Must have gotten a lemon of a RT-BE96U

[GunSmoke]

@GunSmoke I'm sorry to read that the new router to you caused you to stay up pretty much the whole night. If I did that I would be one unhappy camper. Also I'd likely have some answering to do to the wife and son about why it cost so much AND not work as it supposed to. I remember when we had two 6E routers in the house, 1 on the main floor and one on the 2nd floor, we finally got a 6E MacBook Pro and first thing it would not connect to 6 GHz. They literally dialed Apple tech support and handed me the phone. First thing they did was have me hard reset my ASUS AiMesh primary router! Haha there went my 4/5 node network, AND it did not solve the problem....

What solved the problem? Anytime I've had issues with individual devices it was because I was screwing around with the wireless settings when I really didn't need to. I leave those options default now other than set the radio to maximum power if it's not already.

Maybe my WAN IP passthrough issue was a blessing in disguise and AFC on the GT-BE19000 will be worth having. Given 6Ghz is rather exclusive as a band, having the ability to boost the power on that seems like a good idea that I suspect will work out well for those that have it.

Yes for me, I decided a work night was the time to do the job and didn't expect any problems. Mainly annoyed at the router reconfig which I never got to. At 5:30AM and having her and I start work at 8:30AM I was angry but decided to give up. Panicked, knowing work started in a few hours as I got into the morning. As far as the expensive, I bought our 20 year old recently renovated house for my wife and I, it's paid off. Same with the car, and I pay all the expenses like these routers and appliances in the home. Maintenance etc. AND my wife makes more money than I do. So no one can tell me what to do on that front and I have the money obviously. That's what really gets people on the internet mad. When $750 gets a product everyone would love to have, tri-band wifi 7 with MLO and AFC but they can't swing it because stupid or lazy or poor. Who knows the killer combo that strikes the internet lazies. The saddest thing to see in this world isn't their poverty, it's their envy. I love knowing you have enjoyed 6E wireless and now wifi 7 and there's this peanut gallery of poverty techies completely jealous of you. They'd love to have your money or equipment, but instead have to settle on the idea that somehow they're smarter than you because they don't have wifi 6E or 7. Pathetic but that's the world we live in.

 

[Tech9]

When $750 gets a product everyone would love to have

Some folks around actually have outgrown AIO routers and run better quality more expensive equipment at home. Not everyone wants underpowered RPi-like hardware running perpetual beta firmware with known permanently broken, unknown occasionally broken and promised, but delayed or never implemented features. If you really believe rushed to the market consumer device like this is the best you can get in networking - sorry, but it isn't.

 

[GunSmoke]

Some folks around actually have outgrown AIO routers and run better quality more expensive equipment at home. Not everyone wants underpowered RPi-like hardware running perpetual beta firmware with known permanently broken, unknown occasionally broken and promised, but delayed or never implemented features. If you really believe rushed to the market consumer device like this is the best you can get in networking - sorry, but it isn't.

Uh oh. You "don't want it".. "it's bad"... you "have something better", but you're still here arguing and debating people over them wanting it. You're not actually poor in your mind. You're just smarter than everyone else. I see that. You must also be taller than me, be more attractive, and have superior s3xual performance. You've revealed so much about yourself and we are in awe. Thank you for gracing me with your opinions, it's an honor really.

 

[jzchen]

What solved the problem?

I bought a RE815XE range extender and copied the 6 GHz settings that were different over to the AXE16000, I believe two settings:

Preferred Scanning Channels checked/enabled

OFDMA/802.11AX MU-MIMO disabled.

 

[jzchen]

What it will start and end being fully used for is BS marketing. Nothing else will reach 33Gbps ever. If you really make purchase decision based on this marketing class number - home router manufacturers love you. In reality you'll get bigger lemons only with lower price/performance ratio.

Well, the trend is to move higher and higher. I'm not expecting a single device to use up all 33 Gbps, but I hope to support the natural trend to go higher. Just a few years ago I was trying to find a GT-AXE11000 WiFi 6E router, because hey my old RT-AC68U was AiMesh capable! It then became looking around for a GT-AXE16000. I believe the DECO BE95 bumped that up to BE33000, while ASUS has the GT-BE98 Pro and BQ16 Pro at BE30000. I'm not ever going back to look for an AC1900 moving forward....

I know you've kindly shared your setup before somewhere here, but I just rather buy a packaged router.

For example there was news that all consumer grade/home network grade routers can not possibly handle 10 Gbps, but rather somewhere in the 8.x Gbps territory. BUT it turns out it's the ISPs that cap their 10 Gbps service to 8.x Gbps, "for stability"...

