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...

[UK Sentinel]

No problem, an AP is only a bridge between the wifi and the rest of your network and as such features like QOS / AiProtection / Traffic Analyzer etc. is disabled at the AP.

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[Ben Park]

Thank you. Really appreciate the help.

It’s incredibly frustrating as I am being force to use my BT router (in the UK) as it is the only router that supports their digital voice (VOIP) service, which I stupidly subscribed to unaware of the constraint. As such I am having to use their Smart Hub 2 router which lack any QoS features.

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[UK Sentinel]

That is most unfortunate, BT’s implementation of VoIP is proprietary and is only available by using a Smart Hub2.

You could always just put the Smart Hub2 in a cupboard and use another router and number from a 3rd party VoIP provider.

 

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[Jonathan Morris]

. UK Sentinel Said:

That is most unfortunate, BT’s implementation of VoIP is proprietary and is only available by using a Smart Hub2.

You could always just put the Smart Hub2 in a cupboard and use another router and number from a 3rd party VoIP provider.

 

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

I’m in the same boat but as 99.99% of landline calls were spam, I never unboxed the BT hub and simply don’t have a phone connected.

I believe the business version can be set to bridge mode but not the consumer units.

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[UK Sentinel]

Spam Calls, Yuk! we just use our Mobile phones and I don’t miss Landline Spam calls one bit

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[Ben Park]

We get so few land-line calls these days, I am tempted to ditch it. I looked to switch to BT Business broadband recently for this very reason (bridge mode), but then established that they could not port my domestic BT VOIP service across, rendering the whole process somewhat moot.

 

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• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by Ben Park.

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[Ben Park]

On a separate note, can anybody tell me how I can locate the device on my network that is apparently consistently uploading (transmitting?) around 7mbps data?

I have hunted around both the Asus app and Web based Admin portal for the Ax6600 and cannot find a way to do this.

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[UK Sentinel]

To see which devices are using bandwidth, go to Adaptive QoS > Bandwidth Monitor and enable Apps Analysis, this will then present you with each device and its bandwidth it is utilising and which services (apps) are eating up the bandwidth.

 

 

 

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[Ben Park]

Thank you.  That would work if I could access QoS via the Asus router, but as it is in AP mode I cannot.  Looking at the BT Hub, my options are also very limited.  Are there any decent third party tools that might help?

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[Grisu]

You could shift the first mesh-router to router-mode instead of AP-mode.

Then you have all options back. Only thing is that you have double-NAT and have to set port forwards on your BT hub if needed.

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[Ben Park]

This sounds like an ideal solution but I confess I lack the technical know-how to set up the double natting. I’ll do some Googling :-)

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[Grisu]

If you dont have clients which need access from outside there would nothing to be done, it will work like before.

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[UK Sentinel]

@benjohnpark To help add to @Grisu good advice, could you check a couple of options on your Smart Hub 2 as I can hopefully guide you thorough setting up one of your XT8 as the main router which can piggy back of your BT’s Smart Hub 2.

Note: Try to take a backup of both Smart Hub and XT8 before you start (if possible)

 

Can you see if you are able to …. (but don’t actually do it currently)

• Disable wi-fi on the Smart Hub 2.
• At the Smart Hub 2 interface turn off DHCP. go to ‘Settings > Advanced > Home Network > IP addresses’ and deselect the “Use DHCP Server” option.

 

If the above can be achieved, enable the above options and try the following for one of your ASUS XT8s

• Connect with ethernet cable from one of the Smart Hub’s Ethernet LAN ports to the main WAN port on your XT8
• Configure XT8 as a Router (not node) and then you either need to configure the XT8 WAN port to DHCP or give it a static IP address outside of the DHCP range of the Smart Hub and set the gateway address to 192.168.1.254. Set the LAN range of the XT8 to the 192.168.2.xxx subnet.

Now with the XT8 providing wifi and acting as a proper router, you should now have access to QoS / Bandwidth Monitor etc. and then you could configure your other x2 XT8s as a AiMesh nodes.

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[Ben Park]

Thank you so much for this.  I will take a look at this.  That said, having spoken with the wife, I have now decided to forgo the Digital Voice service, as we barely use it anyway.  This would free me up to switch the SM2 out completely.

Without wanting to needlessly throw good money after bad, would the advice here be to replace the SM2 with a decent DSL router?  That being the case, it would seem logical to use an Asus model that supports AiMesh, so would there be a specific model that people recommend?  My thinking is that if I can use a new router as a mesh node on the ground floor of my house, I can then repurpose the XT8 I have here elsewhere in the house to strengthen my wifi mesh in general (which is weak at the top of my house; 3 floors, very thick walls).

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[UK Sentinel]

That sounds like a very logical approach, ASUS do have the DSL-AX82U and this supports AiMesh, I use one also.

Only negative regarding the DSL-AX82U is that it is Dual Band rather than Tri-Band like your XT8

 

https://www.asus.com/uk/networking-iot-servers/modem-routers/all-series/dsl-ax82u/

 

ASUS New DSL-AX82U Modem Router Combo – Wifi 6

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