[Gameman Advanced Kid]

I am a huge fan of using the USB ports on my router for NAS related things. I believe I made a post about this somewhere else before, but I wanted to ask about these two routers in particular.

Netgear R8900/R9000 which uses a Quad-core Alpine SOC and Asus RT-AX89U using a Quad-core IPQ8074. They both use SFP+ modules which is what I want.

Whats stopping me is that the Netgear Router I read about it havinng issues where it will suddenly become defective or just cease to work properly at all. The Asus Router looks appealing but it has no dd-wrt support and was thinking of buying one so I can send it to Brainslayer to bring it to dd-wrt which I know would take a very long time...unless otherwise specified.

Anyway, I wanted to know if some of you could confirm to me the issues with the netgear router and if its a really good buy or if there is any risk of it suddenly becoming defective.

[Alozaros]

my R9000 its been running on heavy load on its 2,4Ghz radio in the office for a long time now...
but, it is in the low ambience temp room and has an extra fan mounted on its case... , yes it has heating issues especially SFP RJ45 port gets very hot...I stopped using it...i haven't used it with SFP optical to see if its not that hot, but overall it has a great range and CPU power for a router...

if you are concern about its failing radios..yep those tend to burn, as it has poor heat-sink design...but my 2,4ghz is fine..so far so good... on the new BS builds it can power on /run even with burned radios, so if you need wifi you have to plug an AP to its LAN ports and its back in action..
if you get a second hand one there is a small risk of a corrupted flash ram with bad blocks...but those 3 that ive had, non of them was having bad blocks that would prevent from flashing...but the first on came with burned radios...indeed..

i dont use 5Ghz on any of my routers.. ... so no comment there..

https://eu.protectli.com/product/vp2420/ with x4 2,5Gbit RJ45 ports but havent seen with SFP port yet so small PC could be more close to your demands..

[Per Yngve Berg]

An X86 box will be a better choice.

I.e a server with Proxmox. You can have the NAS in one VM and the router in another.

Do you intend to add a switch with 10G ports

[ho1Aetoo]

The radio SoCs can tolerate a lot of heat.
Most QCA9984 radios are approved for an ambient temperature of 70°C.
The QCA9994 chips even up to 85°C

This is the ambient temperature and the chip temperature can be much higher.

There are QCA9994 cards that survived even 120-130°C continuous temperature.

So this must be another bad hardware design and other components that fail.

What temperatures do the radios in the R9000 reach?

In my r7800 the 5Ghz reaches over 65°C in summer and under full load.
In the PC I have a fan cooled QCA9984 card which reaches in the summer under full load also over 65°C (the fan turns up only from 65°C)

And that is only the 5Ghz radio that gets so warm at high transfer rates (~1Gbit).


Everything below that should be absolutely no problem.

[Gameman Advanced Kid]

@Alozaros Yikes. Yeah I remember reading the bits about bad blocks and the flawed circuit board design. Already starting to lean over to the RT-AX89X. Like may as well buy it now and send it to brainslayer.

But if the R9000 or R8900 is going to be defective especially with wifi, I wont be able to keep everything compact like I want to.

@Per Yngve Berg I understand, But I prefer using a high end router for now. dd-wrt x86 will not let me add hard drive to the NAS via USB from what I read anyway. I would have to add it via sata im guessing? AFAIK, I dont think I have seen any x86 routers include SFP+ ports anyway.

I do have a Mikrotik CRS326-24G-2S+. 24 1gbe ports with 2 SFP+ ports. My job didnt need it anymore so they let me keep it. I have a special project going on with this one.

*What I want to do is keep everything in one box. This is for the home personal use and I am only doing some massive transfers to and from the NAS but I dont think its anything serious yet.

@h01Aetoo I do not know how hot the chips get in the router. But would that not matter anyway if the circuit board is already flawed from the factory?

Edit: added another sentence for per yngve berg

[blkt]

[kernel-panic69]

[Gameman Advanced Kid]

[ho1Aetoo]

https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=317302&start=33

[kernel-panic69]

At least include all of the associated discussion. I confirmed some of the findings, but I'm not going to post pictures, etc. All of the 2M (micro miniature) repair work is done, I just have to find the mood to finish reviving mine. It's not that important to me.

R9000 bites the wifi dust

R9000 Wifi Failure = firmware load issues

[DWCruiser]

These Netgear routers have been put through my network, at one time or another: R6220, R7000, R7500, RBK50, R7800 and R8500. At present, R9000.

Except the defective R8500 (thought i might be able to resurrect it when i acquired it in its 'coma' state), i found Netgear hardware parts to be, by and large, of leading design, and of good performance within respective specs. The antennas, on some products, are a bit wonky. (But, you do not come into physical contact with the antennas, once set).

For intended home users, Netgear software works fine, although it does not share a leading design edge as its hardware often shows, relative to competitors. But, this is where DDWRT, you and i meet on line.

