Joined: 05 Mar 2014 Posts: 193 Location: Edmonton, AB
Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2014 16:53 Post subject:
Even if they did, do you think it is worth it? If you have read what Kong wrote somewhere in these forums, you may be better off with Netgear 7000. With the linksys, you have to pay the conversion, shipping and wait a long time for true support. Kong has the 7000 for himself which is a great thing when it comes to support. Just a thought.
True, I haven't actually bothered searching carefully in my own local market yet, it might be available here (relatively) soon.
I will of course compare both objectively before "knowing" one is better than the other, the 7000's already readily available here.
Last edited by jalyst on Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:37; edited 2 times in total
Joined: 05 Mar 2014 Posts: 193 Location: Edmonton, AB
Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2014 17:44 Post subject:
Vishwa wrote:
Even if they did, do you think it is worth it? If you have read what Kong wrote somewhere in these forums, you may be better off with Netgear 7000. With the linksys, you have to pay the conversion, shipping and wait a long time for true support. Kong has the 7000 for himself which is a great thing when it comes to support. Just a thought.
I made a mistake in not reading with attention. It is available for preorder not yet on the shelf. Sorry.
One more thought. If you look at the current problems with the Broadcom radios and their driver you can image what kind of problems the new radio on the linksys will have.
Broadcom is one of the best out there but month after release the driver is still in bad shape, e.g. the latest driver causes random reboots for some and this behavior shows up on dd-wrt as well as on asus firmware. On the asus right now you have the choice to either stick with the old frmware which has a few security holes or stick wth the new firmware and suffer from reboots.
Will all those new features Explicit/Implicit Beamforming Airtime Fairness and so on the complexity increased and with all the different client adapters it is not easy to counter all those problems.
Now in order to provide the best experience for our users I created two builds old and new drivers with latest dd-wrt code.
Joined: 05 Mar 2014 Posts: 193 Location: Edmonton, AB
Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2014 22:20 Post subject:
Thank you very much Kong. The support you provide here is phenomenal and invaluable. The newest things look shiny but over the years I have seen that being in the cutting edge, you do more Beta testing for the company be it in computers, peripherals or consumer electronics.
As DD-WRT is a mature software and you constantly read the boards and fix just about everyone's problems we don't feel it as much with R7000. Thanks again.
Joined: 05 Mar 2014 Posts: 193 Location: Edmonton, AB
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 22:47 Post subject:
This router is now available and in stock(at least here in Canada, I didn't check elsewhere). If anybody got one, it would be nice to have the first impression about the overall quality of build, stock wireless performance, tweakability etc. Also, they claim support for third party firmware which means they must have a SDK.
Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 12:22 Post subject: Re: preorders
tedm wrote:
None of the Openwrt devs has an early sample of the device either. It should be obvious why Belkin/Linksys hasn't contacted anyone in either community already - they know that none of the devs would sign an NDA, and anything that was important - like whether or not there's a JTAG port on the device that's ready to hook up to - would be talked about on the forums. They want to keep all of this secret because they want a jump in front of their competition.
You're talking bollox, Belkin has handled this in their usual unprofessional manner.
tedm wrote:
They don't need to provide hardware to the developers, what they need to provide is the right things in the hardware - and the right bits in the source. How many other companies out there - Airlink, Netgear, etc. - begrudgingly provide the GPL code they are required to - and say absolutely nothing about openwrt or ddwrt? A lot. The fact that Linksys is trumpeting OpenWWRT compatibility in the marketing literature means they are going way, way out on a limb, here. If it's a cheap marketing gag to sell a couple dozen routers to ddwrt and openwrt people in those communities that are otherwise unhackable, that will blow up in their face and it will be far worse than if they simply ignored those communities with this router.
It is a cheap market gag, they have not done anything of what OpenWRT dev's has required. Now they are trying to submit patches only and with the wifi driver precompiled
Now now, lets not be "all knowing" in our perspective (wonder what that's about)...
It's still early days comparatively speaking, far too early to be so knowing of the entire situation & how it's evolving.
Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2014 21:34 Post subject: Re: preorders
LOM wrote:
tedm wrote:
None of the Openwrt devs has an early sample of the device either. It should be obvious why Belkin/Linksys hasn't contacted anyone in either community already - they know that none of the devs would sign an NDA, and anything that was important - like whether or not there's a JTAG port on the device that's ready to hook up to - would be talked about on the forums. They want to keep all of this secret because they want a jump in front of their competition.
