Cheap Huawei AX3 router vs RT-AX86U personal experience

[borgqueenx]

What a horrible experience with the RT-AX86U, i am going to try to sell it, since i also bought it used.
It will simply not connect to a load of smart devices in my home. I have around 40 wifi devices, from which 15 are smart bulbs that almost dont send/receive traffic at all, but it's too much to ask for the RT-AX86U.

I bought the router for its strong performance with wireguard and able to make a mesh network, but it's a strong disappointment. With VPN disabled, making the same network settings (SSID + PW) around 11 devices connected. More connected after manually switching off/on the smart bulbs, but still some devices simply refuse to connect.
I did a factory reset, and exactly the same problem. many devices wont connect automatically or only after i turn them off/on.

I just swapped the router again for my old Huawei Ax3, and all devices instantly connected without trouble whatsoever.

RT-AX86U: 250 euro.
Huawei AX3: 50 euro. But ok, does not support wireguard/openvpn and range is a bit less.

 

[bbunge]

What a horrible experience with the RT-AX86U, i am going to try to sell it, since i also bought it used.
It will simply not connect to a load of smart devices in my home. I have around 40 wifi devices, from which 15 are smart bulbs that almost dont send/receive traffic at all, but it's too much to ask for the RT-AX86U.

I bought the router for its strong performance with wireguard and able to make a mesh network, but it's a strong disappointment. With VPN disabled, making the same network settings (SSID + PW) around 11 devices connected. More connected after manually switching off/on the smart bulbs, but still some devices simply refuse to connect.
I did a factory reset, and exactly the same problem. many devices wont connect automatically or only after i turn them off/on.

I just swapped the router again for my old Huawei Ax3, and all devices instantly connected without trouble whatsoever.

RT-AX86U: 250 euro.
Huawei AX3: 50 euro. But ok, does not support wireguard/openvpn and range is a bit less.

Wireguard on Asus routers is still a work in progress.
And do you want to trust a product from a company that is suspected of adding features required by its government especially when you run cheap unsecured IoT devices?

 

[borgqueenx]

Wireguard on Asus routers is still a work in progress.
And do you want to trust a product from a company that is suspected of adding features required by its government especially when you run cheap unsecured IoT devices?

No, which is also a reason why im switching. But i cannot understand why its such a failure. Even officially they claim it can handle 35 devices, while others claim 100 or a bit more. But less then 30 and the asus is already trouble.
And then a supercheap device handles it with ease.

 

[kildare]

when you run cheap unsecured IoT devices?

Actually looking for security at the router level is practically a myth if one has also lot of IoT devices (mostly Chinese products) which use Chinese cloud services... so why worry?...

The true security is possible only if running all IoT devices locally, no cloud services.

 

[TheMegaMan]

It's probably a protocol/legacy compatibility issue.

https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1042475/

It might be Asus's fault, but equally, it's possible a lot of cheap IoT devices cut corners in their TCP/IP stack that might bite them with compatibility with newer protocols.

 

[Yota]

Advice to the OP:

Turn off the 2.4GHz of the Asus router, set your Huawei router to AP mode and enable only 2.4GHz, then block the Internet access of the Huawei router in the Asus router, then you get a network where everything works.

The true security is possible only if running all IoT devices locally, no cloud services.

Sadly when you do, you'll be tripped up by the Asus again.

Release - Asuswrt-Merlin 386.9 is now available for AC models

Wonderfully stable on RT-AC86U [many thanks @RMerlin ] ... just hoping to get as good on my RT-AX86U's sometime in the future with version 388.3 :)

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