Rt-ac68u

[Fester1952]

I have my AC68U for almost 2 weeks, and I feel I am fine with it. maybe I don't use fancy function, such as VPN. wifi strength looks fine on my router.

At the moment, mine is an expensive paper weight!
There has not been one firmware release yet that I get anywhere near the
performance of my RT-N66U.

 

[waltersmith]

I have my AC68U for almost 2 weeks, and I feel I am fine with it. maybe I don't use fancy function, such as VPN. wifi strength looks fine on my router.

Same here. 68U is better than my 66U. Don't understand why so many folks have problems. Hopefully they cleared NVRAM and deleted old router wifi profiles on all their devices.

 

[Fester1952]

Same here. 68U is better than my 66U. Don't understand why so many folks have problems. Hopefully they cleared NVRAM and deleted old router wifi profiles on all their devices.

I have 32 clients, 8 of those are wi-fi IP security cameras.
Most are robotic cameras, they often lose connection, or don't connect a all, if they do connect they cannot be rotated. I cannot access them via DDNS from the Internet. NVRAM was cleared between updates.
If I go back to my old RT-N66U, everything is back up and working the way it should, great connection on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.
I have tried and messed with every setting on this thing, I am beginning to think maybe I have a faulty router, but others are having issues as well.

 

[ronan_zj]

I have 32 clients, 8 of those are wi-fi IP security cameras.
Most are robotic cameras, they often lose connection, or don't connect a all, if they do connect they cannot be rotated. I cannot access them via DDNS from the Internet. NVRAM was cleared between updates.
If I go back to my old RT-N66U, everything is back up and working the way it should, great connection on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.
I have tried and messed with every setting on this thing, I am beginning to think maybe I have a faulty router, but others are having issues as well.

yea, I would be pissed off if my old router had better performance than new one.

 

[luka_w]

I have 32 clients, 8 of those are wi-fi IP security ...

new differ from better, like someone said and wrote already many times;
if most what you need is stability, you should stick to RT-N66U, which is matured and proven product;
it can take months (or never...) for RT-AC68U to get to the point where RT-N66U is (at least in the same technology 'area')

 

[mikey]

new differ from better, like someone said and wrote already many times;
if most what you need is stability, you should stick to RT-N66U, which is matured and proven product;
it can take months (or never...) for RT-AC68U to get to the point where RT-N66U is (at least in the same technology 'area')

Maybe I'm a little "green" when it comes to Asus routers because I bought the N66U late in the game. It worked fine until they broke the 2.4Ghz signal in the last two firmwares: part of what prompted me to buy the AC68 (I know, faulty logic). But I'm not used to buying a product to have it not work for months. The Netgear R7000 is brand new too and I have zero problems with that. I don't think anyone can argue that Asus needs to do better testing before releasing products.

My AC68 had the same security camera problems as Fester: they'd disconnect randomly and would never reconnect until you restart them. My Galaxy Note II would throw "authentication failure" on the 5Ghz network every few minutes. The 2.4Ghz WiFi would slow down after a while and start "stalling" for up to 10 seconds at a time. My PS3 would randomly throw connection errors when trying to use multiplayer. People on iPads and iPods would complain "what's wrong with your WiFi... it's locked up". The R7000 has none of these issues. And yes, I did all manner of nvram clearing including the hard reset, factory reset, and the mtd erase command. Nothing helped.

Mike

 

[bigcid10]

In this day and age with the Internet, looking up reviews before purchasing a new product makes it easier than ever to know before hand if a product can be trusted. I know I never buy any electronic product without looking it up online first.

