Asus XT8 mixing wired and wireless backhaul

[hammy434]

Hi, I'm thinking of getting 3 XT8's. One as the router, one connected to router via Ethernet, and the last one connected to router via WiFi dedicated backhaul band. Will this work?

Also, on the wired XT8 node, can I use the 2nd 5GHz band for clients? As it won't be being used for backhaul.

Thanks.

 

[kildare]

You can connect devices too to the 5GHz-2 wifi even if used as backhaul.
In my case I connect a Huawei Intel 11th generation ultrabook provided with an Intel 160MHz wireless card and the connected speed indicated in the card status is 2.4 Gbits.

 

[Sybrrgeek]

Hi, I'm thinking of getting 3 XT8's. One as the router, one connected to router via Ethernet, and the last one connected to router via WiFi dedicated backhaul band. Will this work?

Also, on the wired XT8 node, can I use the 2nd 5GHz band for clients? As it won't be being used for backhaul.

Thanks.

I don’t believe you can have a mixed backhaul. I think it has to be all wired or all wireless.

 

[Tech9]

I will set the first two routers with Auto backhaul, but Ethernet connected. AiMesh will recognize the better connection and use it. Then in AiMesh page on the main router I'll try to add the wireless node. In theory this configuration is allowed by AiMesh. How well ot will work - I don't know. I wouldn't purchase XT8 to begin with - overpriced, underpowered and with firmware issues history. XT8 owners were hunting for a stable firmware for quite some time.

 

[tgl]

XT8 owners were hunting for a stable firmware for quite some time.

We still are :-(

Aside from that, though, it's impossible to give useful advice when we're presented with such a weird proposed setup and no context. Why do you think you need 3 APs in the first place? (That's a lot of wifi for most people.) Why one remote AP wired and the other wireless? Maybe that's sensible or maybe it isn't, but I sure can't tell from here.

I do agree with @Sybrrgeek that AIMesh won't handle an asymmetric setup like this very well. You might be able to make it work by bypassing AIMesh and configuring the nodes manually.

 

[hammy434]

I will set the first two routers with Auto backhaul, but Ethernet connected. AiMesh will recognize the better connection and use it. Then in AiMesh page on the main router I'll try to add the wireless node. In theory this configuration is allowed by AiMesh. How well ot will work - I don't know. I wouldn't purchase XT8 to begin with - overpriced, underpowered and with firmware issues history. XT8 owners were hunting for a stable firmware for quite some time.

Thanks that helped a lot, I received them yesterday and have been experimenting with them. I'm going to do just 2 wired ones I think because the XT8's don't handle mixing the wired/wireless backhaul the way I'd want them to, so I'm testing them as just 2 wired ones now.

What would you recommend instead of the XT8's? For 2 wired AP's.

Also is it normal for the XT8 to only get about 800-950mbps at best on the 5GHz 2 (160MHz) band? My internet is 1150mbps and this was achievable on my ISP router but I can't seem to get this on the XT8 for some reason. 2.5Gbps WAN is reported in the settings page so I don't believe it's an Ethernet issue. And like just in general 5GHz 2 seems not much faster than the 5GHz 1 (80MHz).

Thanks!

 

[kildare]

Also is it normal for the XT8 to only get about 800-950mbps at best on the 5GHz 2 (160MHz) band?

How did you measure the transfer speed?

And the XT8 5GHz-2 you connect to is the router or the wired node ?

 

[hammy434]

How did you measure the transfer speed?

And the XT8 you connect to the 5GHz-2 is the router or the wired node ?

Using speedtest.net windows app

I’m using Router otherwise it gets limited by gigabit Ethernet. I just tried it on another device though and getting a bit faster like 1050mbps which is ok I guess but still seems a bit weird it’s not doing 1150. I guess it could maybe be a device issue? But the first device got 1130-1140 on my ISP router quite easily.

Checking back through results history on the first device, I did get 1110mbps on the XT8 once, on the day I set it up but never hit it since then.

First device is Alienware laptop with AX211, second is cheap Dell laptop with AX201, if that makes any difference.

 

[kildare]

I get a 2.4 Gbps wifi link speed (reported by the wifi driver) when connected to my XT8 5GHz-2 network from my ultrabook with Intel 160MHz capable wifi card.
I use channel 100 which IMHO is the only one that can support 160MHz bandwidth, at least I have deducted that from the 5GHz spectrum available in my country area.
But I don't have a gigabit wan internet connection, so can't test with Speedtest.net.