if you make a second video for this can you please include the mesh wi-fi coverage when there are concrete walls between the nodes I'm planning using these for a likely scenario at home. The second node for tv and phone only though. Not too far , about 15 meters, but there are 2 concrete walls :) Thanks for the valuable content.
Bought these to go with my GT-AXE16000 (I don't use the 6E band) and they work well. I have one node wired and the other wireless. I had to adjust the Roaming assistant RSSI figures as some clients were being sticky and I've bound stationary clients to certain nodes/router. All seems good so far!
question. I have an ROG Rapture GT-AXE16000 & 2 ROG Rapture GT6s. I have a large area to cover. I was told by ASUS Tech support before I bought them that they will work together. Well I was given the AXE16000 but I bought the 2 GT6s for the extended space. I told them I planned on using the AXE16000 as my main router and the 2 ROG GT6s as 2 nodes or what ever you want to call them. They told me they will work. Today when I called tech support they told me you cannot use them this way. Both devices under their specs say AiMesh capable. Are you familiar with these? If so do you know if they will work like I am hoping they will? If they do where do you recommend I go for quality support to get help setting them up. ASUS customer tech support is terrible. I read my serial number to the guy 10 times and I swear they were just not listening. Also for your info. I plan to have my AXE16000 connected to my ISP modem. My ISP does not have a built in router/wifi. So I will not need to put anything on their equipment in bridge mode. So the AXE16000 will be my router and I will have the 2 GT6s spread out far away on other side of building. My AXE16000 is next to and connected to a 16 port gigabit switch. I have Ethernet ran in the walls all the way out to where both GT6s are located. So the internet will be supplied from my AXE16000 through Cat6 to my GT6s so they will not be receiving WiFi signal from AXE16000 to the GT6s but instead they will be directly connected via Ethernet. I am hoping I can have the 2 GT6s receive wired internet and then broadcast WiFi from there to devices on that side of building. Will this work and how do I go about doing this? Thanks for your help in advance.
I guess they think that AiMesh means that in order for these to work the way I want that the 2 devices that will be considered Nodes and the AXE16000 being the Router. They seem to think that the 2 nodes need to be receiving their signal via wireless signal and then they broadcast wirelessly as a mesh. They seem to cannot grasp the concept that other systems I have used like Eero, Orbi and so forth. They could have just one device be the router and the other 2 or 3 nodes or how ever many you have can be sent their signals via directly connected through Ethernet from router all the way to each node. This helps for more than one reason. 1. If the nodes are to far away from the router to receive their wireless signal, so then the wire helps get the signal directly through direct connection and then the nodes can broadcast wirelessly via WiFi from there. 2. Or if they are close enough to receive wireless signal from router, but the many walls and other interference materials in a building can weaken signals of wireless connections between routers and nodes making the signals unstable. This is where my building layout situation is. From my experience using eero or orbi in my building. One of my potential nodes will just barely be in range of my router if I used no direct connection of Ethernet from router to each node. So that node will struggle. The second nodes location will be to far away. This is why direct connections to each node is important. This way each node gets 100% wired internet connection so then they can broadcast WiFi from there. The reason I want to switch to these Asus devices. Is I am tired of the other brands controlling my 2.4, 5, or 6GHz signals automatically. Plus the AXE has quad band or 4 potential network names that I can use. Well the 2 GT6s only have 3. But I am not sure how this works. If they are connected to the AXE do they all 3 share one choice. Or can each device have their main 3 network names created (AXE 4 network names) or will they all be considered one system and only have 3 network names made (and devices that are in range of the AXE have that potential 4th network name created)
Love your videos @Behfor Thanks for taking the time to make this and show us real world results. I have the DSL-AX82U which is a Tri 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM and that usually sits around 70-75% also so I think that's common for Asus routers with 512MB RAM. Would be great to see a part 2 on these GT6 units for sure. Maybe creating an OpenVPN connection using the built in server. Accessing it remotely to see what throughput you can obtain. OpenVPN seems to struggle on Asus devices and maxes out the CPU so upload throughput is limited. So it would be interesting to see what these units are capable of. Keep up the good work. Appreciated
@behfor once again great review I purchased the ax86u because of you and now my situation has changed. I’m on the fence with the xt9 and the gt6 for my 1750 square foot new purchased home. Primary node in the basement and the ai node upstairs to cover my entire home (the ASUS ax86u will not cover my home for some reason) what mesh system would you go with please advise me :). Cheers.
