ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 (Owners)

[sfx2000]

The OS / Kernel is 64bit like previously discussed, but ARM architecture / instructions curiously still ARMv7-a, this should be changed to ARMv8.

Aarch64 can run pretty much any 32 bit ARM code - there's a cost to doing it, but it can/does run... which with the 3rd party stuff, that's ok...

Looks like the RT-AC86U is going to be in the same SDK -- so folks do need to get started getting up to speed with this drop...

http://www.asussmart.com/smart/556.html

BTW - what's up with Mediafire and the nasty/scammy popups there :|

 

[sfx2000]

I suspect that the GT-AC5300 is being used as a development/test bed for the firmware 382 codebase, hence the frequent updates. Another insane amount of changes in the code, some of it seems to be stuff that's still work-in-progress.

Things are looking bleaker by every release for my chances at being able to merge all of this back onto my code.

I'm sure it's not going to be worth the effort to backport to the AC-1900 class devices - lot of changes, and it's probably time to start thinking about the Cortex-A9's as an LTS type of thing - security and bug fixes perhaps...

The BogoMIPS == 100,00 - this is expected actually... it's an artifact of A7/A53, where they can be part of a big.LITTLE config with cpu hotplug - moving the execution path from the low power cores to the big high performance cores - so bogomips just reports a timing loop value based on a constant...

not a bug...

 

[sfx2000]

The BogoMIPS == 100,00 - this is expected actually... it's an artifact of A7/A53, where they can be part of a big.LITTLE config with cpu hotplug - moving the execution path from the low power cores to the big high performance cores - so bogomips just reports a timing loop value based on a constant...

And if folks really, really want BogoMIPS back, look at cpuinfo.c and smp.c - you'll see why... these days it's more about supporting libvirt compatibility than anything else... which is important to some that are doing really big data center stuff on arm..

Between things like big.LITTLE and DVFS, bogomips are not reliable...

code these days probably should not depend on bogomips, rather determine things in other ways...

 

[kvic]

From what I recall, one of the benefits of GCM is that you don't need to compute a separate HMAC. That means that the performance gain is more visible at the application level than if you just a straight compare of the cipher itself.

That only represents little improvement in GCM. The big gain from GCM is allowing massive parallelism at both chip and application level. Apparently the SDK fails on this aspect or the ARMv8 chip again lags behind its time in terms of crypto functionality.

 

[RMerlin]

I'm sure it's not going to be worth the effort to backport to the AC-1900 class devices - lot of changes, and it's probably time to start thinking about the Cortex-A9's as an LTS type of thing - security and bug fixes perhaps...

I don't have the time/skill/resources to maintain 9 devices on my own without anyone else helping in the long run. I need Asus's engineers to take care of fixing and maintaining parts like the Dual WAN code for me, or else things will remain broken forever - not something I'm willing to support in the long term.

 

[Pathfindercod]

*update*
Router number 3... worked out of the box like a normal router should. So after two routers and I bought a new modem I care the one charter gave me was crap even though my old modem and router was fine. So had two bad routers out of the box.

 

[hackintoshsr]

Mines fine from Best Buy so far. My "regular" non ROG AC5300 had its 2.4ghz band drop out then the 5ghz-1 after it got sent back from ASUS. They then sent me a new 5300, but sold that and got this.

Anyhoo, I'm not too thrilled about the sporatic speedtests I am getting vs. my previous routers. Seems like one out of 5 I will get full speed connecting to my providers speedtest site, which my previous router always pegged. Not sure if I turned too many things on. I turned on all the protection stuff. I just figured the cpu was beefy enough nowadays, but anyone know if that would matter? I need to debug I guess...

 

[madhatter01]

Dual WAN works great. I had At&t Uverse install yesterday and its 50Mbps down and 10Mbps up. Real world is 35Mbps download because TV steals from the internet and up gets 12-13Mbps. So I decide to keep Chater also. Charter is around 65Mbps with boost. Now I get both combined and its awesome.

 

[nyxagamemnon]

I'm debating to pick this router up or not. I've got about 16+ Devices on my wifi network. Any thoughts? Currently using an AC88U with a AC68U As a Repeater.

The AC88U would goto the Repeater duty and the Rapture would be the new main router.

