Asus RT-AX86U restricting speeds compared to Eero Pro 6E Giganet / City Fibre 900meg service

[RicardoRashez]

Good afternoon,

I am new to this forum and hope I am posting my question in the appropriate place. Apologies if this is not the case or if I am duplicating the same question elsewhere.

Prior to our issue we were using a Draytek Vigor 130 modem with our Asus RT-AX86U for our Plusnet FTTC fibre package and this setup worked brilliantly. No issues with either device, very straight forward to configure both devices and we were obtaining the maximum speeds our line could cope with.

Moving on with the times we have just signed up for Giganet’s max speed fttp full fibre package (900down/900up) and they sent us an Amazon Eero Pro 6E which was very easy to set up and using its own internal / router based speed tests, we’re getting around 940 down and 950 up.

As easy as the Eero is to use, its range (we only have one at the moment) isn’t quite so good as our Asus, nor can you configure it quite so easily / get to any advances settings and I’m not overly keen on the Amazon account linking / general data collection (although it doesn’t gather much).

Having done a factory reset of our Asus and connecting it directly to the CityFibre ONT using the same ethernet cable as the Eero, it connects fine (no need for the VLAN setting of 911 any more) with no issues. The problem we have however, is that using the Asus’s own internal speedtest, it only get’s around 600down and about 500 up at best. This also really depends on what DNS you choose in the list as well otherwise it goes way lower).

I have ai protection disabled, QoS disabled, and have tried the firewall completely disabled but I can not for the life of me figure out why it seems to be throttling speeds.

I have been on lots of forums (including this one) looking for an answer but I just can’t seem to find one. Any help would be much appreciated.

I have read in a few places that the Asus’s own internal speed test isn’t always accurate (something to do with its own processor / hardware acceleration etc) but I am out of ideas with regards to what settings I can really tweak.

All my settings match the support article on Giganet’s own 3rd party router settings by default so i really don’t think it should be this difficult.

Anyway, any suggestions would be much appreciated. If I don’t have any joy I think I will ultimately sell my Asus and purchase a 2nd Eero for the upstairs of our house but I’d like to try and solve the issue if at all possible as the Asus has been a great router and I’m a big fan of it.

Many thanks in advance,

Ricardo

 

[Tech9]

The problem we have however, is that using the Asus’s own internal speedtest, it only get’s around 600down and about 500 up at best.

Don't use the built-in speedtest. Ookla bloatware in firmware often limited by the CPU and affected by firmware options in use. Test with a wired client instead for more accurate results. This question comes multiple times every week for different models Asus routers.

 

[L&LD]

Welcome to the forums @RicardoRashez.

Ignore the internal router's speed test. Yes, the hardware can't reliably/consistently report those numbers.

What speeds are you getting from a wired PC? That is what is important.

You may want to check that you've removed permissions from the Administration, Privacy tab and rebooted the router too.

Note that if you've been toggling settings on/off, it is not the same as leaving those settings off in the first place. To be sure you're starting with a fully reset router, at its expected defaults, and thus in a good/known state, you may want to do a WPS reset and follow that with a GUI reset (and be sure to click the box to 'Initialize all the settings...' too).

[Wireless Router] When Standard Reset Isn’t Working: Hard Factory Reset - Models list | Official Support | ASUS Global

The following may also be helpful if you need further details to get your router to a good/known state.

Merlin on ASUS ax86U Question

I have an ASUS AX86U and contemplating the installation of Merlin firmware. The DDNS settings on the AX86U are limited to select dns providers. If I install Merlin, will I have more flexability (choices) with the DDNS Settings? Thanks in advance!

www.snbforums.com

 

[RicardoRashez]

Thanks @Tech9 and @L&LD for your quick replies. I shall look into your links and suggestions and try those and see how I get on.

With regards to a few of your questions and queries ...

I did a wired speed test on my work laptop (HP Elitebook G6) using Which's own Broadband speed test and got the following results (although it is restricted and goes through a work VPN so perhaps not ideal) ...

Eero - Latency 33ms - Download 440.7 Mbps - Upload 554.1 Mbps
Asus - Latency 34ms - Download 240.3 Mbps - Upload - 615.7 Mbps

The Eero's own built in speed test which was done on the app straight after showed 944 Mbps down and 950 Mbps up (I'm assuming the Eero is either pre-customised / hard wired by the ISP to actually test the line speed direct from the ISP at the ONT point rather than go through a 3rd party online?). It gives you absolutely no info other than the results so you can't go in and see what it's doing etc. Reminds me of the Draytek Vigor 130 where it would give you your exact downstream and upstream line speeds at the point of entry to your home / modem but your actual speed tests were always a little lower (which was to be expected).

As for my Asus router, I did a full factory reset / factory reset via the web based GUI (the Asus App on the phone is good but it doesn't go very deep options-wise) and which upon start-up, went through the exact same wizard that it did when I first opened it out of the box so I am pretty sure it was a full reset. I let the wizard do its thing (I tried both the easy set up first, when that didn't seem to help I did another factory reset then ran the advanced wizard and input the settings manually - neither made any difference).

