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Seemingly good router from reviews. need some more words to post..
ASUS RT-AC68U Wireless-AC1900 Dual Band Gigabit Router - $159.20 (C&C w/ eBay Plus, or + $15 Delivery) @ Computer Alliance eBay
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Not bad.
Not bhed..
How's the size
Thanks for playing ;)
Great router. Replaced my rubbish Optus ADSL-2 sagemcom with one of these and havent had an issue since.
I concur.
Went from an Archer D7 that kept dropping the connection when it felt like it, to this and have had zero issues or drop-outs.
Good to hear I’m not the only one…
Wonder what hardware revision is that?
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac68u-rt-ac68p-rt-ac190…C1 and E1 were both released in 2016 so I would guess E1 unless they have some really old ones lying around.
Good questiom, hopefully its the latest 2016 model unless they are ripping us off with the very old model
Does it work with NBN FTTP?
Yes, should be able to plug directly into NTD.
Can confirm it works perfectly. I have FTTP with ABB
OMG ASUS FTTP ABB WTF!
Jokes aside, good setup.
Yes. I'm with Superloop and works as expected.
(Ignore, already answered below)
Work great behind the Telstra smart modem gen 2 also (for the 4G backup and phone)
This is so funny.
Every router works with FTTP.
Yeah it's a very good router and this is a very good price. Grab yourself some Asuswrt Merlin firmware and you're ballin'
Does Merlin do quota control, bandwidth throttling, and time-based internet access? Currently have Gargoyle on WNDR3700 but it is time for an upgrade. Or does the stock firmware already does this?
YesNot sure, yes, yes and I don't know for sure but I assume so. A number of Merlins upgrades have been added to the official firmware.Edit: Sorry but I've realised I am not sure about the quota control. It could be included in the guest network setup. (3 guest networks) per freq.
I think it's a no for the first one, but definitely yes for the last one: https://i.imgur.com/cl399SM.jpg
On the screenshots page it shows traffic monitoring per device but don't know if you can set a quota
What’s this Merlin business?
Click the link, theirs an about and features section.
It's a third party firmware maintained by volunteers. Third party firmware usually adds many more features but since it's maintained by volunteers quality is variable.
Merlin is based on the official firmware of Asus I believe which makes it fairly stable. It crashes occasionally for me, maybe two or three times a year, but I can put up with it. The stock firmware from Netgear isn't that much better as far as stability.
Can you easily rollback to default ASUS firmware?
Yup Asus provides a firmware recovery tool.
Boot the router into recovery and user it to flash whatever firmware you like!
I have swapped between stock, dr-wrt and Merlin the last month and it's all rather painless
Merlin stuffs up my 5ghz wireless
NBN on Telstra Smart modem Gen2 isnt able to deliver even half of the 100mbps on wifi. Ethernet is fine. Would replacing with this help?
Don't expect world's better wifi. You either need mesh or access points set up to improve wifi coverage. Wifi from one router to another is negligible, the real improvement with range comes with multiple devices.
not about the range but the strenght, even sitting next to the modem, the wifi speeds on the mobile are only 40mbps. I do have about 10 devices connected but they are not all active. only 2 mobiles, google minis, smart plugs, arlo which has its own base station so nothing that could be sucking all the wifi power.
If you have the ability to change the channel on the 5ghz band, go for channel 149 and greater. Those channels can output up to 4W in Australia, so if the router isn't a (profanity) it might help a lot.
Can you set beacon threshold and dtim interval? 650 and 4 should help, and work nicely without issue.
You can set for both 2.4 and 5g independently.
@Oofy Doofy: Thanks for the tips guys. Saved me another call to Telstra. Will change the modem settings tonight.
Telstra Gen 2 has AC3200 wifi and this ASUS one is AC1900. I'd recommend to use this as secondary wireless router for better combined coverage.
Never expect 1 device would cover whole house.In my scenario however, as I'm far away from the modem/router I'm connecting using 2.4Ghz. The ASUS is 25%-50% faster than Telstra Gen 2 (50% if turn on Band steering and 25% if turned off Band Steering). That with the fact that ASUS router is handling dozens of Smart devices and all other connections whereas I'm exclusively connecting to the Gen 2 with my Pixel 2.
The Telstra smart modem gen 2 does same ssid name for both 2.4 and 5.0 never know what you connected to. In my case it's slower then the Asus (I have both sittings side by side. End up connect the Asus behind the Telstra one and let the Asus do all the work of routing. Also the Asus got the vpn server
For testing I purposely turn on each of the band only. The 5Ghz on Gen 2 managed to match 2.4Ghz on ASUS but the 2.4Ghz is much slower even without handling the other devices like the ASUS does.
