New - Asus Wireless AC1900 repeater with USB 3.0 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet ports

[IAAI]

RP-AC68U

http://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RP-AC68U/overview/
​

• Extend your existing 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi network with speeds up to 1900 Mbps.
• Quick and secure setup with just a press of the WPS button.
• Smart LED signal indicator helps you find the best location for optimum Wi-Fi performance.
• USB 3.0 port for AiCloud support and fast NAS performance.
• 5 Gigabit Ethernet ports to convert any wired network devices to wireless operation.
• ASUS ExpressWay uses full-speed device connections to boost performance.
• Roaming Assist helps you to get a stable connection everywhere in the home or office.

 

[ankhazam]

Interesting why the AC2400 EA-AC87 has been replaced with a lesser product. Moreover the "Express Way" is technically impossible to achieve 100% performance due to 2.4GHz bandwidth limitation. To me it seems as yet anoter marketing crap to sell old chips.

 

[RMerlin]

Interesting why the AC2400 EA-AC87 has been replaced with a lesser product. Moreover the "Express Way" is technically impossible to achieve 100% performance due to 2.4GHz bandwidth limitation. To me it seems as yet anoter marketing crap to sell old chips.

What they mean by "full speed" is that, typically, a repeater cuts your bandwidth in half, as it has to share its time between the upstream router and the client. What Expressway does is use one band for the link between the upstream and the repeater, and a different band for the client. That means bandwidth is no longer cut in half, so that bullet point is accurate.

 

[ankhazam]

@RMerlin Oh is it?
Please show me how do you wish to transfer full speed with:
802.11n : up to 600 Mbps
802.11ac : up to 1300 Mbps

It's crippled to half speed however you would imagine it. It would work as described by having 2x 5GHz radios... 1 of upstream and 1 for repeater AP.

The EA-AC87U had AC2400... which working as you described did halve the AC2400 into 'double' AC1200 and with properly enabled MU-MIMO should've overgone that limitation and achieve AC1300+ speeds

 

[RMerlin]

@RMerlin Oh is it?
Please show me how do you wish to transfer full speed with:
802.11n : up to 600 Mbps
802.11ac : up to 1300 Mbps

It's crippled to half speed however you would imagine it. It would work as described by having 2x 5GHz radios... 1 of upstream and 1 for repeater AP.

The EA-AC87U had AC2400... which working as you described did halve the AC2400 into 'double' AC1200 and with properly enabled MU-MIMO should've overgone that limitation and achieve AC1300+ speeds

Don`t confuse throughput with PHY link rates - they are never the same with Wireless. All manufacturers report the PHY link rate, never the real-life throughput. That is a totally separate issue from the fact that repeaters also halve the throughput. They do not halve the link rate, which remains the same (600, 1300, etc...)

Traditional repeaters only use one radio. Expressway allows to use both radios.

 

[sfx2000]

Hmmm... I suppose for folks that already spent $400USD on the RT-AC5300, this is a good way to throw some more money at ASUS....

 

[kvic]

The industrial design reminds me of super-computers from the earlier years but shrunk. I like the look.. hope they can release one version as a router with the brand new 64bit broadcom chipset.

 

[ankhazam]

Don`t confuse throughput with PHY link rates - they are never the same with Wireless. All manufacturers report the PHY link rate, never the real-life throughput. That is a totally separate issue from the fact that repeaters also halve the throughput. They do not halve the link rate, which remains the same (600, 1300, etc...)

Traditional repeaters only use one radio. Expressway allows to use both radios.

But still if you halve the throughput for a AC2400 you will end up around AC1000 and then around 500mbps real transfer rate... when you add into the equation a N600 radio it will go with real transfer nowhere near 300mbps which concludes that the RP-AC68U is a engineering fail when compared to RT-AC87U with EA-AC87U combo.

 

[RMerlin]

But still if you halve the throughput for a AC2400 you will end up around AC1000 and then around 500mbps real transfer rate... when you add into the equation a N600 radio it will go with real transfer nowhere near 300mbps which concludes that the RP-AC68U is a engineering fail when compared to RT-AC87U with EA-AC87U combo.

Uh, no. AC2400 does not mean that you have a PHY rate of 2400. AC2400 is the sum of both the 2.4 and 5 GHz PHY rates. It's a 600 MBps 2.4 GHz and a 1750 Mbps 5 GHz rate. So traditional repeaters would give you either 150 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz, or around 500 Mbps with the 5 GHz band - but not both.

 

[ankhazam]

Uh, no. AC2400 does not mean that you have a PHY rate of 2400. AC2400 is the sum of both the 2.4 and 5 GHz PHY rates. It's a 600 MBps 2.4 GHz and a 1750 Mbps 5 GHz rate. So traditional repeaters would give you either 150 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz, or around 500 Mbps with the 5 GHz band - but not both.

Ahh.. ok My bad... it's pure AC1700... still more than halved AC1300 or combined AC1300 limited with N600

How come 500Mbps @ 5GHZ? I have around 500mbps @5GHz with AC866... so I assume ~1gbps with 4x4 AC1700

As measured here: http://www.kitguru.net/networking/routers/zardon/asus-rt-ac87u-4x4-bridge-mode-review/5/

 

[RMerlin]

Ahh.. ok My bad... it's pure AC1700... still more than halved AC1300 or combined AC1300 limited with N600

How come 500Mbps @ 5GHZ? I have around 500mbps @5GHz with AC866... so I assume ~1gbps with 4x4 AC1700

As measured here: http://www.kitguru.net/networking/routers/zardon/asus-rt-ac87u-4x4-bridge-mode-review/5/

For a PHY rate of 1700 you get roughly 800-1000 throughput, halved by two when using a repeater, hence the 500 Mbps figure.

 

[ankhazam]

still more than 300 from 600N

 

[dsquared2]

For a PHY rate of 1700 you get roughly 800-1000 throughput, halved by two when using a repeater, hence the 500 Mbps figure.

Have you had any experience with the RT-AC5300? Especially vs the RT-AC3200?

Having weird problems with the 3200, i can be on my iPod not 10 feet away and it'll drop connection in games whereas on any other router I experience it doesn't do that.

 

[RMerlin]

Have you had any experience with the RT-AC5300? Especially vs the RT-AC3200?

I have both, but I only power them on to test/develop firmware code, so I've never done any real-life test of either of them. I use an RT-AC88U as my main (and before that it was an RT-AC87U).

 

[Steve1985]

@Merlin is your firmware compatible with this or will it be in the future? Currently it does not support guest network and i would really like to add a guest network to this device as it's placed far more central then my main router.
Steve

 

[RMerlin]

@Merlin is your firmware compatible with this or will it be in the future? Currently it does not support guest network and i would really like to add a guest network to this device as it's placed far more central then my main router.
Steve

Not compatible, and there are no plan to support it.

 

[VANT]

Interesting why the AC2400 EA-AC87 has been replaced with a lesser product. Moreover the "Express Way" is technically impossible to achieve 100% performance due to 2.4GHz bandwidth limitation. To me it seems as yet anoter marketing crap to sell old chips.

EA-87u is a wireles bridge, RP-68u is a repeater.