ASUS ZenWifi AX XT8 Setup

[neilybealy]

That’s at least us two waiting to hear from him then. Mine has been 3 hours now and still stable

 

[vjarena3]

I'm interested to hear back RE: Orbi that vjarena3 is parallel testing with the XT8. I thought the Orbi RBK50 was pretty stable but the price difference is what brought me to get the XT8 instead of the new Orbi. I'm still in trial mode as well.

I found the Orbi AX for around $520 on Amazon in "like new" condition which made it a lot closer to the XT8 hence why I jumped on it. I just checked my UPS tracker and it's in my area - I should have some feedback later this evening when I get it online.

 

[vjarena3]

I'm interested to hear back RE: Orbi that vjarena3 is parallel testing with the XT8. I thought the Orbi RBK50 was pretty stable but the price difference is what brought me to get the XT8 instead of the new Orbi. I'm still in trial mode as well.

I just received it and will get it online tonight after work and report back.

 

[vjarena3]

So the moment of truth, here's my first impressions on Orbi AX6000 vs Zen with plans for more testing over the next few days (YMMV):

• For reference I have a 2 story house that's about 3000 square feet and I placed the router upstairs in the front and the satellite downstairs middle/towards the back. Total distance is about 40-50 feet.
• I pushed the Asus about 10-15 further than the Orbi without issue
• Out the box after fooling with Asus the last 3 days and going back to Orbi I felt like I was taken in a time warp back to 1990something! Forgot how archaic the Orbi interface is - especially compared to Asus
• Speeds at reasonable distances are noticeably higher when testing on an iPhone 8, iPad Pro, iPhoneX and iPhone 12 pro max. Tested using both the Ookla app and online speed tester.
• Above I said reasonable distance - the Asus has considerably more range and higher speeds at that range. IE I was sitting out front of my house about 50-60 feet and downstairs but a pretty straight shot which isn't much further than the distance between the 2 units so that's a plus for backhaul and a minus for normal range.
• I think the Orbi roams better than the Asus but that again could be a firmware/setting issue.
• Devices are mapping to their correct channel
• I did notice my signal strength to some of the devices between the two units aren't at full bars which is surprising.
• My initial thought is yes the Orbi is faster(as long as you are closer to the units), devices are on the channel they should and I can roam better. So far that's the results with limited testing. I will definitely be testing it a lot over the next few days to verify. And I definitely want to see if the DNS issue rears it's ugly head with this version of Orbi.
• Gut instinct tells me right now if I can fix some of the kinks with the Asus even though the price gap is smaller buying a refurbished Orbi it may be a better overall as a package. Another thought is I may say screw both and build my own without mesh and use higher grade equipment. However I do this crap all day every day the last thing I want to do when I come home(well leave my home office) is tinker with it.
• Another thing, I love the analytics with Asus. While I don't want to tinker with it to get it running right I love being able to monitor traffic and drill down on said traffic. I also love seeing usage and some of the other tools available with the Asus.

Damn why does this have to be so difficult!

 

[neilybealy]

sounds promising then. I'm the same, I just want it to work without having to tinker all day/night when that's what you're doing at work

which firmware is the asus running? I've just checked mine and they're still on the 5Ghz uplink on the 42095 f/w whereas yesterday morning on the latest version the uplink had dropped back to 2.4. Still seeing a slight drop in download speed on my iPhone but nothing to be worried about so thumbs up for the asus

 

[karma]

It's really unfortunate that your first impressions of the XT8 was with a buggy firmware. FWIW, I don't know if this will help you guys but here are my current settings with firmware 42095 and two XT8s with wireless backhaul with the main router in AP mode. I have no issues that I'm aware of.

