ASUS ZenWiFi AX Whole-Home Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System(XT8
ASUS ZenWiFi AX Whole-Home Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System(XT8), Coverage Up to 5500 sq ft or 510 m or 6+ Rooms, 6.6 Gbps WiFi, 3 SSIDs, 2.5G Port, White
ZenWiFi
ZenWiFi AX (XT8) is a whole-home mesh WiFi system that combines extremely fast and stable wireless networking performance with simple configuration and elegant design.
Whole-home Coverage High speed Stable WiFi.
The ZenWiFi AX system comes with two ASUS AX6600 WiFi 6 routers that together cover up to 510 Sq. m. or approximately six rooms.
WiFi 6 True 8K Streaming
ZenWiFi AX provides 160MHz bandwidth and 1024-QAM for dramatically faster wireless connections. With a total networking speed of 6600 Mbps.
AiMesh Technology
ZenWiFi AX features exclusive AiMesh technology that makes it quick and easy for anyone to set up network, while also giving more experienced users full control of advanced networking features.
Performance Through Engineering
ZenWiFi AX features a quad-core CPU to deliver the full performance potential of WiFi 6.
Make the Internet a Safer Place for Everyone
All your family members, young or old, are exposed to the dangers of internet every single moment they’re online.
| Dimensions: | 7.5 x 16.15 x 16 cm; 716 Grams |
| Model: | ZenWiFi XT8 2 pack WHITE |
| Manufacture: | ASUS |
| Dimensions: | 7.5 x 16.15 x 16 cm; 716 Grams |
Bought it (2 pack) to replace sky modem/router (SR203) for use in Ireland. Found the GUI really easy to navigate and to setup via the ONT box. Connection is very stable throughout the house.
When I upgraded to full fibre broadband at 500Mbps from a 70 Mbps broadband service, I found the speeds I was getting in my garden office no better than before – around 30Mbps – using a TP-Link Deco S4 mesh wifi setup. So I decided to upgrade my mesh wifi so I could get the most out of my new speedy internet service. It was much more difficult than I expected – I tried a couple of supposedly faster TP-Link Deco systems but they were no better, even a Wifi 6 model. And then I tried the ASUS ZenWifi XT9 and suddenly everything got faster – it was a night and day difference. I can now get around 200Mbps in the garden office, and speeds around the house are better too. It’s a brilliant mesh wifi setup and I recommend it. The app gives you good control and the option to change all sorts of settings but it is mostly plug-and-play.
Easy to set up, it has allowed my wi-fi to operate all over the house at the full bandwidth my service provider is supposed to be giving me. Using Wi-fi six it is performing much better than my previous mesh, which only gave me half the bandwidth this provides.
I have struggled for years with WiFi not covering our home. Dead spots throughout.
I have tried extenders and repeaters.
But this mesh set up was easy. And seems to work with good coverage.
Positives:
+UNII4 dedicated Backhaul which is superior to normal 5ghz backhaul.
+Security included without having to pay a subscription.
+VPN options – lots of them including a very easy-to-use “Instant Guard” option which makes it easy to tunnel traffic through my home internet in a few clicks.
+App is decent and works well in and out of the house.
+web interface for advanced options, unlike some providers.
Negatives:
-ethernet speed to my main PC is not reaching a maximum for some reason, which may be due to the options I am using. (hence the 4 stars instead of 5)
-Only 1 2.5gig port which means if I were to upgrade to a higher package in the future, my ethernet speed would be limited to 1gig only.
-ASUS firmware can be buggy at launch. Have to research before updating – not safe to allow auto-update. OK for intermediate/advanced users but not beginners.
After trying quite a few wifi routers with mixed results – including the Eero Pro 6 3-pack and TP-Link X95, I have finally settled on the ASUS XT9. It has so far given me a stable wifi connection with excellent coverage from the front of the house all the way to most of my medium-sized garden.
