New ASUS ZenWiFi ET8 with Wifi 6E

[nicholb]

I'm getting about 1 reboot every day or two. I do have a scheduled reboot twice a week right now but that does not seem to help as the last random one was about 12h after a scheduled reboot.

 

[nicholb]

For whatever reason the random reboots seem to have reduced to where I have not noticed one in several days. I do have scheduled reboots occuring 3 times a week.

 

[opq]

Opposite for me. I’m getting many reboots in a 2-3 hour window sometimes.

 

[opq]

So I ended up flashing the FW on each of my two nodes with the same version available from Asus’ website (since they haven’t released anything newer) and the reboots seem to have gone away or gone down. Need to do more testing to confirm.

 

[opq]

How is everyone doing with the ET8? Our reboot problems never went away even with re-flashing their FW, resetting, swapping the nodes, we tried everything we could think of. ASUS is saying it's a HW problem, so I'm wondering if everyone here who has had an issue, have you had them replaced?

 

[sgoldswo]

What puts me off the 6E routers such as the ET8 is the lack of range. I live in the UK, and older houses such as my own have thick internal walls which aren't Wi-Fi or mesh friendly. We have a smaller house by US standards (nowhere near 6000 square feet), but I need three units to achieve solid coverage indoors. Since I use a wireless backhaul and the XT8 is clearly at the limits of its happiness with positioning of nodes as it is, my analysis is that a 6E router would make things worse, not better.

 

[L&LD]

While you may be correct for your specific environment, WiFi 6E routers should have the same (or better, if properly designed and implemented) range to WiFi 6 routers.

Moving a few hundred Hz up or down the scale won't make a huge impact on the range (that's where the proper design should be leveraged to offset any detrimental effects if any).

 

[Tech9]

Moving a few hundred Hz up or down the scale

The frequency difference can be as large as 2GHz, actually. With added 160MHz channel bonding, it will impact the range.

 

[sgoldswo]

While you may be correct for your specific environment, WiFi 6E routers should have the same (or better, if properly designed and implemented) range to WiFi 6 routers.

Moving a few hundred Hz up or down the scale won't make a huge impact on the range (that's where the proper design should be leveraged to offset any detrimental effects if any).

I'm just mindful that tech publications (e.g. Tom's hardware) report a bigger impact of both distance and solid objects (like my internal brick walls) with 6E / 6 ghz equipment compared to 6/5ghz. Of course, that could be addressed by physical changes to boost signal, but I would assume if thats the case the router/nodes would be larger (e.g. to accommodate larger aerials).

 

[L&LD]

Yes, the range can be large. Fortunately, we still have control over that selection.

Even at 2GHz, that is still a small percentage over the 5GHz/6GHz (effective) top end.

 

[Tech9]

With home routers I expect 6E range to be shorter just because the appearance of the device and advertised specs are much more important than the actual tech inside. Trendy tower design, some lights around and all the marketing BS on the box - good enough to sell it to targeted customers.

 

[thiggins]

@L&LD Testing established awhile back that with 80 MHz bandwidth for both 5 and 6 GHz, there is significant difference in the RvR curves

Moving to 160 MHz bandwidth for 6 GHz significantly improves throughput with stong signals, but doesn't improve range.

For more details see: https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wir...asus-gt-axe11000-rog-rapture?showall=&start=1

 

[thiggins]

Of course, that could be addressed by physical changes to boost signal

Effective transmit power is regulated by law. So there is no ability to "boost signal" past spec limits.
That said, some gear may be better than others at achieving transmit power close to the allowed limit.

 

[RMerlin]

Effective transmit power is regulated by law. So there is no ability to "boost signal" past spec limits.
That said, some gear may be better than others at achieving transmit power close to the allowed limit.

Also, the FCC makes it mandatory for antennas to not be user-replaceable with Wifi 6E products, so that eliminates the possibility of using higher gain antennas.

I guess the old Pringles Can mod may still work tho

 

[L&LD]

Thanks again @thiggins for reminding me about that article. Finally had a chance to re-read it.

The numbers you offer, I do not doubt. But attenuation in a controlled environment such as your test setup is different than attenuation in a real-world setting with naturally occurring peaks and valleys of WiFi signals in a typical home.

I'm now very curious about what the actual results will be in my own home. Those wireless throughput speeds are what my 2.5GbE connected NAS has been waiting for.

 

[neoprimal]

I just try to ignore mine. As long as it doesn't affect me or the family, I'm going to try to not nitpick. I feel like the more I watch it, the more problems I have. At first, I had no ends of issues, between the node disconnecting and reconnecting every few hours to reboots. My wife used to holler at me that her Wifi suddenly stopped (while working from home). Netflix and other services would buffer because the node would reboot or reconnect for no good reason. That seems to be all gone. Now my biggest gripe is just really slow 2.4Ghz. My saving grace is that I only have cameras and my smarthome stuff running on 2.4Ghz (vs. TVs or Alexa devices, which would definitely exhibit streaming lag). I get 3.5 to 4.5 MB max on 2.4 which really is bad. Even my gross Tenda Nova MX6 got at least double - triple that. I'm wondering if having security set to WPA2/3 has something to do with 2.4 being so slow, maybe I should just do WPA2? Anyway, here's to hoping things get better. I also have a few devices (2 to be exact) which refuse to connect to the ET8, my HP Officejet 8620 printer and my Petsafe Smart Feeder. Due to this, I've bridged the Tenda in. It's not what's caused the issues though, since the problems I'd been having happened before I did this.

 

[bkrodgers]

I also have a few devices (2 to be exact) which refuse to connect to the ET8, my HP Officejet 8620 printer and my Petsafe Smart Feeder. Due to this, I've bridged the Tenda in. It's not what's caused the issues though, since the problems I'd been having happened before I did this.

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I just ran into a similar issue with my Petsafe feeder. For me I get the slow blue flash that indicates it’s connected (as the router shows as well), but it thinks it has no internet access. I have the AX86U, but wondering if there’s something about the ASUS routers this device just doesn’t like. Did you ever find a fix?