[SOLVED] ASUS RT-AX55 Thoughts?

[StealthArsenal]

Good Evening Everyone,

I am going to be moving into my own home soon (a condo specifically) and am in the process of picking up my own modem and a new router for the space. I am coming from an Asus AC68U which will be staying with my family. I was looking at the Asus RT-AX55 and pairing it with an Arris SB6190 modem. I likely won't purchase an internet package faster than 500mbps, but I wanted to at least have the equipment to handle faster speeds should I elect to go that route. I am covering roughly 1200 square feet and will have a desktop, laptop, Rokus, phones, Nest, etc on the network.

Does anyone have familiarity with the RT-AX55? I wasn't looking to spend AX3000 money as I didn't think I really needed that for my new application.

Thoughts?

Thanks
Chris

 

[bill001g]

My guess is it won't be a lot faster than the ac68u. They key thing that makes wifi6 faster is its use of 160mhz radio channels. So double the bandwidth of 802.11ac. The other thing that makes it faster is the qam1024.

The problem is qam1024 tries to pack even more data into the same radio bandwidth so it is even more susceptible to interference. Most people says it will only run qam1024 in the same room. It will drop back and use the older encoding of 802.11ac if it can't make qam1024 work.

That particular router seems to be a oddball. it only supports 80mhz channels. So if it can not get a qam1024 session it will pretty much be the same as 802.11ac router

It also will not even attempt to use the better protocols unless you have wifi6 end devices to use it.


If you want speed use ethernet. Most portable devices do not really need more than say 100mbps. They can run speedtst to show they can run faster but there is really is no place to store much data on a cell phone so it kinda is silly. Things like roku etc use very little bandwidth.

I would make a effort to plug your desktop into ethernet. Your laptop you could run on wifi and if you have a need to download something large you could temporally plug in ethernet.

Anything you are going to play online games on you really need connected via ethernet. There is no wifi that can solve the problem if lag spikes caused by interfering signals from the neighbors.

Be aware wifi6e is "coming soon" so don't get too hung up on wifi6.

>>>> a after thought. The 68u might actually be faster. Most wifi6 stuff does not yet support 3x3 or 4x4 mimo. So if it would have to drop back to 802.11ac the best it could run is 2x2. If you happen to have end devices that can use 3x3 the 68u maybe better

 

[StealthArsenal]

@bill001g

That makes a ton of sense. What I was looking to do since I am buying new equipment, is to use the most recent spec'd equipment. I think that makes a lot of sense. I haven't bought a router in a number of years and I would be lying if I said I kept up with the networking side of things. With that, said, I could roll with the RT-AX3000 (same as the RT-AX58U from what I am seeing) or I could go back to a 3x3 AC router. Not really sure what router to even look at or if it makes sense to go backwards when buying new. The plan is to run wired, I just need to knock some work boxes into the walls and route wiring through the attic. I might not have this issue at the desktop as there is a cable line there that I could do everything hardwire. My goal was to run off of Wifi with my other devices and slowly hardwire and use my switches to distribute the connection to multiple devices. I am thinking I am also going to stick with an internet plan around 300-500 mbps. If I can get a lifetime price deal in February for 1gbps, I will do that. Want to have the equipment capable of handling that.

Thanks
Chris

 

[bill001g]

Every very inexpensive routers can run very close to gigabit speeds wan/lan. Almost all routers have the ability to run the NAT function in hardware rather than have the CPU process it. This also means that a lot of the fancy featurs like firewalls or QoS and anything else that needs to look at the traffic are worthless features on expensive routers. You can't actually use them without disabling the hardware nat function. As soon as you run the traffic via the CPU you will cap your rate at about 300mbps even on fast routers.

 

[StealthArsenal]

@bill001g

Do you have a recommendation of a router to look at? Everything you said makes complete sense to me. I'm not married to WiFi 6, just a thought of being up with the times.

 

[bill001g]

I am not sure. I have not looked at new stuff for a while now knowing it is all obsolete already. I actually use very little wifi, everything important is ethernet and what isn't works fine on a very simple 1200 router I am using as a AP. I do have a asus 86u but I am not using the wifi, I am using it as a vpn router because it has a vpn hardware accelerator.

If I had to buy something now I would find some $50 route that has a number like 1200-1450 on it. You want gigabit ports is the only real concern. These routers should give you 200mbps or even 300mbps if you are close on wifi. Something you can tolerate until this summer when we will likely see more wifi6e equipment on the market. Unfortunately it will likely be a year before we see "cheap" wifi6e equipment.