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Terrible news. It means roughly 5 years of FW support and still a lot of people facing issues with the latest FW releases.
I just wish Asus would release the BT8 in the UK as the BT10 seems too expensive and, I assume by the numbering system the BT8 is closest to matching the XT8.
I now have a few devices supporting 6E and 7 so I’m all set to upgrade, especially should I decide to go from 1Gbps fibre to 1.2 or 1.6.
In the UK, EE now has a Wi-fi 7 hub for 1.6Gbps plans but I’m happy with Asus, despite some issues with the backhaul sync rate for a long time that now seems stable. Plus there’s a monthly add on cost for the newer hub and any mesh/repeater you add.
With Asus there are zero add on subscriptions, which I love in a time where everyone wants to force you to commit to paying them forever.
The problem is how bad Asus seems to be in launching and selling networking equipment here. Do they want our money?
The XT8 will likely find a new home quite easily for my parents or something, or sold on to offset the new equipment cost. Even without updates it should be good for a fair few years yet.
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Just seen this publication from ASUS, seems the ZenWiFi XT8 V2 EoL (end of life) is supported until 31th December 2026 at least for the UK.
No mention of ZenWiFi XT8 V1 which is a little odd.
Good to see ZenWiFi XT8 V2 has a couple more years support at least
[Networking Product] Duration of Security Update Support (only for UK)
https://www.asus.com/uk/support/faq/1051929/In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).
That is pretty decent and hopefully the V1 won’t be too much sooner.
I’m still looking for my Wi-Fi 7 successor and thought it might be the BT10 that finally went on sale last month, but now it seems there’s a BT8 which number wise sounds like the spiritual successor. And hopefully cheaper than £700+ for the twin pack.
As with everything Asus, it seems impossible to know when it will ship and even more confusing is it won an award in 2023 so why is it so late coming?
At least now there’s no rush.
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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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The Asus BT10 seems to be going on sale in early August (8th), and will hopefully be a lot cheaper than the BQ16 and BQ16 Pro (and I’m not sure they’re easy to get hold of here anyway – certainly Amazon is quoting a delivery time of up to seven months!).
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-zenwifi-bt10-dual-pack-white-aimesh-8x-antennas-per-unit-mu-mimo-tri-band-10gbe-80211be – £787.99 for a twin pack.
It would also appear to be closest in look and feel as the XT8 that I currently use. I would like to change purely for better backhaul and doing away with the issues relating to Airport radar signals (I am quite close to Luton airport) that has limited me to 80MHz backhaul for most of my time of ownership.
Having 160MHz would mean most of my smartphones would connect at 2400Mbps and therefore I’d get closer to the full gigabit speed throughout the house (instead of 850-900 when in the same room, and 500-600 elsewhere). Many of my phones are also Wi-Fi 7 compatible, but I don’t have any computers, tablets, or TVs that do and likely won’t for many years.
At that price I think I will wait a bit. I’d probably wait for some competition and bite if it gets to nearer £500.
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Does the XT8 support WiFi 6e clients?
I’m about to replace my laptop and all the latest models I’m looking at have WiFi 6e connectivity. Both me and the laptop are old :-) and I am not tech savvy.
Many thanks!
No it doesn’t support 6E. That would likely be for the backhaul only though, so those devices would most likely be connecting on the 5GHz band anyway?
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Well, if this is the final fw for this system, Asus appears to have gotten it right.
60 days up time in AiMesh AP mode!
Wireless backhaul 1441 hours connection time
RAM 193 MB free
26 clients
I haven’t had my mesh mode drop to 2.4GHz once, so I’m extremely happy they finally fixed it!
That’s with 80MHz for the back haul, as I don’t think it will ever work well for me on 160 given I’m 15 miles or so from an International airport.
Going forward I am hoping Wi-Fi 7 equipment comes down to a reasonable price. No rush though, as only my phones support it (the devices that need it least) and I’m not intending to go above 1Gbps fibre until those prices also fall.
Fingers crossed my equipment will just sit and do what it is supposed to do without intervention for the foreseeable.
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Judging by how quiet this thread has been lately, I guess 3.0.0.4.388.23285 has been working well for most folks. I’ve had my main desktop connected the the MikroTik for the past couple of months, so I haven’t been paying as much attention to the XT8 network, but I logged in this morning and the up-time is 31+ days, with a system log dating back to June 2nd! CPU and memory look good as well. Seems like the most stable fw in quite some time.
My uptime has been 20+ days now. I think the stability/instability is due to individual setup, but for me and my setup the latest FW 23285 has been stable.
It does appear very stable, but my mesh node still likes to drop to 2.4GHz for no reason and sit there until I reboot the node (simply optimising doesn’t work). I have no idea what causes it, especially as the 5GHz signal reported is always good (-52dBm) but it reports 2.4GHz as poor at -51dBm…
I now fix the backhaul at 80MHz too.
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For me at least….. FINALLY. Saving this firmware as a future fallback if issues.
I’ve pretty much just ‘set and forget’ in recent months, but this week I’ve had three occasions where the mesh mode has dropped to 2.4GHz and stayed there. A reboot quickly fixes.
I am unsure why it is happening now, but perhaps it’s a radar issue (the logs are huge so I haven’t checked) and maybe just going back to 80MHz is the solution.
Besides that, the XT8 has generally been rock solid for ages and I feel it is now very reliable and dependable. No RAM issues, no USB issues or anything else.
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I’ve been running 3.0.0.4.388_22068 for ages now and not had any issues at all. Can’t even remember the last time I saw the mesh node dropping to 2.4GHz. RAM usage seems fine and so too is the USB flash drive I have hooked up to the main router to share a selection of movies to smart TVs.
I have forced 80MHz backhaul and gave up on 160MHz because it seems that with that enabled, I get the problems. As ever, you can never be 100% certain that changing a setting has helped when also changing the firmware, but with this version it is very much a case of ‘set it and forget it’. I too have WPA2-Personal and have a fixed channel rather than auto.
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Here’s an odd one; As you may recall from previous posts, I’ve had issues over time with 160MHz on the backhaul.. but as everything for me has seemed stable for a while, I decided to re-enable it from within the app – and so far so good. What’s odd is that accessing the router settings via the web, it still shows the mesh as 80MHz and the 160MHz box is unticked. Yet it’s enabled! This is like the app offering an OTA update, and the web interface not. What’s going on with this? How can I have different settings on the same router?
Scratch that. It has now gone back to just 80MHz and 160MHz is deselected in the app now… Go figure.
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Here’s an odd one;
As you may recall from previous posts, I’ve had issues over time with 160MHz on the backhaul.. but as everything for me has seemed stable for a while, I decided to re-enable it from within the app – and so far so good.
What’s odd is that accessing the router settings via the web, it still shows the mesh as 80MHz and the 160MHz box is unticked. Yet it’s enabled!
This is like the app offering an OTA update, and the web interface not.
What’s going on with this? How can I have different settings on the same router?
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