ASUS Expands 11ax Lineup And Sets Ship Date

[thiggins]

from may 2018 meeting notes

• The TG completed resolution of comments submitted on draft D2.0
• The TG passed a motion to enable the TG Editor to prepare draft D3.0 and start a 30-day WG letter Ballot.
• The TG approved the proposed PAR extension.
• The TG approved the Coexistence Assurance documents 11-18/1348r3.
• The agenda is available at: https://mentor.ieee.org/802.11/dcn/18/11-18-0635-10-00ax-tgax-may-2018-meeting-agenda.pptx

So that says there still is not an approved 11ax draft standard.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Unfortunately the person at the Asus booth was clueless and couldn't answer any technical questions at all...

They were only showing the AX6100, which was seemingly only a plastic mockup, as the antennas were falling apart...
It would seem these products were simply just announcements with no actual product being ready yet.

 

[thiggins]

Unfortunately the person at the Asus booth was clueless and couldn't answer any technical questions at all...

They were only showing the AX6100, which was seemingly only a plastic mockup, as the antennas were falling apart...
It would seem these products were simply just announcements with no actual product being ready yet.

Thanks for trying. Interesting they were not showing the AX88, which should be closest to ship ready. Guess it's old news....

 

[TheLostSwede]

Thanks for trying. Interesting they were not showing the AX88, which should be closest to ship ready. Guess it's old news....

The wireless gear barely had a corner in their booth. They showed off some Lyra stuff and that weird router you can talk to. The AX88U was actually there too, but again, no spec beyond what's on their website. I mistook it for an older product, as it looked the same
Regardless, there was no-one on duty that knew any technical details about the products.

 

[thiggins]

Regardless, there was no-one on duty that knew any technical details about the products.

Despite the impression visitors to this forum might get, networking is a very small part of ASUS' overall business.

 

[sfx2000]

Despite the impression visitors to this forum might get, networking is a very small part of ASUS' overall business.

Yep, I concur - small in the larger scope of the business, but obviously enough to support that product line for research and development.

Used to be their main bread and butter business was OEM motherboards and white label desktops/laptops/servers...

 

[sm00thpapa]

2.5GB port lol

 

[thiggins]

2.5GB port lol

What is funny about that?

 

[sanke1]

What is funny about that?

Everything is funny about 2.5 Gbe port. ASUS is going to price this inverted spider for upwards of $499 and for the same price, one can get a good 8 Port 10 Gbe switch from Buffalo. I would rather buy a lower model like AC86U and pair it with Buffalo 10 Gbe switch. Wireless ax is not even a reality and I don't see a single ax device.

Now I would need at least 2 ports with speeds higher than 1 gigabit on a router or a switch. Why? 1 port for my 10 Gbe NAS and 1 port for my 10 Gbe PC. So ASUS including just one 2.5 Gbe port is laughable as it serves no purpose.

 

[RMerlin]

Now I would need at least 2 ports with speeds higher than 1 gigabit on a router or a switch. Why? 1 port for my 10 Gbe NAS and 1 port for my 10 Gbe PC. So ASUS including just one 2.5 Gbe port is laughable as it serves no purpose.

Nothing laughable there - it can be used as an uplink to a NAS, meaning that two 1 GBps clients would be able to fill 2 Gbps off that NAS's 2.5/5/10 port. That uplink can also be used to connect to another 2/5/10 Gbps switch, and once again multiple clients connected to the router will be able to concurrently saturate that 2.5 Gbps port.

Or, you could use it in Dual WAN mode, and connect a 2 Gbps uplink to it (yes, 2 Gbps Internet services exists in Asia).

This kind of architecture is very common. Most high performance switch first hit the market with only a few higher speed ports, and gradually as price/performance improves, switches gradually start supporting more ports. Remember how the same thing happened when Gbps Ethernet started - your switch would have 2 or 4 Gbps ports, and the rest would still be Fast Ethernet.

This design isn't an Asus decision, it's a Broadcom limitation. The chip lacks the performance to route more traffic than that.

 

[thiggins]

It will be a long time, if ever, that we see 10GbE switches on consumer routers. As Merlin points out, the processor buses would need to be beefed up to handle the traffic and the thermal load would be challenging to handle without adding a fan.

For homes that do have Ethernet cabling, there are not going to be many that have the properly installed, terminated and tested CAT6a or CAT7 required to get the 100m distance equivalent that 1GbE now supports.

NBASE-T (2.5/5 Gbps Ethernet) works over CAT5e/6 and is the next logical step that you will see more widely deployed outside of server rooms.

 

[sanke1]

Nothing laughable there - it can be used as an uplink to a NAS, meaning that two 1 GBps clients would be able to fill 2 Gbps off that NAS's 2.5/5/10 port. That uplink can also be used to connect to another 2/5/10 Gbps switch, and once again multiple clients connected to the router will be able to concurrently saturate that 2.5 Gbps port.

