[Asus RT-AX88U] Experiences & Discussion

[Dave in NM]

My recollection of LAN>Switch Control is from my old 68U. My 86U went directly to Asuswrt-Merlin. It is possible that the new HND models may have it in a different location.

Yeah it used to be, then it used to be under LAN or WAN Switch Control, but no there either. Its just buried this time on the Asus UI.

 

[WiFiSeeder]

Hi guys,

Just to share my experience. AX-88U has been running great for a few days.
I've managed to get close to 1 Gbps speeds with a Killer 1550 at very close range. Otherwise 160 MHz channels are unstable and I wouldn't recommend it (Don't know if the problem was the router, my WiFi Adapter or external interference).
Typical 5 GHz performance is great and range is certainly superior to the AC68U. Surprisingly, at close range "regular" clients (20 / 40 / 80 Channels) are a tad slower compared to the AC68U.
USB 3.0 speeds are vastly superior to the AC68U.
IPv6 Works like a charm.
The quad core 1.8 GHz processor is at beast. It isn't even sweating with 5 wired Gigabit clients, 2 wired fast ethernet clients and half a dozen or so wireless clients. My AC68U would often max out both cores and produce quite a little bit of heat under heavy usage. So far the AX88U is handling everything like a champ.
The Pros certainly outweigh cons and I certainly can't wait for AX / Gigabit goodnes!

Now it is time for me to flash Merlin's Firmware. Any special recommendations / advice? Other than bridge mode, telnetd and WTFast, has any feature been removed or is currently not working properly with the router?

Cheers,

 

[Dave in NM]

I've decided to sell my AX88U (and AC1900P) on ebay, just feels flaky to me after the port failure. Bought two Synology MR2200ac units, they are really great quality.

 

[Adamm]

I've managed to get close to 1 Gbps speeds with a Killer 1550 at very close range. Otherwise 160 MHz channels are unstable and I wouldn't recommend it (Don't know if the problem was the router, my WiFi Adapter or external interference).
Typical 5 GHz performance is great and range is certainly superior to the AC68U. Surprisingly, at close range "regular" clients (20 / 40 / 80 Channels) are a tad slower compared to the AC68U.

Try these settings;

My connection has been solid for a few months now.

 

[theirongiant]

I just bought an RT-AX88U a few days ago and it shows 5GHz radio is disabled in the status. I'm running Merlin's firmware, build 384.9. Is this disabled on Merlin, or have I disabled the feature through some kind of easy-to-miss hardware or software configuration? It shows 5GHz disabled whether Smart Connect is enabled or not.

Edit: I also ensured that the radio was not disabled in the Wireless > Professional tab.

Edit2: I pressed the "Wi-Fi" button on the front of the router a few times. Both lights come on, then turn off a few seconds later. Then they turn on again, and finally the 5GHz light goes out.

 

[Adamm]

I just bought an RT-AX88U a few days ago and it shows 5GHz radio is disabled in the status. I'm running Merlin's firmware, build 384.9. Is this disabled on Merlin, or have I disabled the feature through some kind of easy-to-miss hardware or software configuration? It shows 5GHz disabled whether Smart Connect is enabled or not.

I would say some sort of misconfiguration. When in doubt always best to factory reset and try not to over tweak.

 

[theirongiant]

I would say some sort of misconfiguration. When in doubt always best to factory reset and try not to over tweak.

I pressed the hardware Wi-Fi button on the front of the router. The two Wi-Fi lights went out. Pressed it again, and the two lights went on, off, on, and then 5Ghz went out. Does that mean anything?

 

[WiFiSeeder]

Try these settings;

My connection has been solid for a few months now.

Hey Adamm, thanks, I'll try it. As far as I can remember I was using the exact same settings other than the control channel that was set to auto (however, it picked channel 36 as well). Are you using Merlin's firmware? (That will be my next attempt).

Kind regards,

 

[Adamm]

Are you using Merlin's firmware? (That will be my next attempt).

Yes

 

[JemTheWire]

How do you get 802.11ax HE frame support to Enable? No matter what I try, it drops back to Disable after I hit the Apply button.

Using the same settings you have on this page, just HE suppler won’t ‘stick’.

 

[PhantomRay]

Hi guys,

Sorry to bother. Anyone using this router with 1 Gbps or more WAN speed?
Just wondering what kind of speeds you are getting on 5Ghz AC - 80 / 160 MHz at close range (i.e., up to 3 meters / no walls).

