Asus RT-AC66U - Upgrade to Final AC Standards

[dweiss]

Does anyone know if the current ASUS RT-AC66U routers are going to be software (firmware) upgradeable to the final IEEE AC standards when they are ratified?

I'm basically asking what the risk level is of buying one of these routers now and whether ASUS has offered any sort of assurance that the routers will be compliant with the final standards via a firmware update.

Thanks,

-Danny.

 

[thiggins]

Looking at what happened with N, draft N routers (except for very early models) were "grandfathered" to the released standard. There was no firmware update required.

Note, however, that all routers in the field may not support all 802.11ac features. For example, some manufacturers are releasing beamforming updates, while others may not. I'm waiting for ASUS to release a new driver for the PCE-AC66 that supports beamforming, so that I can use it to test routers that support beamforming.

A feature you will want if you have a lot of single stream (one antenna) AC433 devices is multi-user MIMO. But that's probably a year away.

In short, your risk is more one of feature support, not spec compliance.

 

[p71]

Looking at what happened with N, draft N routers (except for very early models) were "grandfathered" to the released standard. There was no firmware update required.

Note, however, that all routers in the field may not support all 802.11ac features. For example, some manufacturers are releasing beamforming updates, while others may not. I'm waiting for ASUS to release a new driver for the PCE-AC66 that supports beamforming, so that I can use it to test routers that support beamforming.

A feature you will want if you have a lot of single stream (one antenna) AC433 devices is multi-user MIMO. But that's probably a year away.

In short, your risk is more one of feature support, not spec compliance.

Do you have any update on the PCE-AC66 beamforming support? I saw that ASUS realeased the PCE-AC68 which has a newer driver and contains a beamforming option.

 

[thiggins]

Do you have any update on the PCE-AC66 beamforming support? I saw that ASUS realeased the PCE-AC68 which has a newer driver and contains a beamforming option.

I will check with ASUS.
Don't know why they released the PCE-AC68. WikiDevi says it is the same hardware.