ASUS RT-AC87U Dual-band Wireless-AC2400 Gigabit Router Reviewed

[roldogg]

Repeater Mode

I have the 87R with a 68U in repeater mode and it works great. I use a 66U in Media Bridge mode and it works well too, though I had to connect it to the 2.4GHz side of the 87R so that I can pull-up the 66U's interface when typing its address into my browser. The Media Bridge worked fine when connected to the 5GHz side of the 87R, but I could not access its interface until I connected it o the 2.4 side.

When you hook the two of these together, do you have to change any of the settings on the primary router (the AC87R), besides a static ip address or something, to let the primary router know that there's a repeater, or a media bridge, on the network? I realize if you set it up as a repeater, your speed gets cut in half, assuming it's a wireless repeater, vs an access point, which would be hard wired. I'm just wondering if there are any settings on the AC87R that you could change so more bandwidth is provided to the repeater, like in QoS.

Whether it's setup as a media bridge or a repeater, is there any noticeable speed difference? I've been using a Western Digital Wireless AC Repeater in my bedroom to connect to my primary router, but since I bought an AC87R a couple days ago, I'm wondering if it'll be beneficial to replace the Western Digital AC Repeater. I already have an AC66R setup as an Access Point on my network, the router I replaced, which I don't have hooked up currently, is a Netgear R7000.

 

[thiggins]

Part 2 posted

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32491-asus-rt-ac87u-review-part-2

 

[TopQuark]

Just got the router before reading the 2nd part of the review. Here's hoping Asus/Quantenna can progress further along in the firmware side. It's already better than my 5 year old Cisco/Linksys router so I'm a happy camper here.

 

[L&LD]

With the RT-AC87U showing worse performance over the RT-AC68U on the 5GHz band and nothing spectacular in the 2.4GHz band, I have to agree with Mr. Easy; time to cool my jets and wait for the second wave of wave 2 devices to become available before I spend any money at this time.


Asus is the only contender for me, the others are just the kick in the pants Asus needs to get it right, quickly. Like it has for the RT-N66U, for example, so many years ago.

 

[RMerlin]

With the RT-AC87U showing worse performance over the RT-AC68U on the 5GHz band and nothing spectacular in the 2.4GHz band, I have to agree with Mr. Easy; time to cool my jets and wait for the second wave of wave 2 devices to become available before I spend any money at this time.

2.4 GHz does show an improvement. However at this point, don't expect any future router to come out and bring 10%+ improvements on that band. At this point manufacturers probably have it as good as they'll ever get it in terms of finetuning.

 

[L&LD]

RMerlin,

I agree; the 2.4GHz band is as good as it can get with the RT-AC87U - but considering the congestion of that band; that is why I went with 'meh'.

 

[madhatter01]

Why would Asus use RGMII? If 5Ghz supports 1.73Gbps, that is more then the 1Gbps on RGMII connected to the broadcom cpu. Look at 2.4Ghz it has 4 times the speed for the connection to the cpu. Maybe I am just not understanding something.

 

[RMerlin]

Why would Asus use RGMII? If 5Ghz supports 1.73Gbps, that is more then the 1Gbps on RGMII connected to the broadcom cpu. Look at 2.4Ghz it has 4 times the speed for the connection to the cpu. Maybe I am just not understanding something.

PHY link rate is nowhere near the actual data rate, which is what actually gets transferred over that RGMII interface.

Same reason why a USB 2.0 802.11AC interface is able to reach its full 2x2 performance.

 

[thiggins]

Why would Asus use RGMII? If 5Ghz supports 1.73Gbps, that is more then the 1Gbps on RGMII connected to the broadcom cpu. Look at 2.4Ghz it has 4 times the speed for the connection to the cpu. Maybe I am just not understanding something.

Remember the main processor is a Broadcom. The reason could be as simple as the 2.4 GHz BCM4360 doesn't have an RGMII interface.

 

[sfx2000]

RMerlin,

I agree; the 2.4GHz band is as good as it can get with the RT-AC87U - but considering the congestion of that band; that is why I went with 'meh'.

N450 in 2.4GHz is about as good as it's going to get - 3 streams and 64QAM adapters - you might find a few adapters that support QAM256 in 2.4GHz, but there's no real incentive to do so...