A couple of things keep in mind:

• when downgrading firmware you potentially won't get the benefits of any security updates of later firmware. i don't really know, just thought I'd mention it. not sure that's as important for AP mode as it is if running the XT8 as main gateway in router mode.
• in the AI-Mesh menu, client list, you can bind a client to a preferred node
• roaming can be helped along in the professional settings, with roaming assistant. in the wireless log (administration menu) you can see the clients connection signal strength and tweak accordingly.
• band steering can be tweaked if using smart connect, personally I just separated the bands (different) SSIDs since I know which devices are stationary and I want them to be on 5GHz, for other devices like mobile phones I just connect them to both SSIDs and let the client decide.
• in AP mode the guest network is not isolated
• for the wireless backhaul it's worth looking at the wireless log (administration menu) to see if there are radar channels and limit the control channel/bandwidth accordingly (I've limited to 80MHz since I don't want the channels to be scanned to see if there's active radar). I prefer to have a consistent connection rather than maybe occasionally having a 160MHz connection.
• I have an automatic reboot schedule for once a week in the middle of the night, not sure if that changes much, it's an old habit coming from an older asus router a long time ago.
• I avoid using any DFS (radar) channels because they can be unpredictable, see the point about the wireless backhaul.
• general (obvious?) comments:
  • don't put the router on the floor or surrounded by walls, for a good wifi signal i've found it's best to give them some height. I guess this also applies to any wifi router brand/model.
  • this is just what works for me and my specific setup, I'm more interested in reliability and consistent behaviour than anything else.

 

[karma]

and the 5_2 professional settings

 

[vjarena3]

It's really unfortunate that your first impressions of the XT8 was with a buggy firmware. FWIW, I don't know if this will help you guys but here are my current settings with firmware 42095 and two XT8s with wireless backhaul with the main router in AP mode. I have no issues that I'm aware of.

A couple of things keep in mind:

• in the AI-Mesh menu, client list, you can bind a client to a preferred node
• roaming can be helped along in the professional settings, with roaming assistant. in the wireless log (administration menu) you can see the clients connection signal strength and tweak accordingly.
• band steering can be tweaked if using smart connect, personally I just separated the bands (different) SSIDs since I know which devices are stationary and I want them to be on 5GHz, for other devices like mobile phones I just connect them to both SSIDs and let the client decide.
• in AP mode the guest network is not isolated
• for the wireless backhaul it's worth looking at the wireless log (administration menu) to see if there are radar channels and limit the control channel/bandwidth accordingly ('ve limited to 80MHz since I don't want the channels to be scanned to see if there's active radar)

Thanks for the tips because after I got "please connect your device to the Orbi network" screen last night on my iPad and my phone this morning wasn't even accepting my wifi password hence not able to even join Orbi I'm good. Yanked Orbi out and put Asus back in. I ran some more speed tests this morning which were closer to the Orbi, the range is much better so I will take karma's advice and run with it. No I don't want to constantly tinker with it but if I have issues I want the options the Asus has to at least allow me the best connection I can get. So while the Orbi may not have gotten a fair shake as I only ran it early evening to this morning I had enough PTSD from previous iterations to happily put it back in the box and return it.

 

[vjarena3]

sounds promising then. I'm the same, I just want it to work without having to tinker all day/night when that's what you're doing at work

which firmware is the asus running? I've just checked mine and they're still on the 5Ghz uplink on the 42095 f/w whereas yesterday morning on the latest version the uplink had dropped back to 2.4. Still seeing a slight drop in download speed on my iPhone but nothing to be worried about so thumbs up for the asus

I'm currently running 43181 which I'm about to downgrade to the 42095 based on all the recommendations. Is your system still behaving on that version?

 

[neilybealy]

yes it's been solid on 42095 so far. still on the 5ghz uplink which was the main issue for me. i might tweak the roaming asst at some point but so far i'm still getting over 200mb downloads on wifi if my phone stays on the node furthest away so not a massive issue

i'm running in ap mode as i haven't resolved the double nat issue with my satellite receiver being on the 192.168.0.x network but i will try again at some point

 

[neilybealy]

so the only issue with that is there's an app called Sky Go which can't access the main sky receiver when it's double nat'd so you can't access the recordings to download to the app. not a big deal but need to sort out port forwarding rules before i change over to router mode on the xt8

 

[vjarena3]

so the only issue with that is there's an app called Sky Go which can't access the main sky receiver when it's double nat'd so you can't access the recordings to download to the app. not a big deal but need to sort out port forwarding rules before i change over to router mode on the xt8

I've got ATT's passthrough mode embedded in my brain by now so I'm running mine in router mode. Not sure if that's best or if I should have it in AP mode and let the ATT router have it.