The backhaul UNII4 “5.9ghz” channel is working really well and gives an impressive signal despite there being 3 thick brick walls and many metal appliances between the main router and the node. No other router managed the same speed without dropping the connection. The Asus app/webpage says that the connection is “OK” – the TP Links could only manage a Poor in the exact same locations, and the Eeros worked but gave me a fraction of the speed.
There are too many features to list here, but the main highlights are the included security features (Eero and TP-Link make you pay for this), Many VPN options including easy and more advanced ones. There is also a decent app alongside a very in-depth web page option to configure and fiddle with the router.
However, there are some negative points as well. Namely, only one 2.5 gb port on each node, and also the ethernet speed while connecting my PC to the router is not even reaching the max of 1 gb for some odd reason. This may be due to a config option, but I am not sure yet. I will have to learn to live with this and would rather have a stable connection over a super fast one.
Also, ASUS firmware is famously buggy so I have had to disable auto-update. I would recommend everyone to do this as soon as they get it and research the update before applying it to avoid major issues.
Other than this, I am very happy with my XT9 set. Hope to get many more years of use out of it.
TLDR: an excellent feature-packed router that has finally given me a stable wifi connection throughout the house.
Used as an upgrade from Virgin Hub/Wifi Pods. Much better coverage and stability across the house, speed greatly improved. Subtle aesthetic compared to a lot of other options. User-friendly and straightforward app. Worth the premium.
Excellent piece of kit but needs to updated and maintained. Occasionally loses high speed wifi backhaul that a power cycle fixes. Software excellent but remote access poorly implemented. I bought a 2 pack and a single, I needed more cover and supplemented with another 2 pack – they offer excellent cover in an old victorian house.
Bought a long time ago (almost 2 years already?). I had some problems with stability on some firmware when you touch too much advanced settings, AND activate the DoS and the parental controls and the the traffic analyser and QOS app Analysis and you forgot that have them activated, probably because the memory/emulated storage get full.
I could get around 900Mbps on most of the places. I use it mainly to link the cable broadband at our bedroom (that I could not move) with my office on the upper floor on the right, through thick walls and I have steady more than 2Gbps backhaul with 160Mhz bandwith on the latest firmware (-60dbm).
DO NOT MIX with inferior mesh systems such as the XD4 that has no dedicated backhaul since either it will use the 2.4Ghz for its backhaul, or the 5Ghz with low throuput because it will share with backhaul and clients, or will use the upper range and the clients will not use the 5Ghz.
But I sucessfully added the XT9 to replace the XDR4 and put it as my “main” router having currently the XT9 + 2xXT8 working flawless
I have a Virgin Media Hub 3, located in the lounge downstairs of a 2 storey 3 bedroom house. I have an office upstairs (I mostly work from home) and was getting relatively poor WiFi speeds – I’m on Virgin’s M350 plan, which gives a theoretical 350Mbps download speed and 36Mbps upload speed. With my laptop in the lounge, I was was getting a little over 300Mbps download speed and 36Mbps upload speed over WiFi, but upstairs in my office was only getting about 80Mbps downloads (though was able to get around 36Mbps upload speed).
With the ZenWifi XT9 pair setup (which was very easy using the dedicated app, once I’d put my Hub 3 into “Modem Mode”), with one in the lounge and one in the corridor at top of the stairs, I’m now able to get 392Mbps(!) download speed and 37Mbps upload speed over WiFi when my laptop is in the upstairs office, even with the door shut.
The units themselves look smart and discrete (and you can even turn off the status leds, if desired) and the mobile app has a modern design, is easy to use and provides loads of options. Updating the firmware was straightforward.
From what I’ve read, if the going for a Mesh setup with Wireless backhaul (i.e. you’re not connecting the Mesh units with ethernet cable), you’re actually best going with a triband Mesh Wifi 6, rather than Wifi 6E setup (i.e. no 6Ghz band), as there’s really no benefit – can be worse in fact, as the 6Ghz band has shorter range and struggles with thick brick/concrete walls (like we often have in the UK), although can notionally be faster.
