Rt-ac68u

[Smedley]

I've been using the AC68U as an access point with no problems with .205 firmware at all. I'm on FIOS in NYC and get insane speeds on this router. Even my neighbor two apartments down can get a great signal from it.

I just installed my ac68u as an Access Point, replacing an old Netgear WG102 (802.11g). My connection on 2.4GHz/802.11n is now 60 down/30 up. I even dropped the Tx power down to 50mw to reduce the signal levels out of the house.

I initially had an issue with MAC Filtering (weak security, just another layer to keep out the uninitiated) trashing the performance, but that was solved by upgrading to the 205 firmware.

All in all, a great upgrade in performance!

 

[geops]

I just installed my ac68u as an Access Point, replacing an old Netgear WG102 (802.11g). My connection on 2.4GHz/802.11n is now 60 down/30 up. I even dropped the Tx power down to 50mw to reduce the signal levels out of the house.

I initially had an issue with MAC Filtering (weak security, just another layer to keep out the uninitiated) trashing the performance, but that was solved by upgrading to the 205 firmware.

All in all, a great upgrade in performance!

MAC filtering is quite pointless and can be circumvented by a newbie. Just use WPA2-AES. It is your best bet for wireless security right now. The overhead is minimal to none.

 

[chamberc]

MAC filtering is quite pointless and can be circumvented by a newbie. Just use WPA2-AES. It is your best bet for wireless security right now. The overhead is minimal to none.

That's why he said "(weak security, just another layer to keep out the uninitiated)"

 

[Smedley]

I just installed my ac68u as an Access Point, replacing an old Netgear WG102 (802.11g). My connection on 2.4GHz/802.11n is now 60 down/30 up. I even dropped the Tx power down to 50mw to reduce the signal levels out of the house.

I initially had an issue with MAC Filtering (weak security, just another layer to keep out the uninitiated) trashing the performance, but that was solved by upgrading to the 205 firmware.

All in all, a great upgrade in performance!

Just a quick update for anyone else to which this might apply.... I had to turn off MAC Filtering, as even with the .205 firmware, the performance seems to drop off sharply at some point. Turning off MAC Filtering immediately restored the speedy performance.

 

[bigcid10]

My Galaxy S4 is connected at 433Mbs wireless AC

 

[geops]

My Galaxy S4 is connected at 433Mbs wireless AC

Didn't know the S4 has a single stream ac wifi.

 

[DaveMishSr]

I am running 374.217 without any apparent issues. I did have to reset my Cox modem by powering it and the router down for 10-15 minutes, powering up the modem and let it fully reboot and then power up the router. The UI is very fast whether by WiFi or LAN. So far this router is doing everything I need it to including streaming HD video (but so did my AC66U).

 

[geops]

I am running 374.217 without any apparent issues. I did have to reset my Cox modem by powering it and the router down for 10-15 minutes, powering up the modem and let it fully reboot and then power up the router. The UI is very fast whether by WiFi or LAN. So far this router is doing everything I need it to including streaming HD video (but so did my AC66U).

Happen to have the 217 firmware lying around? I can't find it anywhere and want to check if it will fix the port forwarding loopback problems I have.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Didn't know the S4 has a single stream ac wifi.

It's not a market I have my finger on the pulse of, but last I read Samsung was the only phone/tablet maker to have AC in a portable device. Off the top of my head I can't think of a multi stream 802.11n ph/ablet either, but I could be mistaken.

One characteristic that I hear touted frequently about AC is MU-MIMO where a single stream on the AP can talk to a single steam device and the remaining streams can talk to multi-stream clients, all going down simultaneously. I'm not 100% certain that MU-MIMO isn't part of the 802.11n spec.

 

[chris431]

And might be a fluke, but I disabled IPv6 advertising and my 2.4ghz wireless stopped working but 5ghz was fine.
****
UPDATE: Just reset advertisting back to enabled and my 2.4ghz client is fast again. VERY odd.

Same thing happened here on an AC66U except all wireless stopped until I re-enabled it. Odd bug to continue through to the AC68U.

 

[waltersmith]

I downloaded 217 firmware the day before my ac68u arrived last week. I'm just using it as a wireless router. The only problem I have found with 217 firmware is that Asus DDNS is not working with port forwarding. Port forwarding works if I enter the global IP address when accessing via WAN. Just can't seem to get it to work with the same asus ddns that used on the N66U. Registration completes, but somehow dynamic IP not getting passed I guess. I thought maybe that was why they pulled 217 firmware.

I remember having similar problems with the early N66U firmwares when it first launched.

Other than that, range and performance is top notch. My 2.4 ghz signal is much stronger than the N66U. I tested 2.4 Ghz on Samsung Galaxy S4 all the way upstairs far in the corner of a bathroom that barely held a connection with the N66U. The client signal never drops below -60dB if you trust the Android Wifi Analyzer app readings... 5Ghz channel also holds up better, but down to -65db. Improving range of over the N66U is an impressive accomplishment.

My older N66U has now replaced a much old router as a wireless LAN bridge for my TV/media devices which are pretty far away from the AC68u's position. I installed Tomato on the N66u so I can use bridge with WPA2-Personal authentication (proper safe authentication not supported with default Asus firmware which only offers a WDS bridge mode).

About a week now with AC68u and the bridge connection always maintains 450 Mbps rate. My video on demand streaming, Vudu/Amazon, no longer suffers from weak connection despite the far distance from the AC68U. A solid wireless connection can help when my ISP gets slow or congested with higher latency sometimes.

