a new (?) netgear router.

robl
robl
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Topic 197642

It is a bit pricey but.... You can see it here (AC3200 TriBand)

Tom*
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a new (?) netgear router.

If its that much again better then the R7000 its a real winner.

I have used UBEE (supplied by TWC)Linksys Cisco TP-Link wireless routers and they all have thruput issues and dhcp issues with renewals and crossed connections ie duplicate, ip addresses when I-stuff and Roid-stuff come in from the cold, also dropped connection problems.

The UBEE was horrible as a wireless router but functions well as a Cable Modem in Bridge mode for my R7000.

I recently got an R7000 and haven't had to reboot it once it was setup (and the BIOS updated)

I usually had to reboot every two days with all the old routers, we do have over 20 wireless devices though.

robl
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I am considering the 7000

I am considering the 7000 myself. Its now on sale at BestBuy. I really don't think I need a triband router like this new one. This new router is not yet available but it is "on the way" so that should drop the price on the 7000. At least this is my hope. I am about to upgrade my Internet connection either with my current ISP or with a different one so I am considering an AC router. There is an AC extender at Office Depot so I could extend my network into another room wirelessly and plug a switch into the extender and my PCs in that room into the Switch. I do not want to buy external USB AC NICs for these PCs. They are expensive and they don't always play well with Linux (ASUS' was an exception, their nics played well).

The extender is pricey also but if you factor in the cost of just 2 USB AC NICs it is cheaper. If you have more computers then even better.

paul milton
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can you run 3rd party

can you run 3rd party firmware on it? i admit, tomato has me spoiled :) (im so used to shibbys mod) and ive had rotten luck with OEM firmware, currently using a WNR3500L(v1, though for some reason shibbys firmware shows v2, think its because it was a samknows router) i replaced the OEM with 3rd party because the DHCP didnt play nice with my computers for some weird reason (it wouldnt renew ip's, it would instead allow them to expire, then take 2 minutes to reissue, very annoying)

got to admit though, that usb 3.0 port is giving me some ideas

seeing without seeing is something the blind learn to do, and seeing beyond vision can be a gift.

mikey
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RE: The extender is pricey

Quote:

The extender is pricey also but if you factor in the cost of just 2 USB AC NICs it is cheaper. If you have more computers then even better.

I looked at that but instead bought a hub and some cat6 cable on sale and will be dropping a cable into each bedroom from the attic and then running another wire to the basement, this will give me wired internet in each room. My router has wireless built into it, it was supplied by Verizon FIOS and is only 'G' but it works okay for me. I tried the 'wireless access point' stuff many years ago but it didn't work well in my 3 story Colonial style home. Some pc's would take days before they got and returned new units, right now the wires are running in the hallways, stapled to the tops of the door frames. It looks 'geeky'.

robl
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RE: RE: The extender is

Quote:
Quote:

The extender is pricey also but if you factor in the cost of just 2 USB AC NICs it is cheaper. If you have more computers then even better.

I looked at that but instead bought a hub and some cat6 cable on sale and will be dropping a cable into each bedroom from the attic and then running another wire to the basement, this will give me wired internet in each room. My router has wireless built into it, it was supplied by Verizon FIOS and is only 'G' but it works okay for me. I tried the 'wireless access point' stuff many years ago but it didn't work well in my 3 story Colonial style home. Some pc's would take days before they got and returned new units, right now the wires are running in the hallways, stapled to the tops of the door frames. It looks 'geeky'.

When I saw Gary's post and pic of his setup in another thread I must admit I had "penile envy" (oops wrong forum!! :>) ).

I purchased the Netgear NightHawk R7000 two days ago and installed it along with the Netgear Extender. I decided to consolidate my 3 crunching machines in one room and onto a metal roll around wire rack and employ a 4 port KVM switch for a single mouse/keyboard access to each machine. With these three machines I wired them into a Cisco (Linksys) gigabit switch which wired into the extender. This way I am getting 3 boxes connected for the price of the extender ($89) rather than for $210 if i purchased each PC its own USB AC capable NIC which may or may not play nice with Linux. If I had used the USB AC NIC approach I would not have needed the extender because each PC would have talked to the NightHawk directly.

Note: doing a "sudo lshw -class network" on one of these boxes shows that the network is running at capcity:

*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
logical name: eth0
version: 11
serial: bc:ee:7b:8d:f4:a5
size: 1Gbit/s
capacity: 1Gbit/s

width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz

The 3 PCs are crunching but I still have some more moving/organizing to do.

