asus RT 86u mesh 1gbsp
- Thread starter George23ed
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Soldato
While that may help with speeds for devices near the router, other devices on the other nodes will still be limited. It's an expensive investment though, do you really need gigabit speeds on WiFi? If you do, I would say you're better off properly wiring the upstairs node to the main router (Asus's mesh can do ethernet backhual) so all the wireless bandwidth can be focused on your devices instead of the main router and second node communicating with each other.
exactly... It is a wireless router ,just because it can be changed for another purpose doesnt change that fact initially! I just thinks its not anything to do with the original topic and also incorrect, but thats IMO.They are actually routers though, they can be switched to an AP mode.
If running off of virgin Super hun in modem mode, one of the will have to remain a router still
well this is exactly the issue. In my house, I dont want to run any wires even to the node I want everything wireless for the neatness. I have someone who wants to buy both my asus 86u right now thats the only reason I was thinking about it just to future proof it as I know i will be on 1100mbps now and not change it. but ai mesh is amazing, solved all my issue upstairs but the node speed is slower although much more stable for devices that dont need the speeds...
Generally the best wifi is with wired backhaul APs, after that you need to buy something with a dedicated wifi backhaul but your success will very much depend on your home constructions, wifi congestion and what can pass through walls etc.
What is the distance between nodes and what does it pass through?
What is the distance between nodes and what does it pass through?
distance is only one floor, the main router is front of the house dining room. and the node is upstairs in a bedroom, almost directly above each other.
Maybe 10m directly line of sight max 12m.... passing through one floor and one wall.
Most of the speed hungry devices though are upstairs...so ps5. xbox series s. 4k netlfix/4k tv, gaming laptop.
Nothing has any issues dropping out on speeds I just want to consider upgrading as I went from 350mbps to 500, stayed with 500 for 6 months and just now got 1gbps from virgin...
Wired I am getting 1100-1150mbps all day .stable .
Maybe 10m directly line of sight max 12m.... passing through one floor and one wall.
Most of the speed hungry devices though are upstairs...so ps5. xbox series s. 4k netlfix/4k tv, gaming laptop.
Nothing has any issues dropping out on speeds I just want to consider upgrading as I went from 350mbps to 500, stayed with 500 for 6 months and just now got 1gbps from virgin...
Wired I am getting 1100-1150mbps all day .stable .
Generally passing through a floor is low impact as they are not brick so you can get good signal between floors, walls are another matter, unless stud wall they will reduce signal.
Sounds like you might have the ideal room config to run a cable outside but if you are reluctant and want to stay all wifi and don't mind getting spendy there is the ASUS ZenWiFi Pro XT12, complete over kill for your setup but sounds like you are looking for overkill, it will take the 2.5G from Virgin plus give you option for 2.5G backhaul in future and all the 160Mhz bands you can shake a stick at.
Cheapest way is to wire between floors though and use more modest units.
Sounds like you might have the ideal room config to run a cable outside but if you are reluctant and want to stay all wifi and don't mind getting spendy there is the ASUS ZenWiFi Pro XT12, complete over kill for your setup but sounds like you are looking for overkill, it will take the 2.5G from Virgin plus give you option for 2.5G backhaul in future and all the 160Mhz bands you can shake a stick at.
Cheapest way is to wire between floors though and use more modest units.
I had a look at those, little out my price range atm but I was thinking being as someone wants my two asus rt ac86u ,right now at a good price, I was thinking about getting two asus rt ax82u ....using one as a mesh and one as a main router ...Or two asus rt ax86u.... Am i right it saying and, yes I dont know that much , that the ax86 is better overall than a ax82u for this purpose of mine...?
also Backhaul Connection Priority, I have that on 5ghz first, is this right as Im not going to use ethernet or is it meant to be on auto?
And the LAN switch control jumbo frames is on, is that correct
I noticed on 2.4ghz if i have the modulation scheme set to MCS 7 then not many things on 2.4 connect to the node, if i have it on MCS 9 turbo qam 256, then the node will take a lot of the 2.4 devices from upstairs where the node is..
