Monday, May 11th 2020
ASUS Intros RT-AX86U Dual-band Wi-Fi 6 Router that's GeForce Now-Recommended
ASUS today introduced the RT-AX86U, it's latest performance-segment dual-band Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) router. Armed with a triple-antenna setup (excluding a 4th discrete antenna on the PCB), the router offers dual-band speeds of up to 5700 Mbps (861 Mbps 2.4 GHz + 4804 Mbps 5 GHz), along with support for the latest WPA3 security standards. The router is NVIDIA GeForce NOW-recommended for the best possible latencies and bandwidth needed by the cloud gaming service.
The wired connections setup on this router is interesting: there are two WAN ports, one of which is 1 GbE, and the other 2.5 GbE. On the LAN-side, you get four 1 GbE connections. Besides the single 2.5 GbE connection, ASUS claims the router can aggregate bandwidth from two 1 GbE upstream connections (there aren't too many gigabit-fiber ISPs that provide fiber cable switches with 2.5 GbE ports). The router uses a 1.80 GHz quad-core Arm processor with 1 GB RAM and 256 MB flash memory size. The router also features a 5 Gbps USB 3.2 gen 1 port, to which you can plug in any USB mass-storage class device that can be shared across the network. The company didn't reveal pricing.
The wired connections setup on this router is interesting: there are two WAN ports, one of which is 1 GbE, and the other 2.5 GbE. On the LAN-side, you get four 1 GbE connections. Besides the single 2.5 GbE connection, ASUS claims the router can aggregate bandwidth from two 1 GbE upstream connections (there aren't too many gigabit-fiber ISPs that provide fiber cable switches with 2.5 GbE ports). The router uses a 1.80 GHz quad-core Arm processor with 1 GB RAM and 256 MB flash memory size. The router also features a 5 Gbps USB 3.2 gen 1 port, to which you can plug in any USB mass-storage class device that can be shared across the network. The company didn't reveal pricing.
8 Comments on ASUS Intros RT-AX86U Dual-band Wi-Fi 6 Router that's GeForce Now-Recommended
Sure, one port on a router is pretty much pointless, what we need are some affordable mult-gig switches with the 1Gbps ports all being 2.5Gbps and a couple of 10Gbps ports.
10Gbps Ethernet controllers are still in the $30-40 range for a single port, regardless of which company makes them. On top of that, they require four lanes of PCIe right now, as to date, there are no PCIe 4.0 10Gbps Ethernet controllers. Then there's the small issue of heat, these 2.5Gbps controllers are around 2W or less, whereas the coolest 10Gbps controllers are around 3.4W, without the MAC, which tends to be the hot part. Then there's the physical size of the chips, where the 2.5Gbps controllers are barely any bigger than 1Gbps controllers. 10Gbps controllers are usually quite large and chunky and many are two chip solutions.
The are a lot of reasons why 10Gbps Ethernet isn't a consumer ready technology, regardless of how much we want it to be.
Asus just paid nVidia to get that worthless badge...
What line do I need to stand in to pick up the beast router so I can beta test a draft ax router for Asus?? How much free vaporware will the router come with and will there be an ETA firmware patch Asus will never release so most of the features won't work? Will I need to buy two routers so I can put one in bridge mode six feet from the main router to get earth shattering wifi speed or will a $5 ethernet cable still offer twice the real world throughput with better latency??