The Zen Wifi XT9 (which is triple band and Wifi 6) has 3 bands – 2.6Gz, 5Ghz (1) and 5Ghz (2) and uses the 5Ghz (2) band exclusively for the Backhaul (i.e. not shared with your other devices). The XT9 also has 160Hz bandwidth on both the 5Ghz bands. The slightly cheaper older XT8 only has the 160Hz on the 5Ghz (S) Backhaul band, is 80Hz max on the 5Ghz (1) band and a slightly slower CPU (only 1.5 Ghz quadcore vs 1.7Ghz quad core. Also the XT9 has Google Assistant support (as well as Alexa), whereas the XT8 only has Alexa support. The XT9 also supports the following additional Wireless security standards compared to the XT8 – WPA-Enterprise, WPA2-Enterprise, WPA3, WPA3-PSK, WPS.
Highly recommended all round!
Great product with lots of added features in the web GUI. No dropouts to date, rock solid signal. will definitely buy another if expanding the mesh system.
Got these to replace my existing single router. I wish I had done it sooner. This mesh system is very impressive. Really happy with it. Lightning fast and fantastic coverage. Well worth the price. The setup was so simple. No messing about. Download the app and follow the instructions. Overall fantastic product.
..Asus is really good bit of kit. Nice and easy to set up. Easily attached my 11 pieces of kit. They all work better. Even my temperamental Ring door bell is working well.
This replaces 5 old google Wi-Fi devices, coverage in the house is astonishing for this old Victorian 4 bed with only two units. I thought I would need 3 devices, and possible a wired back haul but no, with just two and not wired back haul these are blazingly fast in every room. My gym, for example, used to get 5mbps (I have 700mbps broadband), with this I get 250Mbps! Every room is 10 times faster than google or better. I tried a TP-link competitor device set, that was just as fast as these bit fiddly to set up and glitches a lot. This ASUs set is solid as a rock, I am truest astonished at how good they are, 100% recommend.
After two weeks of use I am very pleased with this new system. I bought a two unit pack, plus one additional unit, to replace a flaky Linksys Velop tri-band setup. My stone terraced house is between two others which have been converted to flats, so the WiFi spectrum is quite crowded and my old system failed to hold a manually set channel, and was constantly hunting for a ‘better’ signal with frequent drops in speed. This only became a problem after neighbours switched to Virgin Broadband and changed their routers.
These new units have similar range, and i can set all three to use the same channel and they stay on that chosen channel. Now we do not have frequent channel hopping for my own, and neighbouring, networks. I have strong coverage across three floors and into the extension – with some solid walls and some lath and plaster walls, with full speed throughout the main house and around a 30% speed drop in the extension and garage.
Setup was simple once my telephone connected to the first unit, I then powered up the additional units when prompted in the app, and in around six minutes they were all linked together and ready to place where needed. Signal strength stabilised quite quickly in the new locations.
The AI Protection feature has already protected one user from malicious site visits and I could quickly and easily activate parental controls for devices used by visiting grandsons. Parental controls vary by age group, and devices can be grouped for easy admin. Almost all features can be set in the phone app, with slightly different options in the web interface, and it was easy to set up using my phone, with the website only needed to refine some settings for connected storage.
Got these and installed today. Set up process was very easy. Make sure you use the phone app as it gives you step by step instructions.
My only gripe is I ordered white, and like a lot of people we have white walls and white skirting boards, but guess what, I got the white routers but with BLACK cables. What a shame.
Apart from that, all good and I would recommend. Signal is strong throughout a large house plus in the garden.
I have a Virgin 600mbps connection through their Hub 3. When hardwired into the router, it actually pulls about 630mbps, though. I’ve attached a pic of a spreadsheet I made testing the X95 against the XT8, so this really speaks for itself. This test was run on an iPhone 12, but I did the same testing with my laptop and had similar results.
