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My Experiance with the RT-AC87U And No It's not Good

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They might have improved the internal design sure but where does the heat go when you have it resting on a desk? Um.. inside and your desk gets insanely hot then causes a hot plate effect.

If they were both suspended in mid air okay but how is the positioning? If there's better internal heat sink design okay and it dissipates more heat ok? But where does that heat go oh wait right into the surface it's sitting on causing that surface to get even hotter which then negates the fact. If the router was Vertical it would have no choice but to dissipate most of it's heat into the surrounding air.

Asus screwed the design of the RT-AC87R by the dorky location of the USB 3.0 port on the right front edge.

It not only looks messy connecting your HD, but precludes mounting the modem on its side a la RT n 66U so the heat chimney effect would work by dissipating heat up into the atmosphere.

What I do is place the modem on a metal wire rack so the bottom has at least somewhere for the heat to escape.

For sure someone can design a bracket that will allow you to slide in the RT-AC87R, leave the USB port free with some clearance, and allow the modem to sit vertical on its front end freeing up desk space and address the overheating issue at the same time.
 
I own 3 of them and i am miserable right now SAME thing constant hangs rebooting them on average 10 time a day iv opened a support ticket with asus if they don't release a FW to address this asap im gone i will return them nyxagamemnon are you using merlins FW or Asus stock mate?

I have tried every single firmware version that exists.

Merlins and asus and no avail :(
 
I am in SoCal also dude and the 87 runs cooler than the two 68's I have owned.
 
Asus screwed the design of the RT-AC87R by the dorky location of the USB 3.0 port on the right front edge.

It not only looks messy connecting your HD, but precludes mounting the modem on its side a la RT n 66U so the heat chimney effect would work by dissipating heat up into the atmosphere.

No, they didn't screw it up. They did it by design to avoid interference and maximize wireless transmission and USB speed. I agree, though, it wasn't the ideal location but it was done with a purpose.
 
People complaining about warm routers can be found in numerous threads in numerous forums. The same people can never provide any actual temps. It's a never ending joke.

I predict this thread will grow to 15 pages before anyone actually provides a temp from a temp gun.

Many of these newer consumer routers since 2011 run much warmer than pre-2011 routers from all vendors.

Edit: people complaining about brand new routers is a never ending joke too. Never buy a router until it's been out for at least 6 months.
 
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I do notice one thing with the AC87; when I upgrade the firmware or make significant config changes the 5Ghz channel becomes unstable until i physically unplug and plug it back it. Once it hard reboots its rock solid.

6 days uptime since I did the last firmware upgrade, 21 clients, wired 2.4hz and multiple 5ghz wireless clients tested with 2 roku and 2 samsung tv all streaming 1080p from amazon prime/plex/hbo go.

zero issues no buffering; pretty damn rock solid for as new as the firmware is for this router.
 
I don't have the RT-AC87U, but I have noticed that doing a reboot after any changes make the system stable once again.

This is for RT-N66U's, RT-AC66U's, RT-AC56U's and RT-AC68U's.
 
I don't have the RT-AC87U, but I have noticed that doing a reboot after any changes make the system stable once again.

This is for RT-N66U's, RT-AC66U's, RT-AC56U's and RT-AC68U's.

Same here. This reflects a poorly developed firmware but it is what it is and we have to live with it if we want to use Asus.

I would urge Asus to upgrade its firmware software development team with more brains. This can only add prestige to the company. And remember the Asus R87 is about $300. with tax and delivery - not a cheap home router by any measure - for that price they should be doing much better for what they are charging.

We have Cisco enterprise routers in our data center and yes, these are top dollar but worth every penny.

At home I have a couple Cisco small business routers and these run about $1K retail.

Like the enterprise routers, these small business units are tanks and need maybe once a year software updates via a simple script, and you pop the top and blow out the dust and forget about them until next year.
 
You know what's pathetic about Asus?

Merlin > Multi Billion Dollar Company.


1 Man on his spare time can do more fixes and updates than a company that has billions at it's disposal.


Only thing to do is give Merlin props :)
 
You know what's pathetic about Asus?

Merlin > Multi Billion Dollar Company.


1 Man on his spare time can do more fixes and updates than a company that has billions at it's disposal.


Only thing to do is give Merlin props :)

I appreciate the thought, but I have to disagree there. For every single fix that I do, Asus fixes 10 more issues on their end, while also adding 1-2 new features, and all of this while supporting about 20 different models that spreads over two completely different hardware platforms (I only have to support 6, and they're all Broadcom-based).