Two USED R9000 units came across my network. Both are working fine. My DIY 8-disk NAS box (using Supermicro mobo) has 4 Ethernet ports which are connected (link aggregation) to a Smart Switch. So the R9000 SFP+ remains unused at present.

While i've heard that an optical connector helps reduce heat on the SFP+, one thing i'd say here is the heatsink must be working effectively for it to be hot when touched. It's designed to dissipate... heat, after all. So long as its temperature stays within the design specs.

Autumn just started in our part of the world. And here is a snapshot R9000's temps:
CPU 47.0°C / wlan0 52°C / wlan1 52°C

During hot summer days, none went over 62°C. I have all networking gears in a conventional, big bookshelf to help heat dissipation, mind you.

I have used R9000 as my home gateway router with multiple VLANS; 2.4GHz and 5GHz running DDWRT (not Vanilla); OpenVPN Server and Client with no issues on firmware r51440. R9000 handles the encryption/decryption with flying colours, compared to previous Netgear routers. R9000 requires a higher degree of patience from its users when running DDWRT.

Lastly, i do hope that DDWRT can run on IEEE 802.11ax sometime in future for the simple reason: everything is moving along.... (I always have a lot of respect for German discipline in engineering. Truth be told).

Wishing you a good day.

[Gameman Advanced Kid]

@kernel-panic69 I am trying to wrap my head around the discussion. Is the main cause of death for the wifi on these netgear routers the antenna wires that are touching the heatsinks? if not, What sort of preventative maintenance can be done here?

Does the Netgear R8900 have the same issues?

@DWCruiser I keep my Linksys WRT32X on top of my shelf so it gets plenty of air passing by it. its also got a air vent that blows directly on few occasions. I only have the 5ghz radio active and in 40mhz channel but it is needed. sometimes I will turn on 2.4ghz for some other devices. I havent bothered if dd-wrt supports bandsteering.

Anyway, so if I am reading what you are saying correctly, you have had no issues with your two Netgear R9000 routers? If you did, what were they? were you able to fix them? if so, how?

[blkt]

Could be a hardware issue, or corruption. R8900 is same hardware as R9000. XR450 is same hardware as XR500.
There are no definitive conclusions or fixes, only speculations, though non-removable active antennas are suspect.

Far better off going x86 route if you need SFP ports, additional processing power over R7800 XR450 XR500 series.
Should go without saying, use x86 native drive interfaces instead of old unreliable USB ports on consumer routers.

[DWCruiser]

I can see that you have taken good care of thermal issues for your gears. I do have a thermostat temperature Controller to automatically turns on/off a fan pointed at my IT gears.
(Similar to this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/354458004384?hash=item528757eba0:g:r6MAAOSw9wJjnRhF)

In answers to your questions.
I had no issue with the two R9000s. One acquired from US eBay; one from a local 'Cash Converter' shop in Australia. But i did have quite a challenging time in taming the first one for VLANs for which i wrote up an article (see in my signature).

Essentially, due to Netgear R9000 having dual internal switches, the delayed loading up of its settings (internally) may result, at times, in some 'semi-conscious' status after powered up. This, i suspect strongly, has led to some MIS-diagnosis of R9000's with flawed functionalities. And subsequent forced reflashings might have made it worse.

My advice in dealing with R9000, in short.
- Firstly, only use R9000's s/w function (Admin/Reboot Router) to power off/on R9000. Not the physical power button in between firmware flashing.
- Secondly, be patient and with your eyes firmly on the first four LED indicators (from left).
- And lastly, a SECOND soft power off/on may be needed to bring your R9000 out of its semi-conscious status, if its GUI does not show 'corresponding' features as you would expect (check in Setup/Networking tabs), immediately following a f/w flashing.

Good luck.

[Alozaros]

Apart of the heating issue, as kp-69 explained its more likely due to a bad radio chip placement/casing... mine also came with messy MAC addresses...

I think it was couse i first flashed with Kong factory build(which is recommended) or it was heaving a bad/messy arm partition where the macs are stored/read from...but i can change those manually...sadly i have to do it on every reset...

Thanks to DWCruiser as he made this Vlan puzzle solved i can use x2 of its ports for Vlan's

R8900, R9000, XR700 all the same at the end of the day if you want to fiddle with customisation you can open the case and use the the board and mount extra fans here and there and case solved...
Also you can always use its LAN ports to attach external AP/WAP (radio) and disable its radios..than bob is your uncle...

as DWCruiser noted there is that funny on/off issue when router can stall for a while but its not a big thing reset or another on/off cycle will solve it...just dont use the power button very quick..but wait for a bit before turn it on...

I do like its CPU power but i cannot overwhelm it with my use, at least not like R7800 which on heavy use, goes to its max CPU for a days ...