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RT-AC66U - Disappointing so far...

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Have you tried a clear nvram ?
I have had the doubtful pleasure of Asus N66U , Netgear R6300 and now Asus AC66U. I have problems with the 5 GHz band which is not stable. The 2.4 GHz band I have no problems with. Have you set a fixed channel on the 2.4 GHz band and do you use 20 , 20 / 40 on the bandwidth ?


yeah, well this thing is definitely broken.

I have restored to default and installed Merlin's firmware but nothing changed.
2.4Ghz is unusable. Lot's of drop outs and speed does not go beyond 1mbit/s.
5Ghz is rock stable and super fast.

This might not be the best place to ask but what would you choose between Netgear R6300 and Linksys EA6500 ? :).

Or should I get the money back, use WNDR3700 and wait for new AC models?
 
No, I have not tried clearing Nvram, how do I do this?

On the 2.4Ghz I have tried all that is posible, every single channel, 20Mhz, 40Mhz, 20/40Mhz... Nothing helps.

I might just get my money back and wait some months untill the technology matures and new models come out. I had enough of this... I just want to plug it in, set it up and use it. WNDR3700 was like this, never had a problem with it.
 
Done! I returned and received my money back. Waiting for the new generation or maybe go get the netgear r6300.
Untill than back to my old and rock solid wndr3700.
 
If the reason should be "quality control"

Seems as you are doing the common misunderstanding regarding "quality control".

Any company with a quality management system follow specific procedures during development. Those procedures involves different kinds of test, reviews and approvals. Such procedures take time.
 
I have the old opinion that if a company releases a product it should work at the release date and not sometime in the future...

Seems as you are doing the common misunderstanding regarding "quality control".

Any company with a quality management system follow specific procedures during development. Those procedures involves different kinds of test, reviews and approvals. Such procedures take time.
 
Unfortunately most customers don't want to wait that long. Just look at all those "idiots" wanting to use wireless ac even though it's not even finalised yet...
 
Unfortunately most customers don't want to wait that long. Just look at all those "idiots" wanting to use wireless ac even though it's not even finalised yet...
If a company is selling draft-AC products, mightn't you be someone who wants to use draft-AC features/speeds in the current mode that they are advertised/sold in?

To me, quality control means multiple things:

-Design of hardware/software should meet vendor-advertised functionality and specifications in a stable manner at time of release. Any known serious issues (we all can appreciate that unknowns happen) should be dealt with by this point in time.
-Build quality of hardware must be consistently good on units coming off the production line (e.g., a maximum acceptable defect rate)
-Functionality must meet all industry-standard or agency-regulated minimums at time of device sale

If you advertise a router as draft-AC, as long as someone is using network cards that meet the draft standard you sold, they should work. In this case, I would primarily expect that anyone who buys an ASUS draft-AC wireless card should get the performance benefits if used with an ASUS draft-AC router. Beyond that, anything else is a bonus.

As for other quality controls, I think my RT-AC66R has been made well hardware-wise. While in many cases it performs well, I believe the software is not yet up to the standards I'd like to see; there are some sporadic 2.4GHz wireless issues I'm seeing, and on a different front, there are features that I believe were not fully thought out (e.g., requiring AiCloud use port 443 and not making it changeable -what were they thinking?; choice to limit the UPnP port range) that I would call poor design choices for a $200 enthusiast-level product.

I haven't experienced the frustration that at least a few people here have, and I've found workarounds for several annoying issues, but I do believe that ASUS' top-end routers need further firmware work to make them the product they should be, and that some changes need to be made with enthusiasts in mind (to me, it's pretty clear that if you spend $150-200USD on a router, you're selling an enthusiast-level product and those expectations need to be met, else you'd be spending half the money).

P.S. -as for waiting, I'm a patient person, but if the rumors are true that ASUS already has a successor to the RT-AC66U/R in progress, I'd be concerned that it might force the top-end product I own (which has been top-end for maybe six months) to take a back seat to the new one for development and fixes. We've all seen that happen in the tech industry, and it's a concern that will only be proven valid or invalid with time.
 
