I can understand your frustration. Are you setting up these networks wirelessly or wired? It would certainly be less trouble to find a third alternative than to flash a custom firmware I would think. If you are dead set on that route, I surely can't help, but if you end up looking for another manufacturer, Ubiquiti is second to none. GL on your endeavor

 

Eh, i dunno if it's some defiant thing in me or what but, as i've got it i'm treating it like i stole it/it isn't mine until it's in a 100% fully functional (as intended) state - i wont accept any less as it's my hard earned money i used to buy it. Up until that point they'll get it back in pieces if necessary and i'll take full advantage of my consumer rights.

So yeah, i'm deffo willing to flash it if it means i might get a working product out of it. IF it bricks it, it bricks it - They wont check it, because none of these companies give two sh*s for their products.

If that fails, then most definitely i will look up what you've suggested.

edit:

It's largely for a wireless network/home.

From what I can tell you need DD-WRT version r6700v2 build 45820 20210223

And this would work with the Nighthawk AC1900 (R7000) v2? (as it clearly states r6700v2 in the name you've mentioned)

Thanks for the (non judgemental) replies, it's refreshing to not get some attitude lectures for a change.

 

From what I can tell you need DD-WRT version r6700v2 build 45820 20210223

 

Just buy a Mikrotik and set it up exactly how you want

MikroTik Routers and Wireless - Products: hAP ac³

 

Best advice here from my limited experience.

I do know a lot of the major router manufacturers are very poor with firmware support, and if a Netgear didn't have all of its functions operational out of the box, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

I would not be shocked if a six month old router never got another firmware update, it seems to be how these brands roll.

Mikrotik seems to combine modern hardware while leveraging open source firmware, along with good prices and quality construction.

Personally, I like how they "look", but who cares about looks when you are talking about your internet quality?

 

I personally own the r6700 v3 and the ONLY reason I'm still using it is because I spent so much for the piece of crap. The software for the access sucks and I had to use what's basicly legacy software(the netgear genie) because I don't do the whole "use your phone as a computer" thing. I hope your 7000 series router is better than my 6000 series. I actually had fewer issues with the slower linksys router this 1 replaced.

 

assuming you're past the return window? why not just return it and buy something else?

I bought a R7000 and it came DOA, grabbed a RT-AC86U instead and flashed Merlin to it. Been super happy with it, took all of 5 seconds and it supports what I needed (fq_codel).

 

https://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/asuswrt-merlin-on-netgear-r7000.71108/

 

Seconding Ubiquiti if you go that route. Bullet proof basically.

 

I've gone through my fair share of routers over the years and they all have their stupid issues, Ubiquiti having the least amount.
That said, I have been considering building my own router with old parts. Literally any build using tech from the past 5 years will be miles past any consumer router's internals. Probably use PFSense software and then just link a separate wifi AP while all the security, VPN, etc is handled by the build. I know it's not a ready-to-go situation, but another viable option.

 

Get any router that you know supports DD-WRT (or any other firmware you like), and pair it with a dedicated access point, Ubiquity AP being my recommendation.
Turn off wifi on the main router (if equipped), and use it as a simple wired router only. Can be a cheap router, I use some 8 year old D-link.
Place the AP in a central location in the house. I have mine in the hallway on the ceiling.
Best WiFi you could imagine, just about guaranteed.
This is my setup now, and I have not had to touch a thing since installing it. Will never go back to a "all in one" device again.

 

I will just say this, I gave up on normal consumer gear years ago. I switched to pfsense for my router and all Ubiquiti Unifi networking gear for everything else. Never been happier. With pfsense I never have issues that I did not create with my tinkering. If I leave it alone it does it's job 24/7 with no reboots except for when I do a major update. Usually 6 months to a year between those. And my Ubiquiti gear is much the same. It just works. There are other good business/prosumer products that are pretty good out there too.

The other nice part about breaking up the network gear, easy upgrades. When I upgrade to new versions of WiFi I just swap out the access points. Not my whole network.

DD-WRT is ok. Far better than most OEM firmware and actually gets updates. If you have an extra computer laying around you can buy a cheap network card to get a second port and toss pfsense on it. That will be WAY more capable and powerful than just about anything else you can get.

 

netgear makes **** routers, Asus makes the best residential grade stuff with their RT- series.

 

I know the focus is a bit of why the router is failing on a feature, but for your partner why do you need to setup VPN capability on the gateway?

Almost all WFH solutions I know make the client install VPN software to connect directly to their gateway. Don't need to mess around trying to set up an endpoint on your own network.

Unless it's a hard requirement, your partner should be okay to work. Or justifying chucking that router in the bin.

 

Lol, I just read through this and was about to ask the same question. Wouldn't you also need to setup VLANs if you wanted only the work machine to use the VPN?

Also these budget routers are hardly powerful enough to run the VPN, from what I find online, the CPU in the R7000 will be maxed out at about 50Mbps.

 

Anywhoo, to cut a long story short; I got it working, and my partner needed to connect to her work VPN to.. well, work, but the router wont allow her and functionally is incapable of allowing her to do so because of some ******ed bs features Netgear routers have (According to this article: https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/vpn-netgear-router/)

When connecting a single PC to a work VPN you should be running the VPN from that PC, not setting up the router as the client that it sends all traffic through.

 

It is very frustrating when you spend a lot of money on a product that doesn't work as expected.

It is possible to flash custom firmware to your Netgear Nighthawk R7000 V2 router. However, it is a bit more difficult than flashing firmware to other routers. The reason for this is that Netgear has made it more difficult to flash custom firmware to their routers in recent years.

DD-WRT is a popular open-source firmware that is known for its stability and features. To flash DD-WRT to your router, you will need to download the DD-WRT firmware for your router model and then follow the instructions on the DD-WRT website.

 

I ended up jumping on the pfsense wagon a while back, was going to DIY, but ended up getting one of their prebuilts due to a number of reasons, but mostly lack of time during projects.

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but almost everything I needed to learn for getting pfsense working like butter I learned from Tom at Lawrence systems, Here's a good start, also helped me finalize my sr-x scratch built TrueNAS thats currently faster than something Id have spent at least 2-3x more on.

the only thing he's a fanboy of, other than ZFS, is a network that doesn't piss you off.

I almost wanted to throw the router out the window when I first got it, which was mostly my fault for not prepping myself for the difference all-around, but once I got past the hurdles, I could never go back to a consumer router.

 

Another brand I heard about last year is Firewalla. They are similar to pfsense in that it is an open source firewall distro, but it is closer to the current state of Ubiquiti than pfsense, or I suppose can be more like when you run pfsense with a bunch of layer 7 plugins like zenarmor. I definitely recommend anyone looking at pfsense or opnsense to take a look at firewalla instead in todays day and age because ZenArmor costs money if you have any kind of smart home these days due to number of IPs on the network.

 

I would also recommend Sophos Firewall. The learning curve is high, but it's also an enterprise level next-gen firewall for free that you can install on your own hardware, or even virtualized in Proxmox. Other than that I would recommend an Ubituity Dream Router, which is an all-in-one router/wifi access point.