Which is the best Wifi-5 Merlin-compatible Asus router?

[Yonder]

Hi there!

I live in a house with two floors, and very thin drywalls. There is absolutely no need for a mesh system - a single router works perfectly fine.

I have been using the Asus rt-ac68u with the latest merlin firmware and I am absolutely loving it. This is all I need from a router.

I would, however, like just a little bit better range. I have no interest in Wifi 6 or 7, and there is a lot of routers for Wifi 5 now on the second hand market - for really good prices. I'm thinking this is a good opportunity to upgrade my gear.

What is important to me?
- Merlin firmware compatibility
- Range
- Stability
- Power consumption (there are some models that use a little bit to much in my opinion)

Which of all the Asus routers would you recommend based on the above (price is not relevant)?

Thank you!

 

[drinkingbird]

Hi there!

I live in a house with two floors, and very thin drywalls. There is absolutely no need for a mesh system - a single router works perfectly fine.

I have been using the Asus rt-ac68u with the latest merlin firmware and I am absolutely loving it. This is all I need from a router.

I would, however, like just a little bit better range. I have no interest in Wifi 6 or 7, and there is a lot of routers for Wifi 5 now on the second hand market - for really good prices. I'm thinking this is a good opportunity to upgrade my gear.

What is important to me?
- Merlin firmware compatibility
- Range
- Stability
- Power consumption (there are some models that use a little bit to much in my opinion)

Which of all the Asus routers would you recommend based on the above (price is not relevant)?

Thank you!

Some of the AC models may have slightly better range due to better chipsets, but it won't be anything significant. I don't think any of them will be an "upgrade" per se, and there is a lot of risk in the used market. For example the 86U has a high failure rate and there are a lot of those out there. The 88U seems more reliable but is older technology than the 86, not sure if it would be considered better than the 68 or not wifi range wise.

You'd probably be better off relocating the router or mounting it up higher to get better range. Antenna orientation can make a difference too. Are you trying to get better range on different floors, outside, one large floor, etc? There are a couple settings you can try tweaking (such as disabling universal beamforming) that might help too.

You say you don't need mesh but this is basically the scenario that mesh was designed for, extending coverage. Another 68U (or 1900, same thing) as an AP may be exactly what you need.

 

[heysoundude]

Hi there!

I live in a house with two floors, and very thin drywalls. There is absolutely no need for a mesh system - a single router works perfectly fine.

I have been using the Asus rt-ac68u with the latest merlin firmware and I am absolutely loving it. This is all I need from a router.

I would, however, like just a little bit better range. I have no interest in Wifi 6 or 7, and there is a lot of routers for Wifi 5 now on the second hand market - for really good prices. I'm thinking this is a good opportunity to upgrade my gear.

What is important to me?
- Merlin firmware compatibility
- Range
- Stability
- Power consumption (there are some models that use a little bit to much in my opinion)

Which of all the Asus routers would you recommend based on the above (price is not relevant)?

Thank you!

Any of the AX series stuff that meets your power consumption sensibilities will be fine - they also speak WiFi5. It's your clients that decide which flavour of wifi they like best, and the AX/wifi6 stuff is the norm for anything new in the past...6mo at least now
your venerable AC68 may go for some time yet, or the radios may get problematic (which is a typical age-related failure mode), and this is the case for all of the wifi5/AC stuff. It's long in the tooth now, and almost living on borrowed time. You'll do well for yourself to prepare for the day it decides to retire itself

 

[Yonder]

Some of the AC models may have slightly better range due to better chipsets, but it won't be anything significant. I don't think any of them will be an "upgrade" per se, and there is a lot of risk in the used market. For example the 86U has a high failure rate and there are a lot of those out there. The 88U seems more reliable but is older technology than the 86, not sure if it would be considered better than the 68 or not wifi range wise.

You'd probably be better off relocating the router or mounting it up higher to get better range. Antenna orientation can make a difference too. Are you trying to get better range on different floors, outside, one large floor, etc? There are a couple settings you can try tweaking (such as disabling universal beamforming) that might help too.

You say you don't need mesh but this is basically the scenario that mesh was designed for, extending coverage. Another 68U (or 1900, same thing) as an AP may be exactly what you need.

How would I know if a 86U is a "failed" unit?

I can't move the router higher up, unless I move it to the floor above - but there issue isn't really the top floor - it's not as large as the bottom floor - would it be possible to exchange one of the antennas to one with more gain - to direct it a bit more, as it's generally one corner I feel is lacking.

Another 68U could be an option - but I won't be able to pull the ethernet cable to it - so It would have to act as an extender rather than a AP.

 

[heysoundude]

How would I know if a 86U is a "failed" unit?

I can't move the router higher up, unless I move it to the floor above - but there issue isn't really the top floor - it's not as large as the bottom floor - would it be possible to exchange one of the antennas to one with more gain - to direct it a bit more, as it's generally one corner I feel is lacking.

