Asus GT-BE19000 AI

[ceecee]

Been using the ASUS GT-BE19000 AI router for a couple of months and impressed with its speed and network performance. The router seems to load balance well by using AI for its network management. A combination of CPU and the on-board NPU seem adequate for the purpose.

The router has basic parental controls adequate for router level control including an internet access blanket kill switch, ideal for people who don't want to deal with individual device access and limits. Really handy if you've got multiple kids and many devices.

Docker support and Docker Hub have some ready to download applications. From my understanding, the NPU is not open for use on your own applications. Hoping future versions would allow images of light LLMs to run in containers that can leverage the NPU.

For now, the router is great for gaming, large families with lots of devices and anyone needing a tri-band router, but perhaps overkill for those only doing basic internet browsing.

 

[RMerlin]

Been using the ASUS GT-BE19000 AI router for a couple of months and impressed with its speed and network performance. The router seems to load balance well by using AI for its network management. A combination of CPU and the on-board NPU seem adequate for the purpose.

The NPU has no role in routing, in fact the NPU isn`t accessible by the routing side of the router, only the docker side is. Think of them as two separate computers within the same case.

 

[Tech9]

The ultimate AI Price model indeed. RT-BE96U has the same performance and x86 miniPC with whatever you want on it fits in the price difference. And the miniPC won't be EoL after the AIO router reaches EoL.

 

[jzchen]

"AI" should be added to the title....

The 4 GB memory seems an improvement for the SAMBA function...

 

[Tech9]

It's AI boosted SMB share, obviously...

 

[GJJ]

The NPU has no role in routing, in fact the NPU isn`t accessible by the routing side of the router, only the docker side is. Think of them as two separate computers within the same case.

So can the NPU be used for anything networking related, even by running something in a container?

I was kind of interested in this unit, not really for any need of my own, but in terms of "what the future holds!" I thought the the AI part of this model would be used for networking tasks, rather than, as @Tech9 suggested, a mini-PC bolted on to an AIO router. Tasks like smarter QoS, WiFi band steering, WiFi channel selection in congested environments, security, etc. I think the marketing even suggested power management of the device. Those I thought would be good things for a router to have, not necessarily something that I currently need, but things that I could see would be useful on particular users' busy, high speed networks.

Oh well.

GJ

 

[jzchen]

Thursday afternoon my AT&T Fiber 1 Gbps service went down. Friday morning they were able to send a tech and I watched how he repaired/restored/cleaned the connections inside my house. The problem was my fault basically. I had even tried a Corning 1m shuttered SC-APC cable in the hopes that it would show 20 km instead of what I was worried was too long at 40 km. The tech did not check distance and it is not a concern. I spent the rest of Friday and the whole Saturday trying to restore service to our home. Even the router system clock was 3 years off....

Ended up with Dual WAN failover (with fallback), and how I got the clock to sync was disconnect Ethernet to the back of the router to force use of the tethered iPhone 16e. Behold, once both iPhone AND Fiber service is providing active service, IP addresses, subnet masks, default gateways, etc. normal service is finally restored! Go figure...

 

[Tech9]

Tasks like smarter QoS, WiFi band steering, WiFi channel selection in congested environments, security, etc.

I've got most of this (except AI QoS) on my UniFi setups and honestly... I don't want it for my use case. The AI monitoring of interfaces can't be disabled, stays quiet for now, but Wi-Fi related AI... in a home setup? It may be helpful of you manage business network with >20 APs in a controlled environment. This is the main idea behind it anyway, to save sysadmins' time. We have a few APs only in our homes though. Constant environment scanning and AI optimization... what for? When it comes as an update for free - okay, it's just there, I'm not using it. Paying extra for it - not needed.

 

[jzchen]

The router does scan for interference, at least on 2.4 and 5 GHz. I am not sure why it notes it does not on 6 GHz. The question is whether the NPU is involved, and I'd have to guess that in its current state it is not. Advertisement Blocking and Tracker Blocking appear to be new features of AiProtection that did not exist on prior/lower router models. (I specifically turned them off to give me a better Apples to Apples comparison to the GT-BE98 Pro that ASUS sent me at the towards the end of 2023).

What was the initial selling price of the GT-BE98 Pro, $799.99? I am guessing so because when the 1-pack of ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro was released I immediately bought one, and checking my receipt that was $699.99. For me the $100 more comparatively speaking is not as unreasonable as people make it, (as well as it was on sale for $799.99 on the ASUS estore for a little while just recently, while also in stock).

 

[Tech9]

What was the initial selling price of the GT-BE98 Pro, $799.99?

GT-BE98 Pro is a quad-band (radio) router, the continuation of previous flagship GT-AXE16000. Extra radio for VR for example. GT-BE1900AI is GT-BE19000 or RT-BE96U equivalent in Wi-Fi. The focus is on AI marketing. What is the built-in AI used for... it forwards to Alibaba Cloud for processing as someone found out.

The router does scan for interference

Get an old N300-class router from ~2010 and select 20/40MHz channel bandwidth. Watch the logs. It scans for interference too and in most environments will switch automatically to 20MHz channel bandwidth. If Auto channel is enabled it may change the channel automatically too. Definitely AI powered too... I guess.

 

[jzchen]

I wish the GT-BE98 Pro had dual 5 GHz bands like the GT-AXE16000, but it was the non-Pro version that has that. Been asking for a 5-band model for maybe at least a year now. Mediatek Filogic 880 appears to be 5-band capable.

The plain GT-BE98 is more expensive than the Pro version if I were to try to get one off eBay, especially after tariffs.

 

[jzchen]

It's AI boosted SMB share, obviously...

Hey, if the cache fits on the available memory, I'm happy. Not that 90+% memory utilization of the prior models because of 2 GB or less memory...

 

[Tech9]

Been asking for a 5-band model for maybe at least a year now.

I'm sure when 7-band router comes to the market I'll see it in your signature. For the sake of your total satisfaction I really hope it will have all 4-stream radios with 28 motorized self-adjusting external antennas, at least two Neural processors, RGB laser drawing ROG animation on the ceiling and 2kW liquid metal cooled power supply.

 

[RMerlin]

So can the NPU be used for anything networking related, even by running something in a container?

No. The NPU is tied to the SL1680 CPU, and networking is handled by the BCM4916 CPU. They are effectively two separate computers running in parallel.

The NPU can only be used on the SL1680, which means by Docker containers.