Edit: On 5.0Ghz while having 1 bar, my Pixel 2 MAXED OUT the cable internet using ASUS Router. The Gen 2 Modem does only 80/112Mbps while the ASUS one have room to spare obviously.
You can seperate 2.4 and 5 on Telstra smart modem.
@Dalgona456: Gen 2, no you can not, when ever you change the name and password of the 2.4 the 5 change to the same, you can not change the 5
@huu: No, you can. I have the Technicolor Gen2 and I can SSID + Disable/Enable each of them separately. By default the 5.0Ghz Band actually add 5 suffix to the SSID so it's separated. I have a hunch that the ASUS 2.4Ghz can easily max out my cable internet if not for the multiple devices on 2.4Ghz leeching the bandwidth (Only Google Home and Nest Hub are on 5.0Ghz band, the rest doesn't have 2.4Ghz or too far so automatically switched to 5.0Ghz unless manually disable 2.4Ghz).
@Bigboomboom: Not disabling, "seperating" them as in have both on with different name so you can choose which to connect to. I got a gen 2 Arcadyan so might be worst of then the technicolor from a quick google (so we talking about 2 different modem) 👍
@huu: Yes, the hardware is same but firmware is vastly different, with Technicolor one much better. By default it actually separate the SSID as I have said, eg Telstra for 2.4Ghz and Telstra5 for 5.0Ghz.
Depends, I have no problem with this in my home (very old but sizeable 4 bedroom house). Even furthest room (router at the end of the house and the room is at the entrance, approx 20m distance with 4 walls in between) with 2 bars on 2.4Ghz I still get almost max (90/110Mbps) off my cable internet. I have at least 19 smart devices (9 Xiaomi Yeelight, 3 Google Home/mini, 1 Nest Hub, 1 AC, 2 Smart IR controller, 3 WiFi Plug) connected to both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz outside of the phones as well.
I don't believe the rt-ac68u has good wifi at all.
https://www.digitalcitizen.life/reviewing-asus-rt-ac68u-rout…
^ Now.. Idk if that's the same version being sold.. I hope not, because that's abysmal results compared to the others now.
In that test, it only managed to get speeds of 119mbps to 72.31mbps.compared to the step up, the rt-ac88u: https://www.digitalcitizen.life/asus-rt-ac88u-router-review-…
rt-ac88u was able to peak at 412mbps, but did get down to 69.89mbps, but in most cases was above.
And the tp-link c3150 v2, although a shit company who likes to abandon their routers, DAMN, look at those speeds they wipe the floor with all of them (although dropped out completely at balcony).
https://www.digitalcitizen.life/review-tp-link-archer-c3150-…Somehow it peaked at 485mbps, and was getting 459mbps in the 2nd bathroom which is over twice the others.
Are you connected to the 5GHz band? My Smart Modem g2 is noticeably faster and had better range than the 68U it replaced (can comfortably get 350-400mbps on local transfers to my phone over 5GHz).
Yes, you shouldn't be using an ISP router to route devices on a LAN with internet speed that high because typically they're low end devices that lack the processing power for such high sustained speeds.
You can turn off WiFi and NAT (aka bridged mode) on the Telstra modem/router and connect the new router's WAN port to any ethernet port (except WAN) on the Telstra modem/modem. That way the new router will handle all the LAN routing and WiFi.
Both the Smart Modem gen2 and AC68U use dual-core 1GHz chipsets (the Telstra modem uses the same BCM63138 chipset as the high-end Asus AC88U router), so there shouldn't be an issue as far as power.
Must be the settings then. Telstra support is hopeless. They just changed WiFi channel to 9. When issue was still not fixed they wanted to transfer to their premium support which you have to pay for.
@Dealayed: Ah, (if you haven't already), try disabling band steering and make sure the 5GHz network is enabled (both in the 5GHz panel and the "Wi-Fi Radio" panel) and named differently to the 2.4, then connect to that. Keep channels at auto for the moment.
Wish this was the DSL model so I can use my shitty liberal-funded VDSL :(
Friend, might be cheaper to grab this and a cheap netgear modem.
Some pointers? Would like to get a ADSL modem which is stable and reliable and connect to this for NBN via copper line still.
Parents place getting FTTC to the curb so i need to get a NBN ready modem but this isn't for ADSL so I dunno
Grab the Telstra Modem for like $10, it's faster than the VDSL equivalent. I was getting around 10mbps better after switching. Then add this
Yeah, the ideal vdsl modem is the Technicolor TG799vac, aka. Telstra gateway max. Easy enough to find on gumtree. Put it in bridge mode with a router like this one.
Exactly, it's incredibly good value for money. Will even be capable for most small houses/low requirements on it's own too.
I had an older Telstra Sagemcom 5355 for FTTN and one of these Asus routers plugged into that. 58 Mbps (on a 100/40 plan).
