very cheap! sad I missed out and brought china model for 150
Free SLOW shipping
Mi AIoT Router AX3600
Wi-Fi 6 deluxe flagship model
The pioneer router in 5G era
Good upgrade for anyone.
Wonder what's the difference to the China version?
English/Resale value
Dang! I ordered this one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001033923816.html during the Black Friday sale.
I wish I had known about the Global Version with English support.
I still haven't received the two routers as the seller shafted me on the shipping method. I paid for EMS, and they shipped using slow el-cheapo AliExpress shipping.
@DoctorCalculon: There is an amazing post below that breaks this down. Get the file and manually update it to get English language option in the settings. One thing that happened to me is I can't connect to Mi app anymore (china region). The international region doesn't have the router listed.
Btw, mine just came.
Does it have any Ethernet ports? Doesn't show the back of it on any photo or say anything in the description. Thank you
yes sadly only 3 I think also comes with cat6e cable
Cat6e cable doesn't exist though
It comes with a cat5e. Just got mine and don't think the international version is any different.
Just being “that guy” these numbers are mostly theoretical…. and depends on many factors such as interference and device specifics as well as the moons gravitational pull.
“The Speedtest test results show that 5GHz band WiFi performed well. The download speed in all three locations reaches up to 100Mbps, and the upload speed of 22.8Mbps”
Via First non partial looking review: https://www.thephonetalks.com/xiaomi-aiot-router-ax3600-revi…
You can of course find others that looks similar in results… some others claimed up to 140Mbps
The bandwidth package is 160 Mbps which is below the recommended 500Mbps+ package to get the best out of AX3600 router and test WiFi 6 limit rate.
His download speed is simply not fast enough to show the true limit of this router.
Ok fair enough, he didn’t say anywhere his download speed was only 100MBps in many parts of the world it’s faster up to gigabit.
If the connection was 100MBps he would probably get 95Mbps.
I’m just only trying to point out the speeds in title at the top are not likely to be reached
For comparison I get about 130Mbps doing a file transfer from a memory buffer on my UAP-nanoHD 802.11AC and MacBook Pro.
As long as the router has 160Mhz it should be able to do Gigabit WiFi. My ASUS comfortably do 900Mbps on my iPad Air 4 via 160Mhz.
@[Deactivated]: That's very slow HDD if that's the case. A normal HDD is capable of 150MB/s which is well over 1Gbps.
A SATA III SSD is capable of 500MB/s and PCIE SSD up to 7000MB/s.
Of course you're not going to get 3gbps down on Speedtest. The listed wifi speed is mostly relevant to internal networking. For reference, my ac router gets about 350mbps.
Which one do you have? Did it cost $100?
It is limited by your internet connection as well. However for real life speed, the max speed you get is usually advertised speed / 2 and then depends on whether the router & device actually have > 1Gbps Ethernet port (e.g 2.5Gbps or 10Gbps).
Great router- I have it and fantastic. 4 months and havent needed to reboot.
I just set up mine and so far all good and no drop outs i used to get, might happen soon though if its just with the nbn
is it able to use NBN HFC? thanks
Yeah plug the router to the NBN box.
@Twix: Oh wow, just checked mine and didn't know that it had PPPoe. You can put account and password there.
Well, you can use an el-cheapo modem to do the initial connection and connect/position this at a better location. My NBN box is in the bedroom at the other end of the apartment. Luckily, it has ethernet ports all over. I had two routers before and this 1 is able to beat them in coverage and strength.
Only issue is firmware is chinese so you need to use google translate.. But apparently English firmware is coming soon.
Global Version is in english?
Do you know if you can flash the Chinese firmware with the Global Version firmware so that you won't have to rely on Google Translate all the time?
Yes you can. I just did in the morning. I did lose the ability to connect with the app (china region set).
This "Global" version is the international firmware. But the Chinese version can be upgraded to International (and have the language changed to English), and the International can be downgraded to Chinese. There are no locks on the bootloader preventing this.
You can download a Xiaomi Mi WiFi app for this router that is in English and allows you to control it from an iPhone/iPad or Android device regardless of what firmware you are running. The app works in your language regardless of the firmware language.
