[Asus RT-AX88U] Experiences & Discussion

[MidKnight]

It supports both hardware-accelerated AES at the CPU level (for OpenVPN) and the hardware crypto engine (for IPSEC).

Thanks for reply. I currently have the AC-88U which does have any hardware support correct?

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks for reply. I currently have the AC-88U which does have any hardware support correct?

The RT-AC88U does not have any.

 

[Embattle]

I got mine today, so far no issues except having to update the Intel driver on a Laptop otherwise it can't see the Wifi at all.

 

[jsmiddleton4]

Just so pricey......

 

[Embattle]

Well the £299 price was split 4 ways in this house, so £75 each isn't that bad and I had intended on getting a high end router with 8 Ports, 802.3ad, etc so it was the right pick to replace an older less secure and less manageable TP-Link router.

 

[AndyD]

Looks like restoring saved settings doesn't work at the moment.
Tried to restore some settings I had saved yesterday and found out that only a subset of my previous settings was restored

 

[RMerlin]

Looks like restoring saved settings doesn't work at the moment.
Tried to restore some settings I had saved yesterday and found out that only a subset of my previous settings was restored

Some of the RT-AX88U settings are stored in the JFFS partition (due to non-sense nvram limitations from Broadcom). I suspect Asus might not have implemented backing up/restoring those settings stored in /jffs/nvram/ .

I recommend doing a manual backup of this folder, to a small USB disk plugged to the router.

 

[wpte]

At the moment I've a RT-AC87U and I want to replace it with the RT-AX88U, but I've one issue left from using the RT-AX88U as my main router: telephony.
My provider has the following vlan setup:

• vlan4 = iptv
• vlan6 = internet
• vlan7 = telephone

Setting the internet and iptv is a breeze, it works right out of the box by enterint the details in the lan- iptv page. However, when assigning vlan7 there's a problem: the phone box requires the vlan to remain tagged, unlike the tv box.
Is there any way I can let vlan7 remain tagged for a port? I've been looking around about ethctl to configure this but I haven't found any person successfully using it. Trying to use it myself I haven't come far, I can't even query the vlan status of ports it seems.

Anyone any idea how to achieve this?

Edit: For now I decided to settle on a managed switch to take care of the VLAN switching.

 

[MestasDeejay]

Nov 29 11:16:38 WLCEVENTD: Assoc FC:2A:9C:72:64:41
Nov 29 11:17:22 WLCEVENTD: ReAssoc 78:7E:61:C7:B0:EF

what does it mean? i lost internet connection when this happen... using two ax88u (one main router another one media bridge) lastest offcial firmware...

 

[MestasDeejay]

ok. one of my ax88u is broken. 5ghz stopped working suddenly. amazon is going to replace it.

 

[RMerlin]

Nov 29 11:16:38 WLCEVENTD: Assoc FC:2A:9C:72:64:41
Nov 29 11:17:22 WLCEVENTD: ReAssoc 78:7E:61:C7:B0:EF

what does it mean? i lost internet connection when this happen... using two ax88u (one main router another one media bridge) lastest offcial firmware...

Those simply indicate clients hat have (re)connected over wifi to the router.

 

[MestasDeejay]

thanks fot the reply. i guess it was caused by the 5ghz not working properly.

 

[RMerlin]

Check the Roaming Assistant settings, I believe Asus now enables it by default on the 2.4 GHz band.

 

[MestasDeejay]

both units are dropping wifi. i guess i should return both. and wait for next year. firmware is buggy as hell.

 

[MestasDeejay]

yes it was on by default(2.4 and 5 GHz). disabled now. lets see it that helps.

 

[RobertoMCF]

hello, the same thing happens to me, wifi is impossible to configure manually, the wifi network disappears for my devices. Total that only I can leave in automatic. I have written to Asus of the problem with the window that they have enabled in the firmware, to see that how long it takes to fix it. a greeting

 

[Adamm]

CPU operations are noticeably faster which is nice to know the extra cores are actually doing something. Unfortunately SMB seems very unstable right now (at-least with my Intel 9260 @ 160MHz). Hopefully this is addressed once the firmware is more mature.

I also noticed Runner and Flow Cache are both now compatible with AiProtect, not sure what the previous limitation was but it seems its been resolved.

 

[MestasDeejay]

yeah connection at 160 MHz is really unstable. i turned off 160 and 802.11ax HE frame support and its working really well with the ac86u as a media bridge (5GHz).

 

[Adamm]

Some benchmarks for anyone interested. Results are pretty similar the AC86U for single threaded tasks, unfortunately that includes SMB and openssl so the extra cores don't do much justice there.

