Did I Have Unreasonable Expectations? (RT-AX88U Pro)?

[Daniel Skupien]

So, back in June I finally upgraded my old SB8200 to a Nighthawk CM3000, main reason was because Comcast upgraded the area to handle the higher upload speeds, of which my tier service was listed as getting 200mbps+ for uploads. I've had my Asus RT-AX88U (Non-Pro) since 2020. But just about a month or so Comcast out of nowhere upgraded my tier to the 2000Mbps download 300Mpbs upload speeds. Which all prompted me to finally have a reason to upgrade my router. So I thought the RT-AX88U Pro would be a perfect reasonably priced upgrade, seeing as it has a 2.5Gbps WAN and 2.5Gbps LAN, basically all what I thought was needed. I just got it yesterday, and I'm really disappointed with the results.

Speed with modem directly connected to PC

Speed with modem connected to RT-AX88U Pro WAN and 2.5Gbps LAN to PC

Is it just a setting I'm missing? Can I do something to get around this by using the old non pro RT-AX88U? A switch? What? That is a massive loss, I was downloading large files at 250-270MB/sec to barely able to hit 170MB/sec. I mean are the 2.5Gbps ports not actually 2.5Gbps? Just really confused. It's a massive loss of what I'm paying for and not getting.

 

[Tech9]

The router has 2.5GbE ports. The hardware inside is not really 2.5Gbps capable and relies heavily on NAT acceleration. Anything incompatible with Runner and Flow Cache will result in lower speed. Incompatible options with both will bring you down to ~400Mbps. Withdraw Trend Micro data sharing agreement, reboot the router and test again. If the speed is back, enable the options one by one and see which one impacts the performance.

 

[Daniel Skupien]

The router has 2.5GbE ports. The hardware inside is not really 2.5Gbps capable and relies heavily on NAT acceleration. Anything incompatible with Runner and Flow Cache will result in lower speed. Incompatible options with both will bring you down to ~400Mbps. Withdraw Trend Micro data sharing agreement, reboot the router and test again. If the speed is back, enable the options one by one and see which one impacts the performance.

I'll have to try when I get a chance. But if it's true that the capabilities are a bit limited, then this from Asus makes me really confused.

Is this just false or misleading advertising by Asus? I've used Link Aggregation with my CM3000 and my old RT-AX88U non pro router and could manage about 1,100Mbos at most. Or can you through certain scenarios actually achieve like 3Gbps+ throughput at one time?

 

[Tech9]

What Asus advertisement is not telling you - possible speed "up to", conditional. What 2.5GbE port can eventually achieve is ~2.3Gbps. Don't count on WAN Aggregation, it's not really A+B=C speed. This is subject of another conversation. The speed with this AIO device is not guaranteed. It depends on selected firmware options and only with NAT acceleration enabled. Your old router was exactly the same, with a bit weaker CPU. Home routers are balance devices between commonly used features and power efficiency. If you need guaranteed performance at all possible scenarios you may want x86 hardware with i5 or better CPU inside. It will cost much more, will consume more power, will take more space with additional 2.5GbE switch and AX-class AP.

 

[Daniel Skupien]

The router has 2.5GbE ports. The hardware inside is not really 2.5Gbps capable and relies heavily on NAT acceleration. Anything incompatible with Runner and Flow Cache will result in lower speed. Incompatible options with both will bring you down to ~400Mbps. Withdraw Trend Micro data sharing agreement, reboot the router and test again. If the speed is back, enable the options one by one and see which one impacts the performance.

You were right, it's some setting. Just did a factory reset, disagreed to the firmware/security upgrade even, only thing setup were what the SSID and passwords were going to be for WIFI, did a speed test and sure enough it's good now.

So I do need to basically go slowly through everything and see what the heck just kills the speed.

 

[Tech9]

Don't enable any type of QoS, you perhaps don't need it anymore. AiProtection may have performance impact. Don't bother with WAN Aggregation, use the WAN port only. Enable only what you need and use, go one feature at a time and you'll find acceptable for you balance.

 

[Daniel Skupien]

Don't enable any type of QoS, you perhaps don't need it anymore. AiProtection may have performance impact. Don't bother with WAN Aggregation, use the WAN port only. Enable only what you need and use, go one feature at a time and you'll find acceptable for you balance.

I FOUND IT!!! It's this, this is the setting that kills my bandwidth, of all things I would have not guessed it was the "Traffic Analyzer - Statistic" option!

If this isn't common knowledge, it now needs to be. I did turn on Ai Protection, and I am keeping it on as that doesn't seem to affect anything, but the Traffic Analyzer, that puts my speed test right away down to that 1400Mbps point, turned it off, and speed went right back up. Heck, I wish I knew this with my non pro RT-AX88U, it probably has the same detrimental effect.

 

[Tech9]

Heck, I wish I knew this with my non pro RT-AX88U

It is the same with your old router, but the WAN speed was lower and you couldn't notice any difference. Home routers are similar to RPi hardware and most processes run on a single core. The more things the CPU does the lower the overall expected performance. Keep it simple and you'll be happier.