[Asus RT-AX88U] Experiences & Discussion

[PhantomRay]

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).

You will love it. Even for my AX11000. although it is not maxing out on AC wifi internet speed (477mbps) as my AC5300 did, but it is still a good solid router, give me over 300 mbps most of the time.

I am locked with a 400mbps internet service contract, can't wait to upgrade to 1 gig by the end of this year.

 

[WiFiSeeder]

Hi guys.

Unfortunately i just got home to a dead 5Ghz band.
LED is off. Control channel "0". Professional / Enable Ratio = On.
I've disabled DFS, disabled 160 hz, disabled HE, selected a manual channel, rebooted the router, downgraded to ASUS stock firmware and still no joy.

Is it gone for good? Any further suggestions to troubleshoot?

Cheers,

 

[PhantomRay]

Hi guys.

Unfortunately i just got home to a dead 5Ghz band.
LED is off. Control channel "0". Professional / Enable Ratio = On.
I've disabled DFS, disabled 160 hz, disabled HE, selected a manual channel, rebooted the router, downgraded to ASUS stock firmware and still no joy.

Is it gone for good? Any further suggestions to troubleshoot?

Cheers,

Sorry to hear that, it sounds like a hardware failure of your unit. Better to get a replacement when you can. I just got mine today as well, everything just worked out of the box.

 

[RMerlin]

Hi guys.

Unfortunately i just got home to a dead 5Ghz band.
LED is off. Control channel "0". Professional / Enable Ratio = On.
I've disabled DFS, disabled 160 hz, disabled HE, selected a manual channel, rebooted the router, downgraded to ASUS stock firmware and still no joy.

Is it gone for good? Any further suggestions to troubleshoot?

Cheers,

Power cycle the router.

 

[frichardson]

You will love it. Even for my AX11000. although it is not maxing out on AC wifi internet speed (477mbps) as my AC5300 did, but it is still a good solid router, give me over 300 mbps most of the time.

I am locked with a 400mbps internet service contract, can't wait to upgrade to 1 gig by the end of this year.

Wow, the AX11000 looks like a monster! I was originally thinking a triband router would be the way to go, but I was already getting in over my head lol.

 

[thiggins]

If you keep your routers a long time, you should choose proven technology. 11ax is still in draft stage and using first generation chipsets. You are buying at the worst point in a product lifecycle; highest cost, lowest maturity.
A four-stream AC router like the NETGEAR R7800 would have been a better choice for a buy-and-keeper.

 

[WiFiSeeder]

Power cycle the router.

I've tried. Took it out of the power plug during the night. Still no 5Ghz bandwith. Any other measures that I can try before returning it?

 

[Adamm]

A four-stream AC router like the NETGEAR R7800 would have been a better choice for a buy-and-keeper.

The specs of these two devices cater to different users, the AX88U offers a quad core, twice as much ram, twice as many lan ports and a significantly better firmware. I agree the price is a little steep but that's to be expected of any new device.

 

[AX-Router]

I've tried. Took it out of the power plug during the night. Still no 5Ghz bandwith. Any other measures that I can try before returning it?

Have you tried a complete reset and start over again?

 

[WiFiSeeder]

If you keep your routers a long time, you should choose proven technology. 11ax is still in draft stage and using first generation chipsets. You are buying at the worst point in a product lifecycle; highest cost, lowest maturity.
A four-stream AC router like the NETGEAR R7800 would have been a better choice for a buy-and-keeper.

Hey thiggins, I'm aware. That was my second choice actually. However, issues with ICMPv6 and IPv6 kept me away from it.

 

[WiFiSeeder]

Have you tried a complete reset and start over again?

Yes, factory reset and downgraded to ASUS stock firmware.

 

[WiFiSeeder]

Looks like it is a hardware failure.
Now I'm torn between a replacement or an AC-86U (for half the price of an AX-88U).

 

[frichardson]

If you keep your routers a long time, you should choose proven technology. 11ax is still in draft stage and using first generation chipsets. You are buying at the worst point in a product lifecycle; highest cost, lowest maturity.
A four-stream AC router like the NETGEAR R7800 would have been a better choice for a buy-and-keeper.

Yes, I knew the smart move would have been the RT-AC86U or the R7800 both of I've seen highly recommended here. I am not completely enamored with Netgear which had me leaning towards the Asus side, but then I made the perhaps unwise decision to bump to the bleeding edge AX88U hardware.

Having said all that, the AX88U just arrived =P

I am faced with another conundrum - my cable company "gave" me an Arris modem / router combo. I asked if I could just get the modem and they said the price was the same....? Looks like I have a little more research to do.

EDIT: ugh, these companies are slimy. Yes, looks like I can certainly buy my own modem and they are charging me a monthly fee for modem rental + wifi. $%&*#!

 

[RMerlin]

Modem discussions moved to the appropriate thread.

 

[AX-Router]

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

RMerlin,
Hope to see a stable and bug fixed version soon and I am sure AX-88U will beat others..

 

[RMerlin]

RMerlin,
Hope to see a stable and bug fixed version soon and I am sure AX-88U will beat others..

The networkmap issues are mostly cosmetic, they do not impact performance.

 

[PhantomRay]

Looks like it is a hardware failure.
Now I'm torn between a replacement or an AC-86U (for half the price of an AX-88U).