I got the modem version of the Asus router listed here thinking what you have - that it must be good, but it's actually not. It's worse (slower) than the Sagemcom (55Mbps). The thinking is it's because the dsl chip in it is not the Broadcom one.
Then I got a used Telstra 799vac off gumtree for $20 and it does give a better connection speed (61-63Mbps)! The wifi on the 799vac doesn't seem quite as good though. It also doesn't have anything you can configure yourself other than username and password if your connection requires that. I think you can hack it to give more options.
You could use a Telstra 799vac (or one of the other similar models) and a couple of these routers to give mesh type wifi which would give good wifi speed and coverage.
I had a similar experience with the 5355 (telstra-supplied when we switched over to NBN. Much lower sync than the tg799vac. The smart Modem 1 was similar to the 5355, but the gen2 I've got (Arcadyan model) syncs higher than the 799 (can often find the gen2 <$40 on Gumtree, so it's great value).
The ACMA did some quite thorough testing on these modem/routers here.
shitty liberal-funded VDSL
The private sector is a disaster, having failed to upgrade Australia's internet after 30 years of high prices and now blaming NBN for the high prices … and yet we still have religious people claiming that the private sector does everything better than the Government despite no evidence existing to demonstrate that this theory predicts reality.
If the private sector is bad, that doesn't mean the government NBN is good.
I got a speed drop swapping from the private sector to NBN, and it cost us all, what, $40billion? Assuming a population of 25 million, it's cost every man, woman and child in Australia $1600 each. It's cost my household >$6000 to have slower internet.Sure, but if the Libs hadn't destroyed the original concept just to spite Rudd and Conroy, the full FTTP network would have been vastly better, cost about the same, and would be easily and cheaply upgraded.
NBN is the best it can be, given the gross mismanagement by a foolish and ideologically driven government with zero interest in investing in our communications future. Their only objective was to complete the task as quickly as possible, and sell it off to their mates for cheap.
The same eBay store has some VDSL Modem/Routers that will work with FTTN.
I grabbed the TP-Link Archer VR900 to replace my piece of crap Optus Sagemcom.
Would it be possible to modify VLAN ID in this router?
I have recently switched my retailer and I can't find VLAN ID settings in my existing Technicolor router.
Yes, it’s under voice.
This is a 6 year old router. Starting to get a bit old…
I agree. But still works very well. Buckets of features and the wifi signal is better than most previous routers I've owned in the past.
What features does a router need apart from send wifi signals?
Believe it or not I'm still using a WRT54GL as a secondary router. It is for the G devices to connect to and does my DHCP. I have an NBN Telstra Smart Modem Gen 2 now but for years I had a Telstra Gateway Max which was a gimped Netgear C6300BD with firmware so bad that it randomly assigned DHCP addresses when it felt like despite static IPs configured. The second router got around this and gave me another access point in the house. Trouble is I got a bunch of them when they came down in price. (I think I paid $20 for the last 2). I've had only one WRT54GL die in the last 3 years and they are nice running DDWRT or Tomato.
So now my setup is really weird.
WRT54GL - DHCP server and for slower devices.
Smart Modem Gen 2 - Internet Gateway, primary fast WIFI device.
C6300BD - set up as another fast access point on the other side of the house to the NBN connection.
All 3 connected wired.This covers the whole 2 story house very nicely. Only negative is extra electricity used.
Agreed, especially with Wifi6 routers/devices starting to come in.
The only downside is it doesn't have wifi 6, other than that it's excellent.
True but ASUS is doing a great job updating the firmware and keeping this going, they are still producing it, it has legendary status in home router community even many small business set this up for their router as security is very strong on it
Wifi6 is game changer I think that’s only downside but keep in mind devices with wifi6 are expensive and will take a while to come down in price
Any problems wit this working overseas, say for a Canadian Fibre to the building setup?
shouldn't be any issues. NBN / fibre / cable / DSL almost always use PPPoE or DHCP to connect. These type of WAN connection methods have been standard in all routers since the dark ages.
Paid the same price for ac86u a year ago….
yeah i think that was a one off deal, very hard to get 86u under $200, i've been waiting a while for a deal on that model, with weaking aussie dollar i doubt we will see such price again
Actually I bought it off taobao (a Chinese version of ebay). It's pretty standard price on there. I just looked it up the cheapest can be found for around $100 with $50 post fee. If you interested, just pm me and I will send you the link.
Two questions, why do people buy stand alone routers instead of modem/routers and are there any major differences with this model and the RT-AC58U?
Modem/routers usually won't run custom firmware. People buy these to put one of several open source firmwares on. Most popular are: DDWRT. Tomato. OpenWRT.