Mikey I too have had varying levels of success with wireless. I had used a Netgear AP which talked well with devices attached but in my above setup when I used another model Netgear extender it would run for days then disconnect. I then had to power cycle that device to get everything talking again. I then went with a less expensive Netgear Extender much like the one I have now but only single band and it was stable. It seems that the router people get better as time goes by. One thing I should point out with respect to the Netgear R7000 is that its DHCP function doe not support DNS resolution. i.e., you can't ping by hostname but you can ping by "hostname.local". This creates all sorts of issues with existing scripts, mounts, etc. I have looked and Googled but found no solution. I did download and install the latest firmware. This being the case I believe you will have to install a DNS server on your network if employing DHCP. Maybe Tom, who is using this same router can shed some light on how to do this if it is supported and I missed it. I resolved this by manually defining IPs on each of the network clients. Its a small network so this is not too inconvenient. I had taken this approach with my earlier wired router.

mikey
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RE: Mikey I too have had

Quote:

Mikey I too have had varying levels of success with wireless. I had used a Netgear AP which talked well with devices attached but in my above setup when I used another model Netgear extender it would run for days then disconnect. I then had to power cycle that device to get everything talking again. I then went with a less expensive Netgear Extender much like the one I have now but only single band and it was stable. It seems that the router people get better as time goes by. One thing I should point out with respect to the Netgear R7000 is that its DHCP function doe not support DNS resolution. i.e., you can't ping by hostname but you can ping by "hostname.local". This creates all sorts of issues with existing scripts, mounts, etc. I have looked and Googled but found no solution. I did download and install the latest firmware. This being the case I believe you will have to install a DNS server on your network if employing DHCP. Maybe Tom, who is using this same router can shed some light on how to do this if it is supported and I missed it. I resolved this by manually defining IPs on each of the network clients. Its a small network so this is not too inconvenient. I had taken this approach with my earlier wired router.

Many years ago I had over 23 pc's running and crunching and had some ip address problems, my son brought home a Server from his IT class at school and poof everything just worked again! I got rid of that Server, it was a heavy box on wheels and was soooo slow even with the scsi drives, and the problems came right back. I bought a copy of Windows Home Server, on sale, and poof no more problems! I no longer have more then 15 pc's running but keep the WHS running just because I can, although it did get upgraded to the 64 bit version when it came out. I had some major issues with the backups so don't use it for that anymore either, now it just keeps the IP addresses straight and crunches.

I am a Windows guy and all of my currently running machines are using Win7, except for one that is still on XP, and the Server. I hopefully will never run out of licenses so am good to go for now, but Win 8 or 9 is not in the cards right now. I am checking out various Linux builds that 'just work' for me, but haven't found 'the one' yet. I have an older dual core Dell laptop that used to be my sons I install the different distro's one and play with them. I do kinda sorta like the version Gary Roberts uses, I just have to play with it more. One main thing going for it is that it found and installed the network drivers on the laptop with no problems at all. Meaning I can then do anything with it, one of the other versions I tried did not do that, so was not helpful at all!

Logforme
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RE: Note: doing a "sudo

Quote:

Note: doing a "sudo lshw -class network" on one of these boxes shows that the network is running at capcity:

size: 1Gbit/s
capacity: 1Gbit/s


That just tells you about the wired speed between the linux box and the switch doesn't it? To find out the actual speed over the wireless I think you will have to use some kind of bandwidth measurement program like iperf.

robl
robl
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RE: RE: Note: doing a

Quote:
Quote:

Note: doing a "sudo lshw -class network" on one of these boxes shows that the network is running at capcity:

size: 1Gbit/s
capacity: 1Gbit/s


That just tells you about the wired speed between the linux box and the switch doesn't it? To find out the actual speed over the wireless I think you will have to use some kind of bandwidth measurement program like iperf.

Oops!. You are correct.

Here is how to test using "iperf" on Unbuntu as suggested by Logforme.

Two tests: Test1 will be between two Ubu boxes on the same network on a common switch. Not over the router/extender. Test2 will be between a laptop wired into the router over the wireless interface utilizing the extender., i.e., laptop wired into router talking to the extender wirelessly, talking the the Ubuntu pc.

Test1:
1. install "iperf" on two boxes.
box A will be the server side
box B will be the client side

2. on BOX A:
open a terminal and enter: iperf -s -i 1
3. on BOX B:
open a terminal and enter: iperf -c BOX_A's_ip_address -i 1 -t 60

here is my output on Box A:
iperf -s -i 1
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 4] local 192.168.1.151 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.120 port 50239
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.0- 1.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 1.0- 2.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 2.0- 3.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.2 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 3.0- 4.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 4.0- 5.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec

here is my output on Box B:
iperf -c server_ip_address -i 1 -t 60
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to "BoxA", TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 77.7 KByte (default)om
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.120 port 50239 connected with 192.168.1.151 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0- 1.0 sec 11.5 MBytes 96.5 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 1.0- 2.0 sec 11.4 MBytes 95.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 2.0- 3.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 3.0- 4.0 sec 11.5 MBytes 96.5 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 4.0- 5.0 sec 11.4 MBytes 95.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 5.0- 6.0 sec 11.4 MBytes 95.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 6.0- 7.0 sec 11.5 MBytes 96.5 Mbits/sec

