TP-LINK N600 Wireless N Dual Band Gigabit Router w/ 2x USB Ports (TL-WDR3600) $39 after $15 rebate + Free Shipping

Could never bring myself to buy anything from this manufacturer. Got an access point from a buddy for free and it was the worst. Felt cheap and had to be rebooted several times a day.

Quote from drawz : No Tomato for Atheros-based routers, such as this one.

Tomato USB has not been updated for a few years now.

I read that nobody wants to open the source code the 5Ghz. Why is that?

How does this router compare to the Linksys E3000?

Can DDW-WRT support alot of DDNS? I need this, not just 4 of the popular DNS.

Thank OP!

Quote from WingsOfF : It has been solid for me with the latest stock firmware as well. 3rd party firmware have long been so much superior to router stock firmware that it has been a no-brainer to use them. It is slowly changing as the 3rd party fimware have plateaued in features and stock firmware is catching up. But these TP-Links in particular get overzealous promotion from OpenWRT fanbois because for a change they get to gloat over the DD-WRT given the respective states of development. It is like a football fan thing.

I've been a tomato fanboy for years, but I'll go to whatever works well. I think everyone is getting a boner over OpenWRT due to the CoDel support, which is very very impressive.

Quote from blochead21 : Im in the same boat. I want to see if i can attach a hard drive to the USB ports so I can back up my Macs with Time Machine. I'm still trying to find a definitive answer if it will work with this router though.

No, there is no support for Time Machine from the Router in terms of Time Machine discovery, etc. It is just available as a mountable drive from the router. It can be mounted on a Mac and used as a Time Machine Drive but you will have problems if you want to do so from multiple Macs and/or also want to use it for non Macs. This is what NAS systems are for. People seem to want to convert their routers to be a NAS which is not their strongpoint.

The only good usage for the USB port in routers, in my opinion, is for a drive that can be used by third party firmware add-ons such as stand-alone torrent downloads, etc.

Thanks, OP! My brother's been needing a router and bought one.

Quote from WingsOfF : No, there is no support for Time Machine from the Router in terms of Time Machine discovery, etc. It is just available as a mountable drive from the router. It can be mounted on a Mac and used as a Time Machine Drive but you will have problems if you want to do so from multiple Macs and/or also want to use it for non Macs. This is what NAS systems are for. People seem to want to convert their routers to be a NAS which is not their strongpoint. The only good usage for the USB port in routers, in my opinion, is for a drive that can be used by third party firmware add-ons such as stand-alone torrent downloads, etc.

Can be added via third party firmware, but speeds will be kinda slow. Agree that a real NAS is the way to go.

Quote from chong67 : Tomato USB has not been updated for a few years now. I read that nobody wants to open the source code the 5Ghz. Why is that? How does this router compare to the Linksys E3000? Can DDW-WRT support alot of DDNS? I need this, not just 4 of the popular DNS.

Tomato is being updated, but it's sort of confusing how to get to those updates. The core tomatousb is not update and hence the webpage is not. But there are "mods" out there that are updated regularly and add support to a lot of devices, including those with 5 GHz band support. Click on the "mods" link on the left side of the tomatousb home page for some links. Tomato Shibby mod seems to be the most popular, but Toastman is nice and has a very robust built-in QOS configuration. Wikipedia has a nice table detailing the difference between all the tomato mods. They're all version 1.28 with different build numbers, which makes it confusing regarding when it was last updated.
Note: The drivers are actually not open source, but Broadcom did release enough to enable updated tomato builds. Note that the closed source Broadcom drivers that only work with linux kernel 2.6.xx are the reason that codel is not supported on Tomato.

Isn't wireless printing also a good reason for a router with usb ports? Right now to print a document from my laptop on my wired printer, I upload the file to dropbox, go to my desktop to retrieve the file from dropbox, then print. I would love to be able to share a printer via wifi somehow. Maybe it's a lot more complicated than just plugging my printer in to this router though.

Bought one of these during BF, this thing is junk, it lost wireless capability on the second time I turned it on.

