New Asus RT-87U

[Poseidon]

Actually I'm waiting for the RT-AC87W.

You crack me up bro. I love your router enthusiasm. I'm a router junkie too - except that I would never waste my time with garbage Netgear routers. Belkin/Linksys about to join the "crap" list as well.

Asus is the only way to go IMO when it comes to routers. I've tried them all and I keep returning the rest and coming back to Asus (Merlin's FW has a lot to do with this).

 

[wouterv]

You crack me up bro. I love your router enthusiasm. I'm a router junkie too - except that I would never waste my time with garbage Netgear routers. Belkin/Linksys about to join the "crap" list as well.

Asus is the only way to go IMO when it comes to routers. I've tried them all and I keep returning the rest and coming back to Asus (Merlin's FW has a lot to do with this).

Fact one: all firmware (software) has bugs.
Fact two: Asus seems to manage to give long term firmware upgrade support.
Fact three: Newer Asus firmware does not only contain bug fixes but also enhancements (although some enhancements may have a doubtful value).
Fact four: Most popular Asus routers are supported by third party firmware.

My experiences with other well known brands (mentioned above):
Products are quickly forgotten by the manufacturer, resulting in poor to bad firmware upgrade support.
The GUI of other products is often slow and not user friendly.
Some router manufacturers believe to know what is good for the end user and come up with weird forced solutions like "Cisco Connect Cloud".

Conclusion: Asus routers appear to be an economical and technical smart solution.

 

[sm00thpapa]

You crack me up bro. I love your router enthusiasm. I'm a router junkie too - except that I would never waste my time with garbage Netgear routers. Belkin/Linksys about to join the "crap" list as well.

Asus is the only way to go IMO when it comes to routers. I've tried them all and I keep returning the rest and coming back to Asus (Merlin's FW has a lot to do with this).

Routers are on my mind 24 hours day. I even dream about them. Been dealing with them for over 25 years. Belkin and Netgear have always been crap. Linksys turned to crap just as soon as the N draft came out. I still have a WRT54G, WRT54GL, WRT54G-TM and WRT54GS in which were all beast in their prime and still work today.

I just recently bought a Belkin N300 XR F9K1007 and a Netgear R6050 AC750 to give them a chance. And boy was I right both crap and returned.

Waiting for the reviews of the RT-AC87U and RT-AC3200.

Merlin has been a blessing.

 

[damir]

Probably in your "dreams" you already reviewed them ... share the info \ reviews with us.

 

[Poseidon]

Probably in your "dreams" you already reviewed them ... share the info \ reviews with us.

He only reviews the "U" version and currently he's dreaming about the "R" version so it looks like we're going to have to wait a bit.

 

[sm00thpapa]

He only reviews the "U" version and currently he's dreaming about the "R" version so it looks like we're going to have to wait a bit.

No man I just had a dream about the W version coming soon. LOL!

 

[Ronv42]

Apps Analysis Option on Adaptive QoS - WAN/LAN Bandwidth Monitor

I just picked up the router yesterday and I am very pleased with the coverage I am now getting in my home. I didn't measure in db's but the number of bars on the wireless devices is between 4 and 5 in all far reaching areas of the home.

The question I have is what the heck is the "Apps Monitor" on the QOS bandwidth monitor page? I have turned it on and back to off and haven't seen anything that tells me what it does.

Coming from Tomato firmware on a RT-N66 I enabled adaptive QOS and waiting to see how this works with VoIP, gaming, and video streaming all going on concurrently.

 

[RMerlin]

I just picked up the router yesterday and I am very pleased with the coverage I am now getting in my home. I didn't measure in db's but the number of bars on the wireless devices is between 4 and 5 in all far reaching areas of the home.

The question I have is what the heck is the "Apps Monitor" on the QOS bandwidth monitor page? I have turned it on and back to off and haven't seen anything that tells me what it does.

Coming from Tomato firmware on a RT-N66 I enabled adaptive QOS and waiting to see how this works with VoIP, gaming, and video streaming all going on concurrently.

After enabling Apps Analysis, if you click on one of the clients listed below, it will expand to reveal a list of applications running on that client and accessing the net.

There's also some QoS-related settings available on this page (by dragging one of the colors on top of a client), but I have no idea how they work in relation to the Adaptive QoS settings you can do on the other page (where you can drag and drop traffic types to reorganize their priorities).

 

[Ronv42]

After enabling Apps Analysis, if you click on one of the clients listed below, it will expand to reveal a list of applications running on that client and accessing the net.

