# New router for fibernet (200/200mbit)



## puma99dk| (Oct 31, 2018)

Here is a little about why I am looking for a new router.

It looks like my Asus RT-AC88U (Running Merlin's firmware) have seen better days or it's just playing tricks with me after my ISP yesterday and the day before had some packet loss issues in the part of my country.

Recently Wifi speed has started to drop to my iPhone 7 Plus and my LG SmartTV and Plex streaming can be a pain sometimes with buffering a lot.

This here is like my third Asus router coming from the smaller models with built-in antennas but this 4 antenna beast of a router, I have to say I purchased it second handed a couple of years ago so no warranty.


I been looking a little around and working with Ubiquiti network products at work specially their AP's and they are really good for the price so I was wondering if the Ubiquiti ER-X / EdgeRouter X router would be fast/strong enough for 200/200mbit fiber because it's really cheap or do I need to get a bigger model? and which would you recommend?


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## v12dock (Oct 31, 2018)

EdgeRouter X is good enough for 500mbit I believe.

https://kazoo.ga/re-visit-the-switch-in-edgerouter-x/


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## Solaris17 (Oct 31, 2018)

Yeah ER-x is around 500. You can an ER-lite and without QoS which I’m pretty sure you don’t do, you can line rate gig no problem

https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-lite/


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## puma99dk| (Oct 31, 2018)

Solaris17 said:


> Yeah ER-x is around 500. You can an ER-lite and without QoS which I’m pretty sure you don’t do, you can line rate gig no problem
> 
> https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-lite/



is the EdgeRouter-Lite worth the double price?

Because for the price of a ER-X and UniFi UAP-AC-Lite I can actually get Ubiquiti's AmpliFi HD Mesh Router set.

https://amplifi.com/


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## Solaris17 (Nov 1, 2018)

only if you plan to go over 500. I wouldnt touch amplifi, but only because I dont have much experience, but I have heard that having the extra antenna stations really makes it shine. At an added cost of course. Cant ever go wrong with a dedicated router/AP setup. If you have no intention of surpassing 500 anytime soon then the ER-X is a great little router. I give them to the onsite techs so they can temp keep peoples networks live when we are doing rack changes.

A+ really, as long as you know that units limits.


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## puma99dk| (Nov 1, 2018)

Solaris17 said:


> only if you plan to go over 500. I wouldnt touch amplifi, but only because I dont have much experience, but I have heard that having the extra antenna stations really makes it shine. At an added cost of course. Cant ever go wrong with a dedicated router/AP setup. If you have no intention of surpassing 500 anytime soon then the ER-X is a great little router. I give them to the onsite techs so they can temp keep peoples networks live when we are doing rack changes.
> 
> A+ really, as long as you know that units limits.



Hmm oki just because the price for the AmplifiHD is the same as ER-X and a UAP-AC-Lite.

Going with the EdgeRouter Lite + UAP-AC-Lite it's more expensive that's why I am asking because I need Wifi for iphone and smart tv.

I feel the AplifiHD is better value here.

*Wait* This is for the AplifiHD router only no MeshPoint so wouldn't it be enough my 2 room 52m2 apartment?


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## xvi (Nov 1, 2018)

I haven't dealt with many mesh units (deal with UniFi Edit: I mean AirMax mostly), but I'm generally pleased with our AmpliFi HD system at work. We were using it as a router when we first moved into our new space and it handled ~500Mbps pretty fine. We eventually brought in fiber, but had routing taken over by a MikroTik CCR1009 and we threw the AmpliFi in bridge mode. Throughput through the mesh repeaters was about 60-70Mbps for us. The AmpliFi app is decent too. If your extra APs aren't repeaters, I'm not sure if there's any advantage to getting the mesh units. There's no option to wire in the AmpliFi mesh repeaters anyways and Ubiquiti recommends getting extra AmpliFi routers if that's your desired operation.

For routers, I wish I could recommend MikroTik. They're incredibly feature rich and a killer price, but have a terrible learning curve.

I have a MikroTik RB750v2 and a UniFi AP Pro for my setup at home, but it's a bit overkill on my 1Mbps ADSL. Throughput on the AP has always been more than I've needed.

As far as range, it depends on your environment. Our AmpliFi has pretty nice coverage at work with only one neighbor in the building (certainly enough for your apartment even for 5.8GHz coverage), but that range and speed will go down significantly if you've got a bunch of people around you blasting 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz. Generally, 5.8GHz is going to be significantly better.
I think those will do a bit of spectrum analysis to help pick a high performing channel for you to use, but I can't quite recall. I tried to VPN back in and check, but it's not working on my phone. I can check tomorrow.