I hope you enjoy your new purchase. Unfortunately, not many people watched or liked the video even though I put a lot of work into it. So, I'm not sure if Part 2 will have better luck. I'll wait a bit longer and see what happens.
Hey Behfor Encourage ASUS to add a new feature where a VPN client w a specific configuration (exam. Connect to a country) can be applied for a guest network. I think this would be very cool.
Hey Behfor, nice video as always. You have house size similar to my, but my is old with very thick walls, way off of nowadays houses. How is the wall thickness with WiFi 6? It is huge with WiFi 5....
Not sure if there is any relation to your RAM issue usage = 76%. My old ASUS RT-AC86U router, with only have 512MB, with ASUS AiProtection features all enable, my router is also round about 75-76% usage.
I have a cable from the provider in my apartment only at the front door. Can I use this system to get a stable ping without freezes in online shooters in my room? I will connect the Xbox to the second part of the asus system via cable. Is there an alternative to this mesh system?
Can anyone help doing so much research and need some help I need to buy a new router I live in a two story house about 2500 square feet I got two gamers in the house got about 20-25 devices to connect to wifi looking for help on a recommendation on a router to pickup
@behfor once again great review I purchased the ax86u because of you and now my situation has changed. I’m on the fence with the xt9 and the gt6 for my 1750 square foot new purchased home. Primary node in the basement and the ai node upstairs to cover my entire home (the ASUS ax86u will not cover my home for some reason) what mesh system would you go with please advise me :). Cheers.
I’m can tell you so far the internet speeds from my 1 gig isp are terrible on this device. I’m only getting 500 mbps download connected directly to the modem and the second node is connected to a PlayStation and it’s lagging a lot with games specially COD high latency and download speeds are about 200mbps on the PlayStation 5
Based on what you said, It sounds like there might be an issue with your internet connection itself because if you tested it when directly connected to the modem, then you were basically testing your ISP not the router.
@@Behfor I’m not sure because I went ahead and rebooted and when doing a speed test from PS5 I am getting 768mbps download but the game is unplayable I getting 46ms latency and flare ups of up to 400ms latency and the game skips and lags and happens when I’m usually near players as I play the game
Asus's ai-mesh is interesting, but the only drawback is that they recommend that you don't add more than 4 nodes to the main one. After that the network is mismatched. Greetings friend.
That's the case with almost every mesh system if you decide to use wireless backhaul because the more nodes you have, the higher the chance of interference between them. This can lead to poorer WiFi quality. However, if you use wired backhaul and implement good network design, you can have more nodes without encountering these issues
Interesting on the memory RAM usage of 76%. My Unifi UDM-B (with latest system update) is 85% RAM memory usage, but the CPU is very low. Is it that the manufacturer is not including enough RAM in the device? Nice video very well done.
I take the view as I do for work, I want as much of that memory used as possible, let things use it, caching to improve speed, go for it. Just as long as the swapping is efficient and fast as new processes need more then all is good.
Thanks for sharing! I think (at least in my case) the RAM is fine, it's just designed to be this way. Some other people also reported the same situation with no issues. Hopefully yours is also the same! Thanks again
You should compare the speed between only using dual band and triple band. Theoretically, tri-band is better, but how much better? And shoukd mention if the router is supported by merlin. And I think having high RAM usage is okay. Anh unused RAM is potential unused... up to a certain point.
Yes and no, because you still need to have a modem in your network. Your comcast device is most likely a combo modem/wireless router device, so you will need to use it only as a modem when you add this Asus device to your network.
