AX92U or AX82U as main router?

[Shadowjump]

Just got an AX82U to replace my old Netgear R7000 that started showing its age (needs reboot every 2-3 days).

I also have an AX92U that I was using as an access point.

Of course I am going to use AImesh in wired mode but I was wondering which router has better coverage and can handle traffic and lots of devices better as a router (40 to 50, few wired and mostly wireless devices).

 

[Mr Tvardovsky]

I own both of those routers and after some testing of both configs I decided to use the AC82U as the main one. In my home environment I didn’t notice any difference in terms of coverage. Two reasons that drove my decision were:
1) I’m looking forward to the Gnuton’s fork of Merlin firmware for AX82U. I don’t expect any luck like this with AX92U.
2) My MoCA backhaul happens to be unstable sometimes. I appreciate that when this is the case, the AX92U node automatically switches to the wireless backhaul using its strong 4x4 AX 5Ghz-2 radio, while the AC 5GHz-1 remains fully available for clients.

But YMMV

 

[leerees]

The AX82u has a tricore CPU whereas the AX92u only has dual core so I'd put the AX82u as the CAP (master node).

Both devices will be able to handle 50 clients between them.

 

[Tech9]

The AX82u has a tricore CPU whereas the AX92u only has dual core

AX92U has faster CPU - ARMv8 cores with AES support.

 

[leerees]

I will admit, I know absolutely nothing about these CPU's. Does the AX92u have a better CPU than the AX86u?

I'm interested in this as the AX92u has lower latency than the AX86u over WiFi.

 

[L&LD]

Same CPU. RT-AX86U has 2x the cores and double the RAM. More than likely, they are using different SDK versions too.

 

[Tech9]

I'm interested in this as the AX92u has lower latency than the AX86u over WiFi.

Both routers use exactly the same BCM43684 5GHz AX radio and perhaps the same Broadcom wireless driver.

 

[RMerlin]

Both routers use exactly the same BCM43684 5GHz AX radio and perhaps the same Broadcom wireless driver.

The RT-AX86U uses a newer SDK than the RT-AX92U.

 

[Tech9]

Not much of a software guy - is the wireless driver different?

 

[RMerlin]

Not much of a software guy - is the wireless driver different?

I don't know. That model's wireless is in two parts: the basic "driver", and the firmware image that gets loaded into the radio, and is run by the wifi SoC's CPU. I have no way of comparing the binary images between models.

 

[leerees]

The RT-AX86U uses a newer SDK than the RT-AX92U.

Do I need to sorry about my AX92u's being "upgraded" in the future or do SDK's not affect us?

If they have the same hardware, surely the performance should be almost identical. 5ms extra for the AX86u is an eternity for gamers.

Had I not needed a mesh I probably would have brought the AX86u as it's rated so highly here. Those latencies make it worse than the ISP supplied router. My ISP router isn't that far behind the AX92u offering 3ms latency on WiFi.

 

[RMerlin]

Do I need to sorry about my AX92u's being "upgraded" in the future or do SDK's not affect us?

No idea what is Broadcom (or Asus)'s policy when it comes to SDKs. I assume bugfixes and improvements may be applied to multiple SDKs.

If they have the same hardware, surely the performance should be almost identical. 5ms extra for the AX86u is an eternity for gamers.

If you have constant 5 ms latency on your wifi, then something is wrong with either your setup or your environment. Keep in mind that wifi is a shared media. Clients have to wait for an available timeslot, packets may potentially need to be retransmitted, etc... Make sure it's not a specific device hogging all the available airtime, preventing the important clients from getting lower latency. For instance, Intel wireless driver have a "boost" mode that allows that driver to use more airtime for itself, which will lead to an increase in throughput for that client, but most likely also increase latency for every other clients on your network. You want that setting to be left disabled if latency is important to you.