TurboQAM in 2.4GHz is pretty much a checklist feature for the AP's - some clients do support it - good example here is Asus' USB-56AC, but due to implementation differences (Broadcom, for example using proprietary Info Elements vs. Marvell using illegal VHT in 2.4GHz), interop will continue to be a challenge there.

Marvell and Broadcom do have some benefits here though - a 4T4R:3 config will increase throughput at a given range (3 spatial streams plus one which improves coding gain and error recovery).

sfx

 

[Hereisphilly]

This is slightly OT, but I was just wondering, in your opinion with this unit being the first of the Wave 2 routers, is there much of a benefit over something like a R7000?

My wireless clients are only smartphones and tablets, which have at best 2x2 ac chips in them, usually only 1x1, everything else is hardlined in.
The reason I'm saying this is because amazon have the R7000 on offer for £130 and i could do with a change pronto.

 

[wouterv]

Yeah I have spotted that, the prices of the old ones do decrease quite rapidly!

This is slightly OT, but I was just wondering, in your opinion with this unit being the first of the Wave 2 routers, is there much of a benefit over something like a R7000?

My wireless clients are only smartphones and tablets, which have at best 2x2 ac chips in them, usually only 1x1, everything else is hardlined in.
The reason I'm saying this is because amazon have the R7000 on offer for £130 and i could do with a change pronto.

Based on the majority of your clients I suggest to look for a "reasonable cheap" but as recent as possible AC router of a well known manufacturer, with a suffient number of streams.
Check the support sites for the firmware update rate, if the last update is many months old I would look for another router.
Next check support forums to see if there an active user community, if not I would look for another router.
Wave 2 / MU-MIMO requires supporting clients, which are not released yet.
The R7000 seems nice, I guess comparable to the RT-AC68U and the WRT1900AC.

The AC standard give much room for new routers the next time with up to 8 streams and a few more advanced features (e.g. the future Asus AC3200 is still "only" 6 streams). Manufacturers like to introduce new features one by one, each in a new chipset and router model (which likely is not compatible with the next new feature).
Also look at your own network use: is there lot of LAN traffic (e.g. multimedia) then fast wireless is required. Is there mostly only Internet traffic, then the wireless speed shall be sufficient to cover your Internet speed. Remember: the fastest and most reliable network is still wired.
Buy today what you need today, do not buy for the future.

 

[GreenThumb]

Results based on a day's usage with the Asus RT-AC87 in my house

Introduction: I am a novice at networking and appreciate what I've learned from this website and forum.

Work recently upgraded my laptop to a:
Lenovo Thinkpad W540
with Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7260
In the past week I upgraded (my $$) the SSD to a Samsung EVO 840 1tb. (the data migration tools worked great!)

I've been looking forward to higher wireless speeds and less waiting on my laptop CAD and photo work for so long.
Suddenly, with an i7 + 32gb memory + a SSD, I'm in heaven. No waiting for anything.
The difference is astonishing over an i5 with 8gb and 7200rpm.
Even with just Chrome and 10 tabs open it makes a difference.

Now for the wireless part.
Over the weekend, I decided to take on upgrading the house wireless router to AC since my laptop now supports it.
I'm somewhat Asus brand loyal since the Asus RT-N56u has worked reliably for several years.

The Asus RT-AC87u looked like it definitely had its pros and cons. Hopefully they can work everything out in firmware upgrades, because I tend to buy something and stick with it for years.

Despite the downsides reported, I decided to be courageous / silly and get one anyway from Best Buy, given the long weekend to debug it or return it if something went wrong. The one detail that I liked over the Netgear equivalent was that Asus moved the USB3 port to the front. (I recall reading somewhere that USB3 interferes with some of the key wireless hardware or features. I use a NAS and wireless printers, but at some point I still might use that USB3 port. So I'm glad it's in the front.)


Install went fine, with 2 notes:

1) It went fine once I followed the directions and powered down the cable modem from Time Warner. (I tried to do a 'hot swap' with old router. That did not work.)

2) I tried to setup as shown in directions and plug in my Thinkpad into the router via an ethernet cable. When I launched Chrome, and went to 192.168.1.1, it prompted me with the admin username and password screen. Why? I had not set it up yet. I didn't see a default pw in the instruction guide. Yet it was behaving like someone already set a password.