86% RAM and less than 10% CPU load on my Asus rt-ac86u main router., with 2 people on the home LAN. Always high RAM load, also before I flashed it to MerlinWRT. It,s in a wired Aimesh with two CT8, star layout. Whatever I do, and also at night, the RAM load stays close to 100%, with CPU load occasionally spiking, but it works and is stable. Because of the RAM congestion I,m considering to upgrade from AC to AX, as the newer models have more RAM, but am not sure if it would improve my LAN, because I don,t know why RAM load is high. Maybe just ignore it, like you state in the comment Behfor. Thx for the nice videos, I appreciate your honesty and down to earth approach.
how can i stay with only the router wifi signal and turning off the modem signal?, i have this router, and my internet is from cox y put the modem into bridge mode, but it shut down the wifi too, so i dont know how to do it properly
@behfor I really like your channel and your videos , but don’t you see that you are not going out of ASUS circle and their routers ? There are many other routers and brands out there, also there is OpenWRT which is more advanced than Asus firmware and even merlin. Please accept my humble advice, and keep up the good work, thanks 😊
@@Behfor Routers that are WiFi 6 and compatible with OpenWRT that you can flash and test: 1-Linksys E8450 (aka. Belkin RT3200) 2-NETGEAR WAX206 3-Asus RT-AX53U Routers with Openwrt Pre-Installed: All GL.iNet routers.
if you make a second video for this can you please include the mesh wi-fi coverage when there are concrete walls between the nodes
I'm planning using these for a likely scenario at home. The second node for tv and phone only though.
Not too far , about 15 meters, but there are 2 concrete walls :)
Thanks for the valuable content.
Great in depth video. I was nervous about setting up this system but you have covered everything I believe I need to know. I liked and subscribed!
Happy to hear that you liked the video! Thanks for subscribing 🙂
wow,,, gaming mesh looks great!
waiting for part 2 for gaming boost test.
Thanks for the suggestion 🙂
Been following your channel for a while now and based my latest purchase on this review. Already loving my new mesh setup!
Glad to hear that, thanks for sharing 🙏🏻
Bought these to go with my GT-AXE16000 (I don't use the 6E band) and they work well.
I have one node wired and the other wireless.
I had to adjust the Roaming assistant RSSI figures as some clients were being sticky and I've bound stationary clients to certain nodes/router.
All seems good so far!
question. I have an ROG Rapture GT-AXE16000 & 2 ROG Rapture GT6s. I have a large area to cover. I was told by ASUS Tech support before I bought them that they will work together. Well I was given the AXE16000 but I bought the 2 GT6s for the extended space. I told them I planned on using the AXE16000 as my main router and the 2 ROG GT6s as 2 nodes or what ever you want to call them. They told me they will work. Today when I called tech support they told me you cannot use them this way. Both devices under their specs say AiMesh capable.
Are you familiar with these? If so do you know if they will work like I am hoping they will? If they do where do you recommend I go for quality support to get help setting them up. ASUS customer tech support is terrible. I read my serial number to the guy 10 times and I swear they were just not listening.
Also for your info. I plan to have my AXE16000 connected to my ISP modem. My ISP does not have a built in router/wifi. So I will not need to put anything on their equipment in bridge mode. So the AXE16000 will be my router and I will have the 2 GT6s spread out far away on other side of building. My AXE16000 is next to and connected to a 16 port gigabit switch. I have Ethernet ran in the walls all the way out to where both GT6s are located. So the internet will be supplied from my AXE16000 through Cat6 to my GT6s so they will not be receiving WiFi signal from AXE16000 to the GT6s but instead they will be directly connected via Ethernet.
I am hoping I can have the 2 GT6s receive wired internet and then broadcast WiFi from there to devices on that side of building.
Will this work and how do I go about doing this?
Thanks for your help in advance.
I guess they think that AiMesh means that in order for these to work the way I want that the 2 devices that will be considered Nodes and the AXE16000 being the Router. They seem to think that the 2 nodes need to be receiving their signal via wireless signal and then they broadcast wirelessly as a mesh.
They seem to cannot grasp the concept that other systems I have used like Eero, Orbi and so forth. They could have just one device be the router and the other 2 or 3 nodes or how ever many you have can be sent their signals via directly connected through Ethernet from router all the way to each node.
This helps for more than one reason. 1. If the nodes are to far away from the router to receive their wireless signal, so then the wire helps get the signal directly through direct connection and then the nodes can broadcast wirelessly via WiFi from there.
2. Or if they are close enough to receive wireless signal from router, but the many walls and other interference materials in a building can weaken signals of wireless connections between routers and nodes making the signals unstable.
This is where my building layout situation is. From my experience using eero or orbi in my building. One of my potential nodes will just barely be in range of my router if I used no direct connection of Ethernet from router to each node. So that node will struggle. The second nodes location will be to far away.
