Tuesday, April 19th 2022
ASUS Intros TUF Gaming AX3000 V2 Gaming Router
ASUS today introduced the TUF Gaming AX3000 V2 wireless router. The Wi-Fi 6 router offers not just characteristic TUF Gaming product design, but also durability, in the way of multi-level heatsinks for the various hot components underneath, with a "nano-carbon coating." As a router, its specs are pretty mainstream—you get up to 2.4 Gbps in the 5 GHz band, up to 576 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band (which add up to the "AX 3000" nameplate). The wired networking consists of a 2.5 GbE WAN port, and four 1 GbE LAN ports, from which two ports can be aggregated to a 2 Gbps link when paired with a machine that has two 1 GbE ports. You also get a 5 Gbps USB 3.x type-A port that can turn any USB mass-storage device into a network share, or be used to share a printer; and security in the way of the latest WPA3. The company didn't reveal pricing.
24 Comments on ASUS Intros TUF Gaming AX3000 V2 Gaming Router
And link aggregation sadly doesn't work as claimed by these companies. A single system will not see more than 1 Gbps throughput when used with an aggregated connection, it's meant for servers that has a lot of clients attached to them, not between a router and a PC.
And agree with you 1Gbps Lan connections need to go.
10 Gbps is much more common, even if it's hardly what you'd call common on consumer routers as such.
This year we should se a lot more 2.5 Gbps products at least, hopefully with more than two ports as well.
And even if WAN and high-speed WiFi 6 (and above) are routed through 2.5Gbps, the LAN can also use wire speeds above 1Gbps, e.g. for a decent NAS. Many NAS boxes have 2.5Gbps NIC as standard, and they can actually utilize this speed.
My DIY NAS has a 10 Gbps NIC and so does my PC.
And please, let's not measure our... network speeds! ;)
give me a 5 or 10 Gbps Lan with 4-8 ports
I could care less about a 2.5G wan
Then there's the actual chip packaging, where you have an increased cost too, as the 10 Gbps chips require more advanced packaging techniques, partially due to the higher heat output, but they're as far as I'm aware, mostly BGA type chips as well, which is more pricey to make.
Regardless, 10 Gbps chips are bigger, so they cost more to make and as the demand is much lower, the price ends up being higher due to that as well.
The 2.5 Gbps chips are only marginally bigger than 1 Gbps chips and seem to be produced using similar technology, whereas the only 5 Gbps chips I've seen, are cut-down 10 Gbps parts.
I went 10 Gbps for my PC and NAS years ago. You can get Marvell/Aquantia cards for well under $100. The downside is that you need a PCIe x4 interface to use them.
The issue is switch costs, but you can get something with a pair of 10 Gbps ports for under $200 now. QNAP has an even cheaper product with two 10 Gbps and four 2.5 Gbps ports for around $160. TP-Link also has a passive 5-port 10 Gbps switch for around $375. The list price is actually more like 10-15x, if we're just talking the controller. Intel's list price has gone up a bit, but an I225-V PCIe controller is listed for $2.71 and the cheapest 10 Gbps controllers seem to be around $30.
2.5 Gbps PCIe cards are surprisingly pricey for what they are though.
Asus has a pair of routers with two 2.5 Gbps ports, but more will come this year, for just about everyone.