The OpenWRT guys have been working on hacking/customising this router and there is forum topic all about the international (English) firmware - https://forum.openwrt.org/t/xiaomi-ax3600-int-firmware/74276…
In this thread there is a link to the following official Xiaomi site with the English International ROM;
http://cdn.awsde0-fusion.fds.api.mi-img.com/xiaoqiang/rom/r3…
And this post has a screenshot of someone's Chinese router running the upgraded English version;
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/xiaomi-ax3600-int-firmware/74276…
Edit: someone has put up a pre-modified version of the international firmware, but to get root SSH access you still have to downgrade to the Chinese version and you have to trust the user who uploaded the modified international version. I think if there was anything dodgy, someone on OpenWRT would point it out very quickly, but here's the post - https://forum.openwrt.org/t/xiaomi-ax3600-int-firmware/74276…
That forum link also has links to be able to get SSH root access to the modem, which can allow some extra configuration options, but it involves downgrading to an old Chinese version of firmware to gain root, and then using a tool called xqrepack to modify later versions of the ROM firmware to upgrade back to English and keep SSH root (so not for the sheepish!). They have not fully cracked it yet to allow OpenWRT to install on it, and it will likely be a while, but it already runs a version of OpenWRT that has been customised with Xiaomi's MiWifi GUI overlay (among other things). You can probably install Luci, which OpenWRT runs (and possibly some versions of tomato ??) and that will allow more configuration, or from the SSH you can use command line instructions to add, mod etc.
The OpenWRT guys want to hack it to run a vanilla version of OpenWRT without any Xiaomi stuff on it, but they currently only have minimal functionality for the chipset, which includes drivers for Ethernet and WiFi interfaces. It will happen as the driver development has already made it into the Linux kernel and there are a lot of people buying this because it is cheap, so very popular with Linux developers and OpenWRT gurus, since OpenWRT is Linux.
Thank you so much for such an in-depth response.
Major kudos! 👏👏👏
Am I correct in assuming that the device (AX3600 hardware) is the same across Chinese and Global versions?
Those sellers that are selling the "Chinese" version are just selling the AX3600 router with the Chinese firmware which can be re-flashed?
@DoctorCalculon: I don't believe there are any hardware differences, but I can't have absolute certainty on that.
What I do know is that people on the OpenWRT forums have both versions and have managed to flash the Chinese firmware on the International version and the Internal firmware on the Chinese version and everything works OK. As mentioned above, downgrading to an early Chinese firmware version is the main way to get SSH root access on both the the International version and the Chinese version with later firmware.
Thank you so much rygle for your in depth post! :D
Thanks Mate, I have updated it to English (int) version now. Simply go to settings and then change the language~
You can download a Xiaomi Mi WiFi app for this router that is in English and allows you to control it from an iPhone/iPad
I have not been able to get the Mi WiFi iOS app to detect the router at all. The phone is connected to the AX3600 WiFi before the scan process begins.
Chinese model with Chinese firmware.
Any tips will be greatly appreciated.
is it in english.
I have the Redmi ax6, which I bought from Aliexpress a few months ago. If you knew it, it is a cheap version of Xiaomi AX3600. They have the same control chips, but Xiaomi got better chips for signal amplifying.
I used an iPhone app Mi Wifi. 90% of language are English, only 3 plugins were not translated. Because I bought it from Aliexpress, I have to set up its location as China mainland, otherwise, it does not work. I am not sure if this GLOBAL version has this problem. It doesn't affect normal use, but the time zone variance. You can buy a Xiaomi and a cheap Redmi router to build your mesh wifi networks in your home.
I have not got any wifi 6 device in my household, so I can only use 5g and 2.4g. They are no different from my old tp-link router in connection speed. I used the Speedtest by Optus 50M network to do the test. The only difference is that my old tp-link router could not set up as AP repeater mode, but my Redmi AX 6 can, so that I set up my wifi network in the same IP segment with my Optus router.
Indeed, the router works very stably, which every quality product should do. By the way, the best function is that I can switch the power and status LED light on or off in the setting.
The Redmi routers also frequently have worse heat sinks, or no heat sinks, compared to the better Xiaomi Mi versions.
I've been using an ax6 for about 6 months too.. i literally haven't had to restart it once its probably been the most stable router i've ever used.
Honestly the Chinese language thing is a non-issue, how often do you look at your router configuration lol.
@seniordoc: I have had no problems with porting forwarding. I have 1 port open and I use it daily. As far as I can see, port forwarding can only be done via the web interface. I'm using the international firmware 3.0.22 (latest).
You can set the timezones as well. Again seems to be only configurable via the web interface.
Most options are configurable from both the web interface and the app, but some can only be configured from the web interface or the app.
