ASUS Announces RT-AC87U Dual-Band Gigabit Wireless Router

Announces?

I have owned and been using one for almost 2 weeks now.

necrosis said:

Announces?

I have owned and been using one for almost 2 weeks now.

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So how is it working? What kind of throughput are you getting?

Show me a single instance where it can actually xfer files faster than a 1gb wired connection.

This should be called "olds" instead of "news".

Smallnetbuilder says its crap, unreliable, and total waste of money. Also, enjoy pairing it with your AC2400 capable devices... oops, whats that, nobody has any?

Like all too many routers these days, the RT-AC87 is currently an unfinished product, rushed to market when it should still be back in the lab having its bugs stomped out. Yes, it will function as a basic router and might even provide better wireless performance than the AC1900 router you bought not too long ago.

But its key new Adaptive QoS and AiProtection features are undocumented and Adaptive QoS is flaky. The router will do things like disable both radios for no obvious reason (I experienced this). You may be unpleasantly surprised if you depend on anything other than default settings. And wireless performance is still being tuned on both bands.

Buying the AC87 now gets you mainly bragging rights along with undocumented features to figure out and bugs to discover.

I will say that my wireless testing so far hasn't revealed anything extraordinary in either maximum throughput or range in chamber testing. Nor have I been able to achieve a 1733 Mbps 5 GHz link rate between two AC87s six feet apart in open air.

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looks like it was designed with the goal of selling them to male teenagers.

CombatChrisNC said:

Show me a single instance where it can actually xfer files faster than a 1gb wired connection.

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That's never the point of any wireless router... the point is its wireless. A lot of people don't like walking around the house with a 100ft ethernet cable dragging from their laptop, or have permission to punch holes in the walls of their appartment, or even desire to do so in their multi-story homes (and redo it every 2 years they move if they're army like my sis).

Point is to compare it to alternatives like other wireless routers, powerline products, or MOCA. Problem is, this is a chicken/egg thing where the only affordable AC adapters are AC1200 anyway, and the latest and greatest "super routers" are unreliable POS's that are missing really basic features. I was looking at the Nighthawk for example, and its sad what it lacks compared to even my old ass Linksys E3000s in my house, and reliability is rather poor. I installed one for my parents because they wouldn't allow running wires and while fast w/ the AC1200 adapters on the clients, I put it on a digital timer to reboot it everyday at 3AM to keep it reliable and even simple things like setting a static channel instead of (auto) made clients unable to connect, and it doesn't have loopback and even port forwarding is weird.

Ducman69 said:

That's never the point of any wireless router... the point is its wireless. A lot of people don't like walking around the house with a 100ft ethernet cable dragging from their laptop, or have permission to punch holes in the walls of their appartment, or even desire to do so in their multi-story homes (and redo it every 2 years they move if they're army like my sis).

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True, but when you make statements like this...

Offering 5GHz speeds that are faster than wired Gigabit Ethernet, along with class-leading 2.4GHz speeds and reliable multi-floor coverage, RT-AC87U is the perfect choice for discerning users with busy multi-device home networks who need extreme coverage, lightning-fast performance, rock-solid stability and total peace of mind.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah its one of those "theoretical" things. One thing I do have to say in favor of the Netgear AC1900 Nighthawk at least is that even the 5ghz range is pretty insane.