There are large portions of the code I refuse to touch simply because it's too complex for me to fully understand. The Dual WAN stuff for example.

Frankly, a big part of the problem there is the Tomato base on which Asus has built Asuswrt. Tomato design is poorly designed when it comes to adding new features since the code isn't modular at all. Asus had to add tons of conditional code on the Tomato base to be able to add new features and support different models (all with different feature sets).

If it were my call, I'd say Asuswrt should be rewritten nearly from the ground up, based on a more modular approach, and with a sane build environment rather than the mess Tomato's build enviro is. Tomato's monolithic architecture frankly blows when you start having more services added on top of it. You end up with services such as dnsmasq being re-started 3-4 times during the initial boot sequence, for example. The firewall rule management is also all over the place, with rules done by the firewall code, other sections of the code insert their own rules here and there, while some section will flat your restart the whole firewall subsystem so it can add the specific rules required by that section.

Overall, the problem isn't Asus's developers lack of skill. Look at the amount of features they have developed compared to any other competitors. Writing some of these features such as the actual Dual WAN system requires some serious skills - there's a reason why such a feature isn't available on any of the open source projects at this point.
 
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I appreciate the thought, but I have to disagree there. For every single fix that I do, Asus fixes 10 more issues on their end, while also adding 1-2 new features, and all of this while supporting about 20 different models that spreads over two completely different hardware platforms (I only have to support 6, and they're all Broadcom-based).

There are large portions of the code I refuse to touch simply because it's too complex for me to fully understand. The Dual WAN stuff for example.

Frankly, a big part of the problem there is the Tomato base on which Asus has built Asuswrt.

My interpretation is that Asus forked itself over from the get go.

Time for them to upgrade their software / firmware unit with some serious $$$ and brain trust and fix their goddamned code from the ground up!

They have billions to back it up.
 
I appreciate the thought, but I have to disagree there. For every single fix that I do, Asus fixes 10 more issues on their end, while also adding 1-2 new features, and all of this while supporting about 20 different models that spreads over two completely different hardware platforms (I only have to support 6, and they're all Broadcom-based).

There are large portions of the code I refuse to touch simply because it's too complex for me to fully understand. The Dual WAN stuff for example.

Frankly, a big part of the problem there is the Tomato base on which Asus has built Asuswrt. Tomato design is poorly designed when it comes to adding new features since the code isn't modular at all. Asus had to add tons of conditional code on the Tomato base to be able to add new features and support different models (all with different feature sets).

If it were my call, I'd say Asuswrt should be rewritten nearly from the ground up, based on a more modular approach, and with a sane build environment rather than the mess Tomato's build enviro is. Tomato's monolithic architecture frankly blows when you start having more services added on top of it. You end up with services such as dnsmasq being re-started 3-4 times during the initial boot sequence, for example. The firewall rule management is also all over the place, with rules done by the firewall code, other sections of the code insert their own rules here and there, while some section will flat your restart the whole firewall subsystem so it can add the specific rules required by that section.

Overall, the problem isn't Asus's developers lack of skill. Look at the amount of features they have developed compared to any other competitors. Writing some of these features such as the actual Dual WAN system requires some serious skills - there's a reason why such a feature isn't available on any of the open source projects at this point.


Yeah a fully modular structure would def be a big plus that way you could interchange parts with different models depending on what feature sets are supported needed and each module would have it's own dependency and not interfere with another if something is broken and not ready? Bam don't include it and later update fix include it. Also the more interconnected you get the worse things get from a maintenance point of view as well. I can't believe that asus just worked ontop of something like that rather than building out a complete modular structure.

The management then is to blame for these choices regarding what path to take. That is simply just stupidity if I have the resources of the development team @ Asus I'd basically get them to build me a new ground up modular framework that would not only not create any issues but be much simpler to maintain and bugfix.


On a side note I'm going to be sending these 87U's back and have reverted to my 2x 68R + 1 66U Config for now. Maybe I'll try the Netgear Nighthawk X4 out.
 
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The 87U does overheat especially if your in a warmer climate I'm in California so were getting 90-110F temps here. The horizontal design is a big failiure the heat has no where to dissipate but into the surface below it which causes it to get even hotter.