The main X95 node connected to my modem works more or less as well as the XT8- I had similar download/upload speeds on the ground floor with both platforms. However, the X95 really falls down on how poorly nodes elsewhere in the house connect to one another. I could always get wifi on the 1st floor, but the X95 auxilliary node had a self-proclaimed “moderate” connection to the main node, while the XT8 told me it had a strong connection between nodes. The wifi speeds in my daughter’s room very clearly show how the X95’s poor node connection translates into lackluster performance. The XT8 absolutely obliterates it!
I find the TP-Link Deco app to be a bit more user friendly and responsive than the ASUS app, but otherwise that’s about the only place the X95 shines over the XT8. However, the ASUS app is significantly more configurable than the Deco app, as the former lets you tweak pretty much every setting on the planet, while the latter doesn’t let you change anything. I haven’t even taken time to fine tune the XT8 yet, so it probably could have even better performance if I played with some settings.
In the Black Friday sale, a two-node XT8 system will run you 320, which is 130 LESS than the X95. Even if performance were equal, the XT8 would still be a better buy. I really wanted to like the X95, but I just can’t recommend it at its current price. It’s not a terrible system by any means, but there are comparable (and better) options out there for much less money.
This seemed like a quality product as soon as I opened the box these pair of XT8’s looked very modern with the gold logo and a nice LED indication light, Very happy.
As the title states These XT8’s provide great Wi-Fi coverage for my home/front/rear garden and exceptional speed when paired with my Asus RT-AX89X for complete home Wi-Fi and backhaul solution.
These is built in Security/IDS/lots of extra features and settings.
These can also work on a separate 5Ghz channel if you do not have the physical ethernet cable runs from the XT8 point to XT8 point to enable backhaul you can still use its Wifi reception to connect up the mesh wifi for very good coverage.
In total we have around 50 devices connected up and running quite happily on this network
ASUS do release firmware when feature updates or security releases are required. Also (Im not 100% sure) you can run Merlin’s FW on this XT8’s which is pretty cool as Merlin makes some very useful features available to those who want that extra kind of thing.
Very happy Its a shame its not WIFI 6E but all in all Very good product/Support/Information/ Fairly reasonable price/Solid products from ASUS as always!
Bought a pair of these in white, they blend in with my IKEA white units and I now have coverage around the house.
House is a 1930’s internal brick walls and manages to send a signal through the walls. I’ve placed one of them upstairs at the front of the house.
Not yet played around with all the settings but there’s a lot you can change in the router settings. Or just plug it in.. update the firmware then link them together.. all very straight forward and can then be left alone. Once updated and linked I have not needed to reboot/touch them.
Access via pc or app is easy. Full security with lots of options This knocks my old netgear nighthawk out the park.
Only down side is it only has 4 Ethernet ports on the rear and you need to use one of them to connect my virgin router.
Wireless speeds in same room are around 450-500mb. Upstairs at the back of the house I’m getting around 340mb. That’s with virgin m500. With my PC downstairs plugged into it in am getting 540mb. Lots of units connected to it no problem what so ever. Very happy with my purchase and it’s above and beyond what I need.. but at least it’s future proofed and has all settings I could think I’ll ever need.
Very happy.
As you’d expect the wifi strength, coverage and speeds are excellent but there are some downsides not mentioned here.
The configuration menu’s (for both the mobile app and web gui) are terrible, not user friendly at all. For example, the list of connected devices is a non alphabetical list which changes when it refreshes and there is no way to sort it to show devices actively using the wifi.
Renaming a device to a friendly name in the mobile app doesn’t seem to change it when viewing the list of devices in the web gui.
Also, if you hardwire the 2 nodes it sometimes showed wireless devices that are connected to the 2nd node as wired.