On 5ghz the modulation scheme is MCS 11 nitro qam 1024, that seems to be best speeds overall
This really gets complex with all these setting so I just experimented to get best balanced speeds/connections?
any ideas on these points?
also Backhaul Connection Priority, I have that on 5ghz first, is this right as Im not going to use ethernet or is it meant to be on auto?
And the LAN switch control jumbo frames is on, is that correct
I noticed on 2.4ghz if i have the modulation scheme set to MCS 7 then not many things on 2.4 connect to the node, if i have it on MCS 9 turbo qam 256, then the node will take a lot of the 2.4 devices from upstairs where the node is..
On 5ghz the modulation scheme is MCS 11 nitro qam 1024, that seems to be best speeds overall
This really gets complex with all these setting so I just experimented to get best balanced speeds/connections?
any ideas on these points?
If security is important to you, perhaps look at brands other than ASUS.
www.theregister.com
Feds spank Asus with 20-year audit probe for router security blunder
One crappy vendor down, who's next?
www.theregister.com
Just wire between upstairs and downstairs, use your current stuff and and be happy, place the upstairs router such that you can wire high bandwidth capable non portable gear ( ps/xbox and TVs etc ) to the router/node to reduce wifi contention, this would give them 1Gb potential, basically take the approach that static devices should be wired and you'll probably have better wifi that having everything connected to a wifi device.
Even if you don't wire between floors you still want to wire devices to the mesh node for performance as you are halving wifi bandwidth with out dedicated backhaul.
As an example on my cheapy AX3 (which I don't recommend, just what I have as I am a tight arse) with wired backhaul, I get the full 1Gb Wifi to my 160 Mhz 2x2 Wave2 AC and 2x2 6AX devices in either rooms (can't go any faster as they only have 1Gb ports) but between one floor and office I use wifi backhaul to another AX3, which means it has to split the bandwidth between inter node comms and wifi devices but in my house I have wired all the devices in the office upstairs to the node, the allows the wifi connection to be predominently used to connect to the main router, this gives me the potential of a full 1GB wifi link between floors, wired PCs to the wifi connected satellite node will also get the full bandwidth potential. Of course if anything in the office competes for wifi bandwidth the speed will massively drop off as it has to do the wifi relay thing, but that's fine, handheld devices on wifi are rarely chugging down lot's of bandwidth, with the higher consumers wired everywhere else wifi traffic is reduced.
Obviously if many devices around the house are asking for all the bandwidth there would be problems and there are in my house for example when I pull big action cam clips to and from my NAS to laptop, but you can't avoid that what ever you do as I have one machine saturating the 1Gb LAN port when I'm pulling a 100Gb or so as it goes through the backhaul link, will upgrade this to at least 2.5G at some point in the future, probably when Wifi 7 becomes a thing, ideally you want the backhaul link to be better than what the Wifi AP can deliver.
If security is important to you, perhaps look at brands other than ASUS.
Feds spank Asus with 20-year audit probe for router security blunder
One crappy vendor down, who's next?
That's almost 10yrs ago, case mandated that independent security consultants test their firmware every 2 years for the next 2 decades, this would suggest to me they might actually be in a better place than many providers on the security front?
Certainly better than my Huawei gear sharing data with Mr Xi
True but they showed complete disregard for consumer security, enough for me to give them an extremely wide berth. It's only because they got caught that they bothered to do anything about it.
Soldato
On what devices are you getting these 1 Gbps+ speeds? .stable. or not they’re unusually fast. And did I read it correctly that you were getting 900Mbps on AC Wireless? Or even on 2x2 AX wireless that’s exceptionally fast.
And they’re not routers unless they’re doing routing, and only one of them will be routing. Calling it a router just because it has routing capability you may as well call your laptop a router, because it will run as one. My NAS, NVR and even my WiFi enabled dash cams are all routers according to your definition. Tethered iPhone? It’s a router according to you.