This is a solid wireless bridge connection. From the n66u Tomato system info page:

Channel 153 - 5.765 GHz
Channel Width 40 MHz
Interference Level Acceptable
Rate 450 Mbps
RSSI -25 dBm
Noise -83 dBm
Signal Quality 58

So to sum it up, 2.4 Ghz range is surprisingly noticeably improved with the ac68u over the n66u. 5Ghz on a bridge is solid 450 Mbps connection rate with an N Asus router. And performance and reliability over the first week has been solid. Absolutely no connection or slowness issues.

Not sure what's going on with DDNS but as long as port forwarding works I am fine. The actual wireless functionality of the AC68U already appears stellar on both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. This is what matters. Very happy so far.

 

[vikesfan80]

Stange messages in Sys Log

Anyone else seeing these in the sys log - general:

kernel: br0: received packet on eth1 with own address as source address

Have a bunch of those messages but doesn't see to affect performance.

Thanks.

 

[jayboyyyy]

It's not a market I have my finger on the pulse of, but last I read Samsung was the only phone/tablet maker to have AC in a portable device. Off the top of my head I can't think of a multi stream 802.11n ph/ablet either, but I could be mistaken.

One characteristic that I hear touted frequently about AC is MU-MIMO where a single stream on the AP can talk to a single steam device and the remaining streams can talk to multi-stream clients, all going down simultaneously. I'm not 100% certain that MU-MIMO isn't part of the 802.11n spec.

Moto X I'm getting the same AC connection. I assume that must mean the Vzw droid line also has AC built in.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Anyone else seeing these in the sys log - general:

kernel: br0: received packet on eth1 with own address as source address

Have a bunch of those messages but doesn't see to affect performance.

Thanks.

Yes, if you search the threads with that it is mentioned often and Merlin has addressed. Sorry I can't answer off the top of my head but I seem to remember it wasn't actually problematic.

 

[vikesfan80]

Will do thanks

 

[geops]

I downloaded 217 firmware the day before my ac68u arrived last week. I'm just using it as a wireless router. The only problem I have found with 217 firmware is that Asus DDNS is not working with port forwarding. Port forwarding works if I enter the global IP address when accessing via WAN. Just can't seem to get it to work with the same asus ddns that used on the N66U. Registration completes, but somehow dynamic IP not getting passed I guess. I thought maybe that was why they pulled 217 firmware.

I remember having similar problems with the early N66U firmwares when it first launched.

Other than that, range and performance is top notch. My 2.4 ghz signal is much stronger than the N66U. I tested 2.4 Ghz on Samsung Galaxy S4 all the way upstairs far in the corner of a bathroom that barely held a connection with the N66U. The client signal never drops below -60dB if you trust the Android Wifi Analyzer app readings... 5Ghz channel also holds up better, but down to -65db. Improving range of over the N66U is an impressive accomplishment.

My older N66U has now replaced a much old router as a wireless LAN bridge for my TV/media devices which are pretty far away from the AC68u's position. I installed Tomato on the N66u so I can use bridge with WPA2-Personal authentication (proper safe authentication not supported with default Asus firmware which only offers a WDS bridge mode).

About a week now with AC68u and the bridge connection always maintains 450 Mbps rate. My video on demand streaming, Vudu/Amazon, no longer suffers from weak connection despite the far distance from the AC68U. A solid wireless connection can help when my ISP gets slow or congested with higher latency sometimes.

This is a solid wireless bridge connection. From the n66u Tomato system info page:

Channel 153 - 5.765 GHz
Channel Width 40 MHz
Interference Level Acceptable
Rate 450 Mbps
RSSI -25 dBm
Noise -83 dBm
Signal Quality 58

So to sum it up, 2.4 Ghz range is surprisingly noticeably improved with the ac68u over the n66u. 5Ghz on a bridge is solid 450 Mbps connection rate with an N Asus router. And performance and reliability over the first week has been solid. Absolutely no connection or slowness issues.

Not sure what's going on with DDNS but as long as port forwarding works I am fine. The actual wireless functionality of the AC68U already appears stellar on both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. This is what matters. Very happy so far.

Can you upload the 217 firmwre somewhere for me to test?

 

[vikesfan80]

I put a copy here...
http://www.fast-files.com/getfile.aspx?file=67028

 

[RogerSC]

Anyone else seeing these in the sys log - general:

kernel: br0: received packet on eth1 with own address as source address

Have a bunch of those messages but doesn't see to affect performance.

Thanks.

I was getting those for a while, and they just stopped. Oddly enough, they stopped when I changed my wireless password to a much longer, totally obscure one. Probably a coincidence *smile*, but they seem to come and go. Haven't come back for a week now, and I was getting one or two every 4 hours or so. Yes, didn't seem to affect performance, but they bother you, you kind of wonder what's going on.

The other thing that I got from googling around is that these can be associated with bridges. I do have an ethernet wireless bridge, which I took out and still got the messages, so while they apparently can be associated with bridges, the bridge (external to the router) that I'm using was apparently not the cause.

 

[vikesfan80]

Thanks for the follow up response...(I also have a bridge in place as well btw)I was doing a little research and found something about it being the bridge between the 2.4 and 5gz wireless bands.

 

[geops]

I put a copy here...
http://www.fast-files.com/getfile.aspx?file=67028

When I try to download the file I get "The resource cannot be found".