The biggest issue I see is if your ISP uses vlan tagging, the router doesn't expose vlan settings. It can be done, but you need to hack the router and change the configuration by hand.
Can you buy a couple of these to form a mesh network?
yep
Such a shame cant find a decent router with voip :(
I used a Cisco or linksys ATA… cheap off eBay (opinion)
WTF? No comments about Chinese spying and the communist party yet?
People have already made up their minds one way - or the other. Commenting will just inflame opinion.
We can all make the choice about our network gear at home.. mine is mostly Unifi, for many, many reasons.. so do as you will I guess.
The openWRT guys who are hacking this router have commented a lot on how it is "phoning home". They are advising people not to connect it to the internet without also using an external firewall router device (like a pi-hole) or hacking the router and modifying the /etc/hosts file.
Here is an example of someone's attempt to block numerous domains from their /etc/hosts file, as all the domains mentioned have been detected as being contacted by the router using programs like wireshark. Some of these will be just checking for firmware updates, but there are at least 12 separate domains, which is far more than just firmware updates. If you don't understand what this is, the 0.0.0.0 at the start of a line tells the router to send that domain to nowhere for IPv4, while a ::1 is for IPv6, which is why they are listed twice.
0.0.0.0 baidu.com taobao.com xiaomi.cn xiaomi.com
0.0.0.0 www.baidu.com www.taobao.com www.xiaomi.cn www.xiaomi.com
::1 baidu.com taobao.com xiaomi.cn xiaomi.com
::1 www.baidu.com www.taobao.com www.xiaomi.cn www.xiaomi.com
0.0.0.0 miwifi.com log.miwifi.com s.miwifi.com app.miwifi.com stun.miwifi.com broker.miwifi.com
::1 miwifi.com log.miwifi.com s.miwifi.com app.miwifi.com stun.miwifi.com broker.miwifi.com
0.0.0.0 bbs.xiaomi.cn bbs.xiaomi.com
::1 bbs.xiaomi.cn bbs.xiaomi.com
hacking the router and modifying the /etc/hosts file
Thanks for the heads up on this.
If you have the link handy for hacking the router so that the hosts file can be modified, please let us know here.
Depending on your skills, there are two ways to go;
To get SSH root access, the main forum topic is here on the OpenWRT forum. It is also explained in part on the OpenWRT page for this router. Another guy has tried to explain it here. It involves broadly the following steps;
cd /tmp
curl https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dPoXDP9b9j9U3yOxp6qgCUTKthS… —output firmware.bin
ubiformat /dev/mtd12 -f /tmp/firmware.bin -s 2048 -O 2048
nvram set flag_ota_reboot=1
nvram commit
reboot
0.0.0.0 baidu.com taobao.com xiaomi.cn xiaomi.com
0.0.0.0 www.baidu.com www.taobao.com www.xiaomi.cn www.xiaomi.com
::1 baidu.com taobao.com xiaomi.cn xiaomi.com
::1 www.baidu.com www.taobao.com www.xiaomi.cn www.xiaomi.com
0.0.0.0 miwifi.com log.miwifi.com s.miwifi.com app.miwifi.com stun.miwifi.com broker.miwifi.com
::1 miwifi.com log.miwifi.com s.miwifi.com app.miwifi.com stun.miwifi.com broker.miwifi.com
0.0.0.0 bbs.xiaomi.cn bbs.xiaomi.com
::1 bbs.xiaomi.cn bbs.xiaomi.com
Reconnect to your router using SSH (ssh [email protected] or whatever your IP address is) and run the following command, and when prompted enter a new root password
passwd
all these anti-CPP people are drinking wine and eating lobster right now, too busy to post comments right now.
Presumably same as the CCP enjoying their communist equality?
How fast does a Chinese hacker infiltrate your network? Will wifi 6 be fast or slow enough?
Pretty fast 😜
Bought 3 of this for home mesh. Paid about $450 in total incl shipping. Very happy purchase. Plenty reviews available online. I just can’t find a router in this price range to beat what xiaomi offers.
Any tutorials for setting up mesh?
Or fairly straightforward?
ISPs have different setups. You would need a bit research 1st. But generally easy. TPG is a bit complicated to configure vlan. But you could use tpg router by pass the issues. Other ISPs are easy.
"China is watching…."
I am scared. Will they apply a tariff on my internet? 😜
I’ve been using this redmi version of this and it’s maybe the best router I’ve ever had. Haven’t had to reboot it in months and it was cheap as chips.
Can this be used as a NBN router?