 

[RMerlin]

I'm debating to pick this router up or not. I've got about 16+ Devices on my wifi network. Any thoughts? Currently using an AC88U with a AC68U As a Repeater.

The AC88U would goto the Repeater duty and the Rapture would be the new main router.

What particular need are you trying to address? You already have a pretty high-end router, it should have no issue handling 16 devices. In fact, the wifi on the GT-AC5300 is the same chip as used by the RT-AC88U, so from a wifi point of view you will see next to no difference, unless you had a real need for splitting clients between three separate radios.

 

[John DeLuca]

Hey Merlin et al. Lol. Is anyone else having a problem with the router constely disconnecting? Merlin why don't you try and contact asus it seams like they are having a lot of firmware problems and you could probably help them out a lot. Try and see if they will give you one for optimization purposes. I bet you could make a better and more stable firmware before asus will lol.

 

[RMerlin]

I don't have a GT-AC5300, so there's nothing for me to try... And not really interested in doing an engineer's work for free. I already provide them with patches now and then, but that's about it.

 

[Phoenix]

I don't have a GT-AC5300, so there's nothing for me to try... And not really interested in doing an engineer's work for free. I already provide them with patches now and then, but that's about it.

Do you think there is a way to get the features of the GT router on our standard AC5300 with a new firmware? Isn't the hardware the same?

I tried flashing the firmware on my AC5300, didn't work

 

[Pathfindercod]

Hardware is different somewhat. Different CPU, 8 ports instead of 4 with specific devoted ports for stuff supposedly.

 

[ev8siv3]

I've had this router for about a week now and have mixed feelings. Upon first boot I went ahead with the latest firmware update and proceeded to setup my basic network options. Nothing major, a few of the QoS features enabled, etc.. I also went ahead and plugged a 2TB portable USB3 HDD into it.

I noticed quickly that the router became quite warm to the touch, and the RAM usage was pegged at 98% (roughly 25-30MB free). File transfers via wireless with the shared drive were pretty slow, along with the fact that they became interrupted frequently when the transfer was over a few GB. Upon disconnect of the HDD, RAM use went immediately to 39%. Seems like a healthy amount of room to improve upon this aspect of use.

Continuing onto other issues... Last night I was experimenting with the network logging features to see who were my worst offenders. Shortly after enabling the traffic monitor, along with firewall packet logging, I experienced a high frequency of disconnects on both wireless and wired clients. These would occur every ~5 minutes or so, recover, and repeat. After turning the features off, stable connections were present again.

Lastly, one of the primary reasons I purchased this router was for the VPN client capability. With such strong hardware specs, surely this feature would shine! Unfortunately, after inputting all settings for my openVPN client, uploading a .opvn file and trying to activate the connection, the router simply locks up, reboots, and loses ALL configuration settings. This happened whether I used the file upload, or manual settings for VPN. Nothing I could enter resulted in the feature working. After a few rounds of this, I began to save my CFG after every change so that I wouldn't be pained with the setup a billion times over.

The only things that have been useful thus far have been the Game IPS, and QoS for time management. Neither of these I expect the router to be burdened with in terms of processor/ram consumption. So it's essentially doing what my previous routers were doing, albeit on a single device. Not the result I was after, but my hope is that firmware updates, and perhaps some magical wizarding firmware will be available soon to correct these enormous oversights in functionality by Asus.

 

[RMerlin]

Do you think there is a way to get the features of the GT router on our standard AC5300 with a new firmware? Isn't the hardware the same?

Completely different CPU, with a different instruction set (ARMv8) and architecture (64-bit). Different switch as well.

 

[RMerlin]

RAM use went immediately to 39%. Seems like a healthy amount of room to improve upon this aspect of use

That's perfectly normal. RAM gets used for caching as you transfer files, and it gets freed whenever something else requires that RAM. It's how Linux works, and every other router models is also doing the same thing.

 

[xDonkey]

Anyone knows where to buy this one in United Kingdom?

 

[madhatter01]

So far so good on my end. I have not noticed any issues. It seems to be load balancing the dual Wan fine. Wireless works great and it reboots quicker.

 

[ev8siv3]

After disabling nearly everything, I'm still getting ~5min of use before it drops and reconnects. This is on both wired and wireless. How can this $400 contraption work so poorly????

So frustrated at this thing.