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The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => Routers / COVR => DIR-857 => Topic started by: mvjunkie on May 29, 2012, 03:34:09 PM

Title: 857 or N66U
Post by: mvjunkie on May 29, 2012, 03:34:09 PM
Always been a fan of D-Link..

Its either gonna be the 857 or N66U ( Asus ).

Which one will be better for torrents? Most mid-grade routers fall over, stop responding, need a reboot, when you have multiple torrents going on because of all the simultaneous connections.
Which one can handle these connections better?

I usually have about 15 torrents going on at once, and my old trusty DGL-4100 could handle this, and still does. Tried other routers, and they choke and die when I load my torrents up.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Beeder on May 29, 2012, 03:43:08 PM
N66U has a lot of kinks to work out firmware-wise, though the hardware has great potential. N66U has gotten a lot of positive reviews based on its potential, but if you look around the forums, there are a lot of stability issues.  It seems that Asus is willing to push out firmware to fix bugs without doing regression testing, leading to old bugs that come back.

For me, 857 has been very stable, and I think it's the better choice.  That this is a DLink forum is purely incidental.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: mvjunkie on May 29, 2012, 04:43:50 PM
N66U has a lot of kinks to work out firmware-wise, though the hardware has great potential. N66U has gotten a lot of positive reviews based on its potential, but if you look around the forums, there are a lot of stability issues.  It seems that Asus is willing to push out firmware to fix bugs without doing regression testing, leading to old bugs that come back.

For me, 857 has been very stable, and I think it's the better choice.  That this is a DLink forum is purely incidental.

Thanks for the reply, does the 857 have the CPU and RAM to handle a lot of connections via torrents, and not choke it? I have a 655 right now, and it can't do that many until it has its heat attack.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Doctor Doom on May 30, 2012, 06:12:30 AM
The 857 can handle 30000+ sessions no problem. I know Asus on some models toot 300000 sessions. If you had a DGL-4100 that did the job, either the N66U or 857 will definitely do the job. A lot of older routers had 2000-4000 session limits and that would typically cause the router to misbehave when using torrents.

Hardware wise they are both good. Stability wise I cannot comment on the Asus but their firmwares have always been flakey and DD-WRT is usually the solution. I've been running the 857 for a few weeks and it's solid.

Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Hard Harry on June 01, 2012, 07:00:18 AM
From using both I can say they are pretty even. The RT-N66U has a little bit longer range, but the DIR-857 had better firmware out of the gate. It was patched though, and my build was nothing but heaven.  N66U has VPN hosting (though work is it doesn't work yet) but DIR-857 has a cool iOS/Android app for its cloud support. N66U has two USB and a internal SD (for firmware additions) but the DIR-857 has USB 3.0 and a external SD card. N66U has better CPU/RAM specs on paper, but some prefer the processing method of the 857. I don't want to say which one I prefer, because personal preference doesn't matter, its what is best for you. If you have a big media library, including multiple external storage, want to stream off site, including phones and tablets, and don't need any of the fancy stuff like ssh access, then go with the Dlink. If need full bandwidth monitoring, better VPN support, and stuff your IT will love, go with the N66U. But here is a good walk through to give you some unbias info.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/31687-asus-rt-n66u-dark-knight-dual-band-wireless-n900-gigabit-router-reviewed (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/31687-asus-rt-n66u-dark-knight-dual-band-wireless-n900-gigabit-router-reviewed)
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: FurryNutz on June 01, 2012, 07:51:52 AM
Harry, does the N66U have IPv6 Firewall options separate like the Amplify routers or is that all inclusive in some of the settings? Just curious.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Lexist2112 on June 01, 2012, 07:53:02 AM
Coming from a Linksys E4200, the Dlink 857 works quite well. Have had it for 3weeks and have put it thru it's paces. Out of the box the 1.00 F/W saw my Seagate 3TB HDD connected via the 3.0 USB and the Shareport app (The app just updated today) on all my devices was able to access the drive FAST and snappy...impressive.

