Review: asus rt
Table of contents:
- Technical characteristics
- Introduction and appearance
- Going a little deeper
- Testing equipment
- Performance with external storage
- Wireless Performance
- Firmware and configuration
- News compared to the RT-AC68U
- Overclocking
- conclusion
- RT-AC87U
- 5Ghz performance
- 2.4Ghz performance
- Scope
- Firmware and extras
- Price
- SoC performance
- 9/10
Today we bring you the first analysis in Spanish of one of the most anticipated routers of the moment, the Asus RT-AC87U, which turns out to be the first of the highly anticipated “wave 2” of AC devices, in this case having a Quantenna 4 chip × 4 which raises the theoretical speed from 1300mbps of the first batch AC 3 × 3 routers to a whopping 1734mbps with one more stream.
Finally we have decided to publish these results as a review, although we must point out that it cannot be considered a complete review of everything that this device can give. Unfortunately, being the first has its advantages, but also its drawbacks, and in this case we have a fairly large one: There are still no AC1734 (4 × 4) clients on the market, so we will not be able to get everything they can give yes, just compare it with the existing equipment in 3 × 3 mode. We will not take advantage of the additional speed, but we can see the news that Asus has introduced and how it behaves with the "old" AC 3 × 3 team. You could use another router just as a client to take full advantage of the device, but unfortunately at Asus they do not have as many units to lend us, so we will be waiting to be able to revisit it with the appropriate equipment and update the performance values.
Technical characteristics
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ASUS RT-AC87U FEATURES |
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specs |
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Introduction and appearance
The first thing we see is a box very similar to the rest of the Asus line of routers
In the back we see a preview of the characteristics, the benefits of MU-MIMO and they have even dared to venture a coverage radius of 465m2
Router
Box detail
Documentation
The design is spectacular, I would say that in this aspect they always exceed the high bar of the previous model. A considerable increase in size compared to its predecessor, the AC68U, is evident
The layout has changed quite a bit in terms of buttons and connections. If we go to the back we see the typical connectors, from left to right, a USB2.0 socket, WPS button, RJ45 socket for WAN, 4 RJ45 sockets for LAN (with ports 1 and 2 with support for teaming), a reset button, switch, and power outlet, with the 4 generous antennas interspersed.
Going a little deeper
If in the RT-AC68U review we said that it was one of the most advanced routers on the market, in this case with the RT-AC87U we can be even more explicit: At the time of writing these lines this is the most leading router that exists, since it is the only AC2400 router on the market, until in a few months the response from its competitors arrives, surely based on the same Quantenna chip (or Netgear decides to take its R7500 out of the USA). We note that what many see as the best router of the moment, the Netgear R8000, points to another market that is looking for multi-user performance, but today this R8000 is nothing more than two wave 1 routers placed in the same box.
This router takes over from the AC68U as the flagship of Asus, and at the same time opens the market for the so-called “wave 2” of 802.11ac devices, equipped with a 4 × 4 Quantenna chip to reach a whopping 1734mbps theoretical (AC1734) in the 5Ghz band and the usual 600mbps in the 2.4Ghz band using N networks and Turbocom technology from broadcom (in total, 1734 + 600 = 2334 which rounding up give us the AC2400 of the product name). Again, we remember that these almost 2400mbps do not occur in a single connection, they are not simultaneous, it is simply the sum of the capacity in both bands, with different devices.
In normal use, we have the typical 450mbps of an 802.11n 3 × 3 connection in the 2.4Ghz band, since the devices that support TurboQAM are a minority. It is highly recommended, in any case, to use the 5Ghz network with all the devices that support it, even if it is with the N standard, since it is usually much less saturated than the usual 2.4 (used widely by other networks, mobile phones, car alarms, bluetooth devices, microwaves…), unless by scope it is impossible. Likewise, the default router emits both, excellent for not leaving old devices outside our Wi-Fi network.
Asus has opted for the best components available on the market for this router, compared to those chosen for the AC68U that were a small step below, a novelty very well received since it is one of the small drawbacks that we saw when we made the review of the excellent RT-AC68U. We have a Broadcom BCM4709A0 as the brain of the device, similar to the one mounted by the AC68U but 200mhz faster. Continuing with the comparisons, we raised the frequency of the RAM from 666mhz to 800, keeping the same 256mb and placing ourselves at the level of the Netgear R7000 in terms of main SoC.