End test1

Start test2

BOX A
iperf -s -i 1
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 4] local 192.168.1.151 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.2 port 46253
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.0- 1.0 sec 7.90 MBytes 66.3 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 1.0- 2.0 sec 7.28 MBytes 61.1 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 2.0- 3.0 sec 9.53 MBytes 79.9 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 3.0- 4.0 sec 10.9 MBytes 91.4 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 4.0- 5.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.2 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 5.0- 6.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.8 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 6.0- 7.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.1 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 7.0- 8.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.9 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 8.0- 9.0 sec 11.1 MBytes 93.1 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 9.0-10.0 sec 11.1 MBytes 93.3 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 10.0-11.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 93.5 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 0.0-11.9 sec 123 MBytes 87.3 Mbits/sec

Box B
iperf -c Box_A_ip_address -i 1 -t 60
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to Box_A, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 85.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.2 port 46253 connected with 192.168.1.151 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0- 1.0 sec 8.12 MBytes 68.2 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 1.0- 2.0 sec 7.62 MBytes 64.0 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 2.0- 3.0 sec 9.50 MBytes 79.7 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 3.0- 4.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 4.0- 5.0 sec 11.0 MBytes 92.3 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 5.0- 6.0 sec 11.4 MBytes 95.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 6.0- 7.0 sec 11.0 MBytes 92.3 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 7.0- 8.0 sec 11.4 MBytes 95.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 8.0- 9.0 sec 11.1 MBytes 93.3 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 9.0-10.0 sec 11.1 MBytes 93.3 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 10.0-11.0 sec 11.0 MBytes 92.3 Mbits/sec

Notice that in the second test that the Bandwith start out lower then peaks.

It seems that Bandwidth performance over the router/extender seems about the same as the bandwith performance over the two wired PCs throught the same switch.

I am obviously not a network guru :>P so if someone would like to interpret please do.

Logforme
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RE: I am obviously not a

Quote:
I am obviously not a network guru :>P so if someone would like to interpret please do.


To my amateur eyes the numbers suggest a 100mbit "ceiling" somewhere. I would expect at least test 1 (One ??? Gbit/Mbit NIC connected to a 1Gbit NIC over a 1Gbit switch) to show much higher numbers.
Even test 2 with a AC class wireless should manage 500Mbit on a single link. Though that is trickier to get a controlled test of unless you put all the wifi stuff in the same room and turn off all other electrical stuff in your building :)

Or I'm totally wrong and 100Mbit in iperf is the "correct" number for a 1Gbit network.

robl
robl
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RE: RE: I am obviously

Quote:
Quote:
I am obviously not a network guru :>P so if someone would like to interpret please do.

To my amateur eyes the numbers suggest a 100mbit "ceiling" somewhere. I would expect at least test 1 (One ??? Gbit/Mbit NIC connected to a 1Gbit NIC over a 1Gbit switch) to show much higher numbers.
Even test 2 with a AC class wireless should manage 500Mbit on a single link. Though that is trickier to get a controlled test of unless you put all the wifi stuff in the same room and turn off all other electrical stuff in your building :)

Or I'm totally wrong and 100Mbit in iperf is the "correct" number for a 1Gbit network.

No. You are not wrong. I did a bunch of Googling - its becoming as important as life support. Long story short: the type of network cable makes a difference. Gigabit requires at a minimum Cat5 cable. You can determine this by looking at your cables. They will say in the long printed ascii stream if it is CAT5/CAT5E/CAT6. I have since rechecked all network cabling and am replacing/tossing old stuff. It is the little things that can make for a long day.

I replaced the offending box's neetwork cable on "test1" above and the "new" results follow:

BOX A:

iperf -s -i 1
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 4] local 192.168.1.9 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.8 port 37686
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.0- 1.0 sec 108 MBytes 903 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 1.0- 2.0 sec 112 MBytes 935 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 2.0- 3.0 sec 112 MBytes 935 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 3.0- 4.0 sec 112 MBytes 935 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 4.0- 5.0 sec 111 MBytes 935 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 5.0- 6.0 sec 111 MBytes 935 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 0.0- 6.8 sec 760 MBytes 931 Mbits/sec

BOX B:
iperf -c apollo -i 1 -t 60
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to BOX_A, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 22.9 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.8 port 37686 connected with 192.168.1.9 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0- 1.0 sec 109 MBytes 914 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 1.0- 2.0 sec 112 MBytes 936 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 2.0- 3.0 sec 112 MBytes 937 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 3.0- 4.0 sec 111 MBytes 934 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 4.0- 5.0 sec 111 MBytes 933 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 5.0- 6.0 sec 112 MBytes 938 Mbits/sec

You might notice IP differences since yesterday. I am reworking "stuff".

I will have to recheck test2. Not sure what the cable rating was to the laptop's ethernet NIC.

Ah, closure.

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