 

[Tech9]

It then became looking around for a GT-AXE16000

You've got one and it's the most expensive Wi-Fi 6 model available, correct? It was released in May 2022 and Asuswrt 5.0 was showcased in the same year. The flagship model was about to get the new Pro firmware. It's late 2024 now and it stuck on Asuswrt 4.0 firmware though and no matter the high price you have paid for it 3x cheaper RT-AX86U Pro runs on Asuswrt 5.0 and you still wait. The same for super expensive ZenWiFi Pro ET12. The amount you pay doesn't correspond to the quality of the product, including support. Latest and greatest on the consumer market is not equal to better.

 

[jzchen]

Alright, let's compare...

How much was your set up, when you purchased it? I'm sure what you bought is not as expensive now as it was back then. Neither is the AXE16000, it is priced less than what I did pay for back then.

YES, it did not work with my son's $3k MacBook Pro 6E when he received it, and I had to resolve that, (by copying TP-Link's 6E RE settings over)...

So please remind me, how your system is better? But be fair, share the price you paid when you built it. Because the AXE16000 no longer commands a $699.99 price tag that it did either...

 

[Tech9]

I personally don’t have any consumer AIO routers on my networks for specific reasons. There is nothing to compare.

 

[GunSmoke]

I personally don’t have any consumer AIO routers on my networks for specific reasons. There is nothing to compare.

Don't come trolling, talking tough and then weasel out like this. Tell the man what you're using and don't lie, include photos. Otherwise you're as big of a clown as you come off as. Tough talk but you can certainly include whatever you're using whether it be a PC based router and Ubiquity or whatever else. You can also compare not just what you paid and what you have, but your speeds. I'll bet good money that his setup is faster than yours over wifi. And I'd bet my net worth that my internet connection is better than yours at 5Gbps. Stop the no life, poverty fronting, especially if you're just going to driveby troll products you "don't care about". You care a lot, so much that you'll waste your time arguing here. Nut up or shut up.

 

[RMerlin]

People, be polite.

 

[thiggins]

@GunSmoke Name calling and aggressive attitude is not tolerated here. 1 week timeout for you.

 

[sfx2000]

Folks will likely has an issue here...

Believe it is or not - my primary WiFi network is still running on 801.11 g/n on 2.4, and 11 a/n/ac with gigabit LAN connections on a 500/50 broadband WAN connection...

Most of this is due to interop concerns - and there, where I am, things just work...

11ax/be answers questions that I have not a need to ask...

Over on my dev network - at the moment it is 11ax for 2.4 and 5 GHz - at the moment I've been looking at Mediatek chipsets, but even there, sometimes the legacy b/g/n chip can surprise when we look at performance over range - the legacy ath9k chips continue to impress even though they a decade old now...

 

[jzchen]

"Things just work..." I like that.

I'd still be using my RT-AC68U if ASUS didn't put it on the EOL list. With its long antennae it provided WiFi signal a significant distance in front of our house.

Just getting the new BE products to work as we think they should can be an ordeal, and the tendency is to blame/target the most expensive of our purchases. (Back to tinkering for me)...

 

[Tech9]

Just getting the new BE products to work as we think they should can be an ordeal

Most new consumer products are rushed to the market to beat the competition. Some are eventually fixed later, some remain never fixed for the life of the product. False advertising is part of the marketing, after Wi-Fi 4 the theoretical max speeds are strictly conditional with large gaps between advertising and reality. If someone is after reliability and speed - has to go wired. Wi-Fi is for mobile devices and most don’t need or have nothing to do with Gigabit or faster speeds. Web browsing over 150Mbps is all the same experience. For above reasons many find no significant difference in every day user experience between $200 and $800 AIO router.

 

[GunSmoke]

Most new consumer products are rushed to the market to beat the competition. Some are eventually fixed later, some remain never fixed for the life of the product. False advertising is part of the marketing, after Wi-Fi 4 the theoretical max speeds are strictly conditional with large gaps between advertising and reality. If someone is after reliability and speed - has to go wired. Wi-Fi is for mobile devices and most don’t need or have nothing to do with Gigabit or faster speeds. Web browsing over 150Mbps is all the same experience. For above reasons many find no significant difference in every day user experience between $200 and $800 AIO router.

False.

No comparison between my old AC AP and my AX 6E AP in my crowded urban environment. Can't even connect to my wifi in front of my house on the former. Everything that can be on ethernet is, but that's limited to a sole desktop PC and FireTV devices which are going back on wifi due to the shoddy (100mbit) ethernet adapter used within those. So we're looking at ethernet for a desktop PC alone in this home. Not every situation is summed up by your perspective or situation.