The dual band works great with all my wireless devices ie..iphone, iPad 3 , 5GHZ lappie and 4 Dlink wireless cams, and XBOX!!!!!

DLNA service works GREAT!!! The PS3 streams all my video content, gonna have to rip some HD content soon  ;)

The wireless coverage is by far better than the E4200 both on the 2.4 & 5GHZ bandwidth, solid signal and less instability.

After the release of 1.01 F/W I waited a day and took the plunge and upgraded the F/W and the upgrade process went smoothly and all my configurations were there on reboot.

All in all a great router should have waited 1 year , had I known Dlink was gonna release this router I would have. Would have been worth the wait.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: mvjunkie on June 01, 2012, 10:22:54 PM
The 857 can handle 30000+ sessions no problem. I know Asus on some models toot 300000 sessions. If you had a DGL-4100 that did the job, either the N66U or 857 will definitely do the job. A lot of older routers had 2000-4000 session limits and that would typically cause the router to misbehave when using torrents.


Just out of curiosity, why could my old trusty 4100 handle massive connections, yet my 655 falls over with alot of connections?

I've had 20+ torrents going on at once, full seeds on all of them and the 4100 handled them ... 655 would handle it for a few hours before it needed a reboot.....
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: FurryNutz on November 25, 2012, 12:11:48 PM
You maybe exceeding the limites of the 655 maybe. Having too many torrents going maybe causing the problem. You need adjust the torrents, try cutting your torrents down to half and test?

Just out of curiosity, why could my old trusty 4100 handle massive connections, yet my 655 falls over with alot of connections?

I've had 20+ torrents going on at once, full seeds on all of them and the 4100 handled them ... 655 would handle it for a few hours before it needed a reboot.....
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: mbg on December 26, 2012, 06:32:57 AM
I have a D-Link DIR-825 rev A and recently replaced it with an N66U.

N66U range was worse. The far reaches of my house held stable connections with the DIR-825 but drop quite frequently with the N66U (whether mounted horizontally or on the stand it comes with).

Torrents weren't an issue with either router. Neither fell over, but concurrent connections to non-torrent sources slowed to a crawl on other devices with both routers, I guess because of the many connections competing for prioritization. I found QoS easier to configure for torrent traffic on the DIR-825.

Logging was better on the N66U, and my DIR-825 is Rev A which has decent logging.

Stability of N66U was fine as long as devices were in range. It doesn't formally require reboots for as many config changes as the DIR-825, but sometimes it didn't seen stable after a config change until I rebooted, even if not required.

I went back to the DIR-825 after trying the N66U for about a month. I think the overall quality of the D-Link experience was better. Asus had a nicer interface but a number of things seemed experimental or unreliable.

I didn't try any 3rd party firmware.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Syaoran on January 03, 2013, 03:33:13 PM
Thanks for the reply, does the 857 have the CPU and RAM to handle a lot of connections via torrents, and not choke it? I have a 655 right now, and it can't do that many until it has its heat attack.

Actually, I have this issue with the 857.  I tend to seed a lot of torrents and it can completely lock up my router due to heat.  Just seeding a couple of handfuls of torrents push the temperature of this router into the upper 40's C.  If you don't mind slapping a laptop cooler under it, it's a little more reliable.  Personally, I am tempted to give my router to my grandparents and buy something else.  Whehter torrents or multiple steaming and online gaming at the same time.  This router can get very hot and to the point where lock ups and disconnections happen. 
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Hard Harry on January 12, 2013, 08:38:30 PM
Take note, the RT-N66U was specifically designed to handle torrents. Specs lists it can handle 300k+ As for cooling, just take a look:

DIR-857 thermal sink
(http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/images/stories/wireless/dlink_dir857/dlink_dir857_inside.jpg)

**Correction** Seems Dlink put their heat sink on the bottom
(http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/images/stories/wireless/dlink_dir827/dlink_dir827_bottom_heatsink.jpg)

RT-N66U thermal sink
(http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/images/stories/wireless/asus_rtn66u/asus_rtn66u_board1.jpg)