I'm wondering how this Xiaomi would perform against Netgear nighthawk D7800 AC2600?
Can this be used as a NBN router?
Yes.
Xiaomi would perform against Netgear nighthawk D7800 AC2600
I would imagine it would sh*t all over it. You are comparing an AX (WiFi 6) router against an AC router. Not exactly a fair comparison.
Much appreciated for the reply mate. :)
OP (@Halvar), please consider updating the price in your title to include GST amount which all Aussie AE customers get slugged with.
USD $93.74 ($125.04 AUD) + GST of USD $9.37 ($13.89 AUD)
Does anyone know if AliExpress even pays this GST to the Australian government? I mean they are not even located here.
Alibaba's boss donated $26 millions to University of Newcastle. I don't think they'll skimp on GST. Not too sure about this, but I think Alibaba has offices in Australia.
I noticed that there seems to be two different stores for Xiaomi MC Store selling the exact same AX3600 router for the same price.
• https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001805514952.html (OP's link)
• https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001808785384.html (second link for the same store from a search for AX3600).
🤔
This or the AX3 pro.
How to set it up with NBN? Seems Not working
It depends on what NBN technology you use and what your RSP requires to be configured.
Thx, I am using HTC, not quite sure whether that going to work
HFC
Can the channels be manually selected? My current mesh Smartthings mesh has an affinity to Ch13 which some of my early LiFX bulbs do not connect to due to being a US product.
Beware there is no USB port on this router guys. Could be a big problem for those who need to turn this to a NAS.
Anw, thanks OP for a bargain.
Just as an aside, this has nothing to do with the OPs comment about 5G.
Does this router have a USB port for connecting an external HDD?
No
I ordered 3 units, thanks.
Does anyone have a link to a review that tests the Mesh feature?
mine got delivered today. Surprised quick delivery from Aliexpress. Shipped on 23/12 and delivered on 31/12.
Got it today, super quick shipping and delivery less than 10 days.
I set it up to connect to 2.4Ghz. Just wondering if I should connect all my devices to the 5Ghz instead? Noted there's a setting that allows it to automatically switch between 2.4 and 5 Ghz - is it the best option? Please suggest.
Two antennas broken on arrival. Box has a hole in it.
Got mine today, 2.4ghz and 5ghz range suck, the Telstra smart modem gen 2 was better. This is faster though, just the wifi sucks, which is supposed to be its main feature so it's a pretty pointless router. I am disappointed.
I did some research and downgrading it to use the Chinese firmware increases its performance significantly. Something to do with restricting the antenna's power outside of china. I'm happy with it now.
Chinese firmware ? or change the region to Mainland china ?
I set the region to AU on setup and couldn't change it in the menu.
Just be aware that you are probably running an illegal power level. From what I have read, the Chinese firmware transmits at 1000mW regardless of channel. In Australia channels 36-64 have a max power level of 200mW. Channels 149-161 have a 1000mW max power level.
I too noticed the range wasn't as good on 5ghz when I swapped over from my Netgear r6300v1, but then I noticed that the ax3600 was on channel 40. This was to utilise the 160mhz band width. I then did some research like you and discovered the transmit power differences. Since I don't need much wireless bandwidth for my use cases (my pc's and tv are connected with ethernet), I switched to channel 149 and 80mhz bandwidth and noticed I regained the range I had on my Netgear r6300.
I would be interested to know if you can just factory default the international firmware and set a mainland china region on first setup and it will set 1000mW transmit power on channels 36-64.
You're right, all global versions of the router are set to EU standards and have to use lower signal power. These are the power levels the router is capable of:
0 dBm (1 mW)
6 dBm (3 mW)
10 dBm (10 mW)
14 dBm (25 mW)
18 dBm (63 mW)
22 dBm (158 mW)
26 dBm (398 mW)
30 dBm (1000 mW)
I had to downgrade to an older Chinese firmware, enable ssh and edit the bdata to change the region from EU to any other country (i chose US), it'll then run at 1000mW. It took a while (i haven't used putty for ages) but now the signal is amazing. You can just install the chinese firmware as that takes precedence over the region coded in the bdata but then the router is in chinese and you have less options in the menu related to 20/40mhz mode etc. I'm not fussed if its technically not allowed to be this strong, it works amazingly now.
@acidantics: So after you edited the bdata, does it stick between reboots?
Also did you update the latest international firmware with ssh enabled and still retain the non-EU bdata?