FYI, GT-AC5300 is now selling at a cheaper price of $339 at BH, same price of the AX88U but you are going to have 3 bands.
Comparing to the most cutting edge AX11000, GT-AC5300 has exactly same CPU, same RAM and Flash capacity (different vendor though). Great support for AC clients, I get maxed out internet speed (477/12mbps with ISP 400/10mbps ) with GT-AC5300

 

[PhantomRay]

I got my AX88u yesterday too, I also want to report my AX88 experience.

So, I set it up like this:

Second floor: AX88 as my main router, serves smart devices (N clients) on first floor and apple tv, xbox etc
Thrid floor: AX11000 as a mesh node using ethernet backhaul, serves my gaming PC, iMac, another apple tv, etc (all AC clients).

However, with this setup, I lose my second 5g band from the AX11000 because when you setup AiMesh, the main router determins your network config. AX88 does not have a second 5g band, that made my AX11000 second 5g band invisible and no way I can connect. Another problem with this setup is that my printer is having trouble to connect to the 2.4g band, not sure why, maybe 2.4g band was chosen to be a dedicted backhaul for aimesh? (when meshing two AX11000, even though I connected them via wire, the second 5g band would still be provisioned as a dedicated backhaul but there was no problem connecting to that second 5g band).

I really want my gaming PC to have the best wifi possible (wire connection is not possible), so AX11000 has to be a mesh node on third floor. With AX88 as main router, I am losing the second 5g band and printer is having trouble.

When use my other AX11000 as main router, everything works fine, I have two 5g bands and printer has no trouble connecting. However, my wife was telling me she was having some poor connection issue when facetime with her friend.

So.... I am going to return AX88U and get a GT-AC5300 so that I can have a AX11000 + GT-AC5300 setup for the time being.
(GT-AC5300 for the best AC performance for my thrid floor, and AX11000 for future proof)

Update:
As I am writing this line here, I am having two AX11000 mesh setup... and I am getting slow speed, sub 100mbps, occasionally, seems like that was what my wife was experiencing last night.... But I was able to get over 400mbps right after I set them up using following config:

AX mode disabled,
160mhz disabled
manually select first 5g band on 64, second one 100.
universal beamforming disabled
airtime fairness disabled.

 

[L&LD]

Yes, factory reset and downgraded to ASUS stock firmware.

You first downgraded to Asus stock firmware then you did a full reset to factory defaults, correct?

 

[WiFiSeeder]

I got my AX88u yesterday too, I also want to report my AX88 experience.

So, I set it up like this:

Second floor: AX88 as my main router, serves smart devices (N clients) on first floor and apple tv, xbox etc
Thrid floor: AX11000 as a mesh node using ethernet backhaul, serves my gaming PC, iMac, another apple tv, etc (all AC clients).

However, with this setup, I lose my second 5g band from the AX11000 because when you setup AiMesh, the main router determins your network config. AX88 does not have a second 5g band, that made my AX11000 second 5g band invisible and no way I can connect. Another problem with this setup is that my printer is having trouble to connect to the 2.4g band, not sure why, maybe 2.4g band was chosen to be a dedicted backhaul for aimesh? (when meshing two AX11000, even though I connected them via wire, the second 5g band would still be provisioned as a dedicated backhaul but there was no problem connecting to that second 5g band).

I really want my gaming PC to have the best wifi possible (wire connection is not possible), so AX11000 has to be a mesh node on third floor. With AX88 as main router, I am losing the second 5g band and printer is having trouble.

When use my other AX11000 as main router, everything works fine, I have two 5g bands and printer has no trouble connecting. However, my wife was telling me she was having some poor connection issue when facetime with her friend.

So.... I am going to return AX88U and get a GT-AC5300 so that I can have a AX11000 + GT-AC5300 setup for the time being.
(GT-AC5300 for the best AC performance for my thrid floor, and AX11000 for future proof)

Update:
As I am writing this line here, I am having two AX11000 mesh setup... and I am getting slow speed, sub 100mbps, occasionally, seems like that was what my wife was experiencing last night.... But I was able to get over 400mbps right after I set them up using following config:

AX mode disabled,
160mhz disabled
manually select first 5g band on 64, second one 100.
universal beamforming disabled
airtime fairness disabled.

You have one of each state-of-ther-art ASUS routers in hands now.
Definitely the AX-11000 should be your main router. However, I'm not sure if I would fork the money for a GT-AC5300. It will basically be a glorified AP (i.e., it's hardware will be basically wasted). There are several other routers / APs that will give you the same performance at half of the price (see: https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/bar/187-5-ghz-dn-peak/35 as well as the Up and Down profiles for more realistic data).
Other than that, since you have a wired backhall (or have I misunderstood what you meant by Ethernet backhall?), and considering that two WiFi routers is enough to cover the whole house, I'm curious why you are even bothering with mesh networks. The wired backhall will already give you a stable 1000 Mbit connection between the first and third floors. I would probably just setup your secondary router as an AP and forget about 5Ghz backhall all together.
Make sure to select channels manually to avoid overlapping as much as possible. That way you can have all of your 5Ghz bands available. If you really want to extract extra juice of your setup, invest in a newer adapter for your gaming setup (e.g. Intel 9560, Killer 1550 or an PCE-AC88 If you want to go 4x4 and theoretical 2100 Mbps). That's probably as good as it gets until the first AX clients reach the market.