Rt-ac68u

[dunkin]

Too expensive

around $450?

 

[krum]

21500 Indian Rupee = 339.55 US Dollar

http://www.fonearena.com/tech/route...c-router-launched-in-india-for-rs-21500/4831/

 

[Tsun]

around $450?

Usually €1 in Europe becomes $1 in the US, so I'd expect something around $300-$350 like in the rest of VAT free world (which is still too much in my opinion, unless it delivers some mindblowing performance )

 

[JarleH]

Can someone give the details on the differences of the Asus RT-AC68U and the AC56U? Here in Norway the (still not available) AC68U is more then double the price of the AC56U, which is ALOT more.

The AC56U is available here now, the AC68U has unconfirmed release date. I am pretty sure I will be going for the AC56U, but it would be nice to know why there is such a huge price difference between the two models.

JH_man

 

[chunlianghere]

Can someone give the details on the differences of the Asus RT-AC68U and the AC56U? Here in Norway the (still not available) AC68U is more then double the price of the AC56U, which is ALOT more.

The AC56U is available here now, the AC68U has unconfirmed release date. I am pretty sure I will be going for the AC56U, but it would be nice to know why there is such a huge price difference between the two models.

JH_man

http://wikidevi.com/wiki/ASUS_RT-AC56U, internal antenna, 2 antenna each for 2.4GHz and 5GHz

http://wikidevi.com/wiki/ASUS_RT-AC68U, external detachable antenna, 3 antenna each for 2.4GHz and 5GHz

 

[thiggins]

Can someone give the details on the differences of the Asus RT-AC68U and the AC56U? Here in Norway the (still not available) AC68U is more then double the price of the AC56U, which is ALOT more.

Inside Story: ASUS RT-AC56U & RT-AC68U

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...32120-inside-story-asus-rt-ac56u-and-rt-ac68u

 

[JarleH]

Ok, but why the huge (more then double) price difference?! Just external antennas that results in better wifi should not be the reason alone, nor the higher AC rateing.

JH_man

 

[RMerlin]

Ok, but why the huge (more then double) price difference?! Just external antennas that results in better wifi should not be the reason alone, nor the higher AC rateing.

JH_man

Different product class, as it offers triple stream support versus only two streams.

Pricing might still vary once it gets released I suppose, products aren't always sold at their suggested resale price.

 

[janosek]

the ac68u is now on ncix.com for 220

RMerlin, has Asus sent you a development router?

 

[reallynotnick]

the ac68u is now on ncix.com for 220

It only seems to be on ncix.ca so far right now and of course it is "back ordered" hoping that price is accurate as that will mean the price should be basically the same as the 66U.

 

[RMerlin]

the ac68u is now on ncix.com for 220

RMerlin, has Asus sent you a development router?

Not yet. No one in North America has really received that router. Asus's initial limited inventory was all sold at Comex. My contact at Asus only had a sample for his own internal testing.

I'm not in a hurry. Most of the hard work was already done when I had an advance sample for the RT-AC56U - I was able to finalize the firmware at about the same time it went officially for sale. With the AC68U I won't need an extra 4-6 weeks of development time, so it would be fine if I only got one close to the official mass availability.

NCIX pulled the same stunt with the RT-AC56U - they listed it over a month before it actually became available in North America. Even the pricing was completely wrong, and was probably just based on speculations.

My personal feeling is that this router will probably end up selling to close to 250$ - so it won't be in direct competition with the 210$ RT-AC66U. Unless all current models drop in price, for the AC68U to take the previous spot of the AC66, but I doubt it.

 

[bigmag]

FYI

http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTAC68U/#overview

 

[PrivateJoker]

FYI

http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTAC68U/#overview

More router streams = more SPF (smiles per family).

Cause that is one seriously happy family.

 

[reallynotnick]

This review is looking pretty favorable with it setting all kinds of new speed records.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/asus-rt-ac68u-802-11ac-router_Peripheral_review

 

[PrivateJoker]

This review is looking pretty favorable with it setting all kinds of new speed records.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/asus-rt-ac68u-802-11ac-router_Peripheral_review

Allow me to play devil's advocate. . ."Setting new speed records" when paired with another 802.11ac device that also has the Broadcom TurboQAM chip. Of which there are 3 or so total wifi devices meeting that spec, all made by Asus? (Not to obsessively critique that review, but WD Reds are a consumer/SOHO NAS drive [I use them and like them] but if you're in a situation where your NAS is the weak speed link, I'd start by stepping those up to WD Re blacks, or SSDs, and not alluding to the fact that the WD Reds might have special super high performance NAS mojo running through them).

Call me a skeptic but this smells a lot like Super-G 802.11g back in 2004/05, and I have exactly one old AP that supports it, but no compatible devices.

