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Is this Black Friday price? RT-AC2900 Amazon’s UK

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I feel very attracted to this router since you made me discover it yesterday, it has nice dual 1.8GHz CPUs which is only matched by the GT-AC5300 and RT-NX88U which IMHO are overkill.

I mean if the RT-AC3200 can handle AiProtection and still give such nice high speed via WiFi I cannot imagine how good is the RT-AC86U, and the price is really nice.

Also the antennas chipset is the same as the GT-AC5300 which makes me think are really good.

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I’ll tell you my short story, 6 years ago when I contracted UPC in Ireland I got a Cisco EPC3925 which is a decent router with WiFi, and that was the problem -with WiFi- so I was never able to get the speed I contracted through the WiFi so this is what I did:

• Bought the RT-AC56U and put Merlin in it (not at the beginning, after some research)
• I completely disabled the WiFi radio on the Cisco router.
• Set the Cisco router to bridge mode.
• Got greedy and bought the RT-AC3200 which is better than the RT-AC56U but the TriBand is not a good thing because trying to do too many things usually ends in bad.
• Got even more greedy and bought the DSL-88U which was a bad decision, I didn’t do my homework to find out that the firmware is not the standard AsusWRT that Merlin supports, Merlin doesn’t support ANY Asus DSL router

What I have learned so far:

• When dealing with the ISP don’t ever get a router with WiFi because of their lack of CPU and RAM.
• Buy a good extra WiFi router and configure the ISP router in bridge mode and that’s it, profit.

If I were you and you can return the DSL-88U do it because I don’t think there is hope for it, if you have some router working use it until the RT-AX88U is fully supported by Merlin (in progress) and buy that one combined with a non-WiFi ISP router.

If you don’t have such money you can buy the RT-AC86U which has nice high speed dual CPU.

Here is the spec of every Asus AC router RAM and CPU which is what I use when deciding what to buy next, look at the last two tables which are the AC and AX router(s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asus_routers

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Back to my RT-AC3200, it feels so fast with Merlin UI and stuff, back to my 240mb/s with AiProtection active, my next target will definitely be the RT-AX88U, the difference in gigantic.

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UK Sentinel wrote:

The RT-AC3100 is a dual core 1.4Ghz unit with 512MB Ram, nice unit, but nothing special, the RT-AC86U has dual 1.8Ghz processors, slightly newer wifi chips, but only has three antennas, so depends how many wifi client’s you plan to use and wifi usage in general?

Yeah, you are right, the only logical upgrade I see is the RT-AX88U, good antennas, no TriBand, high CPU speed, I would had never discovered if it wasn’t for this forum, at least I owe that to the DSL-AC88U

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UK Sentinel wrote:

 

If money is no object, then I would go for the new ASUS RT-AX88U and this is newly supported by RMerlin, early days yet for ASUSWRT-Merlin, but 4 core 1.8GHz CPU and 1GB Ram

Oh, I just saw that beast maybe I will buy it when it is on sales, it looks very similar to the RT-AC3100, so my next question is, would you recommend the RT-AC3100?

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So, if you were to go back to an RT series router, besides the RT-AC5300 which one would you choose that supports Merlin and have good 5GHz antennas?

I have the RT-3200 but I don’t like the TriBand for me, I don’t find it useful which makes me believe I should go for the RT-AC3100?

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Also, is it normal that the 5GHz chipset is always at high temperatures?

2.4 GHz: 0°C  –  5 GHz: 71°C  –  CPU: 51.571°C

I don’t use 2.4GHz but I have noticed that the 5GHz never goes under 70 Degrees Celsius, is this normal? hell it is cold where the router is sitting, why is it always so hot in it.

Please don’t tell me (or tell me) that this router has a bad heating design, that will automatically make it return it.

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I have an RT-AC3200 with AiProtection and Merlin firmware and works like a charm.

I bought the DSL-AC88U and I lose about 25% speed with AiProtection, I feel like Cozak, will be returning this piece of junk if is not fixed within the time I have to return it (2 months left)

And I’m not even using ADSL, I have cable with UPC, I just bought this router because of its better WiFi antennas and future proof, but I feel that I have downgraded my network instead of upgrading it.