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It is not a rumour the Asus RT-AC67U is expected to be released in the 3:rd quarter of this year. So Asus has not many months left to deliver the new Broadcomm drivers for the AC66U before the AC67U is available.
 
there are features that I believe were not fully thought out (e.g., requiring AiCloud use port 443 and not making it changeable -what were they thinking?; choice to limit the UPnP port range) that I would call poor design choices for a $200 enthusiast-level product.

AiCloud port is changeable, but for some reason Asus hasn't exposed that feature yet (I suspect that they are still ironing out some issues related to that). In fact, quite a few things with AiCloud are still being developed. Remember that AiCloud itself was integrated only a few months after the launch of the RT-AC66U. It looks like pretty much a work-in-progress at this point, yet is usable enough to be worth being implemented in the firmware.

The limitation of uPNP range is probably a legacy of the Tomato code on which the FW is based. Changing two nvram settings will take care of this. Asus probably never changed it because nobody actually reported this as being an issue to them. It might be tricky to fix however, since it would require someone to revert back to factory defaults to use the new default values (or changing to new nvram names, and leaving some garbage entries in the FW).

P.S. -as for waiting, I'm a patient person, but if the rumors are true that ASUS already has a successor to the RT-AC66U/R in progress, I'd be concerned that it might force the top-end product I own (which has been top-end for maybe six months) to take a back seat to the new one for development and fixes. We've all seen that happen in the tech industry, and it's a concern that will only be proven valid or invalid with time.

The good news there is Asuswrt itself. Aside from device-specific things such as the wireless drivers, the rest of the firmware is shared among all devices. So if, for example, Asus were to add the ability to change the AiCloud ports, then all devices running Asuswrt would benefit from it, not just the newer models. So unlike with some other router manufacturers, your device doesn't become completely obsolete one year after you bought it. See how the RT-N16 is still getting some love, thanks to Asuswrt.

That's what's really great about having a unified firmware across the board.
 
If you advertise a router as draft-AC, as long as someone is using network cards that meet the draft standard you sold, they should work.

Which version of the draft?

This has happened before, for example with modems in the 80's and 90's. Several companies started using draft speeds, which in the end led to two incompatible modem standards. A modem supporting one of the standards could not support the other. So every ISP having a modem pool for dial-up internet would have to have two different pools with two different brands of modems to be able to support all customers.
 
I am not using the ac only the n on the 5 GHz with Asus USB-N53 so I do not believe Asus is testing their own equipment for verifying that things work.

Which version of the draft?

This has happened before, for example with modems in the 80's and 90's. Several companies started using draft speeds, which in the end led to two incompatible modem standards. A modem supporting one of the standards could not support the other. So every ISP having a modem pool for dial-up internet would have to have two different pools with two different brands of modems to be able to support all customers.
 
Even if the 5Ghz band has a shorter range... the RT-N66U had no issues like this on the 5Ghz band. So i agree, Asus RT-AC66U is dissapointing for me too. I have to reboot it even a few times a day to get back my wireless or be able to use simple browsing (sometimes it's simply forgetting the DNS or something). And that's on a gigabit cable connection... not on wireless.
That is not true. I have had dual band routers for over three years and 5GHz performance is always worse than that of the 2.4GHz band. I upgraded from the RT-N66U to the RT-AC66U two months ago and the AC66U has better range, speed and overall performance on the 5GHz band over the N66U and I am not even referring to the speed increase on 802.11ac over 802.11n. You must have a bad router or there is some other reason for you to experience otherwise as the few people I have run across that also used both routers usually feel the same as I. The AC66U has better 5GHz performance over the N66U.
 
Which version of the draft?

This has happened before, for example with modems in the 80's and 90's. Several companies started using draft speeds, which in the end led to two incompatible modem standards. A modem supporting one of the standards could not support the other. So every ISP having a modem pool for dial-up internet would have to have two different pools with two different brands of modems to be able to support all customers.

Thus the other portion of my quote:

In this case, I would primarily expect that anyone who buys an ASUS draft-AC wireless card should get the performance benefits if used with an ASUS draft-AC router. Beyond that, anything else is a bonus.