This is why direct connections to each node is important. This way each node gets 100% wired internet connection so then they can broadcast WiFi from there.
The reason I want to switch to these Asus devices. Is I am tired of the other brands controlling my 2.4, 5, or 6GHz signals automatically. Plus the AXE has quad band or 4 potential network names that I can use. Well the 2 GT6s only have 3. But I am not sure how this works. If they are connected to the AXE do they all 3 share one choice. Or can each device have their main 3 network names created (AXE 4 network names) or will they all be considered one system and only have 3 network names made (and devices that are in range of the AXE have that potential 4th network name created)
Can i connect the backhoul between the 2 routes via Ethernet cable?
Yes you can
@@Behfor thy for the answer 😁
Love your videos @Behfor
Thanks for taking the time to make this and show us real world results.
I have the DSL-AX82U which is a Tri 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM and that usually sits around 70-75% also so I think that's common for Asus routers with 512MB RAM.
Would be great to see a part 2 on these GT6 units for sure. Maybe creating an OpenVPN connection using the built in server. Accessing it remotely to see what throughput you can obtain. OpenVPN seems to struggle on Asus devices and maxes out the CPU so upload throughput is limited. So it would be interesting to see what these units are capable of.
Keep up the good work. Appreciated
Thanks for sharing your experience and also for the suggestion 👍
@behfor once again great review I purchased the ax86u because of you and now my situation has changed. I’m on the fence with the xt9 and the gt6 for my 1750 square foot new purchased home. Primary node in the basement and the ai node upstairs to cover my entire home (the ASUS ax86u will not cover my home for some reason) what mesh system would you go with please advise me :). Cheers.
My ram is 75 percent on my asus ax3000. So i guess its fine this router is alot newer than mine. Good video do part 2
great device Waite for part 2
Thanks 🙏
Thanks for the great video. Can you have one wifi network be a regular network, and a second wifi network that uses VPN? On the same router
I just ordered it .. when is part 2 coming up?
I hope you enjoy your new purchase. Unfortunately, not many people watched or liked the video even though I put a lot of work into it. So, I'm not sure if Part 2 will have better luck. I'll wait a bit longer and see what happens.
Great video, was there any obstacles between GT6 mesh units during the iPerf test? Do they get hot during testing?
nice looking router, hope i will find a deal on those
Hey Behfor
Encourage ASUS to add a new feature where a VPN client w a specific configuration (exam. Connect to a country) can be applied for a guest network. I think this would be very cool.
Excellent work.. i wonder if older routers that arent triband can be added and what those numbers look like...?
If using a wired backhaul, can you then use the second 5ghz band (usually reserved for a wireless backhaul) to connect wireless devices?
Hey Behfor, nice video as always. You have house size similar to my, but my is old with very thick walls, way off of nowadays houses. How is the wall thickness with WiFi 6? It is huge with WiFi 5....
Not sure if there is any relation to your RAM issue usage = 76%.
My old ASUS RT-AC86U router, with only have 512MB,
with ASUS AiProtection features all enable, my router is also round about 75-76% usage.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
great video, would you say this is better than the Netgear Orbi Mesh RBR850 (3 unit) System?
Are you able to add an extra node to the system if needed?
How does it compare in performance with the ASUS ZenWiFi Pro AXE11000 ET12 how does it perform as a an additional mesh Node to the AXE?
Hi Behfor, does it support "Access Point(AP) mode / AiMesh Router in AP mode" in operation mode? Thanks.
Hi there, yes it does. Thanks.
I have a cable from the provider in my apartment only at the front door. Can I use this system to get a stable ping without freezes in online shooters in my room? I will connect the Xbox to the second part of the asus system via cable. Is there an alternative to this mesh system?
How this unit compares to XT9?
Do a DNS over TLS video
Thanks for the suggestion
Can anyone help doing so much research and need some help I need to buy a new router I live in a two story house about 2500 square feet I got two gamers in the house got about 20-25 devices to connect to wifi looking for help on a recommendation on a router to pickup
What’s the maximum nodes can one have ?
I heard it is 9 but haven't tried it myself so i'm not 100% sure!
What of sim card
Hmm currently no Asuswrt Merlin
22222😊
You're an ASUS fanboy.