Kind regards,

I bought an AX11000, which is a different model but I believe the wireless chipset is the same Broadcom BCM43684. And here are some of my test results using speedtest. TBH, the performance is disappointing.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/r...periences-discussion.50396/page-4#post-469961

 

[WiFiSeeder]

I bought an AX11000, which is a different model but I believe the wireless chipset is the same Broadcom BCM43684. And here are some of my test results using speedtest. TBH, the performance is disappointing.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/r...periences-discussion.50396/page-4#post-469961

Very similar results to the AX-88U. The bottleneck is probably your iPad WiFi Adapter (negotiated speeds are probably 867 Mbps with two streams).

If you still have your AC5300 around an interesting experiment would be to try using it as a media bridge. I wonder if it will do any better than the AX88U Router + AC86U Media Bridge over 4 streams (@Adamm managed ~ 1.3 Gbps with iperf ).
In theory the AX11000 router + AC5300 Media Bridge combo is capable of 2,167 + 2,167 Mbps. In practice I wonder if it can get anywhere near 2 Gbps (assuming 50% overhead).

 

[PhantomRay]

Is that what you are seeing? How about others?

unlike your review, my tests using speedtest are seeing lower download speed for all my AC clients.

 

[PhantomRay]

Very similar results to the AX-88U. The bottleneck is probably your iPad WiFi Adapter (negotiated speeds are probably 867 Mbps with two streams).

If you still have your AC5300 around an interesting experiment would be to try using it as a media bridge. I wonder if it will do any better than the AX88U Router + AC86U Media Bridge over 4 streams (@Adamm managed ~ 1.3 Gbps with iperf ).
In theory the AX11000 router + AC5300 Media Bridge combo is capable of 2,167 + 2,167 Mbps. In practice I wonder if it can get anywhere near 2 Gbps (assuming 50% overhead).

I don't have the AC5300 around anymore, I just returned it before my RMA expires... sucks that I let go the one performs better, I would probably buy it again if I really can't stand up with the poor performing AX11000 now.

BUT.... I do have two AX11000 now!! And I just set one up as router, the other as a media bridge over 5G-1 band, here is the best perf result I got:

Using my mid-2014 macbook pro 13 inch, wirelessly connected to router.
I set the 5G-1 band to operate at 160mhz channels, at channel 36
The 80mhz channels seems to have very similar performance.

➜  ~ iperf -u -c  192.168.1.1 -b 1000M -P 4
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.1, UDP port 5001
Sending 1470 byte datagrams, IPG target: 11.22 us (kalman adjust)
UDP buffer size: 9.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  5] local 192.168.50.94 port 58888 connected with 192.168.1.1 port 5001
[  6] local 192.168.50.94 port 60567 connected with 192.168.1.1 port 5001
[  4] local 192.168.50.94 port 58838 connected with 192.168.1.1 port 5001
[  7] local 192.168.50.94 port 50869 connected with 192.168.1.1 port 5001
[  6] WARNING: did not receive ack of last datagram after 10 tries.
[  4] WARNING: did not receive ack of last datagram after 10 tries.
[  7] WARNING: did not receive ack of last datagram after 10 tries.
[  5] WARNING: did not receive ack of last datagram after 10 tries.
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  5]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.22 GBytes  1.05 Gbits/sec
[  5] Sent 890402 datagrams
[  6]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.22 GBytes  1.05 Gbits/sec
[  6] Sent 890982 datagrams
[  4]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.22 GBytes  1.05 Gbits/sec
[  4] Sent 890354 datagrams
[  7]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.22 GBytes  1.05 Gbits/sec
[  7] Sent 891632 datagrams
[SUM]  0.0-10.0 sec  4.88 GBytes  4.19 Gbits/sec
[SUM] Sent 3563370 datagrams

Well... AX11000 has its potential, the speed matches to it 4500+ mbps link rate. But I don't run any NAS at home and this UDP speed make no use to me

Right now wireless internet speed is the problem and it's only giving me barely over 300mbs over AC. Do you think maybe future firmware update may fix this issue or you think it will be the new chipset's drawback?

 

[PhantomRay]

@WiFiSeeder
Some interesitng finding:
With second AX11000 setup as media bridge mode, if i hard wire my laptop to the media bridge, I am able to pull over 400mbps on speedtest occassionally (my comcast 400/10). So i think it is safe to assume that the problem might be the speed delivered to AC clients directly?

 

[WiFiSeeder]

@WiFiSeeder
Some interesitng finding:
With second AX11000 setup as media bridge mode, if i hard wire my laptop to the media bridge, I am able to pull over 400mbps on speedtest occassionally (my comcast 400/10). So i think it is safe to assume that the problem might be the speed delivered to AC clients directly?

Wow. 4.2 GBps over WiFi. I know that this is not what you are looking for but it is very, very impressive.

