[Asus RT-AX88U] Experiences & Discussion

[PhantomRay]

I would bet that the AC5300 was simply doing a better job at selecting the right channel and pushing data over it. You may try to adjust the AX11000 manually to see if it makes a difference.

I forgot to mention that luckily, during my tests, the 5G-1 bands of AC5300 and AX11000 all landed on the same 80mhz channel. But still AC5300 performs much better than AX11000. So I would rule out channel differences being the problem.

BTW, seeing media bridge worked great for wireless communication between the two AX11000s and I set them up to use 160mhz channels and set them to communicate on a fixed channel for another round of testing.

I wired my gaming PC to the media bridge AX11000 on the third floor study, place the main router on the second floor living room. The media bridge mode AX11000 being a floor and several walls away, signal strength being only around -70dB, it was capable of delivering over 470mbps from media bridge to my PC via wire consistently! which is the maximum I can pull directly from the modem (or AC5300 was capable doing over wireless).

To this point, now I truly believe there must be some regression on AC.

A $450 media bridge sounds like a very expensive solution, probably i will return one of the AX11000 and rebuy the AC5300 again to run a AX11000-AC5300 mix.

 

[AX-Router]

Hi Everyone,
My AX88U is on the way and hopefully everything should go smooth setting up and running this weekend.
This is just to replace my old router and connect all my existing Wi-Fi devices.
Can someone please post their settings (screen shots) that are running without issues and suggestions for a stable setup
I will post my experience once it is running.
Can't wait to experiment my AX88U...

 

[Grisu]

you will have a long time experimenting

 

[RMerlin]

Hi Everyone,
My AX88U is on the way and hopefully everything should go smooth setting up and running this weekend.
This is just to replace my old router and connect all my existing Wi-Fi devices.
Can someone please post their settings (screen shots) that are running without issues and suggestions for a stable setup
I will post my experience once it is running.
Can't wait to experiment my AX88U...

Not much to change from default settings, mostly the usual recommendations (with one or two extra for ax):

- Set a fixed channel
- Avoid DFS channel if possible
- Disable HE frames (until you actually get 802.11ax clients)
- Disable Airtime Fairness and Implicit Beamforming

My RT-AX88U wifi has been rock stable here.

 

[L&LD]

Hi Everyone,
My AX88U is on the way and hopefully everything should go smooth setting up and running this weekend.
This is just to replace my old router and connect all my existing Wi-Fi devices.
Can someone please post their settings (screen shots) that are running without issues and suggestions for a stable setup
I will post my experience once it is running.
Can't wait to experiment my AX88U...

To give the RT-AX88U the best chance to shine without self-inflicted glitches and random bugs, follow all the steps in the links in my signature below. In addition to the additional points, RMerlin noted in his post above.

 

[AX-Router]

Not much to change from default settings, mostly the usual recommendations (with one or two extra for ax):

- Set a fixed channel
- Avoid DFS channel if possible
- Disable HE frames (until you actually get 802.11ax clients)
- Disable Airtime Fairness and Implicit Beamforming

My RT-AX88U wifi has been rock stable here.

Thanks RMerlin,
Which firmware is the latest working version to update, incase if necessary.. (I hope it comes with the factory default) and where can I find that?

 

[L&LD]

Thanks RMerlin,
Which firmware is the latest working version to update, incase if necessary.. (I hope it comes with the factory default) and where can I find that?

The bcraffy experimental builds from RMerlin are the best so far for my RT-AC3100.

They won't be coming this way from the factory though.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/experimental-bcraffy-openssl-1-1-x-builds.55036/

 

[AX-Router]

The bcraffy experimental builds from RMerlin are the best so far for my RT-AC3100.

They won't be coming this way from the factory though.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/experimental-bcraffy-openssl-1-1-x-builds.55036/

Does this works with AX88U as well?

 

[L&LD]

Does this works with AX88U as well?

Yes. Be sure you choose the Feb 25 version.

