ASUS Dual Band AiMesh Router AC1900

My Old Chap Vespula experience Where has this ASUS RT-AC68U router been all my life??.

Wow. Goodbye Netgear. Hello ASUS RT-AC68U AC1900 router! In fairness to Netgear, the netgear r6300 I have had for years has been a stable product (with the right settings, however) and it was paired with a Arris SB6141 Cable modem, but lightning took both of them away. I went for the combo C7000 Netgear latest and greatest I wanted to like it but it lagged and had 20 second drops of connectivity. Unstable. Unacceptable new product with bugs was my experience and a lot of others had the same experience too. Reviews for Asus were surprisingly good and never had owned an ASUS router before but the reviews were so over the top I had to find out. So I ordered my new Arris SB6141 Cable modem (because it was rock solid for me before) and the RT-AC68U.

First impressions... wow nice build quality. Very impressive. Real removable antenna just like a real AP pro class. It just felt good and looked great. All the machining and connections looked above grade from any other manufacturers in the consumer space I have seen. A real "PRO-SUMER" product.

My background is I.T. and I am in this space so to impress me was not an easy feat. Our use case for this router is:
NO cable... all streaming house... using Two Roku, 6 laptops, one of them dedicated for streaming Xfinity TV-GO stations, a Wii game console, Grace Digital Mondo Internet Radio player, HP laserjet on wifi, oven on wifi, garage doors on wifi, heated tile floor thermostat on wifi (for the weather), and 6 smart phones (2 iphones, 4 android). Plus a "lab" in my office using wifi devices (Wifi scanners, etc) for job related activities. We often could be streaming roku channels (ESPN, FoxGo, etc) at the same time as Fox news on another tv, with Roku netflix upstairs as well, plus any of the household (or all) could be streaming online youtube, amazon video prime or facetime with friends.

So you can see its a heavy usage situation. My router right now has 21 devices connected at one time from the list mentioned above. Back to the review...
On powering up and connecting to this Asus the setup was so easy it was amazing with the wizard. I was online in seconds.
The interface was amazing... Wow. The feature set was so in depth and so well done that this was like router Eden. Graphics, Data, Stats galore. Instant salivation for anyone with an appreciation and knowledge on 802.11. They should have code named this router the ASUS PAVLOV.

All that is great but if it doesnt work, or drops its just a piece of pretty junk. Guess what. Its got it where it counts too.

Signal strength around the house is stronger than ever. Speeds on all clients are crazy fast. Stability on 2.4 *AND* 5ghz is what it should be. I mean wow. where has this router been all my life?? The router has a cpu graph for the dual core cpus in the interface and its barely breathing handling the traffic- even with all the bells and whistles turned on collecting traffic, stats and web history from clients! Oh and did I mention this is all with QoS turned off!! Why limit bandwidth if you dont need to? QoS seems to be used best for small pipes or compensating for poor routers that cant handle a load, in my expeience. My network is rock solid. I will update this if something changes, of course, but from my experience you just know when you know, you know? And for this router... I know!

In closing, watching the real-time bandwidth utilization graphic in the interface I can see the ebb a flow of downstream data (as well as upstream). Mine was pulsating in bursts from 6 to 28Mbps as the demands of multiple HD streaming clients was requested. Dual core CPU never clicked over single digits combined. I have Xfinity Blast! and speed tests were 75-80 down and 10-12 Up over 5g wifi -- just for reference. plenty of headroom.,Netflix Roku App's Network test reported that my Downstream capability to their servers was 17.35 Mbps. Nice.

So to sum up. I think this is the best router ever on many levels, Build quality, stability, feature set, and pairs very nicely with a Arris SB6141 DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem, which to me is a proven solid product that I have used easily for over a decade (back when it was made under Motorola). I even used a 6121 4 channel version prior to this 6141 8 channel down / 4 up coming out about 10 years ago (I think).
6141=great modem.

