RT-AC66U available in June?

[dunkin]

http://www.excaliberpc.com/617732/asus-rt-ac66u-802.11ac-dual-band-wireless-ac1750.html

Price: $199
Availability: Pre-order
ETA: 6/13/2012

 

[voltsrus]

Rt-ac66u

Got mine Monday
Awesome router!!!

Called Asus Tech Support to ask a few general questions...

They said It was not supposed to be released to the public and wanted to know where I got it from

So far it seems flawless...have not had any issues

Firmware 3.0.0.4.140

 

[aaronwt]

Newegg has the RT-AC66U in stock and for sale right now.

I decided to go with an ASUS RT-N56U for now to replace my aging Dlink DGL4500. I already use four Dlink DAP1522 units as Access Points in addition to the wireless router, so I really don't need to pay the extra money for an 802.11ac unit now. Maybe in a couple of years.

 

[RMerlin]

Might be a very limited quantity (like when they first released the RT-N66U, it was next to impossible to find).

Surprised it's already available at all, last I saw was "sometime in August".

 

[BEM]

Is Wireless "AC" going to be like when "N" came out; everything was Draft or Pre- N for years before the standard was set and equipment finally found it's way to the store.

A lot of money for something still in the works that may not be compatible.

 

[octopus]

We should have this in mind, AC is only 1300mb for 5Ghz band. 2,4Ghz is still 450mb !
Anyway I think for that reason isn't wort the money to buy that one.


octopus

 

[voltsrus]

I bought an "N" router when they first came out...
Thanks to firmware upgrades it is fully compliant with today's "N" standards.

Thats why we pay more for big name brands... Support!

 

[TonyH]

I noticed f/w update already.

 

[TonyH]

You say awesome and flawless. In what way?

 

[voltsrus]

Turn it on and it walks you thru an automated setup....idiot proof
Nothing to mess with, right out of the box, it works.
Tons of bells n whistles!

Thanks for the tip on new firmware

 

[zbeyuz]

How is the range and speed of this router as compared to RT-66U ?

Can I get full speed with 450mbps card ?

 

[RMerlin]

How is the range and speed of this router as compared to RT-66U ?

Can I get full speed with 450mbps card ?

I expect the 802.11n range and speed to be the same, as this is mostly the same router as the RT-N66U, except they added a 802.11ac radio to it.

The 802.11ac radio will require you to have a 802.11ac compatible wireless interface, otherwise you will be limited to 802.11n performance.

 

[BinaryTB]

I expect the 802.11n range and speed to be the same, as this is mostly the same router as the RT-N66U, except they added a 802.11ac radio to it.

The 802.11ac radio will require you to have a 802.11ac compatible wireless interface, otherwise you will be limited to 802.11n performance.

So in theory we could install Tomato on it and it would be just like the RT-N66U (since the ac radio would be disabled, at least for now)?

 

[RMerlin]

So in theory we could install Tomato on it and it would be just like the RT-N66U (since the ac radio would be disabled, at least for now)?

No. There are a few lowlevel changes. For instance the nvram uses a different flash technology that requires support in the kernel. Tomato would have to add support for those changes first.

 

[richto]

My AC66U arrives tomorrow

Any plans for custom firmware for it?

Any AC mini PCI-E cards shipping yet?

 

[DaveMishSr]

I am holding off. The RT-N66U is streaming HD video as fast as I can watch it. That's in the 2.4GHz band as well as the 5GHz band. Range on the 2.4GHz band is superior reaching the opposite end of my house. Why should I bother spending $200 on a draft technology? Maybe in a few years.

 

[arogan]

Anybody else having issues with QoS and wireless 2.4 and 5 ghz? With QoS off I get my expected speeds (around 24mbps on 2.4ghz and around 90mbps on 5ghz using my mid 2010 mbp). With QoS ON wifi speeds drop to < 1mbps on either band. I tried all sorts of different settings in the wireless and qos sections and nothing would fix it. Wired speeds were still fine with QoS ON. Only wireless speeds were affected by qos. This is on firmware 3.0.0.4.164.

fyi, this is what nvram show produces:
size: 31468 bytes (34068 left)

 

[Googer]

Anybody else having issues with QoS and wireless 2.4 and 5 ghz? With QoS off I get my expected speeds (around 24mbps on 2.4ghz and around 90mbps on 5ghz using my mid 2010 mbp). With QoS ON wifi speeds drop to < 1mbps on either band. I tried all sorts of different settings in the wireless and qos sections and nothing would fix it. Wired speeds were still fine with QoS ON. Only wireless speeds were affected by qos. This is on firmware 3.0.0.4.164.

fyi, this is what nvram show produces:
size: 31468 bytes (34068 left)

Same here, wireless is basically completely broken if QoS is enabled. It took me awhile to figure out what was making wireless completely unusable - I'd actually done a factory reset and then started reconfiguring everything one-at-a-time across wireless to see if I could figure out what was causing it. Sure enough, the instant I flipped QoS on, wireless connectivity was utterly worthless and turning it back off brought it back to where it should be. Gotta love early adopter days.

 

[RMerlin]

I wonder if that wouldn't be caused by Asus's NAT loopback which essentially NATs every LAN 2 LAN connection. Any of you can try connecting through telnet, and running these while QoS is enabled?

iptables -D POSTROUTING 2 -t nat
iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -i ! eth0 -d `nvram get wan0_ipaddr` -j MARK --set-mark 0xd001
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -m mark --mark 0xd001 -j MASQUERADE
iptables -t mangle -I QOSO 1 -m mark --mark 0xd001 -j RETURN

(those are backticks around the nvram command, not single quotes BTW - make sure you copy-paste it)

This is the new NAT loopback code I implemented in my custom firmware since build 157. Let me know if it has any impact on wireless + QoS performance. Note that these changes will disappear once you reboot.

if it's still the same, then it's the same issue that has affected the RT-N66U for months as well

 

[Googer]

It helps to be sure - interactive performance is subjectively greatly improved so it's at least vaguely usable, but actual raw speed is still absolutely killed by having QoS enabled. I guess I'll have to live with QoS turned off for the time-being...