Putting such a label on a box many people purchase online won't do any good in the first place...

that is true for me also,but they should make the public more aware of these
situations and be more upfront
this isn't my first trip to the rodeo and I'm not ready to throw the towel
but that's my 10 cents

 

[mikey]

that is true for me also,but they should make the public more aware of these
situations and be more upfront
this isn't my first trip to the rodeo and I'm not ready to throw the towel
but that's my 10 cents

I reviewed both the AC68U and R7000 thoroughly before I bought. Amazon reviews are 4 stars for the AC68U and 4.5 stars for the R7000. Makes it hard to make a decision when most are 5 stars but there's a significant cluster of 1's and 2's. Sometimes you have to just take a chance and wonder if the 1 and 2 star people have peculiar setups, didn't set it up right, etc. Unfortunately for me, I fell in the 1 star category. So chance taken. Chance failed. Moving on.

Mike

 

[whsbuss]

I'm really concerned about this router. I know Asus is trying to address all the issues the first owners concerns. But I think with their 3 week delay re-stocking etailers there must be something beyond firmware causing all these problems. As much as I hate getting another Netgear, the R7000 continues to get great reviews with a limited number of issues.

 

[ronan_zj]

We will see what is the HW revision for Newegg AC68U, the one I have from Bestbuy is Rev.A1

 

[jayboyyyy]

I'm really concerned about this router. I know Asus is trying to address all the issues the first owners concerns. But I think with their 3 week delay re-stocking etailers there must be something beyond firmware causing all these problems. As much as I hate getting another Netgear, the R7000 continues to get great reviews with a limited number of issues.

I don't think you can conclude it something beyond firmware just because of restocking. If you released it and noticed major issues with firmware that might take a month to develop, you wouldn't want to continue releasing the product for fear that it could tank the sales entirely. It would make sense to hold back stock, fix it, then ship out, then reduce the price shortly after that so you can get the most customers and best review. They probably just pushed it out when other companies did for fear of losing the market even though their employees doing the grunt work said it wasn't ready. The big boy boss said IDC, fix it as fast as you can, we have to get this thing released now. IMHO

 

[waltersmith]

While some non-core router features that I do not use may indeed have some bugs, which is very common with new multi-feature electronics products released these days, I can confirm that all the core features of this router work perfectly and reliably on all three versions of firmware I have tested.

I only use QoS, port forwarding with HW acceleration enabled, firewall, and 2.4 and 5 Ghz wireless. All of that performs better than my old RT-N66U router with regards to throughput and range. Reliability is the same, no issues whatsoever across my 20 or so home devices.

Try resetting and unplugging your router for 30 seconds. Try disabling non-core router features and see if you still encounter problems. If yes, probably a good idea to delete the wifi profiles on your connecting clients and try again. Also make sure Windows devices are using the latest drivers.

I have seen Internet speculation of defects with newly released electronics that I have purchased for many years. In all cases the speculation of defects, recalls, and stop shipments turned out to be incorrect.

 

[RMerlin]

I only use QoS, port forwarding with HW acceleration enabled

QoS isn't compatible with HW acceleration. When you enable QoS, the router will automatically disable its HW acceleration regardless of how you have it set on the webui. That might be why you aren't experiencing some of the issues related to it, like port forward / NAT loopback issues reported by some.

 

[whsbuss]

I don't think you can conclude it something beyond firmware just because of restocking. If you released it and noticed major issues with firmware that might take a month to develop, you wouldn't want to continue releasing the product for fear that it could tank the sales entirely. It would make sense to hold back stock, fix it, then ship out, then reduce the price shortly after that so you can get the most customers and best review. They probably just pushed it out when other companies did for fear of losing the market even though their employees doing the grunt work said it wasn't ready. The big boy boss said IDC, fix it as fast as you can, we have to get this thing released now. IMHO

Well stated. I am just disappointed with their rollout.

 

[mikey]

While some non-core router features that I do not use may indeed have some bugs, which is very common with new multi-feature electronics products released these days, I can confirm that all the core features of this router work perfectly and reliably on all three versions of firmware I have tested.

I only use QoS, port forwarding with HW acceleration enabled, firewall, and 2.4 and 5 Ghz wireless. All of that performs better than my old RT-N66U router with regards to throughput and range. Reliability is the same, no issues whatsoever across my 20 or so home devices.