Asus RT68=Awesome Stable Router

EDIT UPDATE on 7/30/2018:
This has been a solid router for me since I wrote this review. I am up to 27-33 clients around the house generally between adding technology finding its way in the house (now 5 rokus!) and supporting transient devices for my job, or friends/family. Still remains to be great. I do update the firmware when it comes up and have not had problems with any version.

Also, I mentioned I used QoS off... I have since changed gears on that. I now have QoS on and set to MEDIA/VIDEO as the priority due to all the video we stream here... It has been rock solid and definitely performs better with QoS set ON. Video plays at Highest resolutions and glitch free all around the house.

Newest feature of this router in the firmware is AIMESH. This feature intrigued me because the far reaches of our bonus room has poor signal.... the roku in there doesnt seem to like the weak signal... I bought another one of these routers and added it as a MESH NODE. This allows seamless roaming around the house and load balancing of clients between the two routers. The only problem I had was the firmware's didnt match so it wouldnt mesh. I downloaded the latest and updated both to the latest firmware and then had no problems meshing the second router as a node. Very easy. I placed it at the end of the house downstairs, and now have good signal in the bonus room. I continue to love this router!! AiMESH rocks!

Update 12/27/18:
Still kicking strong. AIMESGH is great!! There have been several firmware updates and the router keeps getting better. I have not had any real issues with any of the firmware updates so I am grateful for that and kudos to ASUS for apparently knowing what they are doing and testing things sufficiently! I will say I have had to reboot this router less than 5 times since I have owned it due to some kind of internet issue. I dont know if it was caused by comcast, or just a glitch... but I did reboot it and the issue resolved on each of those occasions. Thats pretty darn stable. I might give it "five nines" of uptime considering I just never touch it except for those few times.
Since my original review, Comcast/Xfinity has upped the bandwidth so I am getting about 175 meg down now...same 10/12 meg upload... Everything runs great... and stable.
I have half a dozen clients on one side of the house on the mesh node 1 and the other half on the other "host" router... its nice. I have also been adding more devices since my last update ... RING doorbell, a SONOS Connect, two Google Home Minis, and four Amazon Echo DOT are added to the network (these are cool devices and love how you can use as intercoms by the way) .... also, I have four Ring floodlight cameras sitting in boxes I got for Christmas which I will be installing when the weather is nice which should be pushing me towards about 50 clients in the house (not all on at a time, mind you) but could be I suppose! Great router.

My Fellow Guillaume Gaillet experience I am done with ASUS routers!.

I like ASUS products when it comes to computer hardware like motherboards and graphic cards and all my computers are built with their components for the last 6 years. But for routers, I am done with them. I bought their super expensive AC5300 one which worked for about 3 months, then my wifi network disappeared and I had to send it for repair. It was returned weeks later with no explanation. During this time, I used the cheapest Netgear router available with no issue. Actually it was working so well that I kept it online while my expensive AC5300 was gathering dust. Then, I moved out so I thought this would be the perfect time to rebuild my network with the high end 5300. I updated the firmware and discovered the 5300 was supporting AiMesh. Since the new house is pretty big, I thought this would be a great feature. So I bought the Asus AC1900 to extend the range of the AC5300. Big mistake. The latest firmware is buggy as hell, both on 5300 and 1900 model. As for the AIMesh, I was never able to have the two routers talking to each other despite following precisely the procedure from the ASUS website and manual. I realized that ASUS router firmware support is so poor that several alternative solutions were developed by enthusiasts to offset the many bugs suffered by the official firmwares. But using them would mean loosing the AiMesh feature. So that's it. I am done. I remembered my cheap Netgear router that was working so well and how much all my wired network is made of their sturdy switches and hubs... I went full netgear with their super fancy Nighthawk X6S AC4000 and X6S EX8000 Mesh extender. WebUI is a dream of reactivity and it took me 2 minutes to pair the mesh extender. Sorry ASUS, I love your PC products, but I am so disappointed with your network ones.