That is a good feature to break down the traffic by application type. I swear that I clicked on the client icon on the list before and nothing happened. But this time it did. I think there is bug when you first get to this page it does expand but when click on show all it no longer expands the devices applications connections.

There's also some QoS-related settings available on this page (by dragging one of the colors on top of a client), but I have no idea how they work in relation to the Adaptive QoS settings you can do on the other page (where you can drag and drop traffic types to reorganize their priorities).

I am just using the Adaptive QoS at this time. I fear that some of these features may have adverse effects unless this is just a way of grouping the devices into categories. I did use the drag and drop types to give VoIP and Video streaming a higher priority.

 

[bodean]

Any advantage upgrading to this over ac66u?

 

[rtcomputersinc]

You crack me up bro. I love your router enthusiasm. I'm a router junkie too - except that I would never waste my time with garbage Netgear routers. Belkin/Linksys about to join the "crap" list as well.

Asus is the only way to go IMO when it comes to routers. I've tried them all and I keep returning the rest and coming back to Asus (Merlin's FW has a lot to do with this).

I have put Belkin/Linksys/"cisco home" on the crap list. Had the Linksys wvrs44n v1 and the then rebranded to Cisco wvrs4400n v2. They updated both a couple times and then just dumped support on them. You couldn't load any custom firmware on them so they became junk. I have a small pile of them...may take to range and use for targets.

 

[funkahdafi]

Any advantage upgrading to this over ac66u?

Yes and no. Depends. Many were discussed here in this thread already.

 

[DaveMishSr]

Their managers probably read these forums, and didn't want to have to deal with yet another discounted open box sold at a loss following your incoming return

Oh well. If you want to charge $280 for a router people do have the right to expect it to actually work. I noticed that the 2044 beta Gary posted a link for was titled rt-ac87u. I had to download the "R" version from the Asus support site to get my unit to work properly. That was after a factory default reset, flashing to the shipping firmware and then letting the router upgrade itself to the 2044 version. It works like a charm now.

 

[bodean]

Oh well. If you want to charge $280 for a router people do have the right to expect it to actually work. I noticed that the 2044 beta Gary posted a link for was titled rt-ac87u. I had to download the "R" version from the Asus support site to get my unit to work properly. That was after a factory default reset, flashing to the shipping firmware and then letting the router upgrade itself to the 2044 version. It works like a charm now.

R and U should work the same on the unit. Merlins does, I know that.

 

[gHiDoRa]

Oh well. If you want to charge $280 for a router people do have the right to expect it to actually work. I noticed that the 2044 beta Gary posted a link for was titled rt-ac87u. I had to download the "R" version from the Asus support site to get my unit to work properly. That was after a factory default reset, flashing to the shipping firmware and then letting the router upgrade itself to the 2044 version. It works like a charm now.

i flashed the v.2044 files from Gary on the R version without any problem.

 

[RMerlin]

Oh well. If you want to charge $280 for a router people do have the right to expect it to actually work.

it was a joke, as smooth has purchased a lot of different routers, and returned them all afterward. More than the average customer does.

I noticed that the 2044 beta Gary posted a link for was titled rt-ac87u. I had to download the "R" version from the Asus support site to get my unit to work properly. That was after a factory default reset, flashing to the shipping firmware and then letting the router upgrade itself to the 2044 version. It works like a charm now.

The R and U firmware are 100% identical. In fact when compiling, you cannot chose between R or U, it's one single firmware profile. The only difference is in the CFE - the webui will use the ID stored in the CFE to identify your particular SKU.

 

[bodean]

CNET has a review posted.

http://www.cnet.com/products/asus-ac2400-rt-ac87u-dual-band-wireless-gigabit-router/

 

[RMerlin]

CNET has a review posted.

http://www.cnet.com/products/asus-ac2400-rt-ac87u-dual-band-wireless-gigabit-router/

I wish Asus would stop defaulting the USB 3.0 interference reduction to "enabled" - this is something that most reviewers and users don't know about, so they end up with subpar USB performance. This reviewer tested his USB 3.0 HDD at USB 2.0 speed as seen by his abysmal USB numbers. See my post here for some real USB 3.0 performance results.

 

[tl2k2]

I wish Asus would stop defaulting the USB 3.0 interference reduction to "enabled" - this is something that most reviewers and users don't know about, so they end up with subpar USB performance. This reviewer tested his USB 3.0 HDD at USB 2.0 speed as seen by his abysmal USB numbers. See my post here for some real USB 3.0 performance results.

you should implement this on your custom firmware.

 

[snbdora]

USB 3.0 on the backside

Would there be any chance that AC-87U would come with USB3.0 port on the backside?

I think that will be awesome!

Thanks