Replace RT-AC3200 with RT-AX88U or RT-AX86U?

[spacemanspiff]

yes it is hard if you have very good router like AC3200 and the only reason you need to replaced it because is not support by RMerlin any more. In any other case router you have would be sufficient for next 10 years . This is the reason that I am moving between different software like DD-WRT-tomato- lately RMerlin but in few months I plan to move to UBIQUITI ER-12 router.

I am not sure what are your experiences/ needs with VPN but I tested RT-AX88U at my friend loc and VPN max speed was below 300Mbits, when I tested ER-12 it went 1Gbit, cakeQOS at this Asus router was about 250Mbit and at ER-12 was a bit above 500Mbit.

If your AC3200 was OK for you I would not spend a lot money at new router what think more like replacing it every 5y and go with https://wikidevi.wi-cat.ru/ASUS_RT-AX56U

if you want to have 1Gbit on VPN sry but RT-AX88U will not be even at 1/3 of it.

if you are typical user AX56U will be OK for 1GBit - if you advanced user (QoS, VPN, etc) for 300Mbit above you will need to look for something different than ASUS/Netgear etc.

Yeah, I'm a long time dd-wrt guy, but the vpn implementation on dd-wrt is full of headache and hassles and their was a substantial performance hit on WAN throughput with dd-wrt + ac3200. I was seeing max throughput in the low 800mbps range using dd-wrt....switching to Merlin and throughput immediate went up to the 960mbps range. Maybe that's gotten better over time, but Merlin meets my power user needs and the openvpn configuration is far simpler. If I can sustain even 100mbps VPN performance over Merlin with an RT-AX86U then that is plenty for my needs when I'm travelling and want to use a secure VPN through my own fibre connect.

 

[Tech9]

I am not sure what are your experiences/ needs with VPN but I tested RT-AX88U at my friend loc and VPN max speed was below 300Mbits, when I tested ER-12 it went 1Gbit, cakeQOS at this Asus router was about 250Mbit and at ER-12 was a bit above 500Mbit.

AX88U with BCM49408 can do ~250Mbps OpenVPN and ~320Mbps with Cake. Good luck hitting Gigabit VPN and 500Mbps with Cake on ER-12 with CN7130. You'll be deeply disappointed. Try to set OpenVPN on ER-12 first.

 

[Adooni]

@spacemanspiff 100Mbit on VPN you will hit easy with AX56U - just consider if you need much stronger and expensive router. For AiMesh Node for example Asus introduced AX55U that cost on Poland about $78 https://wikidevi.wi-cat.ru/ASUS_RT-AX55 . This one do not have USB even but are you need it for Node? Just telling that for much more money you will get router that maybe you do not need. Do you really need wi-fi 6Gbit if your LAN is 1Gbit and the same connection to world. Are you using VR? Did you try FreshTomato - they still support AC3200. I would say this is one of the best router Asus ever made it is wrong that not produced any more (like AC68U) and therefore not supported. OpenVPN in RMerlin originally was taken from tomato - over time modified a lot but maybe will be as user friendly to you as in RMerlin.

sry for of topic it is not a problem to set openVPN on ER-12. for Example @Shibby moved to Ubiquiti and is one of expert that start to preparing tutorials https://openlinksys.info/forum/viewforum.php?forum_id=92 . Challenge for a lot users will be polish language

I do not want to argue I just present my opinion. I had a lot issue with AiMesh with Asus (stability, disconnect, loosing nods etc) but not even one with UniFi.