ASUS AC66R isn't performing as expected.

[Alexander Moore]

I bought a high end ASUS router as several people I know said that ASUS routers are the best.

So I bought the ASUS AC66R router and tested it against my friend's old $3 Goodwill-bought Netgear router.

The ASUS AC66 produced 4Mbps / 2Mbps on speeds. We re-tried with the trasmit power brought clear up to 190mW (the default is 80mW) and QoS enabled. Still the same result.

His little old single-antenna Netgear router ran at 15Mbps / 2Mbps.


So, needless to say I'm pretty frustrated. My high-dollar router is getting badly out-performed by a 3-dollar router. If this is how it's going to be then I've just wasted a lot of money and I'm going to return this to BestBuy.

Any ideas of what might be wrong? The ASUS router gets awfully hot awfully quickly too. Is that normal?

Test Specifics:

Tested using 2.4Ghz signal. Used SpeedTest.net

His Netgear router is just a little old white Wireless-G single-antenna router...


(re-posted because I think I may have posted to the wrong section before)

 

[Blackbriar]

Have you been having any issues with lag spikes or latency? I have the same router (AC66R is the retail version) and am having lots of issues. I posted a new thread about this today. Your feedback as a AC66U/R owner would really be helpful.

 

[RealBeast]

For one thing, disable QoS, it is not yet working properly and will kill your speeds.

I've heard some reports of it running hot (I never saw this), check the adapter voltage and current to insure they are within specs. If you run high transmit power, you will run hotter.

This router is excellent for AC, good for 5GHz N and probably about average for 2.4GHz N/G.

I found that Merlin's firmware made it work better because he fixed many of the early bugs that ASUS is still working on, but I don't think he's fixed the QoS issue yet.

If you are not going to use AC, then definitely return it and get an N66 since the N66 is slightly better at 2.4 and 5GHz N wireless and is cheaper, plus the firmware is much more mature.