@behfor once again great review I purchased the ax86u because of you and now my situation has changed. I’m on the fence with the xt9 and the gt6 for my 1750 square foot new purchased home. Primary node in the basement and the ai node upstairs to cover my entire home (the ASUS ax86u will not cover my home for some reason) what mesh system would you go with please advise me :). Cheers.
I’m can tell you so far the internet speeds from my 1 gig isp are terrible on this device. I’m only getting 500 mbps download connected directly to the modem and the second node is connected to a PlayStation and it’s lagging a lot with games specially COD high latency and download speeds are about 200mbps on the PlayStation 5
Based on what you said, It sounds like there might be an issue with your internet connection itself because if you tested it when directly connected to the modem, then you were basically testing your ISP not the router.
@@Behfor I’m not sure because I went ahead and rebooted and when doing a speed test from PS5 I am getting 768mbps download but the game is unplayable I getting 46ms latency and flare ups of up to 400ms latency and the game skips and lags and happens when I’m usually near players as I play the game
Asus's ai-mesh is interesting, but the only drawback is that they recommend that you don't add more than 4 nodes to the main one. After that the network is mismatched. Greetings friend.
That's the case with almost every mesh system if you decide to use wireless backhaul because the more nodes you have, the higher the chance of interference between them. This can lead to poorer WiFi quality. However, if you use wired backhaul and implement good network design, you can have more nodes without encountering these issues
Interesting on the memory RAM usage of 76%. My Unifi UDM-B (with latest system update) is 85% RAM memory usage, but the CPU is very low. Is it that the manufacturer is not including enough RAM in the device? Nice video very well done.
I take the view as I do for work, I want as much of that memory used as possible, let things use it, caching to improve speed, go for it. Just as long as the swapping is efficient and fast as new processes need more then all is good.
Thanks for sharing! I think (at least in my case) the RAM is fine, it's just designed to be this way. Some other people also reported the same situation with no issues. Hopefully yours is also the same! Thanks again
Make part to and how to optimize this system please
I love you Behfor
Love you too
You should compare the speed between only using dual band and triple band.
Theoretically, tri-band is better, but how much better?
And shoukd mention if the router is supported by merlin.
And I think having high RAM usage is okay.
Anh unused RAM is potential unused... up to a certain point.
Thanks for the suggestion 🙂
can this replace my comcast router ?
Yes and no, because you still need to have a modem in your network. Your comcast device is most likely a combo modem/wireless router device, so you will need to use it only as a modem when you add this Asus device to your network.
Nice design and performance. Thanx
Thank you! Cheers!
86% RAM and less than 10% CPU load on my Asus rt-ac86u main router., with 2 people on the home LAN. Always high RAM load, also before I flashed it to MerlinWRT. It,s in a wired Aimesh with two CT8, star layout. Whatever I do, and also at night, the RAM load stays close to 100%, with CPU load occasionally spiking, but it works and is stable. Because of the RAM congestion I,m considering to upgrade from AC to AX, as the newer models have more RAM, but am not sure if it would improve my LAN, because I don,t know why RAM load is high. Maybe just ignore it, like you state in the comment Behfor. Thx for the nice videos, I appreciate your honesty and down to earth approach.
how can i stay with only the router wifi signal and turning off the modem signal?, i have this router, and my internet is from cox y put the modem into bridge mode, but it shut down the wifi too, so i dont know how to do it properly
I have the asus rt ac86u, would it be worth to upgrade to this? Given this would cost me about 1300 bucks haha
Great video, as always.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you.
You're very welcome!
How is the speed when a computer is connected (wired) to only one GT6
No wifi 6?
It is WiFi 6.
@behfor I really like your channel and your videos , but don’t you see that you are not going out of ASUS circle and their routers ? There are many other routers and brands out there, also there is OpenWRT which is more advanced than Asus firmware and even merlin. Please accept my humble advice, and keep up the good work, thanks 😊
Thanks for the suggestion 🙂👍
@@Behfor Routers that are WiFi 6 and compatible with OpenWRT that you can flash and test:
1-Linksys E8450 (aka. Belkin RT3200)
2-NETGEAR WAX206
3-Asus RT-AX53U
Routers with Openwrt Pre-Installed:
All GL.iNet routers.