And So It Begins... Asus Announces First 802.11ax Router

[RMerlin]

There are references to an RT-AD7200 in the Asuswrt source code, but there's no information available at this point.

 

[adrian]

I'm not familiar with 11ax standard, but it sounds to me like a standard that will be useless unless you are so close to your router that you might as well be connected via Ethernet.

This!

 

[RMerlin]

This!

You are confusing 802.11ax with 802.11ad.

 

[sfx2000]

ASUS announced the first router based on the draft 802.11ax standard at IFA in Berlin. The RT-AX88U is a 4x4 design using Broadcom's 11ax platform, according to WikiDevi.

I would just hold off for now - the 802.11ax spec is still in active development, and early silicon likely will have issues with the released spec...

Broadcom is trying to cut the discussion short by releasing early chips there...

 

[David B]

the 802.11ax spec is still in active development, and early silicon likely will have issues with the released spec...

Even ac still has problems and it's been around since 2013. Router dropping is still a common problem. I've been dealing with it on and off since I got my 88U several months ago. It's been good as of late, but it still means that something's wrong with the design.

 

[princi]

From https://wikidevi.com/wiki/ASUS_RT-AX88U

ETH chip1: Broadcom BCM49408
ETH chip2: Aquantia AQR107 ~ (Single port 5 speed)
ETH chip3: Aquantia AQR407 ~ (Quad port 5 speed)
Switch: Realtek RTL8370MB
LAN speed: 100/1000/10000
LAN ports: 8
WAN speed: 100/1000/10000
WAN ports: 1

Respect!

Lots of consumer 10G gear starting to hit the market (eg. Latest Netgear switch). Although, 10G-baseT copper WAN connection still means a noisy media converter. Pity no SFP+ WAN port.

 

[David B]

Even ac still has problems and it's been around since 2013. Router dropping is still a common problem. I've been dealing with it on and off since I got my 88U several months ago. It's been good as of late, but it still means that something's wrong with the design.

And I take that back! I just dropped again tonight.

 

[sanke1]

And I take that back! I just dropped again tonight.

My RT-AC88U has so far never even once dropped 5Ghz. I am using it close to 1 and a 1/2 year non-stop with devices connecting mostly to 5Ghz. The only times it has rebooted is when upgrading firmwares.

You might have a unit from faulty initial batch or I might be using a higher revision model.

According to my personal opinion, RT-AC88U has same or slightly less range than RT-AC68U. The 4 Ethernet ports communicate with other 4 Ethernet ports using a single 1 gbps link. That’s a potential bottleneck. It gets incredibly hot in normal use. In Mumbai’s summer where temperatures reach 35° C, I can cook an egg on it.
In short RT-AC88U is pure waste of money.

I am sticking to ASUS routers because I love the WOL feature and I can use ASUS DDNS service to login to my router and wake any of my PCs in office network and start working remotely using TeamViewer.

Lets see how this RT-AX88U turns out. (I made up that name)

 

[David B]

My RT-AC88U has so far never even once dropped 5Ghz. I am using it close to 1 and a 1/2 year non-stop with devices connecting mostly to 5Ghz. The only times it has rebooted is when upgrading firmwares.

You might have a unit from faulty initial batch or I might be using a higher revision model.

According to my personal opinion, RT-AC88U has same or slightly less range than RT-AC68U. The 4 Ethernet ports communicate with other 4 Ethernet ports using a single 1 gbps link. That’s a potential bottleneck. It gets incredibly hot in normal use. In Mumbai’s summer where temperatures reach 35° C, I can cook an egg on it.
In short RT-AC88U is pure waste of money.

I am sticking to ASUS routers because I love the WOL feature and I can use ASUS DDNS service to login to my router and wake any of my PCs in office network and start working remotely using TeamViewer.

Lets see how this RT-AX88U turns out. (I made up that name)

Well after 9 months of dealing with an unreliable 5GHz connection, I finally contacted Asus customer support and began the return and replacement process. 35° C in Mumbai during the summer? I need to move there! To take care of the heat problem, consider putting a fan underneath it. As for the 4 Ethernet ports communicating with the other 4 via single link, I did not know about this until after I had purchased the router, but it doesn't seem to have caused any issues. Most likely because out of the 6 devices that I have connected to my 88U, only one of them is used in a situation where it could need gigabit speeds. The rest of them never have a need to cap 100Mbps.

