Best Practice/Settings for Current ASUS BE Firmware....

[jzchen]

This is probably the reason I ended up with 14 nodes that you mention. No subliminal advertising here in the app. Looks so appealing! (The ads scroll to the left like a stock ticker tape. I picked my favorite)...

 

[jzchen]

Thank God there's only the one Tether app for both Archer routers and Range Extenders, because that new model is looking mighty appealing!

 

[Reinforcer]

I got a GT-BE98 Pro before I got a Deco BE95. I still have both running in the same household, BE98 Pro as an AiMesh node and BE95 as an Access Point. I have added two TP-Link Range Extenders RE405BE and RE655BE to the same space (no walls between den, breakfast nook, and kitchen. I can't say that setup while I had the three together worked 100% perfectly with my WiFi 7 OnePlus Open, but it did work better than the BE98 Pro based on iPerf speed testing to a 10 Gb PCIe enabled desktop. I guess the phone, which is my only 6 GHz capable device, was the one buggy at that time...

I can say that TP-Link does not bother creating a Deco emulator because you open the settings and it feels like there's nothing to configure compared to ASUS ZenWiFi line. But yes I agree, TP-Link
summed up is "it just works".

There's someone on the ROG forum who received a BE98 Pro for Christmas, and there are a couple of us (3 total) that use the BE98 Pro, trying to help him solve inconsistent performance. Sometimes it is the customer/owner that seems to make things more difficult to resolve. I am still suspicious of his choice of Quad9 DNS and poor router placement....

I was going for the BE98 Pro before I eneded up deciding on the BQ16 just simply because of the more minimalistic look.

I agree TP Link's generally don't have anywhere near the number of configurable options as Asus routers but they just work.

I agree while sometimes it can be user error if a lot of options have been changed however in my case it's a straight forward setup with just the standalone router and advanced settings changed.

 

[Poseidon]

Personal opinion, I would NEVER trust or use a TP-Link router. Heard too many instances of “spyware” theories.

Whether true or not, it’s enough for me to stay away from them.

 

[jzchen]

I got nothing to spy on, or if there is something of interest, I don't mind sharing, ie. never caught COVID...

(Did two things, one of which any doctor would never tell you to do:
1. If I started feeling ill I very carefully avoided possibly transferring it to anyone else.
2. I binge watched Netflix on my phone, sleep depriving myself until it literally fell out of my hands and onto my face.

Never tested positive even when my wife caught it and we slept in the same bed)...

 

[GJJ]

@GJJ Of course only if you are okay with it, have you tried connecting the washing machine to the main SSID? I have few IoTs, and unbeknown to me I had inserted network switches that were very likely detrimental to IoT networks extending to my nodes. So although I tried, I did not get very far and connect them to the Main.

Again the reason why I ask is because one can now set WPA2/WPA3-Personal and AES on the WiFi 7 SSID, even MLO I am seeing. I understand there is some sort of security concern with the practice. One of mine's a Rheem water heater, the other a Deltran car battery charger which was discontinued service just as FYI...

It's been about a month now since I originally read your post and started to transition my various devices to different SSIDs and I have to say that it has improved WIFI performance and stability by small amount. My kids haven't complained or said that things are better or worse, but the Log has less entries in it, particularly with devices moving betwee the different bands. Yes, with this router, I have started having an unhealthy obsession with checking the log file for entries and errors.

I went by a slightly different theory to jzchen and set up my SSIDs and they're capabilities based on the client devices that I had.

My main SSID only supports WiFi6 devices and higher, that can use WPA3 (AES only). It has access to all 3 bands and has WIFI7 switched on.

My second SSID is for WIFI4 and 5 devices that can use WPA2. It only has access to the 2.4 and 5GHz bands and has WIFI7 switched off.

I waited a week before proceeding further, just to make sure everything was behaving. It was, so I added an IOT SSID and the devices that would use it.

My last SSID is for IOT/old devices and only uses the 2.4GHz band, uses WPA/WPA2 and no surprises, WIFI7 is off. Originally, it was WPA2, but I was disappointed to find my bicycle computer, which I bought new last year (2025) and is based on Android, only supports WPA! My beloved washing machine uses a higher encryption standard than my more complicated bicycle computer, with colour screen, maps, routes, gps and all different types of wired and wireless sensors! What kind of a world do I live in!

I don't have MLO switched on for any SSID. No need for it with only 1 WIFI7 device in the house and other forum users don't seem to have good experiences with it on. (and before some one says anything, I know MLO is a WIFI7 feature and it could only be enabled on the primary SSIS.)

I probably went overboard and could have probably grouped my 2nd and 3rd SSIDs together on one SSID, but it was working and stable, so I left it as is. If I had a lot of WiFi devices, it might make sense to only use 2 SSIDs. On the other hand, I'd prefer that my older devices on SSID 2, only have access to WPA2 and not have a choice to use WPA, if for some reason they thought it would be a good idea.

It's been about 2 weeks since the SSIDs have all been set up and I haven't played with it much since. Not very scientific, but it seems as though my phone, which is on the main SSID, uses 1 or 2 percentage points less battery overnight.
What is more measurable, is that there are almost none and often no entries of any kind in the log overnight (when devices are not being used, not moving around and not fighting each other for the best radio). Before adding the different SSIDs, I was getting overnight log entries.

While not difficlut, it took time to set up. As I said in posts elsewhere, it shouldn't be this way and should just work out of the box. After the effort though, the unit seems to be more happy and stable than it was when all devices were on the same SSID. The devices connected to it seem to be happier, but I wish I had some metrics to back this up, rather than just saying "I think". I can say , memory and CPU usage are stable, I haven't needed to restart the unit in over 4 weeks and there aren't any crashes experienced or recorded in the logs.

As I have said in other posts, I have the much maligned RT-BE92U and it has yet to receive the February FW update that some of the other BE routers received last week. I'm interested to see it's effects, because it says it has optimised roaming stability for devices and improved roaming stability for iOS26 devices. We have 2 iOS26 devices in the house and one seems to display a few more log entries than other devices on the network.

I suggest to other ASUS BE users who are having WIFI issues and are capable of setting up the different SSIDs, to try it out. Group your clients based on capabilities and set up your SSIDs accordingly.

GJ

 

[jzchen]

Personal opinion, I would NEVER trust or use a TP-Link router. Heard too many instances of “spyware” theories.

Whether true or not, it’s enough for me to stay away from them.

For the longest time I did not understand what ASUS' Game Radar feature was doing... Until someone reported finding the packets it sends out to game servers and reported unwanted traffic coming from his/her router...

I'd hope the GPL code is made available (from TP-Link,) it is the same code that is distributed to everyone as firmware, (I could forsee someone saying the actual firmware contains spyware but the published code does not,) and that someone does take the time to search for said spyware...

I find myself always opting in to those options that say something like "help us improve our product/program by sharing (supposedly) anonymous data."

I do suspect that such spyware or improvement program does carry some overhead which may be seen in decreased performance as well as (those who like mentioned catch outgoing traffic with firewall type devices)...