I think the AmpliFi HD would be a good all-in-one solution. Splitting them up is a good option too.


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## puma99dk| (Nov 1, 2018)

@xvi I only live in a 2 room apartment and using wifi for iphone, smart tv and PS4 that's why I purchased my Asus RT-AC88U back when I did and it served me great running Merlin's firmware but after my ISP had problems it started to trouble on most speedtest servers with speeds down to 1Mbps but if I disconnect the router and plug the cat 7 ethernet cable directly into the Intel I211-AT on my ASRock Z370 Taichi I see sturdy 200+ Mbps up and down on speedtest on the server I mostly test with and surfing shows pages showing up better on average.

I have tried the newest firmware from Merlin but didn't fix the problem still the same so something has happened with my Asus router.


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## xvi (Nov 1, 2018)

Huh. Sounds odd. When you test through the router, are you testing over wireless or plugged into the LAN side?


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## puma99dk| (Nov 1, 2018)

xvi said:


> Huh. Sounds odd. When you test through the router, are you testing over wireless or plugged into the LAN side?



cat7 cable I don't do wifi on my desktop.


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## Brusfantomet (Nov 1, 2018)

A question, where in the world did you get the router? If in Europe you could be lucky an get it handled within the consumer rights period of the country (was able to prove that a product i had was less than 5 years old, witch got me an replacement even without having the receipt)

Have you tried the basic firmware from Asus? Have the same router running stock firmware and wireless speeds can exceed 500 mbit with quad band equipment in both ends.


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## puma99dk| (Nov 1, 2018)

@Brusfantomet You mean the Asus or Ubiquiti AmplifiHD?

Because in my country the Ubiquiti is available right now with next day delievery.


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## Brusfantomet (Nov 1, 2018)

The Asus one you have now, I am guessing you are Danish, don’t know the exact return rights in Denmark but here in Norway they are 5 years and basically equivalent to what is usually sold as a warranty.


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## puma99dk| (Nov 1, 2018)

Brusfantomet said:


> The Asus one you have now, I am guessing you are Danish, don’t know the exact return rights in Denmark but here in Norway they are 5 years and basically equivalent to what is usually sold as a warranty.



You guess correctly @Brusfantomet I am danish but not proud  and I purchased the Asus router used so there wasn't any warranty and I don't expect the warranty to be transferable.

I can properly borrow a Ubiquiti ER-X router from work and then see what speeds that gives me at home and put my Asus in AP mode and see what I will do.


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## Brusfantomet (Nov 1, 2018)

The dk in your user name gave it away.

But I would try to see if the factory firmware on the Asus fixes it, since the hardware is more than capable of delivering 200 mbit wireless.
Most of the time the warranty flows the product, not the byer in Europe.

Also, do you really need to have an extra AP in a 50 m2 flat? Do you live in a bunker with meter thick concrete walls?


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## puma99dk| (Nov 1, 2018)

Brusfantomet said:


> The dk in your user name gave it away.
> 
> But I would try to see if the factory firmware on the Asus fixes it, since the hardware is more than capable of delivering 200 mbit wireless.
> Most of the time the warranty flows the product, not the byer in Europe.
> ...



The wifi got great reach so nothing to complain about even it's like armed concrete walls.

I have done a couple of resets already but it doesn't change that when the router is connected I see my download speed randomly dropping to 1 Mbps in tests and without I do almost 200 Mbps up and down solid on the usual services I test with.


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## Brusfantomet (Nov 1, 2018)

Over cable? had a weird problem when i tried using self produced cables on mine, got realy bad speeds, made a new cable more carefully and i got the correct speeds.


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## JalleR (Nov 1, 2018)

Have you tried to put the Orginal Firmware on the router, i did that on my R7800 and it has never been better.  (used DD-WRT befor)

All newere routers should be able to do 200/200 my old (7ish years) Netgear WNDR3700 is ok for 300mbit


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## puma99dk| (Nov 1, 2018)

I haven't used the original Asus firmware for ages, Merlin's are tweaked and do better wifi.


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## Brusfantomet (Nov 1, 2018)

Well, it’s worth a try. And as a wrote, stock firmware is still able to do over 500 mbit over wifi.


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## puma99dk| (Nov 1, 2018)

Brusfantomet said:


> Well, it’s worth a try. And as a wrote, stock firmware is still able to do over 500 mbit over wifi.



I will try when I get home from work shouldn't take long and properly try a ER-X router to see what speeds I can get and use my Asus as AP.


