XR500 hardware seems identical to R7800

[DmyTgregu]

The r7800 seems to have the same hardware specs as the newly announced XR500 pro gaming router. Which makes me wonder, will the DumaOS firmware be available to us who recently bought the R7800 as a gaming router at some point?

[BretD]

Thanks for your interest in the Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR500. Router. Although the base hardware specs seem similar, there are particulars of the hardware platform that means any sort of "Porting" of the OS from one device to another is not so cut and dry. 

[DmyTgregu]

Thanks for your reply. I understand that the hardware isn’t identical, just that it seems more than capable of running the OS if tweaked. I only ask because I still experience some bufferbloat when someone is streaming video while I’m gaming. It’s much better than with dynamic qos off, but the latency variation isn’t rock solid. I wonder if the next generation cake qos could perhaps be implemented instead. It’s just somewhat frustrating that soon after a gaming router is purchased a very similar one with “better gaming firmware” is released. I know there are custom firmware options out there but then you lose some of the stability and general WiFi features that the rest of the non-gamers in the home rely on. Just wish the qos was a bit better. Thanks

[FURRYe38]

Have you tried Voxels FW for the R7800?

[DmyTgregu]

No I haven’t tried any custom firmware. I heard openwrt LEDE has the next gen qos but I was afraid of losing MUMIMO and other niceties. I heard Voxel’s is much closer to stock so you don’t lose those features but I wasn’t sure how much of an improvement that firmware was for qos.

[FURRYe38]

Yes, Voxels is using same Web UI and fetures. Only behind the scenes code is being updated and managed. 

[DmyTgregu]

Do you use that FW yourself? Do you know if the qos is improved over stock?

[FURRYe38]

Depends if FW has the Cut Thru or HW NAT included. I know the R7800 does. Seen others over on the NW R7800 boards with 1Gb ISP and there getting around 900Mb+ speeds.

Maybe the HW is identical however the FW isn't. Big differences. I would post over on the Standard NighHawk forums for the R7800 as these are two different router models.

[FURRYe38]

Look at my profile tag. I game two xbox consoles at the same time. One of the few routers that can handle multiple game consoles.

[DmyTgregu]

So upon your recommendation and several others I tried voxels FW. I loved how easy it was to install and how transparent it is to the stock FW. However it seems the bufferbloat scores from dslreports are now slightly worse than with stock. I’ll play with it some more tonight but if it stays this way I might revert to stock.

[FURRYe38]

Be sure to test with different server sites and different browsers as well. Iv'e seen different reported results, between, IE, FF, Opera and Chromem.