Solved Wired speeds slow with three different ASUS WiFi 6 routers, any fixes?

[boxermansr]

I have Gigabyte internet with Spectrum and was looking to get a new router (I currently have an ASUS RT-AC88U and it's worked great, but I won a Best Buy gift card last year and haven't been able to find anything to buy with it.. anyhow, I have tried the following ASUS WiFi 6 routers, and **every single one of them** gives me AWFUL hard wired/ethernet speeds. I get about 450-600 via ethernet right now (I generally get 940 down but with this pandemic and everyone using their internet, speeds have slowed a bit.

With all three WiFI 6 routers i have tried (borrowed one from a co-worker to try and purchased the other two which I'll be returning unless someone has an idea to fix).

I have tried RT-AX58U (which I know is the more/most basic one, and a downgrade from my AC88U), the RT-AX88U which is the cousin so to speak of my AC88U, and lastly the GT-AX11000 which I borrowed from the co-worker (expensive router so yeah glad I didn't buy it).

Anyhow wired speeds MAX at about 280-285 (I think I broke 300 TWICE) via ethernet. Cat 6 cable all new, same cable I've been using with my SB8200 (Arris/Motorola modem) and my current AC88U. WiFi speeds on the three WiFi 6 modems are about what I get on my AC88U (400's or so) and I've gotten as high as 700-750 via WiFi on my iPhone 11 Pro Max (which as I understand can utilize the higher speeds WiFi 6 offers).

Anyhow, is there any idea as to what I can do to get my wired speeds at/around what I get with my AC88U. I tried WiFi with the PC that i use connected via ethernet and speeds were far worse (150-200) as I know the wireless NIC in my PC isn't WiFi 6 ready or whatever.

Bottom line, I am hoping someone has a fix for this, I did some searches around here and there and it seems that all three of these routers have lousy hard wired/ethernet speeds. Any suggestions would be great. Sorry for the jumbled up mess of a message.

Thanks.

I may have accidentally posted this on the general forum as well been awhile since I used Tapatalk on mobile so think I wasn’t paying attention haha.

Also the other other routers are no longer in my possession just the AX88U which was the one I would have preferred to keep, if anyone can get me ideas to get wired speeds back up that would be great.

 

[Gouldin]

Check that qos is disabled.

What wired speeds do you get when just using the modem without the routers?

It's possible that the pc (Not that I know what pc you are using) isn't capable of using fast speeds. (My vaio pro 11 for example has an ax200 wifi card and the cpu throttles the speeds I can get as the chipset and ssd are pretty slow on it and also gigabit ethernet is pretty slow on my old Core2Duo pc, vs my Ryzen 7 pc for similar reasons)

 

[boxermansr]

Check that qos is disabled.

What wired speeds do you get when just using the modem without the routers?

It's possible that the pc (Not that I know what pc you are using) isn't capable of using fast speeds. (My vaio pro 11 for example has an ax200 wifi card and the cpu throttles the speeds I can get as the chipset and ssd are pretty slow on it and also gigabit ethernet is pretty slow on my old Core2Duo pc, vs my Ryzen 7 pc for similar reasons)

Direct to modem (right now with everyone using their internet, I get 500-600 down and 44-50 up, a month ago, pre-covid I was getting 940 down 44-50 up) this is both direct to modem, and/or through my RT-AC88U.

All three of the AX routers I've tried give me awful speeds via LAN/direct connect, 300-310 MB down, 40 up (so upstream isn't getting hit).
QoS is not enabled. I've also tried the Merlin firmware for the AX88U thinking maybe it had some hidden option to enable and it made no difference. My desktop PC has some little WiFi doohicky, and I enabled it to see if maybe it'd get better speeds, and it doesn't (of course I know it's not WiFi 6 capable, as it's an older ASUS desktop, so I wasn't expecting gigabyte speeds but I get 220-240 that way).

My AC88U works great direct connect, so I have no idea if the three AX ones I've tried are just junk (I've read a decent amount of threads regarding slow lan speeds with all three that I tried). I just wanted to give one of these newer ones a shot, and all three have been a letdown when it came to direct connection speeds.

