RT-AC86u Officially announced

[tsunami2311]

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/asus-announces-rt-ac86u-gaming-router.html
https://www.asus.com/Networking/RT-AC86U/

Looks good and if article is right look to be 200$ or less. What your thoughts on this model? chances of it being support by Merlin?

I look forward to see it available, it looks to be my next router

 

[maylyn]

ASUS RT-AC86U was first quietly released in China in Jul 2017 follow by APAC and NA and EU, i supposed?

As for the SRP, you have to check with your local ASUS official representative.

Packaging might be different in your region.

 

[tsunami2311]

we should see reviews soon I hope?

 

[sm00thpapa]

I wouldn't be buying this on initial firmware.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[RMerlin]

we should see reviews soon I hope?

What Asus tells me is that according to their tests, this router offers better coverage than the RT-AC68U. They hope to position it as an upgrade to the RT-AC68U series.

On paper, the hardware looks solid. Hopefully the current software issues with the Broadcom HND platform can be ironed out over time - it's a fairly major change over the past Northstar platform (SDK6 AC68 and SDK7 AC88). New NAT acceleration engine, new networking component, much newer kernel, etc...

I'd be curious to see if Linksys/Netgear/TPLink are having similar growing pains with this new HND platform.

 

[RMerlin]

Looks good and if article is righ

That Guru3D article is filled with errors...

1) It's a 64-bit processor, not 32-bit
2) There's 512 MB of RAM, not 512 GB of storage
3) There's 256 MB of flash, not 256 MB of system memory
4) It has 4 Gigabit LAN ports, not 3

 

[LouisvilleUK]

1) It's a 64-bit processor, not 32-bit

I wondered about this being listed as 32-bit which seems wrong to me but Asus's own website says 32-bit. Has to be a typo, right?

https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RT-AC86U/overview/

 

[RMerlin]

I wondered about this being listed as 32-bit which seems wrong to me but Asus's own website says 32-bit. Has to be a typo, right?

https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RT-AC86U/overview/

Must be, as the kernel is compiled 64-bit. Here's a random kernel component:

netfilter.o: ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

The firmware as a whole is a mixture of 32-bit and 64-bit.

 

[Jest]

Cortex A53 is 64bit arch. Period.


AC86U is starting to show up in europe, but is extremely expensive. It costs more than AC88U.

 

[RMerlin]

Cortex A53 is 64bit arch. Period.

Just to be accurate, it's actually a B53 (Broadcom's own variant on the A53).

AC86U is starting to show up in europe, but is extremely expensive. It costs more than AC88U.

Probably Chinese imports, so they are price gouging. The official worldwide launch is only in the coming weeks. I think it went up for sale yesterday in Singapore. US availability is somewhere in mid-September I believe.

Wait for the official launch, it should be more reasonably priced. I have seen a USD MSRP of 199$ in some marketing material.

 

[RogerSC]

I wouldn't be buying this on initial firmware.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yeah, wait for RMerlin!

 

[sfx2000]

The firmware as a whole is a mixture of 32-bit and 64-bit.

the BSP will be interesting, no doubt... but A53 (and I assume B53) processors can run a mix of 64/32 bit aarch and legacy armv7a code - there's a bit of cost for the context switching, and performance will improve as the rest of the code catches up.

Because of the mixed base, some bugs might be hard to troubleshoot...

 

[blc]

This is on flash sale at GearBest for only 151 €

 

[pege63]

Its the Chinese version.

 

[Kewjoe]

I'm seeing this in stock in Best Buy Canada for $259.99 CDN. https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/produc...l-band-gigabit-router-rt-ac86u/11281277.aspx?

I just ordered an RT-AC1900R, thinking of cancelling/returning that in favour of this. But, not until Merlin officially supports it

 

[pete y testing]

we should see reviews soon I hope?

hi guys


first thing of note is its form factor , surprising in this age of bigger and bigger and bigger monoliths when it comes to wireless router the rt-ac86u believe it or not is almost exactly the same size as its predecessor in the rt-ac68u , this is achieved by running the 4th 5 gig antenna internally to give its the 4 x 4 – 2156M wifi , its the same stand up design as the rt-ac68u also which means its not all that easy to wall mount but its upright design will aid with cooling

Those with the rt-ac68u may not get that rush of getting a new bigger toy but the rt-ac86u is a wolf in sheep's clothing