Try resetting and unplugging your router for 30 seconds. Try disabling non-core router features and see if you still encounter problems. If yes, probably a good idea to delete the wifi profiles on your connecting clients and try again. Also make sure Windows devices are using the latest drivers.

I have seen Internet speculation of defects with newly released electronics that I have purchased for many years. In all cases the speculation of defects, recalls, and stop shipments turned out to be incorrect.

And I can report the opposite, which makes me wonder if maybe it is a hardware problem and maybe it only occurs in a certain percentage. I'm using less than you are, and it was unusable. Only thing I use is port forwarding. I don't use QOS or anything else. Nothing complicated here. And as I pointed out previously, I tried every reset known and none had any effect including complete power pull, power off/on, factory reset, and even erasing nvram with the mtd erase and commit. Nothing changed: all my devices would disconnect randomly and the router wouldn't let them reconnect until they were powered off/on. It was just random as to when it would happen.

Just another data point.

Mike

 

[ronan_zj]

Based on the review from Amazon, it looks like R7000 gets more thumbs up than AC68U, and Amazon does not sell AC68U anymore, not even waiting list. Does it mean Asus will release a new FW rev soon?

 

[jlake]

And I can report the opposite, which makes me wonder if maybe it is a hardware problem and maybe it only occurs in a certain percentage. I'm using less than you are, and it was unusable. Only thing I use is port forwarding. I don't use QOS or anything else. Nothing complicated here. And as I pointed out previously, I tried every reset known and none had any effect including complete power pull, power off/on, factory reset, and even erasing nvram with the mtd erase and commit. Nothing changed: all my devices would disconnect randomly and the router wouldn't let them reconnect until they were powered off/on. It was just random as to when it would happen.

Just another data point.

Mike

Try the basic troubleshooting steps in link below:


http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=12453

 

[PrivateJoker]

It was a simple question. Don't make it too complicated. 802.11ac 1300 connected, any file manager, SMB 2.0 protocol as already mentioned and monitoring interface tx/rx but even the file copy dialog numbers will do as I'm looking for double speed not a tiny difference.

If it was simple why can't you give us a hardwired test from same machine so we have a basis for comparison?

The file copy dialog box? On a Mac?? Let's see a screenshot of that calculating on the fly transfer speeds.

It you're on a MAC try Helios free speed test. It uses fixed 300MB file test size but is quick & easy.

 

[geops]

If it was simple why can't you give us a hardwired test from same machine so we have a basis for comparison?

The file copy dialog box? On a Mac?? Let's see a screenshot of that calculating on the fly transfer speeds.

It you're on a MAC try Helios free speed test. It uses fixed 300MB file test size but is quick & easy.

OK, I'll entertain you. 100+MB/s hardwired via SMB. As I said, this is not a storage limitation. The MBP does 700MB/s on the PCI-e SSD.

P.S. You also asked for file sizes: I tried multiple files, all of them larger than 1GB.

 

[PrivateJoker]

OK, I'll entertain you. 100+MB/s hardwired via SMB. As I said, this is not a storage limitation. The MBP does 700MB/s on the PCI-e SSD.

P.S. You also asked for file sizes: I tried multiple files, all of them larger than 1GB.

Ok, the #s you've tossed out are 30, 60, 100, & 200 MB/s? How about just running Helios test on wired & wireless, grabbing screenshots of those results (and another screenshot of holding down option & click airport menubar icon) so we can be super clear on the wifi connection at time of test.

Using the same program to do the exact same test over and over again is much more reliable of a benchmark than fleeting guesstimates based on ETA to do a file copy/move. It eliminates many spurious things that can influence a result unintentionally.

You're asking for help answering a specific performance question, and giving mostly vague (yet even, round numbered) answers.

I'm trying to help..I'm aware it's not a storage issue, I wasn't implying that it was, I was implying that your #s compared to another person with another laptop and a different file server isn't as useful as it is to compare your own exact same setup with just the NIC differing between tests...for a baseline.