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I have the Asus RT-AC68U/TM-AC1900. I bought it from T-Mobile for $60 and flashed it to stock and then put Asuswrt-Merlin on it (but you can use Tomato or DD-W
by mdasen 10y ago
I have the Asus RT-AC68U/TM-AC1900. I bought it from T-Mobile for $60 and flashed it to stock and then put Asuswrt-Merlin on it (but you can use Tomato or DD-WRT). It does take a little work to flash it to stock (like Telnet'ing into the router), but it wasn't bad and for $60 I ended up with a wonderful router. There are guides online for flashing it back to stock.
If you're looking for information, I suggest SmallNetBuilder. They have very thorough reviews: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/rankers/router/view http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/rankers/router/view. It looks like the RT-AC68U is their #1 pick for AC1900 router now. It used to be their #2 pick under their previous testing methodology (after the R7000 Nighthawk from Netgear). That's slipped to #3 under the new testing and the Asus has taken the top slot.
Asuswrt-Merlin isn't such a radical departure from stock, but it has some nice features and allows me to do things like edit the etc/hosts to block certain things.
The Asus RT-AC68U is probably one of the top 2 AC1900 routers out there and T-Mobile is selling it for a song (even if you're not a T-Mobile customer). It's a little work to re-flash it so read a guide and see if you're comfortable with that. Or you could buy a stock RT-AC68U and get SmallNetBuilders #1 AC1900 router overall, for 2.4GHz avg throughput, 2.4GHz max throughput, 2.4GHz range, 5GHz avg throughput, and 5GHz range.
- zamalek 10y agoI'm on the Asus RT-N56U with Padavan firmware. It's bliss. I'd recommend the entire RT-N*U line, as a friend picked another model up on my recommendation and is equally as impressed. A bit more on the expensive side, but worth it (especially for that juicy hardware NAT). Only tested in the home, I have no idea how they would fare in an office.
- jtolj 10y agoI'll third the Asus RT series. I just replace my FIOS router with an ASUS RT-AC66U running AsusWRT-Merlin (I understand the stock firmware is based on Tomato). It is very fast, stable, has great coverage and is extremely configurable/hackable. I think I paid $75 for it from Amazon Warehouse Deals.
- wtallis 10y ago> extremely configurable/hackable. Except for the closed-source WiFi drivers, which also limit the choice of kernel versions.
- hiram112 10y agoJust got the same one. More information and a link to the purchase site here: https://slickdeals.net/f/9330575-asus-tm-ac1900-wireless-ac1900-dual-band-gigabit-router-59-free-shipping?src=featured-12691 https://slickdeals.net/f/9330575-asus-tm-ac1900-wireless-ac1... I have yet to open it as I'm using my landlord's Verizon crap model, but once I move to my new place, I'm looking forward to flashing Merlin or DD-WRT.
- dexterdog 10y agoI second this recommendation. I've been running this in my house for quite some time now. The author keeps up with patches and I've not had any problems with it. I use it to route to my internal network, access my network via SSH and VPN, and put the entire house (20+ clients) on VPN when I need to. My house does all of its entertainment over the net (no cable/sat).
- toast0 10y agoI recently got one of these, since I use a separate router and put it into access point mode, I didn't bother to flash it to 3rd party firmware, but it seems to work fine.
- bberrry 10y agoRT-N66U with Advanced Tomato here. Couldn't be happier