Another 68U could be an option - but I won't be able to pull the ethernet cable to it - so It would have to act as an extender rather than a AP.

Do your research on adding higher gain antennas...that generally makes for more problems than solutions.
I'd also (again) caution you from adding more legacy equipment to your (W)LAN infrastructure.

But the issue we're having here in making recommendations or sharing ideas is that we don't have much of a concept of the space/layout and/or what problems you hope to resolve.
IF you're going to add another AC68, use it as a Media Bridge rather than repeater/extender/AP, and wire what you can to it. (would that be easier?)

 

[drinkingbird]

How would I know if a 86U is a "failed" unit?

I can't move the router higher up, unless I move it to the floor above - but there issue isn't really the top floor - it's not as large as the bottom floor - would it be possible to exchange one of the antennas to one with more gain - to direct it a bit more, as it's generally one corner I feel is lacking.

Another 68U could be an option - but I won't be able to pull the ethernet cable to it - so It would have to act as an extender rather than a AP.

Unfortunately there is no smoking gun for bad 86Us, but most common are random reboots (minutes, hours, days apart, or could only happen on hot days), poor wifi coverage or speed, or clients randomly disconnecting, unit freezing up, etc. But it could also just be odd behaviors and glitches that you can't explain. Honestly I would avoid used 86Us completely. Eventually they just totally die and won't even boot.

Depending on your space, moving the router higher will typically give you better coverage. So even though the issue isn't on the 3rd floor, moving the router up there may give you better signal to the camera and the dead spot you have. It may sacrifice a bit of signal strength to lower floors, so you'll have to try and see how it performs for all devices and decide if that is a good solution or not. I have mine on the 2nd floor and I can get perfectly good signal on the 1st floor and in the basement. I even get decent signal outside (2.4ghz though obviously). Router is centrally located on the top floor with the antennas in the "W" shape I detail below.

High gain antennas are typically bogus, and often times will make things worse. Partially because they are poorly designed (or outright fake), partially because the gain just directs the signal to a narrower beam. So the distance may be a bit further, but the coverage area will be worse. You can't change just one antenna, they are a system, you would need to change all 3, and finding a decent dual band set of antennas with the right connector may be a challenge, and may end up doing more harm than good.

Try moving the router to the 3rd floor and set the antennas into a \ | / shape with the outer two at opposing 45 degree angles. See how things work.

Barring that, a second 68U (or 1900, or any of the AC routers that have shown good longevity and quality) in AIMESH (wireless backhaul/repeater mode) may be what you need. Or you could even just run it in repeater mode without aimesh, but aimesh gives you some more centralized control over roaming etc. Heck around here I've seen people giving 68Us and 1900s away on Facebook/Craigslist for free.

 

[Yonder]

I managed to get hold of a RT-AC86U pretty cheap so I decided to give it a try - and it actually boosted the signal that much (exact same location and antenna placement) that it works well for my purposes!
Everything is good except for that I notice that it takes quite some time for the speed to ramp up. I'm having 100Mbit, where the AC68U immediately went up to 100Mbit when speed testing, whereas the AC86U slowly gets there - they both get the same top speed, but the acceleration is much slower. This is a bummer as most connections and downloads I do are very small. I'm starting to believe it's some form of setting.

I'm using merlin 386.11, and I'm suspecting It might be something todo with Enable TX Bursting, Enable WMM, Multi-User MIMO, 802.11ac Beamforming and Universal Beamforming which I all have enabled (5Ghz and 2.4Ghz).

Any ideas of what I could disable that could improve the speed buildup - without affecting range?

 

[ColinTaylor]

It's often recommended that you disable TX Bursting, Universal Beamforming and Airtime Fairness (if you have that option). Leave WMM enabled unless you have a specific reason to disable it. I'd also disable Protected Management Frames.

Check that you have QoS disabled as that could also be the cause of the slow ramp up in speed.

 

[heywire]

In my experience, most AC86 issues are firmware related, but people think it's hardware. I've had absolute hell with this router for months before issues cleared up. Unbelievably atrocious QC from Asus. But they are better now. But I always have to hold back a bit and read the new firmware thread at SNBforums carefully before updating.

So in conclusion, I would recommend AC86U routers at this point if you can get them for cheap. The only thing that concerns me is that they are not getting updated to the 388 firmware platform - in spite of being based on the proprietary HND platform, which is really lame. So I wonder if that means we will get stuck on old firmware once it reaches EOL, since there are no HND open source firmwares or ways to maintain LTS firmware like the 374 LTS John fork for the old MIPS routers (which has sadly been abandoned now, as John has not been seen for over a year). As for when that happens, I don't know, but I will be extremely disappointed if it happens anytime soon.