As you can see, the RT-N66U has a solid aluminum thermal sink across the entire top of PCB while the DIR-857 only has electrical shielding. has a smaller heatsink along the bottom.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Syaoran on January 12, 2013, 08:52:30 PM
That's something D-Link should have done with the DIR-857. 
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: FurryNutz on January 12, 2013, 08:55:31 PM
Interesting so seems that users would need to lower the torrent seeding possibly if they were to use the 857? I've noticed that various users have complained about torrents either making routers warmer than normal or the router not being able to handle all the torrents that users are doing. I have mentioned that users do need to lower the torrents they are doing or lower the band width they are using in the torrent program. I still feel that users are probably letting then torrent program be the hog in there down loads and not placing any limits on what they are downloading... Seems like the 857 isn't meant for major Torrent downloads.

My 2 cents.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Syaoran on January 12, 2013, 08:57:22 PM
That's about my conclusion also, Furry!  I was sent a beta firmware earlier in the week but I don't have enough time to push the router to test it until Wednesday.  Once I put it through a good stress test, I will report back to D-Link. 
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Hard Harry on January 12, 2013, 09:06:24 PM
I wouldn't go that far. It depends on the CPU and the design of the router. Overall Dlink has always been very good at doing more with less, so they can very easily design there setup to produce less heat. Actually, thats the trend in most laptops with Ivy bridge and the like. So I don't want it to say they "should" have used a passive heatsink, just that they didn't. So "if" the DIR-857 gets hot, thats probably why. The reason I put it that way is there are pro's and con's.  Heat sink can be a point of failure...just ask Xbox. :-) Cost more too, probably why the DIR-857 is 30$ less.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Syaoran on January 12, 2013, 09:09:03 PM
I don't disagree but I never had issues with torrents on my DIR-855.  It was just the WiFi that gave me problems and that's mroe of less due to the amound of routers around here and within range.  Hard wired though for torrents, the DIR-855 was solid for a lot more than what I've pushed through the 857 so far. 
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: FurryNutz on January 12, 2013, 09:17:39 PM
Keep us posted on the beta FW results. I'm interested to see if this helps any. I presume you have been in contact with Dlink then? I'm currently on v1.03 and it's been very stable. However I probably don't stress the router as much maybe as you might. I only recently have put online a 2nd xbox for gaming and gaming with 2 is very nice.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Hard Harry on January 12, 2013, 09:20:59 PM
Oh yea, I never meant to say one router is better then another with torrents. As far as the data goes, there both great, just that the RT-N66U has a feature set that makes it more torrent frieldly. For example it has a built in torrent downloader so you can download direct to USB storage even if no computer is turned on. It also has a separate chip for NAT processing to take it off the CPU(great for torrents) but I have yet to see any data on how much this improves performance.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Syaoran on January 12, 2013, 09:36:20 PM
Considering the battery died in my Wii U controller, I don't have enough to stress the router the way I want but I'm going to buy another controller on my way home during the week, if I can find one.  I usually run the Wii, Wii U, 3DS, and N based laptop steaming through Netflix and Hulu.  Then fire up some online gaming on the PC and seeding a crapload of torrents over wired to get the router warmed up.  My Brother wireless laser printer still seems to lose a sync tot he status monitor on my PC's but it at least wakes correctly now with the beta firmware.  Before, I would have to manually repoint the monitor to the printer to wake it so there is some improvement already. 
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: FurryNutz on January 12, 2013, 09:54:09 PM
I just opened mine to verify out of curiosity. Ya, there are 2 head sinks plates, upper and bottom.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: Hard Harry on January 12, 2013, 10:01:24 PM
Really? Is it possible your model is different then the norm? Could you take pics? If overheating really is a problem with this unit, I think its best to look there.
Title: Re: 857 or N66U
Post by: FurryNutz on January 12, 2013, 10:05:09 PM
It looks like the pic of the bottom plate in your pic is attached to the bottom of the plastic housing. Mine is attached to the main circuit board itself. Just put mine back together. LOL