I did a bit of googling and Broadcom has had a chip made for mobile use (phones, notebooks, tablets) utilizing TurboQAM aka "5G Wifi" that was announced in 2012, and promised in Q1 2013, it looks like 2 Samsung Galaxy phones have this available right now. Here are a few notes on one guy's findings on its BCM 4335 chip (on a side note, googling "Samsung Galaxy 4 wifi" did not lead me to find glowing reviews of stable wifi by happy customers ).

I'm sure the AC68 great, I might even get one eventually, but I wouldn't bank on it actually transferring things at gigabit+ wifi speeds. . .

I think there is a really good reason that there so much of consumer routers is PR and marketing magic, it's because consumers will buy on higher numbers and more superlatives thrown in to the description.

In my home wifi is a nice way to control other things (music, TVs, home automation) and read emails, but anything that is important or needs to be fast is hardwired. It's just a million times easier. . .and if I wasn't going to move shortly, I would have ran cable up to my 2nd floor where my two bridges currently reside.

I love Asus's router hardware, and the other day I wrote a post defending Broadcom, I'm not trying to come down on either of those fine companies, nor any wifi manufacturer. Was I excited when dual band 802.11n came to the iOS devices? You bet I was. Do I connect any of my dual band iOS devices to 5ghz in my home? Nope, the range just isn't there in my particular RF environment on that band. Just saying, overall - I think if we keep eating it up this fast that our yearly upgrade habits on cell phones will soon spread to all other areas of CE purchasing.

Maybe that's why I like this site, because I've seen Tim ask people in the forums that are soliciting router advice, "do you really need 802.11ac, if so, for what?." That and articles like "Who says 802.11ac routers need gigabit ports" are very interesting and helpful, not because they are "contrarian" (which I don't think they are), it's just good, practical thinking in an enviornment where we're more or less getting choked out by a ceaselessly escalating marketing driven machine. I can't be the only one that thought it was a little funny that Broadcom is trying to get us to refer to wifi now in generations (eg "5G wifi"), to make it easier to know which one we should be buying.

 

[JarleH]

Different product class, as it offers triple stream support versus only two streams.

Pricing might still vary once it gets released I suppose, products aren't always sold at their suggested resale price.

And since I am pretty noob when it comes to wifi tech, I need to ask;
What is a 'stream' in this sense?

JH_man

 

[PrivateJoker]

And since I am pretty noob when it comes to wifi tech, I need to ask;
What is a 'stream' in this sense?

JH_man

No problem. . .wifi uses frequencies that they label with channels, just like TV channels do. In 802.11g the 2.4ghz spectrum was divided (in the US) into 11 distinct channels to choose from. Your access point and devices need to be on the same channel, and you don't want to use a neighbor's channel (ideally) because the interference can slow things down a bit. In 802.11n, the newer standard, they can actually not just give you one channel to work with, but several (they measure the size of the channel in mhz, old single stream style chunks are 20mhz wide, newer multi stream chunks can be 40mhz wide, so taking up twice the room). That enables 802.11n devices to get faster rates because they use multiple channels/and multiple streams concurrently (at the same time). It's kind of like having adding another lane on a highway, it's so more cars can get through.

If you have a router/access point that is 3 stream, it only does you any good if your device can also support that. 802.11ac can do 80mhz wide channels to get very high speed under certain conditions.

If it's not too heavy a read, check out the wikipedia articles on 802.11n & 802.11ac, maybe worth a brief skimming anyway.

Hope this helps!

 

[JarleH]

Ok, so as I understand it the short version is; the more streams the faster, streams has nothing to do with number of stable connections at a time.

For me I can not see that the AC68U is worth it as long as it is just wifi-speed/range that is the difference, the AC56U is under half the price of the AC68U (1100 vs 2500 NOK).

JH_man

 

[reallynotnick]

Allow me to play devil's advocate. . ."Setting new speed records" when paired with another 802.11ac device that also has the Broadcom TurboQAM chip. Of which there are 3 or so total wifi devices meeting that spec, all made by Asus?

Call me a skeptic but this smells a lot like Super-G 802.11g back in 2004/05, and I have exactly one old AP that supports it, but no compatible devices. .

They did test a regular N device and it saw a speed improvement.

Not wanting to leave out the multitude on devices sans-TurboQAM we also ran these speeds through a desktop replacement Sony F Series laptop. Happily is did benefit and speeds at all three distances remained faster than anything we'd seen before.

 

[RMerlin]

This review is looking pretty favorable with it setting all kinds of new speed records.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/asus-rt-ac68u-802-11ac-router_Peripheral_review

His USB performance is way off. I get 2-3x his performance on the USB 3.0 port. I was able to push read speed over 40 MB/s here. Makes me suspect he might have enabled the option to reduce USB3 interference, unless whichever firmware he was running was sub-optimal (I see it's a 372.xxx build).