[Asus RT-AX88U] Experiences & Discussion

[Frankflash]

Sorry to read you are having issues with your router; perhaps Asus is selling a different firmware here in North America, but at least for this user, the Asus RT AX88U is a stellar performer, wired and wireless, with many diverse clients.

True, it's expensive to buy (was $245 US on Black Friday), the ASUS RT AC86U delivers excellent performance for much less, but the 88AX work well here.

Hope you get it fixed. Good luck to you.

Router WAN to LAN/WLAN throughput
Why you should care: What if you have 1 Gbps internet, AND are able to get true Gigabit wireless throughput -- you don't want to then find out that you can't access the Internet at gigabit speeds due to a problem with your router (eg: the Netgear R7800 router has a bug that limits WAN to LAN throughput to 340Mbps over port 80).

LAN to LAN -- 941 Mbps -- Great

WAN to LAN -- 340 Mbps -- BAD!
The problem: The dirty little secret in the consumer router industry is sometimes poor router WAN to LAN/WLAN throughput. Because even with crazy fast wireless speeds (above 1Gbps), the WAN to LAN/WLAN link (below 1 Gbps) is likely where you will see a performance bottleneck.
On a 1 Gbps WAN ethernet port, the maximum speed is around 949 Mbps (due to overhead of around 51 Mbps), so you will never get wireless speeds (from the Internet) above that.
Additionally, all of the 'realistic' wireless speeds we have been discussing above assumes that there is no slow down in the router itself moving packets between the WAN port and the LAN/WLAN ports -- but there often IS a slow down.
The router's WAN to LAN/WLAN throughput is often the limiting speed factor. Why? Because the router itself is performing NAT (Network Address Translation), SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) and other tasks (eg: Parental Controls) that takes processing time inside the router, possibly limiting Mbps speeds.


The bottom line: You will NOT get Gbps WAN to LAN throughput from SOME consumer-grade routers. its broken

user Adamm said it been broken for almost a year now

 

[RMerlin]

The bottom line: You will NOT get Gbps WAN to LAN throughput from SOME consumer-grade routers. its broken

It's not broken. People are able to reach 940 Mbps with those same routers. Just don't enable router features that are not compatible with hardware acceleration.

 

[Frankflash]

It's not broken. People are able to reach 940 Mbps with those same routers. Just don't enable router features that are not compatible with hardware acceleration.

err have you not seen the posts in this thread : p The 1Gbps ceiling has been broken for almost a year now from user Adamm some one telling porkies

 

[Adamm]

user Adamm said it been broken for almost a year now

err have you not seen the posts in this thread : p The 1Gbps ceiling has been broken for almost a year now from user Adamm some one telling porkies

You misunderstood what I was implying. "The ceiling has been broken" is a figure of speech meaning the artificial limit no longer applies.

 

[ubimea]

This morning's Speedtest Result from Dell 7590 laptop with Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650x 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter (200NGW), driver version 21.50.1.1, wireless to Asus RT AX88u access point, Firmware Version 3.0.0.4.384_7756, revision 1.1 on Gigabit cable connection.

 

[JarleH]

Picked up a Asus RT-AX88U yesterday, not had time to set it up yet (family reasons).
Plan to install latest Merlin firmware, and a little later maybe try out Diversion ad-blocker.
Also got some new USB drives: Kingston DataTraveler SE9 G2 16GB, I had planed to use if I install Diversion.

Wow, the box itself for the Asus RT-AX88U is almost worth the price hehehe Solid good first impression of the product, based just on the package hehe

 

[Darcy]

It's not broken. People are able to reach 940 Mbps with those same routers. Just don't enable router features that are not compatible with hardware acceleration.

What router features are not compatible with HW acceleration?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Frankflash]

What router features are not compatible with HW acceleration?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

all the features should be made compatible with HW acceleration ? its just put in the to hard to do list ? usless

 

[RMerlin]

What router features are not compatible with HW acceleration?

