Asus vs. Orbi

[davenpn]

Hi all,

Currently, I have both the Asus ROG Rapture GT6, Asus XT12 Pro, and Netgear Orbi RBK852 and am debating which one to keep. It seems as if the Orbi is more stable overall but weaker/less “sexy” than the Asus. There are also additional charges for internet security and parental controls when Asus provides it for free.

That being said, I really want to go with one of the Asus routers but when I ran those systems devices kept losing connection (specifically, our baby monitor - which is in the room next to where the main router is connected). Whereas, the Orbi didn’t drop the connection once.

After doing research, I noticed that Orbi’s RTS Threshold is set to 64 and Asus defaults to 2457. If I lower this to 64 will it provide stability? Again, I want to go with the Asus but I can’t if our baby monitor keeps losing connection. Any tips or tricks to update the Asus settings to provide more stability?

Disabling smart connect, splitting the bands, disabling beamforming, disabling DFS, changing to 80mhz, updating the channels, and binding the monitor to the closest AP has not worked. Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[RandomUser777]

Definitely worth a try.

I've used lower RTS thresholds because of certain devices and a more noisy environment.

Before you go as low as 64, try something like 1200 or 1400, then maybe 768, then maybe 500, if you end up at 64 and then so be it.

I generally don't see much of a performance hit.

 

[davenpn]

Definitely worth a try.

I've used lower RTS thresholds because of certain devices and a more noisy environment.

Before you go as low as 64, try something like 1200 or 1400, then maybe 768, then maybe 500, if you end up at 64 and then so be it.

I generally don't see much of a performance hit.

I appreciate the reply. I will give it a try tonight and report back. Have you had good luck with Asus? Any other settings I should adjust for better stability?

 

[RandomUser777]

I appreciate the reply. I will give it a try tonight and report back. Have you had good luck with Asus? Any other settings I should adjust for better stability?

I have two independent networks, a home network and a small office Network elsewhere. Both are Asus with AI mesh. I'm very pleased with both.

You can try changing beacon to 90 or 80, but generally what I found is lowering the RTS is the best bang for your buck.

Some may say enable or disable different beamforming methods, but again just try RTS first.

 

[davenpn]

Is it common to have reduced speeds when you lower the RTS threshold? I guess what am I “giving up” lowering it? Also, what does the beacon setting do? Thanks again for your help. So far. No dropped connections!

 

[tgl]

I had an Orbi RBK853 system, I think exactly the same as yours except 2 satellites not one, back in 2021. I was enchanted with it for about a month, because it was a big performance improvement over the Apple Airports I had before it. My level of enchantment went downhill to the point where I replaced it (writing off a rather large investment) after only five months. The main thing I did not like was that the system would not work at all without a netgear.com account, and you could not turn off the remote management features. In particular you could not turn off automatic firmware updates. Call me a control freak, but I'd rather do software updates at times of my own choosing. The event that actually convinced me to junk the things was when I woke up one morning to discover that an overnight update had bricked the base station. I was able to recover it by hard-reset and reconfigure from scratch (so maybe "brick" is too harsh) but I had other things I needed to be doing that day. Even before that I was getting less pleased because it seemed that performance and reliability went downhill from when it was new, and because the web management GUI was so clunky, slow, and hard to use.

I'm sure that my complaints stem from poor firmware rather than bad hardware, and it's possible that Netgear improved the firmware since then. But in the time I had the system it sure seemed that each firmware update got worse not better, so I've lost faith in them.

So I can't encourage you to choose the Netgear. ASUS have their own problems (and I've moved on from them too), but at least they don't force you to enable remote management or automatic updates.

But as for your specific question - I'm dubious that RTS threshold is a magic wand here. In my time with ASUS gear the secret to happiness was using a stable firmware version, so I wonder which one you are on and if you've tried others.

 

[SDGTR]

My experience with Netgear stuff was the Nighthawk MK63 mesh system. After that I have zero interest or desire to have anything to do with Netgear.