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Upgrading from RT-AC68U: RT-BE88U or RT-BE92U or other?

TnF

Occasional Visitor
So i've finally got 1gbps fiber at home a few days ago. I had been running 100/20mbps cable, and ADSL even before that. It was around the time I bought my Asus RT-AC68U 10 years ago. Solid unit, been running Merlin fw with AMTM/Diversion/FlexQoS modulesONT as bridge mode->RT-AC68U->Devices and other access points around the house (old routers)Poor thing however can't handle 1gbps on WAN port, it's limited around 500mbps in best case scenario, CPU are pegging hard with all this load and in summer it's definitely gonna be worse when it's going to be overheating.Thus it's the time to upgrade it now.I've researched a bit and came to these options:
  • RT-BE88U:
Pros: 2x10gbps ports, one of them SFP+ (although i don't have current use for it), 2.6ghz quad cpu, 2gb ram, 4x4 steam, 8 lan ports, Merlin fw available and stable
Cons: 330eur, too wide to fit to the same location without modifying things, no 6ghz, 1 usb port
  • RT-BE92U:
Pros: Cheaper at 265eur, 6ghz, 10gbps wan for future proofing, same cpu i believe but downclocked to 2ghz (could be possibly overclocked with merlin), narrower so it fits in the same location
Cons: No merlin fw yet or even confirmed planned (but i am confident it will), 1 of lan ports is shared if you want to use dual wan, unstable Asus FW as of writting, 1gb ram, 1 usb port

-Third option? Some older Asus router or other brand with other custom FW? I don't think it's worth it, at the moment i already have 2 devices that support wifi 6E, back when i bought the RT-AC68U i didn't even had 5ghz devices yet. Lan wise, i only have 2 devices with 2.5g. What do you think?
 
AX86U Pro. Do you really want to be a beta tester for WIFI 7?
 
Given my experience with WiFi 7, and the availability of kit which can make use of it, go for WiFi 7 if you have money to burn. If you have kit which supports 6E, buy something which can handle 6E well. When that router goes to Silicon Heaven then you might consider WiFi 8 or whatever follows that because either other kit will have gone bang, or you've got the money to incinerate on whatever's the latest and greatest at that time.

Save your money for wine, women (substitute as necessary), or a new GPU! Order may or may not be significant ;)
 
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I jumped on the BE92 when my WAN port on my AX92 was having issues.
I’m very doubtful that you will see Merlin on the BE92.
The MLO implementation is not stable on the BE92. I get less than 24 hours with MLO on before all wireless connections become unstable and I have to hard power cycle.
 
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and other access points around the house

What other access points around the house? Do you need a wired only router?
 
Well i've ordered the BE92 after all. I don't need MLA to be functional right now neither have any 6ghz devices. I am sure they will get it working in a year.
There was also the option for the BE86U but it was expensive as well (310eur, makes more sense to go to the BE88U at that point).
What i hope though is to get merlin support at least from the fork. The CPU is definitely re-used from previous models.

What other access points around the house? Do you need a wired only router?
I have various other old repurposed routers set up as access points with same SSID and spaced frequency channels so i get coverage around the whole house (2 linksys, 1 virgin hub, 1 tp-link etc;p). Issue is houses here are made with concrete so you can't cover the whole house (even though is just a small one); 2.4ghz barely gets any signal outside, forget 5ghz. But the main router is just outside my bedroom door; i used to only connect via wifi but put a lan cable though to get slightly better latency (in practice changing to fiber is what made difference)

Given my experience with WiFi 7, and the availability of kit which can make use of it, go for WiFi 7 if you have money to burn. If you have kit which supports 6E, buy something which can handle 6E well. When that router goes to Silicon Heaven then you might consider WiFi 8 or whatever follows that because either other kit will have gone bang, or you've got the money to incinerate on whatever's the latest and greatest at that time.

Save your money for wine, women (substitute as necessary), or a new GPU! Order may or may not be significant ;)

I am not buying any new gpu from these scalpers (Jensen Huang awarded 1st nobel of scalping). They may as well rot on the shelves; i am on a modded reference 6900xt i managed to get during the lockdown, even though it was overpriced (compared to 6800xt) for 1000eur works perfectly fine and will keep using it until its capacitors start to pop off;p Women...i think i would pay just for her to stop complaining for no reason. Wine might be the only of the 3 worth paying for ;p
 

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