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## puma99dk| (Nov 14, 2018)

JalleR said:


> Have you tried to put the Orginal Firmware on the router, i did that on my R7800 and it has never been better.  (used DD-WRT befor)
> 
> All newere routers should be able to do 200/200 my old (7ish years) Netgear WNDR3700 is ok for 300mbit



Now I been running the Original Asus firmware for like 13days and now I encounter almost the some problem again download is from under 100Mbit while upload says up around 229Mbit every where I test I am getting crazy here because how can this keep happening and if I plug the CAT7 S/FTP cable directly into the onboard Intel I211AT or I219-V on my ASRock Z370 TaiChi I get over 200Mbit both ways.

So if this ain't a firmware issue using the original Asus firmware or the modded Merlin firmware it most be router failing


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## bpgt64 (Nov 14, 2018)

pfsense or bust!


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## therealmeep (Nov 14, 2018)

I like the past 2 Asus routers I've had, an ac 3200 and ac5300. They're good enough for gigabit and handle a decent sized network of about 40-80 devices without a problem.


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## puma99dk| (Nov 15, 2018)

therealmeep said:


> I like the past 2 Asus routers I've had, an ac 3200 and ac5300. They're good enough for gigabit and handle a decent sized network of about 40-80 devices without a problem.



I had one or two lower tier Asus routers in the past with built in antenna's without these issues I needed better wifi so I got the AC88U for a good price second handed in warranty but now it's out of warranty,

I haven't had these issues before and it drives me crazy that I always have to be in the evening when I get home and disconnecting the router and plug my PC directly in I get my connection bad.

I am using the newest Intel driver 23.2 the Ethernet Adapter Complete Driver Pack where I just extracted the Pro1000 folder to avoid all the other crap that's in it.
Link: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/22283/Intel-Ethernet-Adapter-Complete-Driver-Pack


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## Brusfantomet (Nov 16, 2018)

The problem always occur in the eventing or you come home in the evening? if it works fine at other times it could be that the frequency bands are really congested. Have you checked something like wifi analyser?


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## puma99dk| (Nov 16, 2018)

Brusfantomet said:


> The problem always occur in the eventing or you come home in the evening? if it works fine at other times it could be that the frequency bands are really congested. Have you checked something like wifi analyser?



I am only home mostly in the evening but it can be all day and discounting the router get my speeds up again.

It's not wifi I am doing cable from pc to router to fiber.


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## bpgt64 (Nov 16, 2018)

Brusfantomet said:


> The problem always occurs in the evening or you come home in the evening? if it works fine at other times it could be that the frequency bands are really congested. Have you checked something like wifi analyzer?



That's why you separate these roles.

1.  Router --  Manages traffic/QoS/IDS/Proxy for downloads --  Again pfsense is great for this.

2.  Access Point -- Simply bridges the wireless devices to the wired network, I really like ubiquiti's AC Pro for price/performance ratio.  This gives you features like auto band selection (Moving the band of wifi around based on congestion, and Band Steering for best connection throughput.

 Plus if you ever decide to add access points it's a homogenous system, you just adopt the other AP's into the fold and they set up with little help.


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## puma99dk| (Nov 16, 2018)

@bpgt64 QoS is disabled and always have been never use it because I am living alone.


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## jsfitz54 (Nov 16, 2018)

Have you tried the latest merlin alpha build: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=!AGY2taGX02nVmWA&id=CCE5625ED3599CE0!1427&cid=CCE5625ED3599CE0

Make sure you grab the newest one labeled Sunday for the correct model. (5 test builds for each model)

If you have a basic setup do a dirty flash, otherwise do a factory reset and with minimal setup(ssid and password) then reflash newest, then reprogram other settings.


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## puma99dk| (Nov 16, 2018)

@jsfitz54 what sunday???


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## jsfitz54 (Nov 16, 2018)

puma99dk| said:


> @jsfitz54 what sunday???
> 
> View attachment 110707


Sorry, AC88U(correct?) when I pull up the screen, the most recent file says Sunday at 11:03PM.
That's the Alpha 3 build, why yours says Monday I don't know.
They just cleaned up the page.  I wish they consistently used a date code, solely.

So, that's the last one in your list.



*EDIT:*
@puma99dk| :  The official BETA is just released on the home page: https://sourceforge.net/projects/asuswrt-merlin/files/RT-AC88U/Beta/

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/beta-asuswrt-merlin-384-8-beta-is-now-available.49908/

*EDIT2:* Time code stamp may be due to your world locale or you need to make sure the time and date are correctly programmed in the router.


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