The Asus ZenWiFi AX XT8 is a POS, right?

[jpthsd]

My XT8 with latest firm is perfectly stable, fast... No problems at all, as they were solved at last.

glad to hear your XT8's working properly now. Is it the firmware listed as August 11st or what fw revision number? can you please post the fw revision number here?

 

[jmpr]

glad to hear your XT8's working properly now. Is it the firmware listed as August 11st or what fw revision number? can you please post the fw revision number here?

It is the latest:

 

[jpthsd]

It is the latest:


View attachment 36090

Thank you for info (truly tri-band, one is dedicated for Wifi Backhaul, should work perfectly now) - How is the performance for 2.4 Wifi and 5Ghz? No buffering issue for 2.4Ghz? I assumed the range is as good as it gets like 2500 sqft right?

Darn I could have gone for XT8 ,,,but I already went with 2 x AX86U ~ $568 vs XT8 ~$450...

 

[jmpr]

Thank you for info (truly tri-band, one is dedicated for Wifi Backhaul, should work perfectly now) - How is the performance for 2.4 Wifi and 5Ghz? No buffering issue for 2.4Ghz? I assumed the range is as good as it gets like 2500 sqft right?

Darn I could have gone for XT8 ,,,but I already went with 2 x AX86U ~ $568 vs XT8 ~$450...

Fastest device I have is an AX wifi bridge that gets its maximun (1200 mbps) always, so 5ghz band is perfect, I think. I have no more powerful devices ti try (I bought this router for stability and capacity as I do an intense use for about 24 devices). Streaming devices in 2'4 doesn't have any problems at all. I use a wifi ATA for voip that never suffer lags or cuts. So at this moment everithing is fine. I have ffth for 300/300 and I get that speed by wifi very easily. Smartconnect goes ok, using load balance. Router works and you may ignore it at all as everything runs ok (including some very old devices).

I do not use any ethernet, everything is wifi, as the router is near the ceiling in the middle of the appartment (about 100 sq meters):

 

[jasonvelocity]

Yes. Yes it is.

My first purchase stopped working after a few months when the node would not boot into anything but the blinking blue light. Asus sent me a new one, and it lasted around 45 days before encountering the same issue. I am waiting for them to send me my RMA/FedEx details now.

It took ASUS less than eight hours to decide this unit was also beyond repair.

> We are unable to complete the repair of your RMA and will be reaching out to you shortly to confirm the replacement of your unit.

 

[Poseidon]

The XT8 I purchased from BB went back after a few days. Nothing good to say about that router/mesh.

Also fed up with Asus updates. They fix one thing but break several others. I prefer a few updates per year instead of every few weeks. Asus is definitely Firmware update happy.

 

[L&LD]

And yet others complain they don't update their models enough.

 

[karma]

personally i'm thrilled that Asus supports their routers with firmware updates for years and years.... less thrilled when there are regression bugs.. this is specifically for the XT8, the other Asus routers I've owned didn't seem to be so finicky. Over time things will stabilise no doubt...

 

[RogerSC]

The XT8 I purchased from BB went back after a few days. Nothing good to say about that router/mesh.

Also fed up with Asus updates. They fix one thing but break several others. I prefer a few updates per year instead of every few weeks. Asus is definitely Firmware update happy.

Then you should be happy, no updates for the ZenWiFi AX for about 3 months now.

 

[JagoUK]

Weird thing. I decided to buy these again after returning mine for issues with 160mhz and weather radar ch 124. (Amazon had a great offer)

Plugged these in last night. Not updated the firmware (25790) and after 10 mins 160mhz automatically enabled and has worked fine all throughout the night.

Interestingly the channels appear to be shifted to bands out of scope allowing 8 contiguous channels.

 

[albert]

У меня есть два проводных обратных рейса XT8 на 6 месяцев. Я искренне сожалею об этом. После того, как я приобрел отличный 3200, я подумал, что это правильный путь. Теперь у меня есть небольшая коллекция устаревших сетевых устройств, которые не подключаются. Мой очиститель воздуха Rabbitair, новая IP-камера Wyze, моя сеть стримеров Squeezebox. Я должен быть очень осторожен при покупке. Некоторые вещи НЕ будут подключаться даже в диапазоне 2,4. Внешний USB, который я пытался использовать для Time Machine, постоянно пропадает. Хотел бы я их вернуть.

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- решит вашу проблему

 

[ThatGuyinNC]

I'm not going to go as far as call it a POS, but I definitely am not happy with my investment in this system. From day 1, I have not been able to get wireless upload speeds to match the download speeds. Not even close...and ASUS support has been abysmal.

And I have the exact opposite problem due to the issues the router has with using my fiber connection...sigh. I can get 800-900 up but my download is only around 450-500 wired via the router on 1 gig fiber. I did however get it in a stable state, although less than what I would expect to see speed wise, by having the scheduler set to reboot every couple of days and tweaking a few other settings. I currently have 3 nodes XT8s and 1 router and find that if I leave the channels for the 2.4ghz band at 11 and 5ghz at 44, then I see more stable behavior. I did try Netgear and it was considerably worse. I lost connection to many devices and overall the UI was terrible. Agreed, support is worthless. I have about 15 tickets open with them and they keep saying they will call me and then I hear nothing, but it's expected behavior now.

 

[jmpr]

I have it only as a single router, and can't be happier. Has some problems with a firm, that solved with the next one (some old 2'4 devices couldn't connect)

 

[srkbear]

Then you should be happy, no updates for the ZenWiFi AX for about 3 months now.

There’s a new one now and I’ve found it very stable, although I’m running a GT-AX11000 as my main router and three XT8 nodes and found the prior firmware to be rock-solid as well.