I strongly suspect whatever SpeedTest application you are using is reporting theoretical link speed or simplex link speed rather than duplex. The Asus claimed speed for the access point in the RT86U is 2167Mbps and you’re running wireless backhaul so that’s half your bandwidth gone and that figure is simplex so your maximum speed for a client on the RT86U is about 525Mbps but that doesn’t allow for traffic control packets so really under PERFECT conditions you might see 500Mbps. And in reality you’ll likely see half that because of time-slicing clients.
Bear in mind you can only get over 1Gbps with a 2.5GbE or faster connection and while your SuperHub5 may have a 2.5GbE connection, that’s in modem mode and none of your downstream devices appears to have anything better than 1GbE so about 940Mbps once the traffic control packets are accounted for. I’m struggling to see how you’re getting in excess of 1GbE speeds on a 1GbE interface.
So I‘m always interested in ‘better’ so if it actually is doing these speeds I’ll get the same gear.
laptop has an intel wifi 6, this laptop I use most of the time...that connected to the superhub 5 on wireless gave me around 900mbps and I wasnt even in the same room.
the wired speed test was done by my mate who checked my downstream channel power levels as they were way too high so we had an attenutor fitted to bring them down, he knows more than what I do , I dont get too much into the details I just want the quicker speeds... he used some type of usb ethernet adapter with 2.5gbps ethernet port ....the speedtest was over 1gbps wired...
I know sometimes these speedtests are not accurate but im looking at this from a basic angle
I have 1100mbps plus and I want to get the wireless speed here increased just because I feel like it. If i use it or not is not important at this stage at all.
the wired speed test was done by my mate who checked my downstream channel power levels as they were way too high so we had an attenutor fitted to bring them down, he knows more than what I do , I dont get too much into the details I just want the quicker speeds... he used some type of usb ethernet adapter with 2.5gbps ethernet port ....the speedtest was over 1gbps wired...
I know sometimes these speedtests are not accurate but im looking at this from a basic angle
I have 1100mbps plus and I want to get the wireless speed here increased just because I feel like it. If i use it or not is not important at this stage at all.
That was me getting over 900 on AC and AX, my AC is wave2 160Mhz so that is no problem.
Soldato
Fixed that for you. Whatever you are using to measure your speed, it’s lying to you.
Soldato
Except 900Mbps on AC - even with all 4 double width channels combined won’t get you 900Mbps.
I spent nearly a month testing access points in the radio frequency equivalent of anechoic chamber with no background RF at all, nothing using very fast clients and very fast access points and we never saw the theoretical 750Mbps never mind 900Mbps.
You need to bear in mind you’re only feeding the clients at gigabit speeds - and that loses roughly 60Mbps for overheads (no jumbo frames etc).
So you’ve only got 940Mbps of data going into the access point and then you have the overheads of slicing that data across 4 aggregated channels. And unless you had extremely sophisticated access points you wouldn’t be able to turn off the Multi-user part of the AC protocol so you lose even more packets while the access point drops two of your channels every so often to send out a “I‘m here” signal. You lose roughly 250Mbps in those processes. That’s why even 2x2 AX access points see absolutely zero benefit from having a 2.5Gbps ethernet interface. It’s made worse by the fact that the manufacturers of the mini PCIe and NVME WLAN cards spoof a gigabit interface at the computer end and don’t exploit the full bandwidth available to them.
I‘m not saying your tools didn’t say you were getting those throughputs and it may even be correct for Simplex traffic but you were not getting 900Mbps data transfer rates between an AC access point and an AC client.
All the protocols are published, so it’s very easy to calculate the actual theoretical maximum transmission rate across an AC connection. And it’s not 900Mbps. The last person who posted those sorts of speeds eventually discovered they were actually using a wired ethernet connection they hadn’t disabled.
just use some simple math on link speed if 2x2 ac got you an 866 linkspeed and you see 50-60% of that in use, then what will the 1733 of AC160 with same loss of throughput net you?
