Personal AC87 saga

[Laserburn]

I've now had two of them, bought in sealed packaging from Best Buy. During both trials, the router was propped up on top of some old HDDs sitting vertically to allow for greater air flow. Here's a diagram of my network:

The first exhibited the dreaded 5GHz issues most here seem to have. It also randomly locked up one day, all LEDs blinking like normal, but no access to Internet. I tried the most recent stable firmware, and the beta firmware on Asus' site, and the symptoms remained the same.

The second router was much worse. Same 5GHz issues, but this one would cause connection speed to slow to a crawl under load, would occasionally completely disconnect 5GHz clients, and lock up once in a while. I tried the stable and beta firmware releases from Asus, and Merlin's latest as well, with no change. With Merlin's firmware, I checked the temperatures, and everything seemed fairly cool (CPU under 80° and both radios at around 50°). The web interface would also lock up at times, and I'd have to reload the page until it would load properly. Rebooting the router from its web page would not work, I had to physically push the button.

I know some of you have perfectly stable routers, and I have a personal friend who has a stable one as well and recommended it. However, after these two attempts to find a good one, I'd never buy one online, especially considering all the complaints about Asus' warranty service. It's convenient that my local Best Buy has no problems taking them back.

Thanks for reading.

 

[dragon8452]

I've now had two of them, bought in sealed packaging from Best Buy. During both trials, the router was propped up on top of some old HDDs sitting vertically to allow for greater air flow. Here's a diagram of my network:

The first exhibited the dreaded 5GHz issues most here seem to have. It also randomly locked up one day, all LEDs blinking like normal, but no access to Internet. I tried the most recent stable firmware, and the beta firmware on Asus' site, and the symptoms remained the same.

The second router was much worse. Same 5GHz issues, but this one would cause connection speed to slow to a crawl under load, would occasionally completely disconnect 5GHz clients, and lock up once in a while. I tried the stable and beta firmware releases from Asus, and Merlin's latest as well, with no change. With Merlin's firmware, I checked the temperatures, and everything seemed fairly cool (CPU under 80° and both radios at around 50°). The web interface would also lock up at times, and I'd have to reload the page until it would load properly. Rebooting the router from its web page would not work, I had to physically push the button.

I know some of you have perfectly stable routers, and I have a personal friend who has a stable one as well and recommended it. However, after these two attempts to find a good one, I'd never buy one online, especially considering all the complaints about Asus' warranty service. It's convenient that my local Best Buy has no problems taking them back.

Thanks for reading.

I have no idea about your issue, but wanted to comment about Asus and BestBuy.. I needed to RMA my old RT-AC66 because a USB port quit. I called Asus and they saw I bought it at BestBuy. They, at least about a year ago, informed me that if you got it at BestBuy you could walk right in at return it. I was so skeptical that the Asus rep. actually emailed me the internal memo to prove it in case I had to. Sure enough they took it back, nine months old, no questions asked, no box just the wall wart, router and antennas. They issued me a gift card on the spot and I walked out with a RT-AC68 with only $20 spent out of pocket and a fresh start on a new warranty. Of course this is a year ago so YMMV these days. I had previous unrelated issues with the store on an extended warranty but in this case was thrilled and highly recommend purchasing any ASUS networking gear through them as it is as painless as it gets, didn't even need an actual RMA to accomplish the return.

 

[exducados]

There is a new beta FW trying solve 5Ghz issues.

 

[LoneWolf]

Laserburn,

I'll be honest, and say that at this point, I'd be unlikely to buy *any* high-end enthusiast router online, not just the ASUS. Netgear, DLink, Linksys, whatever have you. Just about every vendor releases bleeding edge products with firmware that isn't ready, and there are tons of situations they cannot anticipate. This is especially true of the Quantenna-radio products; the RT-AC87 is one of the first to use that design.

Apple hasn't made it easy either --a lot of people experiencing wireless issues with Apple are adding to it, believing their new fancy router is the issue, when it appears that Apple's wireless implementation has been problematic for some time. It has upped the number of complaints with some of the quality routers, especially on the 5GHz band.

As Tim has pointed out to all of his readers here on several occasions, buying the latest-greatest instead of one generation back means we may get all the new features, but we end up being the 1.0-release product testers too. Buying a generation back isn't as sexy, and of course, sometimes lacks a feature or two, but it is cheaper, and chances are that vendors will release a 1.1 or 2.0 product a year down the road with everything they have learned from the 1.0 release bundled in.

One thing I'll give props to ASUS on - I can't think of any vendor that I've seen work as hard on consistent firmware updates. I've seen plenty of Linksys products over the years where development stopped far short of a decent, fully working product.

 

[jtp10181]

I can confirm the story on Best Buy taking back old items. I worked there a long time ago and a lot of electronics the vendors authorized them to take back defective items and would give Best Buy a refund. There was a y/n flag I think accompanied with a time frame on the good old green screen terminal we looked up sku's on.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk

 

[rtcomputersinc]

Just a thought. I have only ever propped these up with plastic items. Do you think the metal or coils in a Hard drive could be causing an issue. Id think it would act like a reflector or mess with the wave form somehow.