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I have noticed that it starts with 44% RAM usage so maybe it starts partially but when you restart it (the service not the router) it should be truly on and that’s when you should truly test, for the sake on being on stock firmware I went back to 585 but I get the same speed loss with both (which I never experienced with Merlin firmwares my AC3200)

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UK Sentinel wrote:

Ok, so I flashed DSL-AC88U with STock585 and AiProtection On or Off I achieve 50Mbps (ish) throughput, With Beta Build586, I seemed to achieve 50 Mbps with AiProtection OFF and 20 (ish) with AiProtection enabled, I did not notice over use of CPU, but a throughput issue with AiProtection Enabled is noticeable with wifi (2.4 and 5GHz) and Ethernet. I will let ASUS know also, even though a performance, drop, it still works and the new beta build585 does have some new features, so safer to go with build585 unless features in beta586 are required is my view. It’s a beta,

That is because the freaking Build 585 has the bug where sometimes AiProtection doesn’t start, try turning the AiProtection off and then on again, if you don’t get at least 55% RAM in use the AiProtection is not on, then you will get your speed down by at least 25%

Is it beta? so it is the build 585, it is a rushed build so that they could deliver something even if they didn’t fix a thing…is all PR stunt, I know this because I get 180mb/s with it on and 240mb/s when it is off (truly on and off)

Now at least build 586 makes sure the AiProtection service starts, I have tested both “stock” 585 and beta 586

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UK Sentinel wrote:

Ok, so I flashed DSL-AC88U with STock585 and AiProtection On or Off I achieve 50Mbps (ish) throughput, With Beta Build586, I seemed to achieve 50 Mbps with AiProtection OFF and 20 (ish) with AiProtection enabled, I did not notice over use of CPU, but a throughput issue with AiProtection Enabled is noticeable with wifi (2.4 and 5GHz) and Ethernet. I will let ASUS know also, even though a performance, drop, it still works and the new beta build585 does have some new features, so safer to go with build585 unless features in beta586 are required is my view. It’s a beta,

That is because the freaking Build 585 has the bug where sometimes AiProtection doesn’t start, try turning the AiProtection off and then on again, if you don’t get at least 55% RAM in use the AiProtection is not on, then you will get your speed down by at least 25%

Is it beta? so it is the build 585, it is rushed build so that they could deliver something even if they didn’t fix a thing…is all PR stunt

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pavlf wrote:

I hope ‘based upon’ isn’t a euphemism for ‘is’

It looks suspicious indeed, so they have a team testing an unreleased beta and such team was not able to release nada, zero, niente, nothing for the last 10 months, I doubt it is a new version, they said by the end of October and now it will be by almost mid of November, watch them extend that timeline for another 2 weeks because somehow they found something (contradicting that there was a team testing)

Sorry for my lack of trust, but I have no other opinion on Asus after suffering with my PCIe network card which their Windows driver works when it wants, I honestly regret that I bought the DSL version, it seems that without Merlin firmwares Asus can’t handle such task.

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This is bad I guess, is the AiProtection that slow on this version then? I didn’t have speed issues on my RT-AC3200 but I was using the Merlin firmware which is a shame they don’t support the DSL versions of the routers, I wouldn’t be here scratching my head.

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I’m using the Ethernet WAN, it is connected to a cable modem, I bought the router because of the future proof ADSL and Ethernet WAN support, I have so far enabled Firewall, AiProtection, Parental control and the scheduler, it is now sitting at 39% consistently.

What I find strange is that few times it goes up to 55% and stays there, or sits at 39% and stays there.

Before I factory reset it this morning it was sitting at 39% for more than 24 hours so only sometimes when you start/restart it goes up to 55% and never go down, that is strange, I’m a software developer and I mostly work on Linux so I kind of know how Linux uses the memory.

So the question is: Why sometimes when you start/restart it stays at 39% and others at 55%? That might not be a memory leak because it is not going up but surely looks like hugged RAM.

Also, when it is at 55% I can only get 170 Mb/s when I test with my ISP, when it is at 39% I get 240+ Mb/s which what I have contracted (both through the WiFi)

I know what you are saying, but you can’t deny the overwhelming evidence that this smells like a bug.

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