I made sure to test it without touching a single thing as per good/known state after the factory restore then systematically changed one thing at a time, applied settings, tested, then when nothing changed, I switched off the setting, applied the change, tested again, then tried another thing and so on and so forth, always applying the setting before and after.

I shall look into the Merlin firmware you linked to from another post but having received a quick response from Giganet support asking for more detailed 3rd party router / connection settings, they said all you should really need is the username and password (along with the basic details their support page if you do find you need extra details) as pretty much all routers can setup with no issues using their own basic connection wizards or just select PPoE with a username and password and that should be it. There are no unique settings needed.

As mentioned in one of your replies, this is obviously a well known issue with Asus routers which is a shame as I've really liked it as a router (or at least as excited as you can get about a router) and I'd be interested to know if this is the same with any other router manufacturers. Seems strange that there should be some kind of throttling / limiting out of the box / with a default setting.

Anyway, I shall keep going. Many thanks for your responses.

 

[Jbennett360]

Thanks @Tech9 and @L&LD for your quick replies. I shall look into your links and suggestions and try those and see how I get on.

With regards to a few of your questions and queries ...

I did a wired speed test on my work laptop (HP Elitebook G6) using Which's own Broadband speed test and got the following results (although it is restricted and goes through a work VPN so perhaps not ideal) ...

Eero - Latency 33ms - Download 440.7 Mbps - Upload 554.1 Mbps
Asus - Latency 34ms - Download 240.3 Mbps - Upload - 615.7 Mbps

The Eero's own built in speed test which was done on the app straight after showed 944 Mbps down and 950 Mbps up (I'm assuming the Eero is either pre-customised / hard wired by the ISP to actually test the line speed direct from the ISP at the ONT point rather than go through a 3rd party online?). It gives you absolutely no info other than the results so you can't go in and see what it's doing etc. Reminds me of the Draytek Vigor 130 where it would give you your exact downstream and upstream line speeds at the point of entry to your home / modem but your actual speed tests were always a little lower (which was to be expected).

As for my Asus router, I did a full factory reset / factory reset via the web based GUI (the Asus App on the phone is good but it doesn't go very deep options-wise) and which upon start-up, went through the exact same wizard that it did when I first opened it out of the box so I am pretty sure it was a full reset. I let the wizard do its thing (I tried both the easy set up first, when that didn't seem to help I did another factory reset then ran the advanced wizard and input the settings manually - neither made any difference).

I made sure to test it without touching a single thing as per good/known state after the factory restore then systematically changed one thing at a time, applied settings, tested, then when nothing changed, I switched off the setting, applied the change, tested again, then tried another thing and so on and so forth, always applying the setting before and after.

I shall look into the Merlin firmware you linked to from another post but having received a quick response from Giganet support asking for more detailed 3rd party router / connection settings, they said all you should really need is the username and password (along with the basic details their support page if you do find you need extra details) as pretty much all routers can setup with no issues using their own basic connection wizards or just select PPoE with a username and password and that should be it. There are no unique settings needed.

As mentioned in one of your replies, this is obviously a well known issue with Asus routers which is a shame as I've really liked it as a router (or at least as excited as you can get about a router) and I'd be interested to know if this is the same with any other router manufacturers. Seems strange that there should be some kind of throttling / limiting out of the box / with a default setting.

Anyway, I shall keep going. Many thanks for your responses.

Don't use a VPN.

Wired device using speedtest.net.

Compare the results.

 

[Tech9]

I'm getting a little sick of speedtest troubleshooting threads.

 

[RicardoRashez]

Thanks for your time and replies.

 

[bbunge]

I'm getting a little sick of speedtest troubleshooting threads.

I agree! Quality of service is more important for me. The money I save by not getting GB service goes for fun things like ice cream! And three of us can stream videos at the same time on my 100/100 service.

 

[Tech9]

The reality is home routers guarantee WAN-LAN speed up to about 350-400Mbps even high-end models. This is what the hardware is capable of. Anything above is wishful thinking and marketing. AX5700 and 2.5GbE port on this Raspberry Pi - good luck. I've noticed long time ago this router is more stable and runs better with NAT hacks like Runner and Flow Cache disabled. If you remove TrendMicro bloatware from the equation - runs even better.

This is the reason why we mostly troubleshoot speedtests. Anything NAT acceleration incompatible kills it.

 

[RicardoRashez]

Hello again,

Having had a final crack at my Asus just now, and despite me doing a full factory default reset in the gui (and checking the box to initialise everything and remove all saved records etc), I found after also holding down the reset button for 10 seconds just to make absolutely sure it was starting from scratch, this seemed to the trick.

I ran the introductory wizard again using the ASUS app on the phone and didn’t bother using the manual / advanced settings and just let it do its own thing. It did a few steps it never did before and one of them was testing and optimising the brand new network once it was finished detecting the connection. After doing this I got a message saying that the “network was working perfectly” to quote the app and sure enough, the speeds have improved significantly and all seems well again.

I shall leave this thread here and just want to say thanks again to all for your help and patience with me being a newbie and asking something that has been asked many times before.

All the best.

Ricardo