@flagger: It won't stick unless you flash a new crash partition so that you can edit the bdata (you also need to do this to change the region). Instructions are here: https://oded.dev/2020/11/30/AX3600-1/
and yes i'm on the latest international version after setting my region to US with SSH enabled.
@BeerCrisp: I used this guide:
https://oded.dev/2020/11/30/AX3600-1/
It requires a little bit of tinkering (sometimes files got deleted from the router after a reboot) but it works well.
I also used info from:
https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/5071359/
and used some commands people were talking about here:
https://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/internet-bandwidth-networ…
@acidantics: Thanks. I just did this. It was a bit of a journey, but I was bit confused about the first step to gain temporary SSH and SCP access. Instead I followed this method after downgrading using the 1.0.17 firmware https://openwrt.org/inbox/toh/xiaomi/xiaomi_ax3600. It's a bit slower and every time you reboot you have to paste all the commands into the browser but it works reliably.
I changed my bdata to use the US region. Confirmed it was persisting after reboots and updating back to the international firmware. So that's all good.
I did have a quirk. I backed up my settings before downgrading, and restored them after going back to the international firmware. But I found when I went to set 160mhz channel width for the 5Ghz network, only 20,40 and 80mhz was available. Also when I made a change, there was no DFS countdown. Basically I had to do a factory reset, and set the region to Australia and it was all good again.
Did you upgrade to the international firmware after hacking the bdata? oded's guide said you can enable ssh permanently after upgrading by issuing a few commands, but I find that after a reboot, ssh and scp is disabled again. It's not a huge deal as telnet is still enabled, and for the rare occasion I need to scp in, I can re-enable it via telnet.
edit:
I found after upgrading back to the international firmware and setting Australia as my region, it didn't seem much different. I did some digging and found that it was still transmitting at 250mW (24dBm) on 5ghz. I factory reset and selected Great Britain as my region and now I get full power.
root@XiaoQiang:~# iwlist wl0 txpower
wl0 8 available transmit-powers :
0 dBm (1 mW)
6 dBm (3 mW)
10 dBm (10 mW)
14 dBm (25 mW)
18 dBm (63 mW)
22 dBm (158 mW)
26 dBm (398 mW)
30 dBm (1000 mW)
Current Tx-Power=30 dBm (1000 mW)
root@XiaoQiang:~# iwlist wl0 freq
wl0 258 channels in total; available frequencies :
Channel 36 : 5.18 GHz
Channel 40 : 5.2 GHz
Channel 44 : 5.22 GHz
Channel 48 : 5.24 GHz
Channel 52 : 5.26 GHz
Channel 56 : 5.28 GHz
Channel 60 : 5.3 GHz
Channel 64 : 5.32 GHz
Channel 100 : 5.5 GHz
Channel 104 : 5.52 GHz
Channel 108 : 5.54 GHz
Channel 112 : 5.56 GHz
Channel 116 : 5.58 GHz
Channel 120 : 5.6 GHz
Channel 124 : 5.62 GHz
Channel 128 : 5.64 GHz
Channel 132 : 5.66 GHz
Channel 136 : 5.68 GHz
Channel 140 : 5.7 GHz
Current Frequency:5.22 GHz (Channel 44)
@flagger: SSH should persist after reboot if not you can telnet in (as you said) and use these commands to re-enable it:
sed -i 's/channel=.*/channel=\"debug\"/g' /etc/init.d/dropbear
/etc/init.d/dropbear start
You can check the bdata dump (using the py script in the guide) to see if SSH and Telnet are permanently enabled. It's possible that flashing firmware might override some of the Bdata (like installing the chinese firmware) I'm only following the instructions that smarter people have figured out, so there are sure to be some unexpected outcomes.
What are the optimum settings for stronger wifi? I am having a wifi performance issue atm…
I've setup two units , 1 as main router and the other as a mesh node. I am a little disappointed with the wifi performance… I really don't want to fiddle with the Chinese firmwares and etc…
You can try using wifi analyzer (in the android app store) to make sure its not on a crowded channel but unfortunately is it coded to be weak by default (thanks EU radio standards), i was dissapointed with it until i hacked it, that's the only way to make it perform as it was intended. One thing you can do is set everything up and then flash the chinese firmware, it will retain your settings and give you the boosted performance. Then just hope you don't have to mess with it again. (i can't vouch for it retaining the mesh setup but it may be worth a shot)
I am fiddling with the router atm, but it's already giving me a headache….
That's a cheap ax router