ASUS ZenWiFi AX (XT8) Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388.21617 (2022/11/21)

[A1MB1G]

what boggles the mind is that the XT8 features in alot of the best wifi mesh router lists.. personally in good conscience I would never be able to recommend them. I guess it just goes to show that all reviews should be taken with a VERY BIG grain of salt.

It really is remarkable that it keeps showing up as one of the best routers. I'd like to move on to another router that has better firmware updates. I just don't trust Asus any more to release stable and working firmware updates for their products. Unfortunately, I'm just not sure which router to choose.

 

[paul85eng]

I think most vendors will have similar issues. Especially with something like a highly capable router the possible scenarios are pretty much limitless so hard to test everything.

On a side note my zappi car charger. Had a firmware update which stopped the only using excess solar for charging ability. (Thats their key selling point so you would have thought that would have been picked up)

They are releasing a fix prerty prmoptly though.

So just shows its all products in this world we live in of we dont need to release a working product as we can just release updates. Gaming is another prime example.

 

[Daylight_Invader]

To be fair to ASUS, there are a lot of things that us consumers miss.

Firstly it is worth remembering that in Europe, many of us have much thicker walls rendering wireless backhaul problematic at best. Physics can’t overcome this without breaching regulatory signal level maximums, especially in the 5ghz area. I ended up running Ethernet around my joists to solve the issue as I was sick of signal drops. Secondly, 160mhz channels for backhaul is hard, especially since in most regions we are restricted to setting it to the first channel to take advantage of it. In most cases people should really opt to just set it to 80mhz if they want stability. Add in DFS related issues and sadly the tech will always over promise and underdeliver no matter what. It won’t matter whether you have ASUS or any other manufacturer.

The only thing the manufactures really need to focus on is better error handling for signal related issues and tools to help identify issues and present these meaningfully to the consumer. We should not as consumer need to know which channel to set our nodes to, and better built in country specific help would go a long way to better setting customer expectations.

As many on this forum have said, it’s important to separate your bands out. Most IoT devices only work on the 2.4 band and often won’t work with any of the more advanced functions switched on. Also keep it on 20mhz only. There are countless threads on devices like LIFX where people talk about their disconnecting IoT devices not realising you really need to keep your 2.4 band as basic as possible. Since keeping my 2.4 band as vanilla as it gets I never have devices disconnecting on me. This leaves me to turn on 802.11ax on the 5ghz bands with all the bells and whistles enabled. Also try to use wired backhaul wherever possible, especially if you have thick walls. Our house is 220 years old and wireless backhaul was simply set up to fail in these conditions.


Finally don’t forget to try the full hard reset option if you have issues with certain firmwares. Personally I’m finding this latest version pretty stable again so I can’t complain. This is in complete contrast to the previous version which was never stable.

 

[tgl]

I think most vendors will have similar issues. Especially with something like a highly capable router the possible scenarios are pretty much limitless so hard to test everything.

That's a very fair point, and I just want to note that it plays into a recommendation that some of us like to make: don't buy a router if your situation only requires an access point. Less functionality means less to go wrong, not to mention that you aren't paying for hardware specs you don't really need.

 

[fsc137]

Anyone having issue of WIFI download speed capped at around 200Mbps after using firmware Version 3.0.0.4.388.21617? previously I am able to get around 400Mbps for the download speed using speed test.

Yes. After an automatic update to 21617, my previously-working system started to fail for some WiFi connections, dropping packets and dropping connections to yield very low effective download speeds (less than 10 Mbps). A manual reload of 21099 fixed this.