How are Tenda routers ?

[itspriyank]

Hi I would like to buy a new wireless ADSL router and was looking at Tenda TE D301 and Tenda TE D303 and both of them are damn sexy. I want to know if anyone has used Tenda products,how are they in reliability. Do they support DD-WRT and how is there wireless range. How is the customer support and RMA service?

 

[bill001g]

Pretty much you will not find third party firmware for any DSL...or cable modem.... device because there are licensing restrictions when device use open source software. You can't get the software drivers for the modem part of the router.

This make good software support even more important. This is the key reason you pay a lot for the larger brand routers they tend to fix things very fast. Now if you could load dd-wrt you don't care as much but in your case since you are force to use factory firmware it is critical to get good support.

Performance wise you would have to dig though the databases and find out what cpu and radios the device uses. Pretty much there are only 2 or 3 makers of chips for routers. Routers with the same chip will pretty much perform exactly the same.

Still the wireless market is actually very old tech wise so there is not much difference in the range on any router. They all transmit near the legal power allowed. Your house is actually what affects range much more and there is no way to predict why certain router do or do not work well in a particular house.

 

[itspriyank]

Pretty much you will not find third party firmware for any DSL...or cable modem.... device because there are licensing restrictions when device use open source software. You can't get the software drivers for the modem part of the router.

This make good software support even more important. This is the key reason you pay a lot for the larger brand routers they tend to fix things very fast. Now if you could load dd-wrt you don't care as much but in your case since you are force to use factory firmware it is critical to get good support.

Performance wise you would have to dig though the databases and find out what cpu and radios the device uses. Pretty much there are only 2 or 3 makers of chips for routers. Routers with the same chip will pretty much perform exactly the same.

Still the wireless market is actually very old tech wise so there is not much difference in the range on any router. They all transmit near the legal power allowed. Your house is actually what affects range much more and there is no way to predict why certain router do or do not work well in a particular house.

I have been going through the website of tenda and it seems that they are using broadcom chipset in there routers. Also looking at there website and products list, it seems that they are manufacturing routers since many years.
As far as ddwrt is considered then as your saying that routers with modem won't support it then I think any brand's ADSL router wouldn't support it. So should I go with more common brands like D Link or should I go with tenda?

 

[bill001g]

There is no brand that can run dd-wrt....technically you can load dd-wrt on them but the DSL does not work then.

It is a software copyright thing. The owners of the DSL chips refuse to allow their drivers to be used in a open source product.

I would only buy tenda if it is cheaper but it does greatly depend what country you are in. In china you likely would get better support than for brands supported out of the USA.

 

[itspriyank]

There is no brand that can run dd-wrt....technically you can load dd-wrt on them but the DSL does not work then.

It is a software copyright thing. The owners of the DSL chips refuse to allow their drivers to be used in a open source product.

I would only buy tenda if it is cheaper but it does greatly depend what country you are in. In china you likely would get better support than for brands supported out of the USA.

Here D Link, TP Link, Netgear, Cisco and such brands are too famous in my country. But Tenda does have registered service centres here. As these devices have broadcom chipsets, so do you think they would be reliable?

 

[bill001g]

I would search the reviews and look for people complaining about having power supply failures or strangeness like having to reboot the router all the time. Those type of complains generally indicate hardware issues. Most other comments like how well they cover mean nothing since houses are so different. What would be most worrisome would be if you find complaint that the device failed and the company refused or made it very hard to get replaced when it was under warranty.
You could also look at the company web site and see if there are firmware updates espeically newer ones on the newer routers that would indicate the company at least trys to fix things.

I have seen routers form unknown companies you can't even find a copy of the manual much less a firmware update.

 

[itspriyank]

I would search the reviews and look for people complaining about having power supply failures or strangeness like having to reboot the router all the time. Those type of complains generally indicate hardware issues. Most other comments like how well they cover mean nothing since houses are so different. What would be most worrisome would be if you find complaint that the device failed and the company refused or made it very hard to get replaced when it was under warranty.
You could also look at the company web site and see if there are firmware updates espeically newer ones on the newer routers that would indicate the company at least trys to fix things.

I have seen routers form unknown companies you can't even find a copy of the manual much less a firmware update.

First of all I would like to clear my situation here as why I am not going for a mainstream product.
Its actually not that I dont want to spend money but I want to try this new product which has almost all features at low price.

So as far as my setup is concerned I am using a Netgear WNDR4300 N750 for my 50 Mb/s fibernet connection and I am very happy with its performance. I have used tp link and digisol products too and they do serve well. But now I want to get a new ADSL router for brother's office and he is more interested into DSL than fibre because of low usage and low costs (So here he is considering looks too as it is gonna be on the table top).

I have been googling a lot to find reviews about tenda but have not found many as it is not much popular outside Asia I guess.
But most of the reviews I found were positive .
I did check the website and its quite beautiful and with a lot of information. The PDF version of manual has 136 pages for all possible settings and configuration help and the latest update to firmware was done in January 2015 only.

Here's the link to official webpage : http://www.tenda.cn/in/product/D303.html

 

[Kip Lian Li]

Pretty much you will not find third party firmware for any DSL...or cable modem.... device because there are licensing restrictions when device use open source software. You can't get the software drivers for the modem part of the router.

This make good software support even more important. This is the key reason you pay a lot for the larger brand routers they tend to fix things very fast. Now if you could load dd-wrt you don't care as much but in your case since you are force to use factory firmware it is critical to get good support.

Performance wise you would have to dig though the databases and find out what cpu and radios the device uses. Pretty much there are only 2 or 3 makers of chips for routers. Routers with the same chip will pretty much perform exactly the same.

Still the wireless market is actually very old tech wise so there is not much difference in the range on any router. They all transmit near the legal power allowed. Your house is actually what affects range much more and there is no way to predict why certain router do or do not work well in a particular house.

I have been going through the website of tenda and it seems that they are using broadcom chipset in there routers. Also looking at there website and products list, it seems that they are manufacturing routers since many years.
As far as ddwrt is considered then as your saying that routers with modem won't support it then I think any brand's ADSL router wouldn't support it. So should I go with more common brands like D Link or should I go with tenda?

FYI, all (new) Tenda routers have Broadcom solutions. Most support firmware like Tomato, and doing so will NOT void your hardware warranty. But, keep your eye out for sales of the new AC15.

I only have the n150 USB from Tenda myself, but have the AC15 in my office. Very nice!