Help with Asus RT-AC68U

Hey all

Earlier this week I finally replaced my @#$#@$ EA3500 Linksys router with the AC68U. I updated to the latest firmware and initially used it with my built in wireless adapter (the one in my sig below, killer 1202). Whereas this adapter BARELY worked with the linksys, it absolutely shines with the Asus.

For some funny reason though, the external adapter which I used with the linksys, a Linksys AE3000 refused to even acknowledge the existence of the 5GHZ band... I ignored it and blamed it on incompatibility. I had already ordered the Asus USB-AC56 so I didn't bother investigating the issue.

However, the same problem happened with the AC56 upon installing it. I messed around with the channels used for the 5GHZ and it just appeared after a while. I am using channel 48 for now.

My concern now is that the AC56 can take up to 10-15 seconds before connecting to the 5GHZ band (takes a sec on the 2.4GHZ). My Killer adapter connects in a sec to both bands. It's not THAT big of a deal as when it does connect, it's very stable.
But would still appreciate if someone could guide me on solving this.

Another question I have is the following:
I have a WD Live Hub connected directly to the router (LAN). I was expecting to get a bump in write speed to the drive when copying stuff from my laptop the drive. I am getting practically the same speeds as with my old router: ~13-14MB/s.
Is this normal? Is this due to the drive itself?

Otherwise, performance, stability and range are absolutely stunning. But I would like someone to guide me on how to measure the max speed of the router to check if there are any issues in the way I configured it initially. I was planning to just try copying a file from my laptop to another laptop connected by LAN to the router. Would this be accurate or is there a way from the router itself to test this?

Thank you in advance!

 

I have no idea how WD Live Hub is in terms of performance so I can't comment on that speed but it shouldn't matter. You can see if everything is performing fine the way you suggested which is by transferring files to and from a computer connected with an Ethernet cable to and from a computer connected via W-Fi.

While you can use different apps to measure throughput it's probably not what you are interested in so making a practical test makes more sense. Do not rely on Windows there though. Install TeraCopy (free app) and use it to copy files - when you click on "advanced" (or something like that) while files are being copied the window will not disappear once the operation is finished and it will show an average transfer speed calculated after the download has finished.

MS Windows shows transfer speeds that are way off and are calculated n the fly but will not show average speed for the whole file once the transfer is done - and that is exactly what you are interested in.

Also before you start those transfer make sure that theoretical connection speed shown by Windows is as it should be - 867mbps or thereabouts.
Ming you - you have to use USB 3 port i order to utilize 802.11ac speeds of this adapter.

 

@Downloads

Thanks for your advice.

I had some time to mess with the router's settings a bit today and noticed a few things.

Windows theoretical speed NEVER reaches 867mbps for some reason. It reaches 585mbps. And this is done ONLY when I forces channel width to 80GHz and select a channel below 48. If I select any 3 digit channel, my AC56 doesn't detect the 5GHz band anymore (while my Killer 1202 still does). If I select the 40Ghz channel width, the max speed displayed by Windows is around 200mbps.
At 585mbps, when copying a file to another laptop connect by lan, Windows shows a max speed of 50MB/s, while Teracopy shows an average of 36MB/s. Are these figures what I should get out of the AC68? To be honest, I am EXTREMELY happy with this, but if I can tweak things some more to get that router even MORE awesome than it already is then why not

The 2nd strange thing I faced yesterday is a VERY bad performance on my wife's laptop which can only connect to 2.4Ghz. Performance was catastrophic and I had to face her wrath for a couple minutes . Checking the settings a bit, the only thing that I could think of was an issue with the channel selected. Choosing Channel # 1 fixed the issue completely. Both channel 9 and 11 gave bad performance. First time I faced this personally so thought someone could clarify why this happened on the AC68.

All in all, I am extremely impressed with the router. I am NEVER going back to Linksys, that's for sure.

 

Performance seems to be OK. Signal is either too weak or you are too far to achieve 867mbps. For what you have 36MB/s seems fair enough. With full 867 that would be closer to 45-48MB/s.

As for 2.4GHz performance, it doesn't seem to be router related. My guess is that the channel you started with was already heavily crowded and interference caused performance to drop significantly. That's to be expected from 2.4GHz band unfortunately.

The reason you can't use certain channels on your card is that these channels are typically not available outside US. For the same reason my European smartphone can't see my 5GHz network running on channel 157. It might be possible to use drivers from US website to make it work as there are typically no "country" settings in drivers themselves (unlike in routers where you can set a country and that makes some channels available and others not).