Looking for settings advice RT-AC86U Asuswrt-Merlin

[Tiber38]

Hello all,
Thank you for all of the great information on this forum!

I am returning my GT-AC5300 router in favor of the RT-AC88U. The key factor in my decision was no support for Merlin FW. One of my key interests is to have two xbox ones on my network with OPEN NAT playing COD WWII. I was not able to do this with the GT-5300 and understand that Merlin's FW will allow a full cone NAT.

I am looking for help with optimal settings to achieve the above and to minimize ping time while prioritizing XBOX traffic. With a few key settings to focus on it could save me some of the frustration I have spent trying to get the GT-AC5300 to work how I wanted it. I am interested in security, but not anything vastly above what the router natively provides. I am also hoping the range will be atleast equal to what I was getting with the 5300.

Setup:
RT-A-88U with Asuswrt-Merlin FW
2 XBox One's(one day one and one S) and two PC's hardwired to the router, all CAT-7.
3-10 wireless devices, 1-2 of which will stream Netflix or Hulu on occasion
Xbox and router's setup in IPV4 & IPV6
COMCAST cable internet with latest speedtest at 200/10ish ping 11.

Thank you for your time!
Tiber38

 

[RMerlin]

I was not able to do this with the GT-5300 and understand that Merlin's FW will allow a full cone NAT.

Full Cone NAT is only available on the RT-AC86U.

 

[Tiber38]

well.... damn. Would I lose much capability going with the RT-AC86U? In other words would I sacrifice too much WIFI range and routing speed?

Thanks for your response RMerlin

 

[RMerlin]

well.... damn. Would I lose much capability going with the RT-AC86U? In other words would I sacrifice too much WIFI range and routing speed?

Thanks for your response RMerlin

The RT-AC86U is actually a more powerful model than the RT-AC88U. The only area where it isn't is that it's limited to three streams instead of four streams - but almost nobody has a four stream capable network card, so you probably wouldn't see any difference in wifi performance.

For routing, DPI, VPN, SMB however, the RT-AC86U will run circles around the RT-AC88U.

 

[Tiber38]

LOL, guess I am doing another amazon return. Most of my "serious" traffic is wired so I am not real interested in loads of wireless bandwidth.

I am just trying to improve over my older router which did not cover my whole house and the GT-AC5300 did, so I don't want to sacrifice range. I also want to XBOXs to work flawlessly together online.

I will just have to dust off a switch to make up for the 4 less ethernet ports. The processing power has me excited though.

Thanks again!

 

[RMerlin]

Keep in mind that Full Cone NAT is not a panacea. It will help in some scenarios, but ultimately the games themselves (and the OS of the console) also need to be able to deal with multiple concurrent clients within the same LAN.

 

[Tiber38]

Upnp solves most of my issues. Both OS's show open NAT. COD WWII, however continues to give one machine a Moderate NAT and connection issues. I had read that your firmware was able to solve similar issues with BO3 so that is the path I was going on.

I understand that maybe the two games open ports differently. Either way it makes sense for me to switch to the cheaper router as long as the range stays competitive because I won't use most of the GT-AC5300 features.

 

[Vexira]

The 88u should be fine with open nat, multi console wise, merlin fixed the unpnp issue ages ago, the issue is that the gt-5300 doesn't have the fix in its firmware, so I suspect its running a port-address restricted cone nat, For full cone nat on the gt-5300, you'd have to ask ASUS for that, would be nice though.

 

[Vexira]

Keep in mind that Full Cone NAT is not a panacea. It will help in some scenarios, but ultimately the games themselves (and the OS of the console) also need to be able to deal with multiple concurrent clients within the same LAN.

on the game devs end dedicated servers would fix the nat requirement issue, and on the client side ipv6.

 

[Tiber38]

I wanted to update anyone who may be interested. I received my RT-AC86U and successfully loaded Asuswrt-Merlin FW. I can confirm that I have 2 XBOX's running COD WWII with both showing open NAT inside the game. I did have a few issues while playing that seemed to be the same symptoms of one in moderate so its not perfect.. Overall I am very happy with performance.

I have 2 new goals with settings:
1. Improve upload speeds. Right now I am 240/5, and I am playing with QOS bandwidth limiter settings, without much improvement. It would seem I have a ton of bufferbloat. My modem's upload power seems like it is in band, but I should be seeing atleast double that if not 4X. I am thinking there may be downstream noise.. My street connection was replaced in the spring.
2. Ensure the 2 gaming machines have priority traffic.

Thanks for the input!