 

[pete y testing]

In short RT-AC88U is pure waste of money.

you would be better of buying an air conditioner , as anything running in constant 35deg plus temps is going to struggle without active cooling , the max working temp is 40deg c , so running it so hot is always going to be an issue , install merlin fw on it and see how hot those chipsets are getting , excessive heat will also reduce lifespan so its wise to actively cool it and when i say cool it , not just blow hot fan air at it

According to my personal opinion, RT-AC88U has same or slightly less range than RT-AC68U.

then you ether have a faulty unit or a local wifi environment that is actively blocking the signal or just simply wifi congestion / interference

in my testing the 88u will work on both 2,4 and 5 gig where the 68u wont get coverage to

 

[Vexira]

Gold antennas I have to have it ASAP!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Needs to be red with gold antennas and the whole antenna needs to be gold for me to be interested.

 

[Vexira]

Few interesting things:

• Ethernet ports look like 10 GbE! The Aquantia AQR407 can provide four 10/5/2.5/1 GbE port and the AQR107 provides another one. Specs on the Broadcom BCM49408 are vague, but it looks like a 5-port 2.5/1 GbE switch. I think the AQR107 is used for the WAN port, so 4x 10 GbE and 4x 2.5 GbE LAN and 1x 10 GbE WAN.
• 5 GHz is a 4x4 MIMO implementation with 160MHz channels, good for 1200 Gb/s for each stream and 4.8 Gb/s total.
• 2.4 GHz is also a 4x4 MIMO implementation, but doesn't support 802.11ax! It's 802.11n with NitroQAM (1024-QAM) and some other proprietary Broadcom stuff. It's really disappointing if the final product doesn't support 802.11ax on 2.4 GHz, since it is one of the big improvements of 802.11ax.

It's not final spec based I'm assuming it's draft spec based.

 

[Vexira]

My RT-AC88U has so far never even once dropped 5Ghz. I am using it close to 1 and a 1/2 year non-stop with devices connecting mostly to 5Ghz. The only times it has rebooted is when upgrading firmwares.

You might have a unit from faulty initial batch or I might be using a higher revision model.

According to my personal opinion, RT-AC88U has same or slightly less range than RT-AC68U. The 4 Ethernet ports communicate with other 4 Ethernet ports using a single 1 gbps link. That’s a potential bottleneck. It gets incredibly hot in normal use. In Mumbai’s summer where temperatures reach 35° C, I can cook an egg on it.
In short RT-AC88U is pure waste of money.

I am sticking to ASUS routers because I love the WOL feature and I can use ASUS DDNS service to login to my router and wake any of my PCs in office network and start working remotely using TeamViewer.

Lets see how this RT-AX88U turns out. (I made up that name)

My 88u was worth every penny I played for it, the wifi range is insane it can hit the back yard of my place. You need to invest in a laptop cooler for it. Or a liquid cooler.

 

[netmik3]

Man I'm barely using ac with 1x1 on one device. I liked n the best.

 

[bilboSNB]

for some reason getting this when I click on this thread:

"
Deceptive site ahead
Attackers on wl500g.info may trick you into doing something dangerous like installing software or revealing your personal information (for example, passwords, phone numbers or credit cards).
"

 

[RMerlin]

for some reason getting this when I click on this thread:

"
Deceptive site ahead
Attackers on wl500g.info may trick you into doing something dangerous like installing software or revealing your personal information (for example, passwords, phone numbers or credit cards).
"

Looks like the domain wl500g.info which hosts the image in the first post is now blacklisted by Google.

I'll remove the image from the first post to fix this.

(pinging @thiggins on this, just to let him know)

 

[Etz]

Wonder how its internal layout will look like...

Is Realtek switch still connected with 1G to main switch or with something befier.

 

[sfx2000]

My best guess is that the WAN/LAN Aquanta chips will be on PCI-e, maybe with a PLX switch there, along with the WiFi radios in similar configuration. At least, that's how I would lay it out at first glance.

The realtek is likely hanging off the SGMII+ port on the BCM48408, even though likely not needed, as the 48408 has enough GigE ports as it is.

With enough horsepower to run Broadcom’s new 5G-HD platform and scale for future needs as well.It includes a quad core CPU complex, integrated 5-port GE Switch and PHYs, as well as interfaces for 2.5G Ethernet connectivity.
Features

• Low power quad core B53, 64-bit ARM @ 1.8 GHz
• 1MB shared L2 cache w/ ECC
• IPSEC Crypto support
• 32-bit DDR3-1600
• 3x PCIe Gen2, USB3, SATA3
• 2.5G-phy support (SGMII+)
• 5 Integrated GE PHYs and switch

 

[maxbraketorque]

RT-AX88U was highlighted again at CES. Must admit that I'm curious to see how much ASUS is going to charge for this draft AX device that should have great CPU and radio specs.

 

[thiggins]

RT-AX88U was highlighted again at CES. Must admit that I'm curious to see how much ASUS is going to charge for this draft AX device that should have great CPU and radio specs.

This and all other AX routers announced so far are nowhere near ready.
You can assume they will test to see if they can get more than the $500 levels that have already been proven to work.