ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 Wireless-AC5300 Tri-Band Gaming Router Reviewed

[pege63]

Yes that theoretically true.
But then you have the HDD /SSD in PC or laptop how fast they are and so on so on, you dont just want full speed from one port to a other port.
You want Gb speed in the whole chain as much is possible not just from Internet but in the whole homenetwork.

 

[RMerlin]

1 Gbps is often a marketing gimmick. It depends on the fiber technology used by your ISP, some will cap things at 940 Mbps.

 

[geek_ninja]

Case in point is: I pay for 1 Gb internet (ok, fine 940 Mb/s) and it really works! I don't want my router to be the bottleneck. Actually I never thought this might be a bottleneck since 1Gb LAN-LAN is a solved problem (?) and WAN-LAN shouldn't be different (silly and naive me still thinks that). I'm trying to figure out what is happening with GT-AC5300 in this regard because otherwise it impresses: WiFi is faster than most other routers and it has 8 LAN ports. And I'm ready to pay for this.

I was wondering if anyone could retest with latest firmwares to see if the problem is fixed. Or maybe some of the gurus here (Tim, RMerlin please?) say one of the two:
1) This router has a hardware flaw X and Y, that's why it can't handle 1 Gb/s "ish" WAN-LAN speed. And it can't be fixed via SW update.
or
2) The firmware XYZ is buggy and that's why we only get 719 Mb/s WAN-LAN. We tested with firmware ABC and it improved. So there is hope in a few months it will actually get to 1 Gb/s "ish".

What of those to do you think is more plausible?

Or maybe I misunderstood the test and depending on configuration it actually handles 1Gb/s WAN-LAN?

 

[RMerlin]

I don't have a GT-AC5300, so I can't comment on its behaviour/stability/performance beyond what is already posted by others on these forums, sorry.

and WAN-LAN shouldn't be different

WAN-LAN is quite different, as the router must perform NAT on traffic going between both segments, in addition to any extra processing (traffic monitoring, QoS, firewall processing, etc...).

 

[geek_ninja]

I don't have a GT-AC5300, so I can't comment on its behaviour/stability/performance beyond what is already posted by others on these forums, sorry.



WAN-LAN is quite different, as the router must perform NAT on traffic going between both segments, in addition to any extra processing (traffic monitoring, QoS, firewall processing, etc...).

You are right, I didn't think about that.

But you have experience with RT, right? So comparing to that GT has a faster processor and double the RAM so theoretically it shouldn't be slowed down as much by the same tasks (NAT, traffic monitoring, etc.) and bet at least as fast. Why would you think it performs worse?

 

[RMerlin]

Why would you think it performs worse?

The GT-AC5300 is a completely different architecture. Different CPU instruction set (it's also the first 64-bit version), different switch... Different Broadcom software stack too. Even the Trend Micro DPI engine is a completely new one. This all might simply require more finetuning to work at its full potential.

 

[randomName]

Hello. Late to the party but upon playing around with my old RT N66U it got me looking at what's out there as of late and it's the end of 2017. Read through the thread and the article and I'm interested in how the GT model is doing now. I imagine it's gone through some Firmware upgrades, and was curios how it's doing. I've searched posts on this forum and checked reviews on e-tailer sites so i'm kinda curious what people are saying on here, as this would be more of an authoritative type place to seek questions about networking hardware etc.

Thanks

 

[John DeLuca]

Hello. Late to the party but upon playing around with my old RT N66U it got me looking at what's out there as of late and it's the end of 2017. Read through the thread and the article and I'm interested in how the GT model is doing now. I imagine it's gone through some Firmware upgrades, and was curios how it's doing. I've searched posts on this forum and checked reviews on e-tailer sites so i'm kinda curious what people are saying on here, as this would be more of an authoritative type place to seek questions about networking hardware etc.

Thanks

Happy holidays! Personally I’ve been using it as a recever in my room using a power line and I haven’t been having many problems (however, I have a main router that could be covering up dropouts.) I was planing on using that router as my driver for a while so I’ll set that up tonight and report back in a few days to see how it works! To stay scientific I’ll do some distance speed testing using only my main router pre and post change. And will use only the one router in my house.

 

[randomName]

Happy holidays! Personally I’ve been using it as a recever in my room using a power line and I haven’t been having many problems (however, I have a main router that could be covering up dropouts.) I was planing on using that router as my driver for a while so I’ll set that up tonight and report back in a few days to see how it works! To stay scientific I’ll do some distance speed testing using only my main router pre and post change. And will use only the one router in my house.