You're talking bollox, Belkin has handled this in their usual unprofessional manner.
tedm wrote:
They don't need to provide hardware to the developers, what they need to provide is the right things in the hardware - and the right bits in the source. How many other companies out there - Airlink, Netgear, etc. - begrudgingly provide the GPL code they are required to - and say absolutely nothing about openwrt or ddwrt? A lot. The fact that Linksys is trumpeting OpenWWRT compatibility in the marketing literature means they are going way, way out on a limb, here. If it's a cheap marketing gag to sell a couple dozen routers to ddwrt and openwrt people in those communities that are otherwise unhackable, that will blow up in their face and it will be far worse than if they simply ignored those communities with this router.
It is a cheap market gag, they have not done anything of what OpenWRT dev's has required. Now they are trying to submit patches only and with the wifi driver precompiled
This is why we have option to return the product back to the vendor/store. If Belkin decides not to place nice, then all you have to do is return their vaporware and their profits go down the drain.
At the end of the day, the regular Joe and Jane, dont care about OpenWRT, no do they need the top of the top hardware. So Belkin has to focus and target a specific group of customers, that do need the router and its ability to run other firmwares. Otherwise they will end up losing boatloads of money if it doesnt sell well.
Think of it this way. Would you buy a new car without wheels, even though you were told the wheels would be delivered to you the next month?
Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:00 Post subject: Re: preorders
KGB7 wrote:
At the end of the day, the regular Joe and Jane, dont care about OpenWRT, no do they need the top of the top hardware. So Belkin has to focus and target a specific group of customers, that do need the router and its ability to run other firmwares. Otherwise they will end up losing boatloads of money if it doesnt sell well.
Belkin is well known for not caring about GPL requirements, Marvell is known for wanting their source being closed source instead of sharing it to developers in the open community.
They are for each other a match made in heaven and they both have a lot to learn about giving back to from where you take.
Any manufacturer can pull the same stint of throwing in a faster cpu in their router which will get the attention of the megahertz counting crowd of users but there is more to a router than the cpu.
(Fekk, Atheros (now owned by Qualcomm) could easily make a router with a cpu core from Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 or 800 series but they do instead concentrate on getting out a good 802.11ac wifi chip)
The wifi chip is as important to a router as a fast cpu but is much harder to make, Marvell is not known for good wifi chips in the past and this is likely to be the Achilles heel for the WRT1900AC..
Belkin is well known for not caring about GPL requirements,
You could throw an entire congo line of OEM/ODM's in there, vast majority drag their feet, occasionally some never cough-up.
Quote:
Marvell is known for wanting their source being closed source instead of sharing it to developers in the open community.
Nice general throwaway line, how about backing-it-up with some no's that demonstrate how it's unequivocally worse than others.
Because, as some of us know, many (heck most) OEM's have been useless at one time or another when it comes to F/OSS.
Qualcomm has a horrendous record at openness, it doesn't play at all, it doesn't need to, it dominates the hand-held market nowadays.
TI (with it's OMAP platform) was the last OEM that came close to being truly F/OSS friendly, & TI's now out of the game.
Quote:
They are for each other a match made in heaven
Makes zero sense in light of what Linksys has specifically said they're aiming to do...
It'd be suicidal to vocally claim they have an OpwnWRT SDK & will work with that community, & then turn around & do the opposite.
Quote:
The wifi chip is as important to a router as a fast cpu but is much harder to make, Marvell is not known for good wifi chips in the past and this is likely to be the Achilles heel for the WRT1900AC.
Lets be more balanced here, it was rarely complete shit, it just wasn't frequently the best (or among the best).
So the logic is: because something was often not good in the past, then it can't be good in the future, I see.
Just picked up the WRT1900AC, and i can say that it appears to be built rather well, its much heavier and bigger than the older wrt54g, seems really fast, just waiting for an open source fw to be available...
Open Source/Linux
Open Source is a vehicle for other communities, such as DD-WRT, Open WRT, and Tomato, to create their own custom versions of open source firmware for the product. OpenWRT developers will be provided hardware and SDKs/APIs to begin creating custom firmware for the WRT1900AC.
An OpenWRT custom firmware for WRT1900AC is planned to be available for download online at availability in the spring 2014.