My Buddy Big Daddy say USB 3.0 easily jams this router's Wi-Fi.

Purchased this router in January 2014 and have had no issues. Firmware is still at 3.0.0.4.374, hardware version is A1. I purchased this router after I bricked a Cisco router from a bad firmware update. I'm writing this review (actually more of a potential solution) because I noticed a little over 10% of the reviews are 1 star (which is "normal" percentage of any product) and after scanning through the 1 stars the common theme is intermittent wi-fi drops and "weird" router behavior when using the USB 3.0 port. Something to be aware of is that USB 3.0 ports, cables, and devices transmit on the 2.4 GHz - 2.5 GHz range. From the Intel White Paper:

"As previously shown in Figure 2-2, the noise from USB 3.0 data spectrum can be high
(in the 2.4-2.5 GHz range). This noise can radiate from the USB 3.0 connector on a
PC platform, the USB 3.0 connector on the peripheral device or the USB 3.0 cable. If
the antenna of a wireless device operating in this band is placed close to any of the
above USB 3.0 radiation channels, it can pick up the broadband noise. The broadband
noise emitted from a USB 3.0 device can affect the SNR and limit the sensitivity of any
wireless receiver whose antenna is physically located close to the USB 3.0 device. This
may result in a drop in throughput on the wireless link."

I experienced this when I built a new computer and placed the router on top of the tower on my desk and plugged my Patriot USB 3.0 thumb drive in the USB 3.0 port on top of the tower which is about 8 inches from the router antenna. My desktop is Ethernet, so was not affected. Laptop1 was using 5.0 GHz band and was not affected. Laptop2 was using 2.4 GHz band and could not connect wirelessly. Took an hour to figure this out (only variable that changed was distance of thumb drive to antenna). My old computer's USB 3.0 port was at the bottom back of the tower and farther away. So basically, USB 3.0 acts as a router wi-fi jammer if located too close and it's easy to mistake this common issue as a router intermittent wi-fi drop issue.

My friend Stephen Doonan say Great Hardware - Cr@ppy Firmware.

Four stars instead of five because of the buggy firmware.

The hardware is very nice and capable, but the firmware has "issues." No matter how much broadband bandwidth you have available from your Internet connection, the speed (throughput in the router) becomes less and routing worse until a reboot is necessitated, because of operating-system (firmware) issues or bugs. This problem, which has been reported on the Internet as well as here in some of the Amazon reviews, becomes obvious if you do a lot of video streaming such as Netflix or Amazon's own video-streaming service, with the video quality becoming worse and worse (especially noticeable with 4K or 1080p quality video) and the buffering lag more and more frequent, requiring the router to be rebooted once, twice or three times per day, which can become quite frustrating. FORTUNATELY, Asus has allowed open-source, 3rd-party firmware to be installed to its flash memory, so despite not addressing these issues itself with official firmware updates, or being slow to do so, the Asuswrt-merlin alternative firmware is easily installed (instructions at the Asuswrt-merlin website), works great, looks very similar to the stock Asus webUI admin interface, and resolves these annoying issues.

SO, if you buy this router, you might want to be prepared to download and install an alternative to the firmware already installed by Asus. Just a "heads up."

My Old Man doug sisco Talk AiMesh Didn't Work For Me.

I have had a small IT business for 14 years and have lots of experience with wireless.

I bought three AC1900 units which have AiMesh and configured one as a main router and the other two
as nodes. After many tries the nodes would not connect: the router found them but consistently showed an error msg
when attempting to add them to the mesh network. The error msg did not offer any information about why the node would
not connect; it just displayed a dialog with suggestions such as "make sure the units are within 9m" and "be sure both
devices have updated firmware."

Note that I updated the firmware to the latest version on each unit.

I finally used one of the other units as the main router and this one was able to connect both nodes on the first attempt.

Note that I disabled my existing wireless network before testing and there were no other wless networks detected.