In addition to this main processor, this router incorporates a 32-bit Quantenna QT3840BC chip, operating at 500mhz, in a 2-CPU architecture that reminds us of the design seen in the netgear R8000. This Quantenna chip is in charge of the 5Ghz network, and of course it is a 4 × 4 chip. The 2.4Ghz network is handled as we expected an old acquaintance, a Broadcom BCM4360 (3 × 3) chip, one of the most widespread chips in high-end routers because it is one of the fastest and most reliable and supports TurboQAM technology. Broadcom to give those 600mbps.
As it is such a recent model, and also with a new chip, we are not surprised to see that it is not currently supported by DD-WRT like its predecessor, but we hope that the situation will change in the coming months.
The cooling has undergone improvements, it is still passive but with generous aluminum heatsinks in the three heat sources (the SoC and the 2.4 and 5Ghz chips). We see slightly lower temperatures than in the RT-AC68U, at a similar load about 5º less in the SoC and in the 2.4Ghz chip, despite being a faster 200mhz processor. Even with 1.2Ghz overclocking we see temperatures below 80ºC in normal use.
The central heatsink corresponds to the Quantenna QT3840BC chip, the left to the main SoC, a Broadcom BCM4709A0, and finally the right is for the chip that deals with the 2.4Ghz band, a Broadcom BCM4360. The PCB is fairly well used, the cooling is good, and the soldering is impeccable, nothing to object to the "guts" of this router.
The firmware is a little green, as was the case with the RT-AC66U when it was released, we are confident that it will follow the same path, if possible in less time, and will catch up with its brothers who have already been shooting more. A detail that we did not like at all, precisely because of this, is the absence of the native repeater mode (without using WDS and with good security) that the previous models do incorporate.
Testing equipment
To make the performance measurements we will use the following components:
- 1 Router RT-AC87U firmware version 376.47 (Asuswrt-Merlin), for observing better results and stability with it than with the most recent release (376.2769)
1 RT-AC68U router configured as client, firmware version 376.47 (Asuswrt-Merlin) Pendrive USB3.0 Sandisk Extreme (approximately 200mbps read / write), formatted as NTFSE Device 1, with Intel (R) 82579VE network card 2, with card Delock USB3.0Jperf version 2.0.2 (a convenient graphical interface in Java for the use of IPerf)
Performance with external storage
As usual we start with the performance tests with USB storage. With a router like this it is becoming more sensible to use it to replace (or at least complement) a NAS to use.
To evaluate this section we will copy a mkv video file of approximately 5gb from our PC to a USB flash drive shared by NFS in the router, one way and the other, obtaining the average speed in both cases. Note that USB read / write is one of the tasks where the processor performance of a router is most noticeable, since all wireless communication, NAT and switch functions are accelerated by hardware and, except for unrealistic loads, the processor does not have too much work.
However, when it comes to reading and writing to disk, things change. We will take advantage of the test to see if we have gain by overclocking the router (raising its BCM4709A processor from 1000mhz to 1200mhz) in a real and favorable scenario for it. Note that the network infrastructure is usually a point where stability is mandatory, and we do not have temperatures as controlled as on a desktop PC, so we do not recommend this practice to novice users (and in general, not to expert users, Unless they know the risks and failures that this process entails, to start the temperature, the cooling of a router is generally just, although in this case we see clear improvements from its predecessor, the RT-AC68U). It is appreciated that we do not need any utility or modification in the firmware for this process, since it can be done with the official firmware simply by enabling access by telnet and adjusting the parameter that stores the frequencies in NVRAM. We will explain how to overclock in this same review, in a later section.
Speed clearly outstrips even the excellent performance of the RT-AC68U, making it the best router we've tested to date with external storage, dangerously close to 100MiB / s of overclocked reading - in short, much faster than most. USB flash drives, including mid-range USB3.0 models. Repeating the observation we made with the RT-AC68U we can affirm that as FTP storage, or to have local files available from the internet, it does more than enough. Again, the gains with overclocking are evident, so the bottleneck in this scenario is the processor again, although in this case Asus no longer has room for improvement: This is the fastest router SoC on the market.
When it comes to working with external hard drives, it is not an understatement either, we see that any USB2.0 drive will make the most of it without any problem. With USB3.0 disks we are not going to take advantage of all the bandwidth they offer us (which is usually around 100MiB / s on 5400rpm disks, somewhat more or less depending on the model), but we are going to stay close, significantly more than with its predecessor passing with margin half the performance that a usual SATA disk would still have mounted on a PC, so as we did with the RT-AC68U, but with more reason, we recommend this router again accompanied by a USB3.0 disk as a good system to share our music, movies, and other heavy files on the network (remember that the router supports UPnP, so many smart TVs will see the files on the disks connected to the router when we give them permission to do so). We get closer to the performance of a dedicated NAS, beating even some entry-level NAS, but for the most demanding users who are evaluating a high-end NAS, performance is obviously at another level.