NASTester over LAN w/ 250GB 850 Samsung Pro;

Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on \\RT-AX88U-DC28\test (at SSD) 5 times...
Iteration 1:     59.10 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     57.94 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     49.31 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     60.35 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     57.80 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (W):     56.90 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on \\RT-AX88U-DC28\test (at SSD) 5 times...
Iteration 1:    112.99 MB/sec
Iteration 2:    117.51 MB/sec
Iteration 3:    117.08 MB/sec
Iteration 4:    116.69 MB/sec
Iteration 5:    116.00 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (R):    116.05 MB/sec
-----------------------------

NASTester over WLAN @ 80MHz w/ 250GB 850 Samsung Pro;

Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on \\RT-AX88U-DC28\test (at SSD) 5 times...
Iteration 1:     33.97 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     36.72 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     41.03 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     37.61 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     36.29 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (W):     37.12 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on \\RT-AX88U-DC28\test (at SSD) 5 times...
Iteration 1:     71.99 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     79.22 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     77.07 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     71.95 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     65.91 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (R):     73.23 MB/sec
-----------------------------

OpenSSL Benchmark;

skynet@RT-AX88U-DC28:/tmp/home/root# openssl speed aes-128-cbc aes-256-cbc bf-cbc
Doing aes-128 cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 12639897 aes-128 cbc's in 3.00s
Doing aes-128 cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 3460012 aes-128 cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-128 cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 893757 aes-128 cbc's in 2.97s
Doing aes-128 cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 227895 aes-128 cbc's in 3.00s
Doing aes-128 cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 28606 aes-128 cbc's in 3.00s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 9662465 aes-256 cbc's in 2.98s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 2655614 aes-256 cbc's in 3.00s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 678162 aes-256 cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 170073 aes-256 cbc's in 2.97s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 21415 aes-256 cbc's in 2.98s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 9597057 blowfish cbc's in 3.00s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 2636969 blowfish cbc's in 2.99s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 648646 blowfish cbc's in 2.88s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 170402 blowfish cbc's in 2.98s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 21370 blowfish cbc's in 2.98s
OpenSSL 1.0.2q  20 Nov 2018
built on: reproducible build, date unspecified
options:bn(64,32) des(idx,cisc,16,long) aes(partial) idea(int) blowfish(ptr)
compiler: /opt/toolchains/crosstools-arm-gcc-5.5-linux-4.1-glibc-2.26-binutils-2.28.1/usr/bin/arm-buildroot-linux-gnueabi-gcc -I. -I.. -I../include  -fPIC -DOPENSSL_PIC -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DOPENSSL_NO_HEARTBEATS -DL_ENDIAN -march=armv7-a -fomit-frame-pointer -mabi=aapcs-linux -marm -ffixed-r8 -msoft-float -D__ARM_ARCH_7A__ -DOPENSSL_NO_BUF_FREELISTS -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -O3 -Wall -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DAES_ASM -DBSAES_ASM -DGHASH_ASM
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
blowfish cbc     51184.30k    56443.48k    57657.42k    58554.24k    58745.99k
aes-128 cbc      67412.78k    74060.46k    77037.64k    77788.16k    78113.45k
aes-256 cbc      51879.01k    56653.10k    58063.37k    58637.96k    58869.69k

iperf @ 80MHz

PS C:\Users\Adamm\Downloads\iperf-2.0.9-win64\iperf-2.0.9-win64> ./iperf -u -c  192.168.1.1 -b 1000M
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.1, UDP port 5001
Sending 1470 byte datagrams, IPG target: 11.76 us (kalman adjust)
UDP buffer size:  208 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 192.168.1.101 port 55502 connected with 192.168.1.1 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec   796 MBytes   667 Mbits/sec
[  3] Sent 567483 datagrams

iperf @ 160MHz (Client linkrate between 1.1Gbps - 1.7Gbps)

PS C:\Users\Adamm\Downloads\iperf-2.0.9-win64\iperf-2.0.9-win64> ./iperf -u -c  192.168.1.1 -b 1000M
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.1, UDP port 5001
Sending 1470 byte datagrams, IPG target: 11.76 us (kalman adjust)
UDP buffer size:  208 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 192.168.1.101 port 65296 connected with 192.168.1.1 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec   933 MBytes   782 Mbits/sec
[  3] Sent 665401 datagrams

iperf over LAN;

PS C:\Users\Adamm\Downloads\iperf-2.0.9-win64\iperf-2.0.9-win64> ./iperf -u -c  192.168.1.1 -b 1000M
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.1, UDP port 5001
Sending 1470 byte datagrams, IPG target: 11.76 us (kalman adjust)
UDP buffer size:  208 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 192.168.1.105 port 60319 connected with 192.168.1.1 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.05 GBytes   899 Mbits/sec
[  3] Sent 764237 datagrams

Once things are more stable w/160MHz channels it will be much easier to benchmark, right now its very unstable and at times will constantly disconnect.

 

[RMerlin]

Results are pretty similar the AC86U for single threaded tasks

Which is expected, the BCM4908 uses the same 1.8 GHz B53 cores as the BCM4906.

160 MHz stability issues seem to be a known problem at the moment, a few persons reported having them. I wonder how much of it is due to the fact that 160 MHz is a pretty wide band that is highly likely to run into interference issues (just like trying to use 40 MHz on the 2.4 GHz band).