Reply To: ASUS ZenWiFi AX Whole Home Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System Not sure if this is the right place to ask…. I am thinking of upgrading my Google Mesh wifi to the above. Has anyone used this and does it…

[Jonathan Morris]

I have just recently got the XT8 for my BT 900/100 FTTP connection and when it works, it’s great. When it does odd things that impact the service from the node, I feel like wanting to throw it out the window!

I have only used it with one firmware; the latest I got when setting up – 3.0.0.4.386_43170

Posts here and elsewhere do talk of some of these bugs, so I’d love to know if/when they’ll be fixed as the experience is tarnished by the following:

1. Like the poster above, the PHY rate can fluctuate – a lot. Sure, there are various things that can cause Wi-Fi issues, but the range can be significant, and earlier today my son complained about the Internet being slow (slow with 900Mbps on tap?!) and despite the mobile and web app showing a good connection with circa 2600Mbps backhaul, a speed test from the node netted a throughput of 3Mbps down and 25Mbps up?!?! The node is about 10 metres away through one stud partition wall and a ceiling, and usually says excellent signal (5GHz). Here, it was still saying that – so it seems the real-time information isn’t even accurate.
2. I have had some Radar incidents that has impacted the 160MHz connection, but even forcing 80MHz still causes issues from time to time where the throughput drops like a stone. It’s a shame, as 80MHz on the backhaul would likely be sufficient to offer near full-speed via the LAN ports.
3. The node seems to like dropping to 2.4GHz and saying weak signal – even though the 5GHz signal is very strong (so strong that I could almost get away with just using the XT8 router on its own, if I didn’t mind losing the LAN ports upstairs). Rebooting the node doesn’t help. Optimising doesn’t help. Selecting to ‘reconnect node’ actually might, but sometimes it requires an actual power off/on to do anything, and then it’s back for a few days before it quietly drops back to 2.4GHz and stays there until further manual intervention.

As you can imagine, this is frustrating. I can accept signal blips, but I’d hope the Asus would self-heal and sort the problem out transparently (and by all means put it in the log or email me). My son could just power cycle the node, but I’d sooner he didn’t start doing that. When my wife is working from home, a drop to 2-3Mbps is going to impact her Teams chats.

I’ve read about rolling back firmware, but I’d really prefer to move forward to something that fixes these problems – which I’d hope that Asus could solve on a product that has been on the market for a year or more.

My earlier routers have been Asus and I’m impressed that they support hardware for many years, but they do sadly appear to still manage to release the odd update that probably shouldn’t reach the end user. I have run beta builds on older devices, but now I just want a final release, stable, firmware that I can trust.

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