Netgear D7000 - Your thoughts?

[soupladel]

I have been looking at the various VDSL modem/router combos that are available and i have (so far) settled on the Netgear D7000.

My last couple of routers have been netgear, I am familiar with the UI and performance wise the review give it the edge over its rivals in almost all categories except distance which isnt significant for me currently.

I know there are a few people that have chosen this as a replacement for the HH5, so I just wanted to understand what your experiences of this are and am i making the right choice?

[SimonN]

@soupladel

I have (partially functioning) FTTP so I kept the openreach modem. I got the router only - The R7000.

It's wifi performce is far better than the HH5a it replaced. So much so, I've turned off the devolo access point downstairs and it's just been releagted to a powerline ethernet extention for the TV. Wireless reaches everywhere just from the netgear. (3 storey house)

One reason was because of the flaky PSN performance of the HH5a.

Another was the ongoing issues with BT's parental controls and how they badly interact with other services at times. No need to worry about netflix issues etc. Using the netgear gives me OpenDNS customisation options.

MTU seems to require standard PPPoE of 1492 rather than the HH5a's default 1500 but so far no issue with that.

Netgear genie is intuitive and open. App on phone works too. All the toys are available out of the box. Disable SIP ALG for example.

UPnP even works properly. No port forwarding with CoD or PSN voice chat etc. Not sure why BT can't get that right.

I can turn on/off things I want with netgear rather than it being hidden by HH5a's interface.

Looking at the netgear logs I've only suffered disconnect due to my issues with openreach and low light levels - which are written about elsewhere here.

I cannot comment on the combined D7000 unit - only the R7000 but so far, I'm really happy with it.

I just need OpenReach to stabilize and strengthen my FTTP and I'll be away.

[soupladel]

@SimonN

Yeah we spoke about the PSN issues in another thread, although some posts on this forum suggest the warnings on PSN about packet fragmentation (or lack thereof) might be a bit of a false positive, the OCD in my just doesn't like the fact the message is there.  My instinct tells me that regardless of where the fault lies (in this case seems to be the A model HH5) that message being present tells me something is not right.

I am picking this modem/router up later from Maplin for £150, its a small price to pay for peace of mind really.

[soupladel]

Well I have just finished setting the modem/router up and to be honest, it was a bit of a pig.  Almost all of the issues were caused by the latest netgear firmware which i automatically installed bit after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, i downgraded and my problems went away.

I was astill getting the packet fragmentation warning on PS4 but i turned down the MTU in the router to 1400 and lo and behold, the problem has gone away.

[soupladel]

Ok, spoke to soon, the thing was forzen this mroning and has froze at least another 3 or 4 times since then and nothing has helped inlcuding restoring to factory settings and making a number of measured changes in the settings, it seem i may have been sold a lemon by Maplin but from the support forums for netgear, it seems to be a common problem

[anthonyUK]

Have you updated the firmware?  These are very highly rated routers. They can also run custom firmware such as open-wrt or Tomato. 

[Interceptor121]

The R7000 version is definitely a high performer on all accounts but I am unsure of the combined modem version. I have an openreach modem and the R7000 and it works a treat. Considering what goes on with openreach and the fact that netgear stats are rather poor i would be careful with the modem version

[soupladel]

it turns out whatever the fault is, it is somehow related to the wifi functionality bet that a setting issue or just a general fault in the hardware. I disabled wifi altogether on the router and it hasn't locked up once since, i have been given a suggestion by netgear to try (disabling the 20/40 MHz co-existence) but short of that i have to assume the unit is faulty because for the 48 hours i used the HH5 it didn't lock up once, my previous netgear router never locked up and my Apple Airport has never locked up either, so the problem is specific to the D7000 and its wifi, be that a fault or a setting (although i am not quite sure why a setting would cause it to lock up continuously in a fairly standard setup)

[SimonN]

Sorry to hear about you troubles. I can assure you the R7000 has been faultless. Did you set QoS up? I've heard that is as useless as BT smart setup and should never be used.

[Interceptor121]

Qos works fine and is one of the best features of the R7000. Especially video streaming downstream is brilliant