Why do you keep your house at 100F. I'm in West Texas and mine is like 75 ;).
 
BTW I checked the bottom of my shelf last night, and the wood felt cooler than it did back when I was using a Linksys WRT320N. That thing would make the wood quite warm.

The heatsink lies on top of the router. If you have an adequate cooling solution (heatsink + thermal pad/paste), that means you should have less heat underneath, and the vast majority of the heat on the top. That's why the flat position of the RT-AC87U is not an issue - more heat gets transferred to the top than it did with previous models that had either smaller heatsinks, or they had all three chips sharing the same heatsink.

Take objective measurements when evaluating temperature with actual numbers, rather than "oh, it feels warm, it must be abnormal". The 800 MHz BCM4708 of my RT-AC68U would usually sit at around 87C. The 1 GHz BCM4709 of my RT-AC87U sits at 82C. The 2.4 GHz SOC that would be close to 60C (I forgot the exact number) is currently sitting at 46C.
 
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I have 3 of these routers in a 8100Sqft home 1 main and 2 set up as hardwired AP's im running the latest available firmware (FW Rev 3.0.0.4.376.2678) the 5ghz on all of them is intermittently slow and the main router constantly locks up and will not allow access to my internal network(My LAN) or the Internet (The WAN) this happens anywhere from 4 and 10 times a day depending on the load and requires a Physical reboot , prior to purchasing these i was running the same 3 router config but with the RT-AC68U with absolutely no issues i spent close to $1100 on these 3 routers and as you can see from the pictures here --> http://d.pr/i/mGCv I have taken a lot of time to upgrade from my previous 68U's and incorporate them into my network, i want to love them i really do but need them to work! asus needs to squash these bugs and fix these issues this is a premium product to $330 a pop CAD i expect SOME issues when jumping on board early but this is nonsense seriously wow

All I can say is wow, What a setup! My wife would kill me if I put a router on the wall like that:rolleyes::):)
 
UPDATE

RMerlin
I just updated to your RT-AC87U_3.0.0.4_376.46_0 FW becuse of the issues in that i posted in the quote below

I have 3 of these routers in a 8100Sqft home 1 main and 2 set up as hardwired AP's im running the latest available firmware (FW Rev 3.0.0.4.376.2678) the 5ghz on all of them is intermittently slow and the main router constantly locks up and will not allow access to my internal network(My LAN) or the Internet (The WAN) this happens anywhere from 4 and 10 times a day depending on the load and requires a Physical reboot , prior to purchasing these i was running the same 3 router config but with the RT-AC68U with absolutely no issues i spent close to $1100 on these 3 routers and as you can see from the pictures here --> http://d.pr/i/mGCv I have taken a lot of time to upgrade from my previous 68U's and incorporate them into my network, i want to love them i really do but need them to work! asus needs to squash these bugs and fix these issues this is a premium product to $330 a pop CAD i expect SOME issues when jumping on board early but this is nonsense seriously wow

"The update"

the issues still happen even after installing your FW,after doing further testing it seems all these issues only happen if I have either one or both of the AP's plugged in
if I unplug the other two ac87u’s that I am using as AP’s and leave only the main router everything seems to work fine, I cant seem to figure out how to sort this out mate any ideas would be greatly appreciated?

thanks RMerlin
 
Dubbed Watch Tower (yes I love smallville) :p

All I can say is wow, What a setup! My wife would kill me if I put a router on the wall like that:rolleyes


thanks mate my wife loves what I do and all the tech that comes with it shes my little side kick! seriously she walks into my office sits down on my chair, im like what are you doing? she's like I feel like a super hero in here lol. plus she cant really complain im all tech with a twist of class :p , My home (your gona LOVE my office :) lol) --> https://www.flickr.com/photos/enigmatai/sets/72157633586568140/
 
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thanks mate my wife loves what I do and all the tech that comes with it shes my little side kick! seriously she walks into my office sits down on my chair, im like what are you doing? she's like I feel like a super hero in here lol. plus she cant really complain im all tech with a twist of class :p , My home (your gona LOVE my office :) lol) --> https://www.flickr.com/photos/enigmatai/sets/72157633586568140/

Do you need a work partner?;)

have you read and tried this thread
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=19131&page=3
 
I am now testing the Netgear Night Hawk X4 7500. And Just from my few min of using is so far it's a night and day difference between the Asus and this.

I'll get into it more later.
 

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