Or, you could use it in Dual WAN mode, and connect a 2 Gbps uplink to it (yes, 2 Gbps Internet services exists in Asia).

This kind of architecture is very common. Most high performance switch first hit the market with only a few higher speed ports, and gradually as price/performance improves, switches gradually start supporting more ports. Remember how the same thing happened when Gbps Ethernet started - your switch would have 2 or 4 Gbps ports, and the rest would still be Fast Ethernet.

This design isn't an Asus decision, it's a Broadcom limitation. The chip lacks the performance to route more traffic than that.

Yes agreed, but you are more future proofed if buying a Buffalo 10Gbe switch + RT-AC86U (Or any equivalent MU-MIMO router). Just replace the AC router with final version of AX router.

 

[Internet Man]

It looks like the RT-AX95U, GT-AX11000, and RT-AX11000 will be the same hardware after all. Test Report documents included with a Class II Permissive Change request available at the FCC today include "Changing the model name to GT-AX11000 from RT-AX11000". Of the RT-AX95U and the GT-AX11000 it says, "All the models are identical, the different model names served as marketing strategy."

 

[RMerlin]

Yes agreed, but you are more future proofed if buying a Buffalo 10Gbe switch + RT-AC86U (Or any equivalent MU-MIMO router). Just replace the AC router with final version of AX router.

Always a matter of needs and budget. Those 10G switches are still very expensive. The typical user will probably only have one NAS that requires more than 1 Gbps, all clients will be either Wifi or 1 Gbps Ethernet, so having just one single router handling it will get the job done. It will be years before home users starting having 2.5/5/10 Gbps clients as well, at which point you can cascade a switch on that single port (and at that time, switches will have dropped a lot in prices too).

2.5/5/10 is still at an early adopter stage. Mainstream is still a few years away.

 

[RMerlin]

Another interesting product for anyone gradually migrating to faster LAN throughput:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZMM7ZO/?tag=snbforums-20

(@thiggins - sweet, my link automatically got your tag added)

 

[Easy Rhino]

, "All the models are identical, the different model names served as marketing strategy."

Oh Asus, when will you learn?

 

[daviworld]

So, I have been following the AX router's, and baffled ASUS is putting out draft product's so early. I'm a early adopter of most tech and open source project's because I end of learning the in's and out's of the technology and it feel's nice progressing and expanding my my knowledge in current and new field's I am both familiar and unfamiliar with.

I have been debating on weather to buy an ASUS AX draft router to see what to expect, try out the performance, and because I am a early adopter. My current network environment has all cat 7 cables, a 32 channel downstream 1G switch, and my current ASUS AC5300 right now it is pretty future proof until wpa 3 drop's and AX gets finalized late next year.

Thing's that will determine for me personally if I test out one of these AX draft's are

• Will Merlin support any of the AX draft unit's? --Most important factor since Merlin has a good track record of keeping the firmware up to date in a timely fashion, especially security related event's which is important to me
• Will these first wave of draft's support WPA3 -- This is the 2nd important factor to me, as the phone I am updating to later this fall will support WPA3 Qualcomm making the decision to support WPA3 on SD 845 & 835
• The last decision is price point, I am expecting a $350-$500 price range

 

[avtella]

Don't buy the new AX routers on release for the following reasons, even though you may want the latest and greatest as thiggins and some others pointed out:

1. When you buy new expensive routers you are the guinea pig and trouble shooter as the firmware is not matured so you are basically paying to beta test. With routers old is usually gold.

2. AX standard won't be finalized till 2019 so any missing features may or may not make it into early AX draft units. Plus 0 real clients till next year anyway.

Best to get AC routers at lower prices when draft AX routers release.

Also the CPU on the 11000AX is pretty much the same as the one in the GT5300AC and with AC clients I doubt you would see any real gain on the AX unit versus the GT5300AC.

 

[sfx2000]

Always a matter of needs and budget. Those 10G switches are still very expensive. The typical user will probably only have one NAS that requires more than 1 Gbps, all clients will be either Wifi or 1 Gbps Ethernet, so having just one single router handling it will get the job done. It will be years before home users starting having 2.5/5/10 Gbps clients as well, at which point you can cascade a switch on that single port (and at that time, switches will have dropped a lot in prices too).

2.5/5/10 is still at an early adopter stage. Mainstream is still a few years away.

It's going to be really hard to push a 10Gbe link in any event - There's client and server bottlenecks that need to be resolved (heck, look at SATA BW and overhead there).

The NBase-T stuff is nice, and a good step forward - and will keep things affordable - e.g. look at the price of Aquantia NIC's these days.

 

[sfx2000]

NBASE-T (2.5/5 Gbps Ethernet) works over CAT5e/6 and is the next logical step that you will see more widely deployed outside of server rooms.

I would agree - and 1Gbe had a great run - and faster than most folks appreciate - even a three-stream 802.11ac link can't push a 1Gbe interface...