The web gui is as expected from asus with the addition of the new aiprotect designed to work with both normal clients and IoT devices , slightly revamped gui styling ,

Game boost is also included as it is in the rt-ac88u and rt-ac5300

has both usb 3 and usb 2 ports and its suggested that its usb 3 speeds are very good ( yet to be tested )

the red racing stripes suggest speed and this thing has got it in spades

specs

CPU1: Broadcom BCM4906 (1.8 GHz, 2 cores)
FLA1: 256 MiB (Macronix NAND)
RAM1: 512 MiB (Micron MT41K256M16TW-107)

WI1 chip1: Broadcom BCM4366E
WI1 802dot11 protocols: an+ac
WI1 MIMO config: 4x4:4
WI1 antenna connector: U.FL, RP-SMA
WI2 chip1: Broadcom BCM4365E
WI2 802dot11 protocols: bgn
WI2 MIMO config: 3x3:3
WI2 antenna connector: RP-SMA

ETH chip1: Broadcom BCM4906
Switch: Broadcom BCM4906
LAN speed: 10/100/1000
LAN ports: 4
WAN speed: 10/100/1000
WAN ports: 1

just for info the E series broadcom wifi chipset has been proving to be really good coverage wise

pete

--------------------------------------------------------

note : the data below is tested with the best adapter available and under test conditions , use of lower spec adapters / devices and or poor environmental conditions will give reduced mileage

----------------------------------------------------

data throughput for wifi

25 meters pc2 with pce-ac88 ( one end of my house to the other )

5 gig @80mhz ch 157

read 61 MB/s write 40 MB/s rssi -58 sync 585M

2.4 gig @ 20mhz ch1

read 12 MB/s write 12 MB/s rssi -40db sync 192.5M

------------------------------------

12 meters next room

5 gig @80mhz ch 157

read 110 MB/s write 86 MB/s rssi -29 sync 1.6G

2.4 gig @ 20mhz ch1

read 25 MB/s write 25 MB/s rssi -25db sync 361M

------------------------------------

3 meters same room

5 gig @80mhz ch 157

read 110 MB/s write 107 MB/s rssi -25db sync 1.4G

2.4 gig @ 20mhz ch1

read 25 MB/s write 25 MB/s rssi -25db sync 288.5M

--------------------------------

usb 3 testing with

Reducing USB 3.0 interference off

test comp to ethernet on 86u connected at 1Gbps

ntfs

read 110MB/s write 32MB/s

need to check write results

----------------------------------

originally posted on whirlpool forums

 

[pete y testing]

I just ordered an RT-AC1900R, thinking of cancelling/returning that in favour of this.

certainly a better router in both coverage and throughput , but at a pretty big jump in price

 

[RMerlin]

The web gui is as expected from asus with the addition of the new aiprotect designed to work with both normal clients and IoT devices , slightly revamped gui styling ,

It's actually more than that just a revamped GUI styling. It's a completely different engine (still from Trend Micro). Different internal architecture, the IPS is also now bi-directional unlike the original one (from what I gathered).

has both usb 3 and usb 2 ports and its suggested that its usb 3 speeds are very good ( yet to be tested )

I posted a few tests the other day. I can saturate a 1 Gbps Ethernet link in read speed. Write speed was at "only" 70 Mbps, however I was able to bring that up to 100 Mbps in my firmware by adjusting CPU affinity. It means the USB subsystem of this new platform is much, much better than their previous generation. It's also possible the newer kernel helps as well.

The OpenSSL performance is really, really nice for a device of that price range. Will be interesting testing its IPSEC performance once I get the library loader issue sorted.

 

[RMerlin]

certainly a better router in both coverage and throughput , but at a pretty big jump in price

Having seen the CAD pricing, I see that the RT-AC86U is priced almost at the same price as the RT-AC68U when it came out. The RT-AC1900P price right now has gone down only because it's getting a bit older, and those models are getting shifted down in the price scale thanks to the RT-AC88U and now the RT-AC86U.

 

[pete y testing]

I posted a few tests the other day. I can saturate a 1 Gbps Ethernet link in read speed. Write speed was at "only" 70 Mbps, however I was able to bring that up to 100 Mbps in my firmware by adjusting CPU affinity. It means the USB subsystem of this new platform is much, much better than their previous generation. It's also possible the newer kernel helps as well.

did you notice cpu and mem usage while testing , seemed quite high to me