 

[neilybealy]

Unfortunately the correct info on what’s needed to be configured isn’t provided by Sky so it’s just what you can learn from forums like these from people that have managed to get it working. I did have a quick go last week but couldn’t get it right

 

[vjarena3]

It's really unfortunate that your first impressions of the XT8 was with a buggy firmware. FWIW, I don't know if this will help you guys but here are my current settings with firmware 42095 and two XT8s with wireless backhaul with the main router in AP mode. I have no issues that I'm aware of.

A couple of things keep in mind:

• in the AI-Mesh menu, client list, you can bind a client to a preferred node
• roaming can be helped along in the professional settings, with roaming assistant. in the wireless log (administration menu) you can see the clients connection signal strength and tweak accordingly.
• band steering can be tweaked if using smart connect, personally I just separated the bands (different) SSIDs since I know which devices are stationary and I want them to be on 5GHz, for other devices like mobile phones I just connect them to both SSIDs and let the client decide.
• in AP mode the guest network is not isolated
• for the wireless backhaul it's worth looking at the wireless log (administration menu) to see if there are radar channels and limit the control channel/bandwidth accordingly ('ve limited to 80MHz since I don't want the channels to be scanned to see if there's active radar)

Appreciate you sharing these tips as I've implemented most including shifting to the 42095 firmware and will be testing this out to see if there's any improvement. The one I couldn't get is setting my control channel to 60 so I set it to 48. I may play around with that and see how it goes.

 

[karma]

Appreciate you sharing these tips as I've implemented most including shifting to the 42095 firmware and will be testing this out to see if there's any improvement. The one I couldn't get is setting my control channel to 60 so I set it to 48. I may play around with that and see how it goes.

no worries, i'll be happy if it helps. the thing is that every deployment environment and topology is different so sometime things need to be tweaked. channels are probably gonna depend on your country, congestion etc

when downgrading firmware you won't get the benefits of any security updates of later firmware, not sure that's as important for AP mode as it is if running the XT8 as main gateway in router mode.

 

[karma]

no worries, i'll be happy if it helps. the thing is that every deployment environment and topology is different so sometime things need to be tweaked. channels are probably gonna depend on your country, congestion etc

when downgrading firmware you won't get the benefits of any security updates of later firmware, not sure that's as important for AP mode as it is if running the XT8 as main gateway in router mode.

oh btw, since you're using lots of apple devices, i have an oldish iPad (my only apple device) and with the 43181 firmware I was unable to get a stable connection but with 42095 I have no issues.

here's another thread with people complaining about the latest firmware: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/asus-xt8-3-0-0-4-386-43181-2021-06-17.73161/

 

[vjarena3]

no worries, i'll be happy if it helps. the thing is that every deployment environment and topology is different so sometime things need to be tweaked. channels are probably gonna depend on your country, congestion etc

when downgrading firmware you won't get the benefits of any security updates of later firmware, not sure that's as important for AP mode as it is if running the XT8 as main gateway in router mode.

I currently have it running in router mode and am thing of putting an edgerouterx or similar in front of the Asus and running it in AP. That way the AP's don't get bogged down routing and let the edge handle security etc.

 

[karma]

I currently have it running in router mode and am thing of putting an edgerouterx or similar in front of the Asus and running it in AP. That way the AP's don't get bogged down routing and let the edge handle security etc.

yeah, I did something similar. That way I can just swap APs whenever I want to if something better comes on the market and I don't trust ISP routers... I'm not a security expert so i'm not gonna recommend anything or talk about my firewall/gateway setup.

 

[karma]

I currently have it running in router mode and am thing of putting an edgerouterx or similar in front of the Asus and running it in AP. That way the AP's don't get bogged down routing and let the edge handle security etc.

all good? just out of curiosity

 

[vjarena3]

all good? just out of curiosity

The firmware downgrade and some tuning has this thing humming! I will admit I rushed judgement too soon on it and after using it this week am really impressed. People always review speed and coverage which is crucial but they often overlook features. This thing is loaded with them from the IPS, firewall, parental controls, and traffic analyzing to being able to use it as a NAS solution. I also think me throwing the Orbi in for a day helped me realize what I had. So overall I would highly recommend this setup.