P.S. As the owner of a USR Courier 16.8k HST Dual Standard back in the day (prior to my Courier V.Everything), I totally remember proprietary standards --even before the V.FAST debacle you mentioned above. :)
 
Thus the other portion of my quote:



P.S. As the owner of a USR Courier 16.8k HST Dual Standard back in the day (prior to my Courier V.Everything), I totally remember proprietary standards --even before the V.FAST debacle you mentioned above. :)

That is hilarious, brings back many memories. When I was a kid I had my own BBS, with 3 nodes, and in the later stages of my BBS I had those exact MODEMS!! 300 baud, then 1200 baud, then 2400 baud (us robotics), and then 9600 and then 14.4!!!

WOW!
 
That is hilarious, brings back many memories. When I was a kid I had my own BBS, with 3 nodes, and in the later stages of my BBS I had those exact MODEMS!! 300 baud, then 1200 baud, then 2400 baud (us robotics), and then 9600 and then 14.4!!!

WOW!
Ditto. A 300 baud modem then 1200 baud on my Commodore 64.

Then 2400 baud, and finally a 14.4k Courier HST with my Amiga which I ran a BBS on.

Now "gigabit" wireless...
 
Ditto. A 300 baud modem then 1200 baud on my Commodore 64.

Then 2400 baud, and finally a 14.4k Courier HST with my Amiga which I ran a BBS on.

Now "gigabit" wireless...

I spent so many hours playing with the Color64 code back in the day... LOL :)
 
Ditto. A 300 baud modem then 1200 baud on my Commodore 64.

Then 2400 baud, and finally a 14.4k Courier HST with my Amiga which I ran a BBS on.

Now "gigabit" wireless...


I started out with commodore 64, then 128, then I got a PC, and I was running Wildcat BBS with mult-windows with Qemm desqview I believe it was.. LOL.
 
My first modem was my 24/96 fax modem installed in my Packard Bell 10MHz Turbo XT, but my first good modem was my 14.4k external USR Sportster. ProComm, then Terminate.

Before that, I played with the Commodore 64, Apple II, TRS-80 a little, and the TI99-4/A. Just didn't do any BBS stuff with them.
 
same here, RT-AC66U is not ready for prime time

I am in the same boat - tried replacing the WRT54GL running TomatoUSB with RT-AC66U. After a week of experiments ended up returning it to the store.

Works reasonably well on 5GHz (stable 11MB/s, both the same room or through 2 concrete walls), but is very slow (500KB/s) on 2.4GHz using the latest official firmware 270 and the custom 270.26b build.
The published beta version (354.27-BETA1) improves the speed for both 2.4 (3MB/s, less through walls) and 5GHz (13MB/s), but provides inconsistent ping (from 1 to 10ms) even on wired connection, which is a major issue.
All test above using file copy through Windows network, wired desktop to wireless N connected laptop.

Enabling QoS reduces noticeably the throughput in all cases, which may be normal but I was not expecting it. Not being able to classify traffic by source port is surprising, that is what I currently do for Skype on Tomato.

My Android phones and the IPod 4 all measured speeds around 3 Mbps on Speedtest, supposedly connected on 802.11n, while with an old WRT running Tomato I am getting 8 to 10 Mbps connected on 802.11g.

To me the conclusion is simple - it is a great hardware for 5GHz devices, but it is not ready for mixed 2.4/5 deployments, which will be the case most of the time.
 
Going to bump this because I see the drop in 5G performance. Windows reports 300mb but then drops to 144 . now this is just in "status" but it also drops a bar on the signal strengtt. And I'm sitting 10 feet away from the router. I live on 4 acres of land--I can barely pick up the wifi of my neighbor--sometimes. So don't get a lot of other wifi traffic here.

Like it has been suggested hitting "apply" on the the "professional settings" tab bumps it right back up . .

. .why does this have any effect? I'm not changing any settings. Is this a defacto reboot?

I'm running 3.0.0.4.372_0-ga8208f0 (something I think Merlin linked).

I'm attaching 4 screen grabs of the wifi settings for both 2.4 and 5.
 

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