Same PC I've been using, same Cat 6 ethernet, same entire setup, zero changes, other than me swapping from the AC to the AX router -- I can swap the any of the AX routers and speeds tank on LAN, go back to the AC and they go back up. I figured since the AX88U was the "counterpart" so to speak of the AC88U that it'd have all the same internals (aside from whatever WiFi 6 stuff, sorry not all technical on all this stuff), and would ideally give me the same wired speeds, but even it hasn't.

 

[degrub]

we don't know how you have configured the router, so hard to say. One issue may be buffer bloat. i am not an Asus user, but there are threads here and in the Asus subforum about ways to address.

 

[boxermansr]

we don't know how you have configured the router, so hard to say. One issue may be buffer bloat. i am not an Asus user, but there are threads here and in the Asus subforum about ways to address.

Just the more basic I guess of setup. All I really ever change is the DNS servers for IP4 and IPv6 and setup port forwarding for the few things I need it for. I' more used to ASUS routers, so that's why I've kept it in the ASUS family so to speak. All three were configured (as best I can tell) the same as my AC88U. I can swap from my AC88U to any of the three AX ones and speeds tank via LAN, go back to the AC and they bounce back up (I'm not getting my full gig speeds on even the AC88U as I know everyone is home using their net, but pre-covid19 I was easily getting my gig with the AC88U -- I am also not trying to use an AX in the hopes of *getting my gig speeds back* as I know the router isn't going to accomplish what is simply the result of more folks using the net).

I just wanted to try one of the AX routers I guess to have it already and because I had gift card funds to blow - I figured the AX88U would be as close to the AC88U as all it adds is the WiFi 6 stuff, so I'm just confused as to why speeds tank via LAN on all three -- and I've read many of the threads here, hence why I joined last night, hoping that maybe someone had some new insight -- it just seems it's either an ASUS thing, or the fact that this whole AX thing is newer tech, so who knows. Thanks for the reply however.

 

[degrub]

i would turn off IPv6 unless you have to have it. Running both stacks on other routers has killed throughput for me in the past.

 

[boxermansr]

i would turn off IPv6 unless you have to have it. Running both stacks on other routers has killed throughput for me in the past.

Tried that as well as trying different ip4 and ipv6 dns servers but all is setup the same on the AC router and not getting the same bottleneck on LAN.


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[degrub]

try turning off the wireless and any QOS and packet inspection if available.

Are there any updated firmware ?

Any issues like this being documented on ASUS's help forum ?

 

[boxermansr]

try turning off the wireless and any QOS and packet inspection if available.

Are there any updated firmware ?

Any issues like this being documented on ASUS's help forum ?

Qos never been on firmware at latest also tried Merlin no change. Most of the posts I have found have been on these forums but none of the other suggested things to try have fixed (sshing into router and making sure two things were enable that were not that i enabled and made no change, changed back and still also no change).


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[degrub]

are all 3 the same chipset and different from the AC router ?

 

[boxermansr]

are all 3 the same chipset and different from the AC router ?

Not sure I imagine the AX88U is the same chipset as AC88U since they are near identical short of one being AX/Wifi 6 and the other not.


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[L&LD]

@boxermansr you can't 'clone' the settings from your RT-AC88U and expect them to work on such vastly newer equipment and firmware.

Start in small steps. Flash the firmware you want to use (even if you have already flashed it). Do a full reset to factory defaults/Initialize all settings of the router you want to test. I would recommend the latest RMerlin 384.16_0 release final to test with.

With minimal customizations, test for the issue you're facing. If there isn't one, add one customization and test/reboot/test again.

Don't blindly put in customized settings just because the old router needed it. Things change/improve constantly. To get the maximum benefit of the latest hardware, you may need to start from scratch.

The M&M Config and the Nuclear Reset guides will get the test routers back to a good/known state. This will give you a proper basis to test and compare them to your current router. Please see the link in my signature below for those guides and more.

The following may also be helpful to fully reset the router too (don't use Beta 2 though... the release final is out).

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/ax88-packet-loss.62891/#post-563326

 

[boxermansr]

@boxermansr you can't 'clone' the settings from your RT-AC88U and expect them to work on such vastly newer equipment and firmware.