Perhaps the gear you are using doesn't work @ 160 ?
as for the 2.5Gb port being useless, come on, your backhaul should always be stronger, one client being able to saturate your backhaul when you have multiple devices wired/wifi connected to your AP is far from ideal.
Perhaps the gear you are using doesn't work @ 160 ?
as for the 2.5Gb port being useless, come on, your backhaul should always be stronger, one client being able to saturate your backhaul when you have multiple devices wired/wifi connected to your AP is far from ideal.
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I would add that I had a very good deal with virgin after a complaint that they investigated and agreed with my issue and I may be no wireless expert but I spent years working in consumer/customer complaints ...
so basically after it all I got 500mbps for £34 for 18 months ....then when I combined o2 with Vm , the o2 data got doubled ( o2 and vm can be different names now same address though) and 500 went to 1gbps
If it wasnt so cheap and the VOLT benefits werent here, no way would I have this speed and pay the usual £60 per month as I dont need it...no devices are really using that speed here, im not big internet user but atm I have now 67 devices 10 wifi lights 6 ip cameras so it adds up.
so due to all this IM thinking why not upgrade...considering leaving one asus 86u as a node upstairs and changing the main router to a ASUS RT-AX82U, I know someone selling one mint for £110
OR other option is to get a asus rt ax86u and again leaving the asus 86u upstairs on mesh
Wiring the two routers together isnt an option here at all, no chance...IM not in full control of what wires go where.
The speed upgrade did show me 802.11ac wireless isnt as fast as i thought...
the router names are misleading... eg asus rt 68u ...I had 2 of them before but at first glance years ago I thoght.. Hey 1900mbps.
obviously not the case.
so basically after it all I got 500mbps for £34 for 18 months ....then when I combined o2 with Vm , the o2 data got doubled ( o2 and vm can be different names now same address though) and 500 went to 1gbps
If it wasnt so cheap and the VOLT benefits werent here, no way would I have this speed and pay the usual £60 per month as I dont need it...no devices are really using that speed here, im not big internet user but atm I have now 67 devices 10 wifi lights 6 ip cameras so it adds up.
so due to all this IM thinking why not upgrade...considering leaving one asus 86u as a node upstairs and changing the main router to a ASUS RT-AX82U, I know someone selling one mint for £110
OR other option is to get a asus rt ax86u and again leaving the asus 86u upstairs on mesh
Wiring the two routers together isnt an option here at all, no chance...IM not in full control of what wires go where.
The speed upgrade did show me 802.11ac wireless isnt as fast as i thought...
the router names are misleading... eg asus rt 68u ...I had 2 of them before but at first glance years ago I thoght.. Hey 1900mbps.
obviously not the case.
Router manufacturers add up the bandwidth of all the channels, so it is quite misleading if you don't read and understand the hardware specs this is compounded by the fact the device manufacturers don't always tell you what the hardware is running and also parts of the spec can be optional, for example having wifi 6 does not mean you have to have 160Mhz channel support. Ubiquiti for example on their first 6 devices only supported 80Mhz, same for the likes of Samsung and google on their handsets, 160 only came in later devices.
So you have to dig into the specs of what you want to connect, how you are going to use it and buy appropriately but if you are going to use wifi without a dedicated channel for backhaul you have to accept you are never getting speed you want. Unless you buy with lost of antenna and stream, even the distance and blockages will limit that.
I have wired AP in most rooms as I plan to use high frequency 6Ghz in the future that doesn't penetrate bugger all and will require faster than 1Gb wired backhaul, wired APs are also going to be more important in the future, though will predominantly be fibre to the room, some way off.
So you have to dig into the specs of what you want to connect, how you are going to use it and buy appropriately but if you are going to use wifi without a dedicated channel for backhaul you have to accept you are never getting speed you want. Unless you buy with lost of antenna and stream, even the distance and blockages will limit that.
I have wired AP in most rooms as I plan to use high frequency 6Ghz in the future that doesn't penetrate bugger all and will require faster than 1Gb wired backhaul, wired APs are also going to be more important in the future, though will predominantly be fibre to the room, some way off.
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