Hey, Happy Holidays to you too! Thanks for the reply. I am interested in a few things with it but something has come up that sounds concerning. Apparently there is a WPA2 vulnerability? Some Krack issue that's directly related to Broadcom. Have you heard anything about it?

I don't use many devices on the wifi. I don't own a gaming console. I am a PC gamer, and I use wired connection. The quad core aspect of the router seems like it will offer more granularity, and a long future for the GT. My RT N66U is still doing everything I need but being a hardcore gamer stupid gamer-bait things always interest me, lol. What prompted me to re-evaluate my router was game testing with CTF off and on. Aside from the human factors I noticed pointing and shooting seemed more in sync while CTF was off. Questions about CTF to be withheld for some other time, hehe. So the GT AC5300 offers some neat feature for gaming. Some game specific. Some global like port priority. So I was just curios about some of these feature and how much they offer to wired PC gamers and over my old RT N66U.

Thank you for your time,

Cheers!

 

[randomName]

Also did I read that these new Asus routers can be accesed via your cell phone? Is there an app for it, or did what I read imply via browser on the phone?

Thanks

 

[Melontes]

Also did I read that these new Asus routers can be accesed via your cell phone? Is there an app for it, or did what I read imply via browser on the phone?

Thanks

I have always just logged into my browser by Firefox, or whatever, on my cell phone just as I would on my computer. Great for activating/deactivating VPN at the router...

 

[Melontes]

Hello folks...interesting posts!!

I presently own an Asus RT-AC68U and am contemplating getting an RT-AC5300 or a GT-AC5300 to allegedly solve my poor VPN performance.

At present, I run a dedicated Cat6e line from my router to a downstairs 8-port Gigabit switch (80 feet of cable) which feeds my home theater needs. I have a 150Mbps ISP connection. I run a LAN cable from that switch to my H96 (3Gb - 32GB) streaming device. When I run my VPN app from the Google play store directly on the H96, my connection speed drops to a paltry 2-3Mbps!!! When I delete the app and run the VPN directly from my router, I can get around 22Mbps, which to me, is still very poor but doable.

My question is will either of those contemplated routers (RT-AC5300 or a GT-AC5300) be able to boost my speed considerably? I doubt the H96 has the power to run the Google Play VPN app so that is no longer gonna be an option.

What are the main factors in choosing a router that can process a TCP OpenVPN installed directly on the VPN Client on the router?

And would it make much difference if I ran AsusWRT-Merlin instead of the stock Asus stuff to increase VPN performance?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Bryan Avery]

Upgraded from RT-AC68U to GT-AC5300 myself as well, and I can say VPN performance is much faster now. Haven't done a lot of speed tests on the VPN yet, but I went from about 20 Mbps on the AC68U to 130 Mbps with the GT-AC5300 on my first test. That was good enough for me and haven't run another test since. Also the "VPN Fusion" settings make managing the presets for different VPN servers, and controlling which device is routed through the VPN really easy.

Now if asus could just fix that slow WAN-LAN speed thing I would be completely satisfied with the upgrade.

 

[primitivo]

What's the VPN fusion thing? Is it different than on other Asus routers like RT-AC86U?

Also considering both GT-AC5300 and RT-AC86U have 1.8Ghz, although the 1st being quad core and the 2nd dual-core, does it change anything to OpenVPN performance? I believe OpenVPN is still single-threaded?

 

[avtella]

It is single threaded.

 

[matthew johnson]

How can you tell what revision you have?

Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Tapatalk

 

[RMerlin]

Hardware revision is usually a sticker at the back of the router.

 

[AndreiV]

And would it make much difference if I ran AsusWRT-Merlin instead of the stock Asus stuff to increase VPN performance?

Thanks in advance!

You won't be running Merlin's firmware on a GT-AC5300 . it is not a supported model.

 

[John DeLuca]

Has anyone else seen this bug where the database update is missing or is this just a feature changed with an update I don't know about?

 

[psychopomp1]

Tim,
Any chance you could do a review of the Linksys EA9500 V2 which has identical hardware to the GT-AC5300 and is an upgrade on the EA9500 V1? (just like the GT-AC5300 is over the RT-AC5300). Yes, the EA9500 V2 is difficult to get hold of out in the wild, but I'm sure Linksys can send you one in exchange for free publicity. Really curious to see how the EA9500 V2 stacks up against Asus' offering (GT-AC5300).
Cheers
Psycho