Yes, you are right. There are multiple problems but the major one is with 867 Mbps negotiate speeds (two streams AC). The expected WiFi overhead is about 50% so your AC5300 was already "maxing out" your speeds.

Assuming that we can trust speed tests (i.e., connection to the external server is stable), I would bet that the AC5300 was simply doing a better job at selecting the right channel and pushing data over it. You may try to adjust the AX11000 manually to see if it makes a difference. However, as per your tests, lastgen firmware and hardware combination is much more mature / hence the stable connection. My old AC68U is also slightly faster than the AX-88U at short range / 876 Mbps negotiated speeds (however, I'm not seeing 100 Mbps + gaps like you).
Truth be told, it will be a while before AX clients are out. At this stage, unless you are using two routers, I wouldn't really expect speed enchantments. Regressions over AC are also, unfortunately, a possibility .

 

[shawnbeard99]

I have a Mediacom 1 gb internet service and just got the RT-AX88U. When I test wired connection on speedtest.net. I always get at or close to 1gb speeds. Wifi on the other hand not so much. I average probably 250mb with rare but occasional over 400mb. Ive tried almost everything I can think of. Updated to the latest version of ASUSWRT merlin(which disabled the 5G radio and I couldnt get it working again, so had to revert back to standard ASUS firmware. Shutting off WiFi6. Shutting down AIProtection, shutting down IP6 firewall. Dedicating 5 GHZ to 80 MHZ and setting 2.4 to use channel 6. Separating 2.4 and 5 to seperate SSID. Nothing helped. My previous router, an ASUS RT-AC3100 often got 500mb+ speeds on wireless. All of my clients have AC adapters. Any ideas?

 

[WiFiSeeder]

I have a Mediacom 1 gb internet service and just got the RT-AX88U. When I test wired connection on speedtest.net. I always get at or close to 1gb speeds. Wifi on the other hand not so much. I average probably 250mb with rare but occasional over 400mb. Ive tried almost everything I can think of. Updated to the latest version of ASUSWRT merlin(which disabled the 5G radio and I couldnt get it working again, so had to revert back to standard ASUS firmware. Shutting off WiFi6. Shutting down AIProtection, shutting down IP6 firewall. Dedicating 5 GHZ to 80 MHZ and setting 2.4 to use channel 6. Separating 2.4 and 5 to seperate SSID. Nothing helped. My previous router, an ASUS RT-AC3100 often got 500mb+ speeds on wireless. All of my clients have AC adapters. Any ideas?

Hi Shadow, have a look at PhantomRay results above. I can confirm similar results with clients running 1 or 2 streams (i.e., the vast majority of clients). As of now I'm afraid that there isn't much that can be done about it (other than using another AC router as a client).
Maybe more experienced members of the forum may share optimization techniques that I'm not aware of, however, there seems to be a non-negligible performance hit when comparing AX-88U and AX-11000 with their lastgen counterparts.

Hopefully firmware fixes will mitigate the problem until AX clients are out.

 

[shawnbeard99]

Hi Shadow, have a look at PhantomRay results above. I can confirm similar results with clients running 1 or 2 streams (i.e., the vast majority of clients). As of now I'm afraid that there isn't much that can be done about it (other than using another AC router as a client).
Maybe more experienced members of the forum may share optimization techniques that I'm not aware of, however, there seems to be a non-negligible performance hit when comparing AX-88U and AX-11000 with their lastgen counterparts.

Hopefully firmware fixes will mitigate the problem until AX clients are out.

Thank you I was afraid of that. May just have to return the AX88U and wait until the technology is more mainstream. Also Ive been reading the Netgear AX routers are having similar issues. Seems like maybe the vendors rushed this new technology to market.

 

[PhantomRay]

Thank you I was afraid of that. May just have to return the AX88U and wait until the technology is more mainstream. Also Ive been reading the Netgear AX routers are having similar issues. Seems like maybe the vendors rushed this new technology to market.

Hi there. yes! like WifiSeeder already explained, that my AX11000 is also suffering a performance hit with regular current gen AC clients.

I have comcast 400/10 package, my previous GT-AC5300 (returned after I bought the AX11000) was pulling 477mbps down consistently out of the box with speedtest.net for all my AC clients, iPhones, iPads, Macs, PC with maximus ix code onboard wifi), but my AX11000 is only capable of pulling maximum over 400 mbps and majority of the time sub 300 mbps. I originally thought I might got a defective device, but the replacement was doing about the same.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/r...periences-discussion.50396/page-4#post-469961

Netgear AX routers use the same broadcom chipset, I would not be surprised if they are having similar issues.