I placed the main router in my office, node 1 about 25ft away, and node 2 in my shed about 85ft from node 1. My laptop
connected to the mesh network in my office but when I walked to the shed it would not switch to node 2 (though it was only a
few feet away). I disconnected from the network, reconnected, and I could not get an IP address. Apparently node 2 was
not talking to node 1. It is helpful to note that my non-mesh network has no problem transmitting from my office to my
shed (over 100ft).

Of course the problem could be a defective node unit but there was no indication that this was the case.
Another possibility is that node 1 was not completely initialized when I plugged-in the node 2 unit. However this also
should not be a problem as this will happen if there is a power loss, so any mesh system should be able to reinitialize itself
independent of the order of powering-on the units.

I also noticed that during an AiMesh search a node will be found but will disappear when the search is completed. The search
will indicate that no available nodes were found. Therefore you must click on a node *before* the search completes. According to
the Asus tech this behavior is normal.

If you are looking for good mesh try Eero Pro. This system was easy to set up and worked well in exactly the same locations I described above. Drawbacks include no settings for DNS so it's not good in an office with a domain. And the Eero *requires* a cell phone number.

My Old Man Eduardo Villarreal said Excellent Router..

I have used it for almost two months and I am very satisfied. I use it for my home.
My Internet type is fiber 200 Mbps down/up from Axtel (X-Tremo).
The equipment that my family use is:
- 1 desktop (wired)
- 2 laptops
- 3 tablets
- 4 smartphones
- 3 Rokus (wired)
- 1 Raspberry Pi 2 (wired)
- 1 printer
- 1 internet radio
- 1 access point (wired)
I did several stress tests, for example:
- 3 netflixes (HD) running on the 3 rokus
- 1 kodi (HD) running on the Raspberry Pi 2 (with OSMC)
- 1 laptop running netflix (HD)
- 1 tablet running face time
- 7 simultaneous downloads on the desktop computer
- 1 internet radio playing music
And the router was at 55% peak at processing, really great.
The user interface is very friendly, easy to use and intuitive. I am using the firmware version 3.0.0.4.380_4164 12/23/2016.
The wireless coverage is very good, the router is on the first floor and I can receive full bars on the second floor (2.4 Ghz).
This is my first Asus router and I can recommend it without a doubt.

My Old Fellow Lantana Al said Very nice router & features.

My background: Software developer that uses computers almost all day long. I have business class Verizon FiOS and 5 static IPs.

Here's my experience & thoughts with this router:

* Setup was pretty easy. However, there was some browser quirkiness. If you have trouble then I suggest trying a different browser.
* In case you need it, the factory default username/password is admin/admin and the default IP is 192.168.1.1.
* I went to Administration->Firmware Upgrade and the router checked for an update, found one, and installed it. Pretty painless.
* Access the router's web interface via HTTPS is possible, but will give you a certificate error that you will have to allow/override.
* The web interface is pretty easy to use. I like it.
* I set up 2 guest networks, one on 2.4GHz, and one on 5GHz. Very easy and so far working great. It allows up to 3 guest networks on each band.
* The traffic monitor is very nice, and shows different graphs for 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless traffic.
* I highly recommend you leave remote (WAN) access disabled. You'll potentially be opening up your router to hackers and security vulnerabilities.
* I am not using AiCloud or USB features and I'd be careful with those. I'm not sure I trust the security on features such as these.
* Under Network Map->System Status->Status it shows nice CPU and RAM usage graphs. Currently mine is showing only 45MB used and 205MB free. I think this router has 256MB of RAM. It's also showing low CPU usage (by the way, it's a dual-core ARMv7 CPU).
* The system log indicates it runs Linux 2.6.36 and has 128MB of AMD NAND flash and 255484k of available memory.
* I purchased the router at the end of September 2014 and my hardware revision is "A2".

Should anything change then I'll upgrade this review. So far I really like this router so 5 stars.

UPDATE 2014-11-24: So far it has been rock solid. I set it up and I haven't had to reset or reboot it since.