Wireless Performance
This is both the most controversial and most interesting part of this router. On the one hand we have one of the first devices to mount the Quantenna 4 × 4 chips (the other being the Netgear R7500), so we went from AC1300 to AC1734 with 1734mbps. Unfortunately, as we advanced in the introduction, there are no compatible 4 × 4 clients on the market yet, so all the results below will be done with a 3 × 3 client, limited to 1300mbps as in previous routers. We promise to revisit this router and repeat the tests once AC2400 clients are available.
If your predecessor already allowed you to completely replace a cable connection, both for stability and speed, we expect nothing less from this router.
To carry out the tests, we will use JPerf 2.0.2, with a team in our network acting as a server and connected to router 1, and another as a client connected to router 2, one way at a time. We will also see how the number of streams affects speed and if the router correctly manages its 3 links if there is only one active connection.
I can't help but have mixed feelings when analyzing these results. For one thing, they are really good numbers. On the other hand, although limited by 3 × 3 customers, we did not expect to improve the results of the excellent RT-AC68U, nor did we expect to see significantly lower values under certain conditions, both at short distances and at long distances. Unfortunately, the performance situation is not repeated with external storage, where it pulverized all the previous results, even without overclocking.
As usual in 5Ghz networks, the biggest enemy of high speeds are the obstacles on the road (walls, doors…). The conditions are identical to those we used to test the RT-AC68U, and despite testing various antenna positions, the results did not vary much. As we see the distance is not a great enemy for this router, logically there is a loss of performance, but it is still an excellent performance that does not harm the usability of the connection, not only for the internet, but to work with large files within our local network without any problem or slowdown. In other performance tests carried out, it could be seen that just the fact of adding a wall near the client router, at the same distance, drops the speed to around 200Mbps. It is still more than enough to take advantage of 100% of our internet connection, however the users of the fastest fiber optics must bear in mind that minimizing the obstacles of the router to the client is mandatory, and of course, any user who wants performance Similar to a cable connection you should consider this as well.
Despite the recent availability of this router on the market, it seems that the stability with both the supplied and RMerlin firmware is equally good, although there are certainly some shortcomings that we will mention later. It is also an optimal router for online games, apart from the new and improved QoS options (quality of service, to prioritize the packages that games use over downloads), as soon as we introduce latency in the connection, we talk about less than 1ms additional Absolutely negligible value in any possible metric, a cable switch has a similar effect, and only the monitor's input lag is already tens of times greater.
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Firmware and configuration
The configuration is quite simple, since, even without having read the instruction manual, as soon as you open the browser from any computer connected to the router, a wizard appears that guides us through the connection to our old router (in bridge mode). if possible) or cable modem, administrator password settings, and wireless security settings.
We will not go into details in this process, since in most cases the most complicated step is to configure our old router as a cable modem (for which we must refer to its manual, to the technical support of our ISP or, in most cases, to specialized forums and sites). We have most of the improvements that have been gradually included in the firmware of previous models, such as for example support for custom VLANs, marking the option "special requirement of the ISP", that is, that we can use the router directly to connect For example, to the fiber optic internet offered by Movistar, without the need to install DD-WRT as it had to be done previously. It can also be used to service the image decoder, although we anticipate that the configuration is not at all easy, making it highly recommended to use one of the many tutorials that are in the specialized forums.
The firmware once the configuration is complete is very similar to the one that already surprised us in the RT-AC68U, complete and intuitive. Some new features are appreciated, such as the CPU usage screen in the first view of the router. Although we are facing a fairly advanced firmware version, with almost all the features already common in AsusWRT (OpenVPN, Dual WAN, etc.), the router is really recent, and throughout these tests we had some problems accessing the configuration that They were solved by resetting the router to default values. As we said previously, the stability is good, so we trust that it is a sporadic problem that will undoubtedly be solved in the following reviews.
News compared to the RT-AC68U
In the absence of DD-WRT support, in this section we will focus on the firmware options that are, at least for now, exclusive to this model.
The most important improvement is probably the Adaptive CdS (QoS) inclusion, which uses Trendmicro technology to inspect not only the packet header, but also its content, supposedly resulting in an algorithm much more effective than the limited QoS we saw in Previous routers, which only allowed filtering by protocol and size.
More security-oriented functions are also present, such as blocking internet access from a device on our network if the router detects that it is infected by malware and sending packets.