The biggest failure (and the reason I returned it) was the fact that any older device, not wifi5 or 6 capable, seemed to have terrible trouble connecting. I had numerous older devices (Squeezebox Radio’s and PC’s with old wifi cards in) couldn’t see the wifi network at all. Easy to say “just upgrade” but when they all worked perfectly on your old mesh wifi network it’s hard to accept this newer one is an improvement in this scenario.
I found the instructions a bit feeble and struggled initially to set it up (especially as I wanted to keep the IP range I used on my old routers to avoid re-configuring every device). A couple of hours later though and it was setup beautifully and has worked flawlessly now for 2 months.
I have 2 units, both downstairs in opposite corners of my 4 bed house and the WiFi signal is strong in all rooms on both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. I use Ethernet back haul and therefore can use the 3rd band for WiFi – oddly the 3rd band gives faster performance than the other 5 Ghz band – so I save that for my favourite devices.
My Virgin Hub 4 is in modem mode and I get 924 Mbps (D) / 50 Mbps (U) speeds directly from the routers and typically get between 250-600 Mbps (D) / 50 Mbps (U) from connected clients (laptops and phones).
The router web portal is well designed and has lots of features. I have successfully configured port forwarding, parental controls, etc. I’m yet to use the Alexa and IFTTT features. Easy to backup router settings.
In summary – I’m very happy with the Asus ZenWiFi AX. Very good coverage – no more black spots in my typical UK 4 bed house. Reliable and plenty of standard features. Would buy again.
I have Sky FTTP via the usual Openreach ONT, and the Sky router was excellent on ethernet (1.2Gbps) but not so hot on Wi-Fi (150-250Mbps).
So I plumped for the ASUS XT8 following the reading of several reviews. I set it up in router mode connected directly to the ONT, rather than as an access point from the Sky router. I set the DHCP option 61 for Sky, and bingo – job done. 1.2Gbps on Ethernet and 770Mbps+ on Wi-Fi. Ensure the Tri-band setting is used for maximum Wi-Fi speed.
Easily covers my three bed house, would probably do a much larger house too. The DHCP 61 key is as follows (accessible within the WAN section of the GUI via the router’s IP address on any browser)….
anything@skydsl|anything
As long as you use that key (importantly with the ‘pipe’ symbol after ‘skydsl’) it’ll work perfectly. You can use that precise key if you wish.
Anyhoo, a cracking router. I also purchased the matching wall mount which allowed me to position the router in the dead centre of the house.
The accompanying app is a little shaky in that it can quit for seemingly no reason, but it does the job for a quick overview. Far better to use the IP GUI via Ethernet for any settings changes.
Worth every penny of the price. Nice and compact, looks pretty too.
I have this set up in my living room in a 4-bed detached. It fully replaced my BT Smart Hub 2 (with a single complete wi-fi disc.) I initially wanted a mesh system to replace the BT setup since my direct connection to the BTSH2 was pretty bad from my desktop PC (it sits in the further part of my home.) I wanted a reasonable future proof replacement and my options were the Eero, Netgear Orbi or TPLink Deco. After countless reviews I ended up with the XT8 as it seems to provide the best speeds over a longer distance. Surprisingly (or not?) I get better speeds connecting directly to this router (signal shows 4 of 5 bars) as opposed connecting to the BT disc (previously 5 of 5 bars) which was sitting in the bedroom directly above the living room which hosts the SH2.
Pros –
Much faster and more consistent wifi than the standard BT router. I’ve attached a speed test I did to the furthest area inside my home.
Better signal – no extenders or additional ‘wifi discs’ needed
Guest network can be used if needed
AiProtection included with no subscription required
Parental controls (can be set against websites/apps/or specific devices). Time scheduling is also possible
Built in speed test (with history) to show what speeds are going directly to the router. Useful to show your service provider if you aren’t getting expected speeds.
Built in VPN if needed
IOS/Android app can be used to manage and monitor the network
USB port supports devices such as printers and hard drives, making them available across the entire network
Cons –
None at the moment, it does exactly what I need. Current uptime in the log is showing 28 days – so far I have not rebooted this router since updating the firmware the day it was received.
