Asus BT10 - still not stable at all even after latest firmware - been tinkering for months - high frustration

[raven-au]

I actually tried to offer help (but with the caveat I'm not a programmer by trade). I was informed by a friend at ASUS that they get their firmware direct from Broadcom, implying that at least WiFi implementation is proprietary, (or I'm under qualified, the nice way of putting it)...

I agree the SDK is not gonna be a "blackbox" as you note. But what they program into the firmware...

Even ASUS' Game Radar was sending pings out (by default) on all but the most recent firmwares...

I'm pretty sure they get the firmware from whoever makes the WiFi chipset they are using in their routers.
Certainly, with newish chipsets, the vendors haven't merged the drivers into the upstream Linux kernel yet and probably won't for quite a while.
The vendor binary only bits are usually the WiFi drivers perhaps some other bits but not too much.
Then, as you say, there's the customization that the clients (ASUS) will do, AiMesh, Game Radar, etc.
You can see several iterations of the SDK that ASUS uses and what they value add (often binary only bits) in the github.com repository Merlin uses for his work.

 

[Tech9]

Asus and Broadcom usually figure it out in about 2 years time after market release so you guys just need to be patient. What comes from Broadcom to Asus and now open/closed it is - it doesn't matter. What matters is what comes to you as a product.

 

[YamahaArtist]

I recently purchased a 2-pack router set after returning the fast and reliable BE96U due to my wife's dislike of its appearance. I initially set up one unit with a main network using 2.4G, 5G, and 6G MLO, plus an IoT network. Surprisingly, in single-unit mode, its speed was only slightly lower than the BE96U when tested in MLO mode one floor above, achieving 1.1–1.3 Gbps compared to 1.3–1.5 Gbps for the BE96U. The IoT network also performed well, reaching 1 Gbps from the same location. It ran smoothly without any disconnections for three days straight.

Today, I added the second node on the second floor using an MLO backhaul, but noticed a significant speed drop in MLO mode, maxing out at 500 Mbps initially. The IoT network remained decent but was slower than in single-unit mode. With some tinkering, i was able to speedtest with result never seen before at whopping 1.8Gbs.

In my experience, this router is fast, stable, and offers great range in non-AiMesh mode, performing nearly as well as the BE96U.

 

[RogerSC]

I recently purchased a 2-pack router set after returning the fast and reliable BE96U due to my wife's dislike of its appearance. I initially set up one unit with a main network using 2.4G, 5G, and 6G MLO, plus an IoT network. Surprisingly, in single-unit mode, its speed was only slightly lower than the BE96U when tested in MLO mode one floor above, achieving 1.1–1.3 Gbps compared to 1.3–1.5 Gbps for the BE96U. The IoT network also performed well, reaching 1 Gbps from the same location. It ran smoothly without any disconnections for three days straight.

Today, I added the second node on the second floor using an MLO backhaul, but noticed a significant speed drop in MLO mode, maxing out at 500 Mbps initially. The IoT network remained decent but was slower than in single-unit mode. With some tinkering, i was able to speedtest with result never seen before at whopping 1.8Gbs.

In my experience, this router is fast, stable, and offers great range in non-AiMesh mode, performing nearly as well as the BE96U.

Can you please describe what "tinkering" you did to get your mesh speed up from 500Mbps to 1.8Gbps? I have some self-interest in asking about this, since I'm getting a pair of BT10's today. So I'd love to hear what you did to get the speed of your mesh up.

 

[YamahaArtist]

Can you please describe what "tinkering" you did to get your mesh speed up from 500Mbps to 1.8Gbps? I have some self-interest in asking about this, since I'm getting a pair of BT10's today. So I'd love to hear what you did to get the speed of your mesh up.

I just turned off the wifi on my PC and turned on to let it reconnect. This router is super fast even at Wifi 6 mode. I can speed test at 1.2Gbs+ one floor above from the main router and same few meter aways from the node router with my Wifi 6 laptop.

 

[RogerSC]

I just turned off the wifi on my PC and turned on to let it reconnect. This router is super fast even at Wifi 6 mode. I can speed test at 1.2Gbs+ one floor above from the main router and same few meter aways from the node router with my Wifi 6 laptop.

Yes, I'm very happy with the BT10's at this point as well. Finally seeing the gigabit internet that we pay for all over the house. Now all I need to do is see why I had to connect our Apple TV's to an IoT network instead of our MLO main network. With the RT-BE96, the Apple TV's were happy on the MLO main network. Guess I've got something to tinker with there, although they're plenty fast on a 5GHz. IoT-style network. They don't even need 100Mbps for streaming, maybe a quarter of that, but just has me curious. Also seeing some odd messages in the log, but they don't correlate with any disconnects, no bad behavior. Again, just a matter of my insatiable curiosity *smile*.