Quote from dealmonkey : I was looking at buying the Asus N66U, but I'm having a hard time pulling the trigger at $170. This router has the external antennas, dual band, and the speed I want. I'm willing to spend more money if it means better reliability. Anyone use both routers? Is it like comparing a Kia to a Mercedes?

Not really...Kia has a better warranty because its owned by Hyundai.

Asus (who I love) is great if you want all the fancy features built in that ddwrt or Openwrt will give you, you are basically paying for the advanced software. So if you are afraid of flashing a diff firmware and rather have a working out-of-box product with support for said advanced software, go with the Asus, otherwise you will LOVE this router.

I bought it first time around and running OpenWRT, using a USB as root partition (have more space for more packages), I have a:

1. swap partition so I can transfer larger files without the system crashing,
2. I have a USB 3.0 (no support for 3.0 but backwards compatible to 2.0) powered Hub connected to it,
3. that powered hub has a HDD (formated with EXT4 as more efficient than NTFS) and a USB printer connected (didn't have to buy a new network/wireless ) to it working with CUPS to turn the printer into a wireless printer,
4. Samba installed and sharing the HDD over the network, specially to my raspberry pi ,
4. I also have OpenVPN installed and setup so I can remotely connect to my network over a secured connection to access my shared files on the HDD when needed.

OpenWrt is awesome, and this router for this price makes it more that worth the Asus in my opinion.

If anyone has questions on how I accomplished this or needs help let me know, don't mind helping you out. (oh look at that someone to support your newly purchased router)

Quote from chong67 : Tomato USB has not been updated for a few years now. I read that nobody wants to open the source code the 5Ghz. Why is that? How does this router compare to the Linksys E3000? Responses to questions/comments: Can DDW-WRT support alot of DDNS? I need this, not just 4 of the popular DNS.

Yes, it can. I have used OpenWRT,DDWRT, and TomatoUSB and all of these popular router firmware's support DDNS, but depends on the router and the version you are using, typically newer versions only have them (aka past year 2012/2011 builds).

Quote from ruok : Isn't wireless printing also a good reason for a router with usb ports? Right now to print a document from my laptop on my wired printer, I upload the file to dropbox, go to my desktop to retrieve the file from dropbox, then print. I would love to be able to share a printer via wifi somehow. Maybe it's a lot more complicated than just plugging my printer in to this router though.

Yes, works great with CUPS, this is exactly what I used to do, albeit I shared the files over the network instead of Dropbox. If you get OpenWRT working, then follow this simple guide to get it working for you:
http://mattie47.com/getting-cups-...n-openwrt/

Quote from intex45 : Bought one of these during BF, this thing is junk, it lost wireless capability on the second time I turned it on.

You probably just got a defective one, as quality control now-a-days sucks, so i would get it replaced. I have one from last deal was posted without any problems with either stock or custom firmware, but you HAVE to updated the firmware to the latest (stock) as i heard someone else having same problems on forums I have read.

Quote from hardcoremofo : I got the asus 56u, an older model for $100. It works really well, surprisingly. I stream Netflix, hulu every night; fast forwarding etc. is quick. Also my range increased. Like you, the $170 price tag just not justifiable. 56u is a good option if that's the case. I was stuck with a dlink for 3 years before. I wouldn't even touch the cheap routers anymore.

+1

I got an openbox ASUS RT-N56U from newegg for $60 and once I put the open source firmware [google.com]this thing has been rock solid! Have 3 connections wired in (PS3, Viera ST50 & Vonage) and use both bands for ipad, iphone, laptop and desktop. Love it!

Thanks OP, scored one. Repped

For anyone using dd-wrt w/ this router, do you happen to know the memory/flash capacity? Best I could find was the following link suggesting 128MB/8MB.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/view...p?p=713686

TIA

Quick question. I'm using an older Linksys wireless G router for going on about 7 years. It streams Netflix to my Bluray player without any hiccups. I can also stream video to my netbook while Netflix is running and still I have no issues. It has ran for over 2 years without having to be reset. Do I gain anything by upgrading to wireless N?

I'm paying $54 a month for my ISP so I guess my thought process is heading in the direction of upgrading my router and then stepping down a tier speed wise for my connection to save some money. Is that plausible or should I stay where I'm at?