 

[RMerlin]

I recommend sticking with official releases (384.9). Alpha builds are incomplete, and do contain a number of bugs.

 

[AX-Router]

I recommend sticking with official releases (384.9). Alpha builds are incomplete, and do contain a number of bugs.

I couldn't find 384.9
Below is the latest official release

 

[L&LD]

I couldn't find 384.9
Below is the latest official release

View attachment 16512

https://sourceforge.net/projects/asuswrt-merlin/files/RT-AX88U/Release/

The above is the real 'official' release.

 

[AX-Router]

Not much to change from default settings, mostly the usual recommendations (with one or two extra for ax):

- Set a fixed channel
- Avoid DFS channel if possible
- Disable HE frames (until you actually get 802.11ax clients)
- Disable Airtime Fairness and Implicit Beamforming

My RT-AX88U wifi has been rock stable here.

I am setting up my AX88U and did a firmware update to 384.9
So far everything looks good.
Where can I find DFS channel setting?

 

[frichardson]

Hah! After reading these forums and all of the very clear warnings I decided to go ahead and get an RT-AX88U !!!!

I expect I will be feeling the grief for a while getting this thing going (I guess I am a glutton for punishment), but the long game for me is to get OpenVPN running on it and to try and benefit from my new 1 gig internet service as much as possible.

Fortunately I'm familiar enough with Linux systems that I should be able to manage my way around, and there is a lot of great advice on these forums from folks like L&LD and remarkable contributions from folks like RMerlin. I always feel quite a lot better when I can talk to someone who writes actual code =D ( as opposed to someone who just tells me I need to reinstall my operating system =\ , although actually I guess that is what we are doing with these router fw updates lol! )

So thank you guys in advance, this should be an adventure!!!

 

[EmeraldDeer]

I am setting up my AX88U and did a firmware update to 384.9
So far everything looks good.
Where can I find DFS channel setting?

5 GHz Control Channel 52-144

 

[AX-Router]

My AX88U is up and running for few hours and so far so good.
Thanks to everyone for their contribution here in this forum

I updated my firmware to 384.564 and all my devices were showing correct
Once I upgraded to 384.9, then the device list was dropping now and then (numbers and list were going up and down)

I reverse back to the firmware version to 384.564 and now it's stable
I am not sure if there is any setting change or bug in 384.9

 

[AX-Router]

5 GHz Control Channel 52-144

Thanks for showing the settings..
I could see that option only when the channel set to "Auto"

 

[RMerlin]

I am not sure if there is any setting change or bug in 384.9

384.9 is based on an older Asus release, which had a buggy networkmap service.

 

[AX-Router]

• When I use the ASUS app on my phone, it takes a long time to get the router information, especially if the mobile phone out of the same WiFi range and connected to cellular data. Is there any settings can improve this?
• How can I connect to the router remotely from another PC? (without using the ASUS app)

 

[frichardson]

RMerlin AX-Router L&LD

In eager anticipation of my new RT-AX88U, I've been compiling some n00b HOWTO notes on setting up the router. What I've gleaned from what you all have said so far is:
1. Follow the pointers in L&LD's signature (I have these compiled in a document for easy access)
2. Follow RMerlin's additional suggestions for the AX88U: [Asus RT-AX88U] Experiences & Discussion
3. If I understand correctly, AX-Router has had better luck with the current Asus firmware version 384.5640 which may actually be the version on my new router when it gets here. It's also available here: https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RT-AX88U/HelpDesk_BIOS/
(RMerlin's current 384.9 firmware version is based off of a slightly older Asus firmware release 384.5329). So I will wait to try out RMerlin's next version

Please let me know if you think that is about right. Of course I realize this being a very new router there may be a fair amount of changes moving forward.

BTW - my current router is an 8 year old Netgear WNDR4000. I don't buy routers very often so I'm hoping I can keep the AX88U for a good long time (or, eh, return it right away lol).