Thankfully I brought my iPhone upstairs to the electronics closet to do this install. Just for fun, I tried to connect via my iPhone to the "Asus 5g" network. That worked, and then it kindly prompted me to set up the router admin password. Just like I expected to happen with the laptop.

After that point, I was able to log in via the big screen laptop.



I set up same SSID's and security as prior router, so that all 31 house devices would still connect.
All devices I've tested still connect fine, and my special work VPN software works fine also.

Results from the Lenovo Thinkpad w540:

Connecting now to:
Asus RT-AC87u on 5GHz band, Firmware Version:3.0.0.4.376_2061

Connection speed now is: 650Mbps
signal strength 99%
on channel 153

One odd thing - Lenovo's Access Connections program reads my laptop as making a 802.11n connection. Not AC.
Wonder why? Maybe that's just a bug with that app.
I had the idea to try to force 5ghz to be AC-only. However, I couldn't find where to do this.

Before, connecting to:
ASUS RT-N56u router, same laptop
connection speed was 150-200Mbps
signal strength 80%


So, 3x speed boost for me in numbers, and in actual usage, it seems at least that much faster than the same laptop connecting to the Asus RT-N56u. I'm very happy.

 

[icemankent]

As soon as you current "owners" start reporting that the latest firmware works well, I will be buying this in a heartbeat.

 

[bodean]

As soon as you current "owners" start reporting that the latest firmware works well, I will be buying this in a heartbeat.

Might be a few months for you then...

 

[LoneWolf]

As soon as you current "owners" start reporting that the latest firmware works well, I will be buying this in a heartbeat.

It really depends.

If you're not doing a ton of tweaking, I'd say the RT-AC87 works well. Since FW 2061, things haven't been bad; since 2678, I haven't had any issues with the basic functionality of the unit (like others, I did have some 5GHz issues under the first couple firmware revisions).

Now, if you turn on the AiProtection, or the Adaptive QoS, that may change. There are still some bugs, and a number of them are in the extra features. I haven't turned on some of those features yet simply because I've been waiting for others to say they're working well.

 

[vachief]

VESA Mounting

Has anyone successfully mounted this router using a VESA mount? It claims it is VESA mount compatible, yet the screws are 215mm apart, which is not a standard VESA size. Am I missing something here?

 

[theveterans]

Results from the Lenovo Thinkpad w540:

Connecting now to:
Asus RT-AC87u on 5GHz band, Firmware Version:3.0.0.4.376_2061

Connection speed now is: 650Mbps
signal strength 99%
on channel 153

One odd thing - Lenovo's Access Connections program reads my laptop as making a 802.11n connection. Not AC.
Wonder why? Maybe that's just a bug with that app.
I had the idea to try to force 5ghz to be AC-only. However, I couldn't find where to do this.

Before, connecting to:
ASUS RT-N56u router, same laptop
connection speed was 150-200Mbps
signal strength 80%

If it's above 300 Mbps, its 100% 802.11ac. I wonder why you couldn't reach constant 866.7 Mbps though. At 99% signal strength, it should've been that case like mine.

 

[Hawkeye360]

Hey everyone, hopefully this is the right place for this question.

By the way, love the site and have been reading for a while.

Anyway, my issue is with my Xbox One. I just got this router and an Xbox One recently and I can't get the NAT to be "Open" on the Xbox One. It is Strict currently and won't budge. UPnP is enabled as well.

Does anyone know what the issue here might be? I can't figure it out.

Thanks!

EDIT: Well, it appears to be Open now. Didn't do anything other than a power cycle of the Xbox One. Hopefully it stays open!

EDIT 2: Now I'm having NAT problems with my Xbox 360 and PS4, ugh.

 

[bodean]

Hey everyone, hopefully this is the right place for this question.

By the way, love the site and have been reading for a while.

Anyway, my issue is with my Xbox One. I just got this router and an Xbox One recently and I can't get the NAT to be "Open" on the Xbox One. It is Strict currently and won't budge. UPnP is enabled as well.

Does anyone know what the issue here might be? I can't figure it out.

Thanks!

EDIT: Well, it appears to be Open now. Didn't do anything other than a power cycle of the Xbox One. Hopefully it stays open!

EDIT 2: Now I'm having NAT problems with my Xbox 360 and PS4, ugh.

Static IP the Xbox One. Put that ip in DMZ on router, done.