Traditional QoS is the most common one.

all the features should be made compatible with HW acceleration ? its just put in the to hard to do list ? usless

HW acceleration works by bypassing certain portions of the networking stack. Features like Traditional QoS rely on those bypassed portions, hence it's not compatible.

And this is the case for pretty much every other platforms. Ubiquity for instance will also bypass HW acceleration if you use certain features (and just like Asus, QoS is one of those features that aren't compatible). This has nothing to do with Asus or Broadcom, this is simply a fact of how technology works. So-called acceleration works by bypassing certain portions of the networking stack, taking shortcuts. This applies to any product based on Broadcom or Qualcomm, and most likely other manufacturers as well.

 

[Christian Herzog]

hi all.

I recently replaced my AC68U with an AX88U and got my rather complex bridging/VLAN/multiple SSID setup running. Performance is just stellar! The only thing I'm wondering is the allocation of ethernet ports. eth0 is wan, eth6 is 2.4G wifi and eth7 is 5G wifi, but how do eth1-5 map to the 8 ethernet ports? Has anyone figured that out?

thanks,
-Christian

 

[ubimea]

This morning's wired Speedtest Result from aging HP desktop with Intel gigabit chip attached to Asus RT AC86U CAT5 wired access point, Asus RT AX88U as main, Firmware Version 3.0.0.4.384_7756, revision 1. Asus RT AX88U performs as advertised, and the ceiling is broken.

 

[Makaveli]

This morning's wired Speedtest Result from aging HP desktop with Intel gigabit chip attached to Asus RT AC86U CAT5 wired access point, Asus RT AX88U as main, Firmware Version 3.0.0.4.384_7756, revision 1. Asus RT AX88U performs as advertised, and the ceiling is broken.

View attachment 20289

What ceiling is broken?

 

[Grisu]

AFAIK it is not possible to get any more than 1Gb/s over 1Gb-Ethernet, in reality even a bit lower about 950Mb/s - I wont trust your measurement.

 

[RMerlin]

Some ISPs support some esoteric "speed boost" features which are used to cheat on speedtests (or provide short speed bursts). I wouldn't put too much stock into that result.

 

[Makaveli]

AFAIK it is not possible to get any more than 1Gb/s over 1Gb-Ethernet, in reality even a bit lower about 950Mb/s - I wont trust your measurement.

This is what I was getting at but waiting for him to explain what he meant.

Fast.com is can be very unreliable depending on where you are and the WAN port on the AX88U is 1Gbps so the site is incorrect.

Example.

 

[RMerlin]

What ceiling is broken?

Probably mean that the 1 Gbps hardware limit seem to have been broken in this test result.

 

[Grisu]

You should sell your OC-router for 1k $ and get some new for it.

 

[ubimea]

AFAIK it is not possible to get any more than 1Gb/s over 1Gb-Ethernet, in reality even a bit lower about 950Mb/s - I wont trust your measurement.

I don't trust it entirely either, I believe my ISP has a "peering" relationship with Netflix, and that FAST.com does tend to run hot. With other tests, I typically measure near 940 Mbps wired, 600-800 wireless, which is really quite good, more than enough for watching movies and occasionally gaming.

I am trying to make a much smaller point, that is, answering some of the overly critical posts in this thread that suggest there is something broken in the Asus router line. IMO, Asus consumer-grade routers, especially including the RT AX88U and the RT AC86U are quite good; even better when coupled with Merlin firmware.

 

[jomsjoms]

Is the RT-AX88u already stable enough or
would it be a better to just get the AC-5300 to ensure stability?

 

[JarleH]

Is the RT-AX88u already stable enough or
would it be a better to just get the AC-5300 to ensure stability?

I am new to it, and run Merlin firmware. But I am pretty sure the RT-AX88u is more then stable enough, it got major focus from Merlin making the firmware.