RT-AC88U

[System Error Message]

The Broadcom part of the equation should be exactly the same as all past Broadcom SoCs - nothing special on this current generation or the RT-AC88U itself.

So you're saying that all the routers even the AC5300 still have 1Gb/s link from switch to CPU? If so than these routers have major bottlenecks.

 

[thiggins]

Was there ever a 1st gen MU-MIMO router that worked?

If you mean Quantenna based MU-MIMO ready routers, then no.

 

[thiggins]

So when the validations take place will it just be a firmware upgrade to current routers or do we need new hardware?

That's what manufacturers' hope. But what reality turns out to be is yet to be seen.

 

[sm00thpapa]

This is actually why I just broke down and bought the RT-AC88u instead of the RT-AC3100. I don't need the 8 ports (I tend to be more wireless focused). I figured it was stupid to pay more for less router (I have to pay taxes at both amazon and best buy, so why leave money on the table. Even though both are way overkill for me, I figure I won't have to upgrade for 5-6 years

I do wonder if the RT-88u is going to go up in price on amazon. When I looked at the router in my wishlist is mentioned it was a deal price ($279.99). So it makes wonder if once they have more in stock and the RT-ac3100 hits amazon prices much jump up to match Best Buy and Newegg.

Next time you buy from Amazon look for sellers that have "Fulfillment by Amazon" next to their name. Those items are stored, sold and shipped by Amazon but with no taxes so you save a few bucks.

 

[bmn1]

Next time you buy from Amazon look for sellers that have "Fulfillment by Amazon" next to their name. Those items are stored, sold and shipped by Amazon but with no taxes so you save a few bucks.

Unless that person lives in a state where Amazon has a fulfillment warehouse, then that person WILL be charged sales tax.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Unless that person lives in a state where Amazon has a fulfillment warehouse, then that person WILL be charged sales tax.

That's why you scroll to see who doesn't charge tax.

 

[sfx2000]

Was there ever a 1st gen MU-MIMO router that worked?

The Linksys one was tested and confirmed that it did MU on the QCAtheros solution...

 

[sfx2000]

People should stop worrying so much about MU-MIMO, quite frankly. I bet none of you have the pair of MU-MIMO enabled clients that would be necessary to take any benefit out of a MU-MIMO enabled router.

MU-MIMO was abused by router manufacturers and SoC makers as a marketing checkmark to add to their spec sheets. "Look, this new router adds another checkmark that your one year old router didn't have, so you MUST upgrade!".

And with the Wifi Alliance not starting MU-MIMO validation until summer 2016, don't expect much to change on the market until then, aside from perhaps the stray early adopter that might face compatibility issues until proper validation start to happen.

Agree - and I think a lot of folks in the small network space are going to be rather disappointed with the results once they have a few MU clients..

 

[RMerlin]

So you're saying that all the routers even the AC5300 still have 1Gb/s link from switch to CPU? If so than these routers have major bottlenecks.

How "major" it is when the WAN itself can't be faster than 1 Gbps, and all the rest of the traffic LAN is switched anyway? The vast majority of home users would never even notice such a bottleneck. The wifi 1 Gbps bottleneck to the LAN is the same as any business-built network that employs APs. Those APs are linked to the LAN over a single 1 Gbps link as well. And I suspect non-Broadcom platforms might have similar limitations, especially those that use an external switch rather than having one built in the CPU SoC itself.

I doubt that a solution that has WAN, LAN and Wifi all working accross a single 8 Gbps bus are very common.

 

[thiggins]

The Linksys one was tested and confirmed that it did MU on the QCAtheros solution...

All QCA based AC2600 routers have shipped with working MU-MIMO.

 

[faur]

Hi, i have 1 Gb up and 1 Gb down PPPOE WAN. Can AC88u handle this speed? Thank you.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

[System Error Message]

Hi, i have 1 Gb up and 1 Gb down PPPOE WAN. Can AC88u handle this speed? Thank you.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

with hardware acceleration. Honestly i think you would still be better off with a ubiquiti ERL than a consumer router for gigabit WAN.

Business hardware does not include a switch with wifi and if they have 2 ethernet ports, they are usually CPU connected. Its very frustrating that with wifi already fast a 1Gb/s link between LAN and CPU just wont keep up. In a business environment a switch would usually have faster interfaces for stacking or servers or multiple ports combined to prevent bottlenecks, it is very disappointing technologically to have bottlenecks within a chip when it is part of the same silicon. Broadcom could've made a 4Gb/s link to CPU without any extra cost. In otherwords, until this bottleneck is removed there is no point in purchasing anything faster than an AC1900. Its even worse for the AC88U because if half the ports have 1Gb/s to the other half than with lots of LAN traffic this will be a serious bottleneck.

