle the main R7000 because no wireless connections would work. That's in about two years of ownership.

My peak wireless bandwidth through one wall and 20 feet away is 350 mbps. My peak wired bandwidth is 650 mbps, tested with netcat. That's disappointing to me, but not a killer problem. And it's always possible the gigabit ethernet device in the laptop I used to test wired speed was the bottleneck and not the router. I haven't gotten around to trying all the combinations possible to isolate the bottleneck.

[bug77]

He is right on the price, it's plain worse than a switch, a router and 3 access points that would cost around the same. The fact that people buy overpriced crap too (not that this device is crap, far from it) does not mean that when something is overpriced it isn't overpriced.

He is also right on asking information that would matter for the Phoronix readers. A proper article on a linux-oriented news site would list that info, this isn't Tom's Hardware.

"Overpriced" or "too expensive" are relative. I'd avoid these terms altogether. Like I said, I think they cost too much, but I still bought an X6. Obviously that wasn't "too expensive" for me. Maybe "overpriced".

As for the rest of the info, if he was truly interested, he could have seen part of his questions were already answered. Another part, he could have spent 5 minutes online to find some useful links and post them here (I'm talking about support in 3rd party firmware). "Does in have open source?" I'm not even sure I understand what that means. And I'm pretty sure Michael cannot possibly answer "Does it have backdoors?"
That's why I said the post looks a little trollish to me.