What custom firmware features would you need? I thought routers only needed to send out WiFi signals.
https://www.geckoandfly.com/24007/router-firmware/
"These third party firmware comes with additional functions such as bandwidth allocation, bandwidth quotas, parental control, boost wireless wifi signals, enable password internet access, and more. Turn a regular old router into an enterprise-class device."
Also should add usage stats to that list. Not as big a deal now that most plans are all you can eat.
So whether you want to block little Johnny from playing Fortnite during school hours when he's off sick, or your steam download not to interfere with his game, you have the control to do it. Again not as big a deal now that all that can be done in software. But these things have been around for a very long time.
Routers provide routing between networks. They don't send out WiFi signals. Wireless access points transmit and receive WiFi signals. The two types of devices, plus an Ethernet switch and optionally a DSL modem are usually integrated into the one consumer-grade device.
@alvian: Actually a gateway provides routing between networks and a router within the network. But colloquially they're referred to as routers or modem routers or modems or gateways. The terms have become interchangable even though that is not technically accurate. They mix and match traditional gateway, router, access point, modem roles.
Actually a gateway provides routing between networks and a router within the network.
Incorrect. A router routes between networks using the same protocol. It works in Layer 3. A gateway routes between networks using different (or the same) protocols. It can work in multiply OSI layers. A router is a type of gateway. A gateway can be thought of as a router that can translate between protocols.
A modem is a signal converter that works mostly in Layer 1. A simple switch or hub is sufficient for communication within the one network, and a Layer-3 switch implements routing logic in hardware and it can substitute as a router between LANs (but not between a LAN and the WAN).
For example, a router is needed between the networks 192.168.0.0/24 and 10.0.0.0/8 running, obviously, on IP. A gateway is needed between a LAN running on IP and the WAN via the ISP running on, say, PPP. But since PPPoE is now used almost everywhere instead of PPP, the distinction between a gateway and a router has become blurred.
So yes, this so-called router RT-AC68U is strictly speaking a wireless access point + switch + firewall + gateway.
@alvian: You said
A gateway can be thought of as a router that can translate between protocols.
Well not quite. From your own link:
"A gateway is often characterized as being the combination of a router and a modem."Which is basically what I said…
The router part USUALLY refers to local area networks, (but yes switch would be less ambiguous).
The modem part refers to Internet connection.Both routers and gateways must "work" at OSI layer 3 - i.e. that's where the software does address translation and determines where packets go. But don't forget you still need physical layers, data links etc. so they must be connected at each layer. I suggest you avoid going into that level of detail when discussing with people outside the industry because unless you've learnt this stuff in proper context it all sounds like off-putting gibberish.
It's all a matter of semantics though.
The term "Gateway" literally came from the idea of a gate between 2 different areas. It's the point connecting 2 networks.I suggest you avoid going into that level of detail when discussing with people outside the industry because unless you've learnt this stuff in proper context it all sounds like off-putting gibberish.
I was not the one who bought up the distinction between a router and a gateway and I was not responding to you at all in my first comment. YellowKnight thought a router is responsible for WiFi and I only wanted to correct that. Then you joined in the discussion with this incorrect statement "a gateway provides routing between networks and a router within the network" which required correction.
The router part USUALLY refers to local area networks, (but yes switch would be less ambiguous).
From this statement I am unsure if you know the difference between a switch and a router, and the differences amongst the other types of inter-networking processors. Since no one here wants to read any more off-putting gibberish, I will end the discussion here. Thank you for spending the time to respond, even though they are technically inaccurate.
@alvian: I do know the difference between a switch and a router. I was talking about the USAGE of the word. Unless it's a separate switch (usually wired) no one talks about switches anymore. And as most of these devices allow devices on wired and wireless simultaneously on the same VLAN the distinction is even more blurred. But I'll stand corrected though - common usage or not a switch is not a router. The problem with putting so much functionality in one box is that, as you said, lines have blurred.
@syousef: I'll leave this reference for anybody who wants to seek further clarification and information. I did not previously give this reference because some statements in the article were unsupported by primary references and seemed to be original research by the authors, in violation of Wikipedia's guidelines.
In my case, I installed openWRT, because the 4G USB dongle I was using was not compatible with the original firmware on the ASUS RT-AC68U. From memory I think they were pretty slack with providing updated firmware for it. Another reason to use a custom firmware might be to patch a security vulnerability that gets found in the router after the manufacturer stops supporting it.
For some connection types (e.g. NBN HFC or FTTP), the modem is provided by NBN and you can't use your own.
to add to this — this doesn't mean you cannot use a different router. You just set the router hold the PPPoE connection to the cable modem, NTD, or DSL modem. Sometimes modems might require you to put the modem in bridge mode.
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Good price.