These new features, which also use Trendmicro's Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), demand a lot of CPU, so we see a very good option that they have started to include them in this router. Technically, it would be possible to port them to old devices, such as the RT-AC68U, although it is unknown if Asus has plans to do so at any time. Older devices, such as the RT-AC66U, given the limited MIPS processor, are unfortunately even out of the possibility of receiving these new features, the hardware is beginning to be somewhat old given the speed that the world of routers.
Overclocking
As many of us already speculated, by sharing SoC and most of the firmware code with its predecessor, overclocking this router is very simple by following steps similar to those mentioned in the RT-AC68U review.
For curious users, and as always, at your own risk (and monitoring the temperatures), we have attached the necessary commands to adjust the RT-AC87U processor to 1200mhz (compared to 1000 in stock). We repeat that in network equipment these practices are not especially recommended, especially if we value stability. Also, going too high on either of these two numbers can lead to a useless router, which of course will not be covered under warranty.
Firstly, we enable telnet access from the Administration - System panel of the web interface. We restart the router, and we connect via telnet (using, for example, the PuTTY program) with our administrator username and password.
The screenshot shows the values of the RT-AC68U, in the router that we are dealing with the stock values are 1000, 800 (CPU / RAM respectively), so what we must enter for an overclock of 20% is the following:
nvram set clkfreq = 1200, 800 nvram commit reboot
nvram set clkfreq = 1000, 800 nvram commit reboot
conclusion
It is difficult not to have conflicting feelings when testing this router. On the one hand it is globally the best router we have tested to date, on the other, with the slight drops in Wi-Fi performance compared to the AC68U, I would not recommend its purchase until we see how it performs with 4 × 4 clients that take full advantage of it.
The improvements in the internal components we liked a lot, it is placed again in the first line in terms of hardware with the BCM4709A processor and the ram at 800mhz, and it shows it by significantly increasing the performance with external storage. The innovations, such as the adaptive QoS that reviews the content of the packages, are really promising, although these innovations really highlight major absences of excellent firmware such as repeater mode. For a newly launched router I wouldn't say firmware is anything bad, but neither stability nor features live up to its predecessors. That DD-WRT still doesn't support the Quantenna chips doesn't help overshadow this snag either.
For the rest, it is a really complete product and without any lack to highlight. The performance is very good even limited to 3 × 3 clients, the MU-MIMO (Multi-User MIMO, to take advantage of the 4 simultaneous streams with several clients that use fewer streams) is not yet supported by the firmware but according to Asus there is not much left.
That it can only be supported horizontally is a small drawback, in fact I would say that it is easier to place a vertical router like the RT-AC68U, although it takes up more visual space. The LEDs can be turned off, as in the previous model. The price is in a fairly high range, with about € 215-230, however given the range and choice of components it is not exaggerated, especially when we consider that we are paying for the novelty of having the first AC2400 router. Thinking about the future and trusting in the good work of Asus and Quantenna, it can be a good purchase if we want to be at the forefront. Personally, thinking of the safe present and not the desirable future, I see much better value / price for the RT-AC68U.
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ADVANTAGE |
DISADVANTAGES |
| + EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE | - ABSENCE OF THE REPEATER MODE EVEN IN THE LATEST FIRMWARE. |
| + ARM DUAL CORE @ 1GHZ PROCESSOR, 256MB RAM TO 800MHZ. IMPROVEMENTS IN HARDWARE HAVE IMPROVED USB3.0 PERFORMANCE CONSIDERABLY | - THERE ARE STILL NO AC 4X4 CUSTOMERS WHO CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF EVERYTHING THIS ROUTER CAN GIVE. WITH CURRENT EQUIPMENT (3X3) PERFORMANCE SOME LESS THAN THE EXCELLENT RT-AC68U WHICH IT REPLACES |
| + DOUBLE BAND 2.4 / 5GHZ AND USB 3.0 PORT | |
| + FIRMWARE ASUSWRT IN CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT, ALTHOUGH NOT SO POLISHED AS IN ROUTERS WITH MORE TIME IN THE MARKET | |
| + THE NEW ADAPTIVE QoS, WHICH MAINTAINS AT LEAST THE FIRST LEVEL OF ACCELERATION BY HARDWARE | |
| + POSSIBILITY TO TURN OFF THE LEDS |
Waiting to have a 4 × 4 client to see everything that this router can give, with the remarkable current results in 3 × 3 mode, the professional review team awards him the gold medal
RT-AC87U
5Ghz performance
2.4Ghz performance
Scope
Firmware and extras
Price
SoC performance
9/10
A very promising router, in a few months it will take full advantage.
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