 

[jzchen]

False.

No comparison between my old AC AP and my AX 6E AP in my crowded urban environment. Can't even connect to my wifi in front of my house on the former. Everything that can be on ethernet is, but that's limited to a sole desktop PC and FireTV devices which are going back on wifi due to the shoddy (100mbit) ethernet adapter used within those. So we're looking at ethernet for a desktop PC alone in this home. Not every situation is summed up by your perspective or situation.

I bought this with my FireTV purchase last year:

Amazon.com

Works great. It did require careful research and asking a question to verify this is actually higher spec than the Amazon original version...

 

[GunSmoke]

I bought this with my FireTV purchase last year:

Amazon.com

Works great. It did require careful research and asking a question to verify this is actually higher spec than the Amazon original version...

I used one of those for years. I had the UGreen before it.

It adds a number of layers, from the FireTV's USB controller to Cable Matter's implementation of their adapter, and the software involved on the FireTV side. I had one FireTV Cube on one of those for ethernet for years, and an identical FireTV Cube on wifi and swore the one on wifi was in general smoother and worked better. This is from years of back and forth dual usage.

I did a comparison with my FireTV on 6E and it was as snappy or faster than that USB 2.0-limited ethernet adapter. I was left unconvinced it's superior in my testing. If the FireTV had a known quality ethernet implementation like the Apple TV 4K has, I wouldn't be comparing Amazon's wifi implementation to their ethernet / USB-enabled ethernet at all. Unfortunately for me, all of my smart home devices are Alexa enabled and I care more about sticking to that, than I do my connectivity to my FireTVs for videos and casual games. So while I do hardwire everything that makes sense to, the small bit of latency introduced with using wifi 6E over ethernet when it involves such an outdated and generally unvalidated stack like what's going on with a FireTV's USB 2.0 + adapter combo seems questionable to me. I've actually stuck to using 6E over ethernet for these particular devices. For an AppleTV 4K user or Shield user who both have built-in gigabit, be a different story. Amazon just about wants to remove ethernet entirely and leaving us with a 100Mbit SoC "NIC" or USB 2.0 options says a lot. So does ethernet always win? No, not when its this restricted and gimped as Amazon does. YMMV but I'd invite you to do some testing. It's a tough call and I do lean ethernet like most people, but felt after years of using two FireTVs to compare with, to put all of them on 6E.

 

[SandmanXX]

I think I got the actual lemon, so far. Couple of similar tales on reddit. I bought the 96u, started on a sunday afternoon. Boy did I need it. Got it started, on initial startup, then it wanted to upgrade to newest firmware. I said yes, I don't remember if I even had a choice. That was it. It rebooted, never came all the way back. Power led would come on, stay on, and that was it. Tried factory reset, didn't work. Read up on and put it rescue mode, it 'seemed' to go into rescue mode, with the power led blinking REAL slow. Couldn't get my pc to recognize it, couldn't get the firmware rescue software to even find it. I'm sure I was not doing something right about changing my computers ip4 addy to what they said, 192.168.1.10, nor .50.10, nothing worked. I claim to only know very little more than the average joe about networking, but MAN was I frustrated. Even had the ISP bump my modem (sb8200) to see if that was something, as I tried hooking in to the modem AND pc trying things. Nothing, so 2 days later, back to amazon it goes. The new one will be here in a couple days, going to try it one more time. I posted another thread earlier, no one said anything, about recommendations about what to do step by step on replacing my router. I'll ask a couple more questions to refresh the thread, we'll see. Half a day trying hard didn't get me anywhere.

 

[Unisoft]

Most new consumer products are rushed to the market to beat the competition. Some are eventually fixed later, some remain never fixed for the life of the product. False advertising is part of the marketing, after Wi-Fi 4 the theoretical max speeds are strictly conditional with large gaps between advertising and reality. If someone is after reliability and speed - has to go wired. Wi-Fi is for mobile devices and most don’t need or have nothing to do with Gigabit or faster speeds. Web browsing over 150Mbps is all the same experience. For above reasons many find no significant difference in every day user experience between $200 and $800 AIO router.

I did, the newer one had VLAN support, better WiFi.

Whilst I agree with what you say about business grade kit, it often gets more expensive to match the features of AIO instead of skimping on some to keep cost down, and you need more kit around consuming more electricity, generating heat in summer to any room (air con is even more money and people might live in countries where air con isn't required normally for just a couple of hot days per year) needing patching and in a domestic house situation, most don't want this.

 

[Tech9]

and you need more kit around consuming more electricity

Not the case anymore. We have alternatives conversation in another forum section.