RT-AC5300 Firmware Beta Version 9.0.0.4.380.2697

[Logi]

New Beta FW is available at the Asus website

 

[joe012594]

New Beta FW is available at the Asus website

Smart Connect still isn't separating out clients to the proper bands, Traffic Analyzer still isn't properly calculating total data usage, and the GUI is still lagging really bad. Not much of an improvement over the last alpha firmware they pushed out. :/

 

[Forerunner]

I can Confirm that Smart Connect isn't working as it should as my AC Laptop is getting connected from 2.4 Ghz to 5Ghz constantly so I have disabled it and set 5GHZ and 2.4GHZ on their own SSID. I am not seeing any issue with the GUI though.

 

[garethr]

I've actually not had any issues with the Smart Connect with all my 5GHz devices (mostly Apple but a couple of Windows).
In fact my experience so far is that Asus' implementation is much more effective than Netgear's more conservative implementation I've been used to.
Initially after update with this beta the UI was slow to respond but was fine after a power cycle.

Overall no major issues so far with this beta for me (and good to see some security fixes/issues addressed) although I've not tried MU-MIMO but then I've got no suitable clients.

 

[joe012594]

I've actually not had any issues with the Smart Connect with all my 5GHz devices (mostly Apple but a couple of Windows).
In fact my experience so far is that Asus' implementation is much more effective than Netgear's more conservative implementation I've been used to.
Initially after update with this beta the UI was slow to respond but was fine after a power cycle.

Overall no major issues so far with this beta for me (and good to see some security fixes/issues addressed) although I've not tried MU-MIMO but then I've got no suitable clients.

Are you sure your 5GHz clients are landing on the proper bands? 802.11n clients should be landing on 5GHz-1 and your 802.11ac clients clients should be landing on 5GHz-2. Double check in the GUI.

 

[garethr]

Are you sure your 5GHz clients are landing on the proper bands? 802.11n clients should be landing on 5GHz-1 and your 802.11ac clients clients should be landing on 5GHz-2. Double check in the GUI.

Distributing them fine as far as I can tell (and the Asus UI makes this super simple to tell including the connection rate - I love this). Having said this I've not got any 5GHz capable N only devices - they're all AC, but the faster devices (like my 2015 MacBook Pro) consistently always get steered to the second 5GHz band and the other slower devices the first 5GHz band which I'm happy with. My experience is that Asus' implementation of SmartConnect is more effective than Netgear's somewhat more conservative and less tunable implementation.

 

[joe012594]

Distributing them fine as far as I can tell (and the Asus UI makes this super simple to tell including the connection rate - I love this). Having said this I've not got any 5GHz capable N only devices - they're all AC, but the faster devices (like my 2015 MacBook Pro) consistently always get steered to the second 5GHz band and the other slower devices the first 5GHz band which I'm happy with. My experience is that Asus' implementation of SmartConnect is more effective than Netgear's somewhat more conservative and less tunable implementation.

I have a heavy mixed N and AC client environment. All N clients do land on 5GHz-1. However, some dual band N clients remain on 2.4GHz instead of being steered to 5GHz-1 due to the "not-allowed" setting in the Smart Connect Rule page. If this is turned off, then there isn't a problem.

Regarding AC clients, most of them land on 5GHz-1, including my RT-AC68U in bridge mode. Very rarely does an AC client actually land on 5GHz-2. I've had to go to great lengths just to get things working properly, such as fine tuning Smart Connect Rule settings, Wireless MAC Filtering all dual band clients to prevent them from connecting to the wrong bands, etc,.

Funny thing is, I don't have any of these issues nor do I have to go to these lengths on the RT-AC3200. It works perfectly separating out my N and AC clients.