ASUS RT-AC68U

[Lazybones]

My wireless performance continued to degrade so I looked arround and realized that about half of my devices now support 5Ghz so I figured this time I will just go for the top of the line..

Although the AC68 does not have the absolution top speed for legacy 2.4N devices it does have probably the best all arround performance right now next to the Netgear Nighthawk..

First thing I have noticed is now on both the 2.4 and 5Ghz band my devices ALL show it as clearly the strongest AP.

Also looking at inSSIDer it has a very very stable wireless signal that isn't bouncing up and down..

Did some internet speed tests as well.. It's dual core process seems to make a significant difference in internet speed as well, I am getting between 3 and 6Mbits more speed out of my Shaw 100 connection.



I haven't run many wireless through put tests yet, however the difference on the speedtest.net iPhone app is crazy. I was getting 4.67Mbit down and 1.58 up on my RT-N16 on 2.4Ghz.. My iPhone 5C now reports 91.23Mbit down and 5.30 mbit up over 5Ghz WiFI... I get nearly my FULL home internet speed on my phone now!

[Tom]

Haha. That's great! I can get full speed over N here, but not too many of my devices actually will do 100mbps wifi consistently. It doesn't help that my ap isn't properly mounted yet. I might as well go do that right now! lol. only been a year or two.

[Lazybones]

According to the guy that makes the merlin firmware mod the latest ASUS firmware source contains new features not yet enabled such as a new QoS engine and some DPI features..

[Tom]

Very nice!

[Thorin]

jeebus, I should get my Shaw modem/router bridged and buy one of these...  How much was it?

[Lazybones]

jeebus, I should get my Shaw modem/router bridged and buy one of these...  How much was it?

$229 at NCIX on sale right now.

http://m.ncix.com/products/sku/90144/1264

It is on the high end that is for sure.

Also to get those speeds you will need 5ghz gear. Just happens that my iPhone 5c and our Asus win8 tablet are.

Speeds are much much lower in 2.4 ghz in my tests


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[Lazybones]

I should note that if you have no concern about AC gear or dual core CPU power for future features there are several cheaper N class routers that can match that speed.


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[Tom]

* Tom hijacks the thread 

Mounted my ap to the ceiling. Didn't really help speeds on my laptop at all. thought it might. I'm starting to think its the linux driver or something. My nexus 7 2013 gets 80-90mbps+ where as my laptop only wants to get 60-70.

[Lazybones]

I am not surprised if the phone outperforms the laptop. Some laptops have bad antenna placement or low end chipsets.


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[Mr. Analog]

You can get a wireless antenna dongle for the laptop right?

[Lazybones]

If he is already getting 60-70mbits that is rather good actually. Just not as good as the phone


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[Thorin]

Well I'm getting a lot less with the default Shaw modem / router

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/876103274

[Lazybones]

Well I'm getting a lot less with the default Shaw modem / router

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/876103274

if you are on a single radio 2.4 Ghz that isn't bad...

As a follow up of day to day.. I have noticed my iPhone will bind back to the 2.4Ghz channel if it loses sight of the 5Ghz.. then my speeds drop to close to my old speeds something around 10Mbit down and 2-4Mbit Up (still more stable and still higher signal strength than the old AP).

I think I am going to split my 2.4 and 5GHz into two separate SSIDs so I can control the performance a bit better. Some wireless devices are not too smart about picking the FASTEST connection, instead they will prefer the strongest signal.

[Tom]

If he is already getting 60-70mbits that is rather good actually. Just not as good as the phone


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Laptop has a 3 antenna, "450mbps" "Centrino Ultimate-N 6300" adapter. It could be down to the placement. cause it's antenna is much larger than the tablet's. Signal strength as reported by the laptop is less than the tablet gets.

And I /have/ seen 100mbps from the laptop. it's just weird.

[Lazybones]

If he is already getting 60-70mbits that is rather good actually. Just not as good as the phone


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Laptop has a 3 antenna, "450mbps" "Centrino Ultimate-N 6300" adapter. It could be down to the placement. cause it's antenna is much larger than the tablet's. Signal strength as reported by the laptop is less than the tablet gets.

And I /have/ seen 100mbps from the laptop. it's just weird.

If it is a three antenna unit I would expect it to be better than the phone for sure.

[Tom]

If he is already getting 60-70mbits that is rather good actually. Just not as good as the phone


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Laptop has a 3 antenna, "450mbps" "Centrino Ultimate-N 6300" adapter. It could be down to the placement. cause it's antenna is much larger than the tablet's. Signal strength as reported by the laptop is less than the tablet gets.

And I /have/ seen 100mbps from the laptop. it's just weird.

If it is a three antenna unit I would expect it to be better than the phone for sure.

It is, afaik. I'll have to make sure one of the antennas didn't get disconnected... And do some testing in windows at some point. If windows is regularly faster, then its a driver bug probably. But the nexus is a 7" tablet, not a phone

[Tom]

Tested today, windows also gets 90mbps+ on the /same/ devices. So its just the normal linux driver being dumb.

[Lazybones]

Tested today, windows also gets 90mbps+ on the /same/ devices. So its just the normal linux driver being dumb.

You know I don't think I have every heard of ANYTHING that works better on a Linux desktop?

I have more and more Linux servers at work however.

[Tom]

Eh, no need to get all "linux sucks"

[Tom]

Ok, turns out its a change in a default driver option. There's a feature called TX Aggregation, which used to be enabled by default, but was causing device resets and crashes. Seems its a firmware bug in various intel wifi cards, which apparently has no hope of actually being fixed any time soon. Kernel devs were nice enough to add a new flag to re-enable the feature.

I have re-enabled TX Aggregation, and I get upwards of 145mbps (according to iperf). Which isn't too bad!

[Lazybones]

Ya that is better than I am seeing on my phone... Haven't done any real tests with the tablet since its my only other 5Ghz device and I am fairly sure it isn't a triple antenna.

I should note that after a few days I have noticed inconsistent results... my iPhone doesn't allow very much control over priority... I am sometimes seeing 10Mbit, 50Mbit or 90Mbit depending where I am in the house, but such is life with wireless without having an AP on every floor for full strength.

Still compared to my previous setup I am not seeing the packet loss numbers I was before and fairly stable ping times.

[Tom]

How are you testing local speeds on your phone? I'd like to see what my phone and tablet can get locally.

[Lazybones]

How are you testing local speeds on your phone? I'd like to see what my phone and tablet can get locally.

Using the speedtest.net app... Which on my desktop I know gets just over 100Mbit so up to that speed it is a fairly reasonable measure.

[Tom]

How are you testing local speeds on your phone? I'd like to see what my phone and tablet can get locally.

Using the speedtest.net app... Which on my desktop I know gets just over 100Mbit so up to that speed it is a fairly reasonable measure.

Ah, I'm not sure what I was thinking now.. heh.

I just found an android "wifi speed test" app that comes with a python app/exe you can run on a computer. Seems my tablet only gets a 150mbps connection, and phone gets a consistent 75mbps connection. So I assume the phone is a single antenna, tablet is dual, and laptop that gets 300mbps is a triple? Wifi connection manager says signal strength is only 60% or so, which seems bogus to me.

append: actual connection speed registered seems to waffle about a bit...