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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-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. 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.




I'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.


I'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.


> extremely configurable/hackable.

Except for the closed-source WiFi drivers, which also limit the choice of kernel versions.


Just got the same one. More information and a link to the purchase site here: 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.


I 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).


I 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.


RT-N66U with Advanced Tomato here. Couldn't be happier




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