So if you're in the high end with heavy LAN traffic, all of these new routers will be a disappointment. When the hardware does encounter a bottleneck such as a file server on wire uploading to wifi and WAN at full gigabit speeds, one of the paths will suffer disconnects.

 

[Blind_Bandit]

Amazon has the RT-AC88u at $279.99 again with prime shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016EWKQAQ/?tag=snbforums-20

 

[sm00thpapa]

Amazon has the RT-AC88u at $279.99 again with prime shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016EWKQAQ/?tag=snbforums-20

I ordered it 3 days ago at that price. Free shipping and no tax.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Dr Tone]

What is the AC88 doing when QOS upload and download speeds are left at automatic? Seems to be a new option compared to the AC68.

 

[connorm]

It turns out the CISCO whitepaper that I quoted on another day isn't lying but hitting 70+% is not that hard either. I made it on my AC56U.

650 out of 866 between AC56U and a Mac. 802.11ac 2x2 link. That's a whopping 75% efficiency!

It's the post of Actiontec Wifi Extender the other day (thank you!) drived me to question what are the possible bottlenecks in achieving higher efficiency..

I'm reasonably convinced AC88U can easily achieve 60% efficiency as some early adopters reported. Some people may manage to hit near 80%...I won't be a surprised.

That's all I can say for now. Into my Nirvana

Spoiler: AC56U iperf test

root@wjes:~# iperf -c 192.168.1.100 -P 4 -t 45
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.100, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 43.8 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 4] local 192.168.1.110 port 36538 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ 3] local 192.168.1.110 port 36539 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ 6] local 192.168.1.110 port 36541 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ 5] local 192.168.1.110 port 36540 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.0-45.0 sec 866 MBytes 161 Mbits/sec
[ 6] 0.0-45.0 sec 868 MBytes 162 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 0.0-45.0 sec 896 MBytes 167 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 0.0-45.0 sec 861 MBytes 161 Mbits/sec
[SUM] 0.0-45.0 sec 3.41 GBytes 651 Mbits/sec
root@wjes:~# iperf -c 192.168.1.100 -P 4 -t 45
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.100, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 43.8 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 6] local 192.168.1.110 port 36545 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ 5] local 192.168.1.110 port 36544 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ 4] local 192.168.1.110 port 36543 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ 3] local 192.168.1.110 port 36542 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 5] 0.0-45.0 sec 872 MBytes 163 Mbits/sec
[ 6] 0.0-45.0 sec 876 MBytes 163 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 0.0-45.0 sec 875 MBytes 163 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 0.0-45.0 sec 868 MBytes 162 Mbits/sec
[SUM] 0.0-45.0 sec 3.41 GBytes 650 Mbits/sec
root@wjes:~# iperf -c 192.168.1.100 -P 4 -t 45
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.100, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 43.8 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 4] local 192.168.1.110 port 36547 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ 5] local 192.168.1.110 port 36548 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ 6] local 192.168.1.110 port 36549 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ 3] local 192.168.1.110 port 36546 connected with 192.168.1.100 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 5] 0.0-45.0 sec 839 MBytes 156 Mbits/sec
[ 6] 0.0-45.0 sec 880 MBytes 164 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 0.0-45.0 sec 901 MBytes 168 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 0.0-45.0 sec 873 MBytes 163 Mbits/sec
[SUM] 0.0-45.0 sec 3.41 GBytes 651 Mbits/sec

AWESOME, thank you!

i knew that the max numbers for RT-AC56U documented by tim were incorrect.....

now i dont know what to trust at all, because i agree that 600mbps+ is possible on 2x2 AC but some tests are showing 3x3 and 4x4 devices not getting that high

i would imagine if i test R7000 on 3x3 ac to get 750+mbps

 

[Clark Griswald]

Ordered my RT-AC88U from Amazon, and twice they delivered without proper shipping materials (bubble wrap). Both 88's had smashed boxes from being bounced around inside shipping boxes, and I returned both. Today, Amazon page states they are reviewing product and/or shipping, and product is currently unavailable.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016EWKQAQ/?tag=snbforums-20

 

[sm00thpapa]

Ordered my RT-AC88U from Amazon, and twice they delivered without proper shipping materials (bubble wrap). Both 88's had smashed boxes from being bounced around inside shipping boxes, and I returned both. Today, Amazon page states they are reviewing product and/or shipping, and product is currently unavailable.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016EWKQAQ/?tag=snbforums-20

I just saw that and cancelled my order. I'll stick with my 68P for another year.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

You can still get the RT-AC3100 at local stores unless you need 8 lan ports it's the same router. Tomorrow will be 14 days since i bought mine and i have not had one single issue.

 

[NightOwl326]

Looking at the article posted to today on SNB, even though not a flow blown test the 88 doesn't look like anything special. Just looks average.