UPDATE 2016-01-05: Still extremely pleased. This is what a router should be. Set it & forget it. It just works.

My Old Chap cryomerlin Talk RT-AC68U maybe the best router ever. AiMesh, however, needs some work.

I've had an RT-AC68U since January and recently decided to try out the AiMesh from Asus by getting another RT-AC68U. The one I've had since January is rock solid stable. Works Great. The second one appears to work well, and for all I know it would be a great router on its own. However, as a node in an AiMesh configuration, it kept dropping the signal. I mean like twice a day, not every ten minutes. The problem with dropping a signal is that when your smart TV detects a loss of signal from the node, it flashes a message saying you've lost your signal. Then I have to restart the TV. This is irritating. My trusty old AC750 Netgear range extender I've had plugged into a wall outlet for 3 years never dropped a signal. That thing was like $40. If I pay $150 for a router to pair with another $150 router and that purchasing decision is based on Asus' representation that I can configure it into a mesh network, and then that mesh network is unstable. Well, that's not good. The router used for the node was returned.

If you want a mesh network you should probably buy a product that was designed from the ground up as a mesh network instead of something that is trying to incorporate a mesh network by retroactively installing the capability into routers via a firmware update. I applaud Asus for the idea, and I'm sure a ton of work and engineering went into the effort. Just wish it worked. At least worked as well as my cheap range extender.

Having said all this, I do believe the RT-AC68U is the absolute best router you can buy. Asus has made this router for going on 5 or 6 years with incremental improvements every year. It's been perfected. It runs cool. Never had a problem with it. Great speeds and range. If you want a solo router, this is the one to get. Highly recommended.

My Old Fellow B. Good Talk Great mesh WiFi nework!.

Connected as my secondary mesh router. It works very well to extend my network out to my detached garage. My main router is installed in the front of my house (living room) and this is set up in the back of my house (kitchen) and the 2.4 Ghz and 5ghz networks connect my devices seamlessly wherever I am on my property. My single router could not do this while maintaining a strong signal. Very pleased with the Asus brand of Wifi routers.

It was easy to set up the mesh network, but it did take a couple of attempts before it worked. The Android app lets you see what devices are connected and you can see what router they are currently connected to. FireStick and Samsung TV devices are able to connect to this 5 Ghz network, but my previous Apple Airport Extreme somehow did not put out a 5 Ghz signal that those devices could "see." So, that is a nice network speed upgrade for a lot of my devices.

I approve and would would recommend it to create a mesh network along with your main Asus router. I don't know about mixing brands.

My friend Astrid say I should have known when I saw the CD tutorial....

EDIT: So, after my extreme frustration, my friend gave me some easy pointers on how to do the configuration using a cell phone... which, it turns out, is in the longer version of the set up documentation. Except that the screens do not match even a little with the documentation screens. So, the doca are extremely misleading... and the tech support is useless. However, if you can disregard all of that, the router seems to be working well now that it's set up. Definitely not for someone with limited experience setting up a router/modem combo should be taking on... but hopefully I won't have to deal with any of that for a long time now. I'm up to three stars because honestly, the documentation, CD tutorials, and absolutely useless tech support make this a no go for a LOT of people with limited tech experience without a very knowledgeable friend.

Might be great—who knows? You just can’t actually use it if you’re a Mac user. In order to get the router working, you must hook it up to your laptop and do some configuration...but to do that you must use an Ethernet cable. I haven’t seen an Ethernet cable (or a CD drive) in a MAC since their OS was some animal or other. I called ASUS support, waited a LONG time to reach someone—his suggestion was to borrow a PC from someone so I could configure this. I bought this on the recommendation of a very smart, tech savvy friend (who happens to be one of the very few PC users I know) so I’m assuming that if you are a PC user, it will work well. But God help you if you use a Mac! I’m going to spend the extra money and buy something that doesn’t require me to use ancient technology or “borrow a PC from a friend."