Start in small steps. Flash the firmware you want to use (even if you have already flashed it). Do a full reset to factory defaults/Initialize all settings of the router you want to test. I would recommend the latest RMerlin 384.16_0 release final to test with.

With minimal customizations, test for the issue you're facing. If there isn't one, add one customization and test/reboot/test again.

Don't blindly put in customized settings just because the old router needed it. Things change/improve constantly. To get the maximum benefit of the latest hardware, you may need to start from scratch.

The M&M Config and the Nuclear Reset guides will get the test routers back to a good/known state. This will give you a proper basis to test and compare them to your current router. Please see the link in my signature below for those guides and more.

The following may also be helpful to fully reset the router too (don't use Beta 2 though... the release final is out).

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/ax88-packet-loss.62891/#post-563326

I didn’t clone anything. I set cloudflare for dns for ipv4 and ipv6 and added three urls to the blocklist that keep my tivo from playing pre roll ads. Only other thing was port forwarding for three things. There was no cloning or otherwise.

Also I used the latest firmwares from ASUS with zero configuration done, reset (factory reset) after the upgrade and configured nothing. Tried with merlin (the latest version) and factory reset with nothing. No matter how I did it lan speeds were garbage. I disabled wifi 6 i turned off all wireless. None of these things improved wired speeds. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to all of this networking stuff but I did exercise what I felt to be every means I was able to before coming here for suggestions, which I appreciate all of.

I have tried all I could think and all that you had suggested. I even downgraded the firmware to the last few available and even older ones did not help. I was up until 1 AM trying to figure it out simply because at this point I swear these damn routers are taunting me, lol.

I only have the AX88U to test now, returned whichever one I had from Best Buy and the one I borrowed from co-worker (ax11000).

I’m at my whits end. Thanks for the reply and suggestions.


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[Val D.]

Not sure I imagine the AX88U is the same chipset as AC88U since they are near identical

Completely different hardware, actually.

 

[boxermansr]

Completely different hardware, actually.

Thanks, I figured maybe they were somewhat closer than the other two I had tried. [emoji1360]


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[L&LD]

The 'cloning' I mean is the 'blind' matching of settings between old and new.

New router, a new network (I say)! Everything old is suspect until proven otherwise.

 

[boxermansr]

The 'cloning' I mean is the 'blind' matching of settings between old and new.

New router, a new network (I say)! Everything old is suspect until proven otherwise.

Right, thats more or less what I did first time around, and then figured it would be a good idea to try from a blank slate, sadly it didn’t make a difference. [emoji3491][emoji375]


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[Hawk]

Right, thats more or less what I did first time around, and then figured it would be a good idea to try from a blank slate, sadly it didn’t make a difference. [emoji3491][emoji375]


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How are you testing speed? I am using rt-ax88u and my speed is in line with my package, which is gigabit. Only thing i can suggest is to do factory reset along with using different Ethernet cable would also directly to modem.

 

[boxermansr]

How are you testing speed? I am using rt-ax88u and my speed is in line with my package, which is gigabit.

Speedtest.net website with chrome, firefox, internet explorer and edge. Also the speedtest.net app in Windows 10.

I have (had pre covid, as my speeds have went down due to more people using the internet) no issues getting 940 down and mid to high 40’s (I have Spectrum so I have crap upload period).

Example - two months ago was getting 940 down solid, no issue. Past month due to more people using it I am getting 500-600 down and upload is unchanged.

I wasn’t looking at a new router to boost my current speeds as I know they are that way due to more usage by others, even Spectrum tells me they are aware of the sIowdowns — ultimately I just had gift card funds to blow, nothing else of interest to buy and wanted to basically just get it to get it. Just really confused as to why I would be suffering even lower download speeds with three different routers when connected via ethernet.

I can swap to the AX and run a speed test and not even break 300, then swap to the AC and get 450 upwards of close to 600. Also tested numerous different test servers all same results 300 or so on AX and 450+ on AC.


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[Hawk]

This is what I get if I use browser, try speed test app and see if you getting the result.