I’ve found that many folks who raise issues on here seem to be mucking around with the settings too excessively, trying to get speeds that are beyond expectations for a wireless client under any configurations—and quite a few are running 20+ devices as well.

I’m sure some have legitimate issues, but I find it very hard to believe that all the peeps condemning these high-end (and highly rated) ASUS products as junk are on the level (IMHO)…

 

[srkbear]

And I have the exact opposite problem due to the issues the router has with using my fiber connection...sigh. I can get 800-900 up but my download is only around 450-500 wired via the router on 1 gig fiber. I did however get it in a stable state, although less than what I would expect to see speed wise, by having the scheduler set to reboot every couple of days and tweaking a few other settings. I currently have 3 nodes XT8s and 1 router and find that if I leave the channels for the 2.4ghz band at 11 and 5ghz at 44, then I see more stable behavior. I did try Netgear and it was considerably worse. I lost connection to many devices and overall the UI was terrible. Agreed, support is worthless. I have about 15 tickets open with them and they keep saying they will call me and then I hear nothing, but it's expected behavior now.

Do you have multicast enabled?

 

[Thirteen]

I’m sure some have legitimate issues, but I find it very hard to believe that all the peeps condemning these high-end (and highly rated) ASUS products as junk are on the level (IMHO)…

Keep in mind that most people who don't have issues probably aren't going online to post about it.

 

[srkbear]

Keep in mind that most people who don't have issues probably aren't going online to post about it.

Sure, but I still maintain from reading a great number of these posts that a great deal of folks complaining are either running betas, are attempting unusual configurations or have unrealistic expectations of wireless speed limitations.

I admittedly can’t produce data to back up what I’m surmising. I’ve just seen an awful lot of folks futzing around with wireless or other GUI settings to match the uplink speeds advertised by ISPs on their end-user wireless clients—something that has never been promised. Or they have multicast enabled, which by design confounds download speeds reported by router GUI diagnostic speed tests. Even relying on Ookla’s algorithm is majorly problematic.

Do some folks on here have legitimate complaints? Of course—there is really no such thing as a perfectly “stable” firmware for the vast spectrum of user configurations out there. Do a substantial portion of these unhappy customers rely on the numbers reported by myriad diagnostic methods or some arcane error code noted in their syslogs, instead of how things are performing on their network in general? I can’t help but worry that they are. Because I’ve owned a ton of routers from every major manufacturer there is, and for the most part the reliable sources of performance reviews have been accurate in my experience. Peace…

 

[slrt]

Sure, but I still maintain from reading a great number of these posts that a great deal of folks complaining are either running betas, are attempting unusual configurations or have unrealistic expectations of wireless speed limitations.

I admittedly can’t produce data to back up what I’m surmising. I’ve just seen an awful lot of folks futzing around with wireless or other GUI settings to match the uplink speeds advertised by ISPs on their end-user wireless clients—something that has never been promised. Or they have multicast enabled, which by design confounds download speeds reported by router GUI diagnostic speed tests. Even relying on Ookla’s algorithm is majorly problematic.

Do some folks on here have legitimate complaints? Of course—there is really no such thing as a perfectly “stable” firmware for the vast spectrum of user configurations out there. Do a substantial portion of these unhappy customers rely on the numbers reported by myriad diagnostic methods or some arcane error code noted in their syslogs, instead of how things are performing on their network in general? I can’t help but worry that they are. Because I’ve owned a ton of routers from every major manufacturer there is, and for the most part the reliable sources of performance reviews have been accurate in my experience. Peace…

I agree, calling XT8 a POS is way over the top. While I had a rough patch setting them up a year ago (including a dozen times that the router stopped responding after a simple config change like an IP address reservation, and required a hard reset), they have been working really well since - with the exception of ESP-based IoT devices, that I eventually just moved to an AP on an old router.

On the other hand, I don't think expecting these high-end units to handle 20+ or 40+ clients is unrealistic (and from my experience they do handle them well), and Asus has been repeatedly pushing out half-baked firmware. Also, while it is expected that unsatisfied customers would be more vocal, this should be the case for other routers as well. Same goes for the tweakers. As other routers do not seem to attract rants at this magnitude, there may indeed be more serious stability issues here.

 

[Smokey613]

I had purchased a pair of XT8 from Amazon to replace my 3 eero Pros. My only real complaint on the eero units is no web gui nor access if you loose internet connectivity. I was using them in bridge mode with my RT-AC86U as my router due to my needing a dedicated ip vpn client connection. The eeros do not support vpn. I had planned to replace everything with the 2 XT8. I should have done more research. I knew it had no Merlin support but they did have vpn capabilities. What I did not realize is they do not have AES-NI so even though I did get my vpn client working, it maxed out around 25m on speed. So, I put my ac86u back in and used the XT8 in a AP/AiMesh setup. This worked pretty good and the link between the units was great. However, I did have some connection issues with older IoT devices until I disabled AX mode on the 2.4 band. No big deal, I only have 2 AX devices, 2 iPhones and they usually hop on the 5g band. The XT8 units worked great but after thinking more about it, with my puny 100/10 internet service, they offered no real advantage over my 3 eero pro units I purchased used off eBay for less than $150. I decided I could live with the app only access to to the eero units and the eero, being wifi 5, worked great with my older devices. I returned the XT8 units. I you have fast internet and no need for a vpn then the XT8 is a great mesh solution.

 

[Mikeyboyeee]

Just purchased an xt8 2 pack from Amazon to replace (put in reserve for now) an RT88Xu.

Relatively simple to get going. Upgraded to latest FW. Have at least 25+ IOT devices. No major issues except my Logitech MegaBalst Alexa enabled speaker has been briefly dropping connection.

Otherwise pretty good and a bit of an upgrade from the 88xu. Too bd no Merlin for this.