I was struggling to get a decent internet connection while I worked and provided all you can eat Candy Crush, Minecraft, Orange County House Wives and gawd knows what else being streamed, downloaded or switched on and forgotten about in this house until I found my precious!
Now it takes a little journey to setup but what you want to do is Broadcast two different WIFI signals from this box of magic. You put the orcs, trolls and Nazgul all on one of the WIFIs and then you just put yourself on the other. You basically want to set it up so that you’re never on the same channel or band. A quick Google will show you how to do this.
Then you just sit on the other WIFI all to your self never having to worry about competition for bandwidth.
The software that ships with this piece of kit is no joke either. You’re free to take your evil to the next level by throttling individual devices, dropping them off the network ( not that you care as you have your own ) or even what content the devices can access. It’s amazing what leverage you have when in control of the bandwidth folks!
1 ping to rule them all! Buy it folks, you’re not just buying bandwidth – your buying power!
Big Popa P ou
Right, onto the main review. This router and node kit is fantastic! Powerful, fast and full of useful features from an easy to use App (Android and iOS both available FOC) or the web GUI. Features include advanced IPS and gateway antivirus (provided by Trend Micro), full VPN server, excellent QoS and a host of other features for the advanced user.
Setup was a breeze via the iOS app and from unboxing to fully configured mesh WiFi took less than 10 minutes. Please note however that the WAN port is presented as upto 2.5Gb Ethernet so you will need a Modem if you use VDSL/FTTC. I have a DrayTek Vigor 130 in my setup but the white OpenReach modems will be just as good for 99% of users.
So far it has been rock solid and not missed a beat. There are some really cool features built in including a Speedtest.net plugin to test directly on the router (so you don’t have the drop between router and client) l, also a real-time traffic monitor lets you see how much bandwidth each device on your network is using in real time (great for fault finding) the VPN server works flawlessly as does the endpoint for Site-to-Site VPN.
This is a great router system for both standard and advanced home users and would definitely recommend!
Bought this product to extend an existing Asus zen WiFi to the garden office.
Conected as an additional node with out any difficulty.
It is now placed in the office and working as expected
WiFi connects and I can now use a wired connection
Before the additional node
Poor and unstable WiFi connection and a 50 mb home plug connection
Now a strong stable WiFi connection and a 280 mb wired connection
My set up is not unique and really wanted a strong wired connection
To those who say that this product is rubbish and does not work :
To set it up you need to follow the Asus instructions
The connection is stable but needs carefully placing of the nodes
If you are experiencing a weak connection you may need to reposition a node or as in my case due to distance and a solid brick wall needed an additional node
You Also need to be careful if changing settings
For example I changed the dpch server to192. 168.0.1
This apparently conflicted with the original virgin media dhcp setting on some work from home devices causing a no Internet connection error
Switched it to a different ip address and no probs sence
So the routers work
Be careful with the initial set up
Be careful if you change settings
Was uncertain if the Asus mesh router would bring a significant improvement to my previous ageing high-end Asus AC router. Lots of mixed reviews seem to be posted for all the main router brands, but luckily for me so far I’ve had no issues yet. The WiFi coverage has been a significant improvement over my old router and after a few weeks running I’ve had no stability issues. I’ve not really tested for speed improvement on the local LAN and since I dropped my internet speed to 100Mbps to save money on greater bandwidth not needed by me very often, the WiFi and Ethernet speeds to the router exceed my internet connection speed easily.
A few months in now and have had no issues with speed or connection. Has been very stable and no reboots required.
Waited a few weeks to write this review and have to say I’m really pleased with the purchase.
It was really easy to set up, no major issues and I have a moderately sophisticated set up, multiple SSIDs, guest network, VLANS, etc.
Miles easier for setting fixed IP addresses to devices than my previous single router Netgear.
I set one up in the living room and one in the loft with a straight line of around 15m I’d say through 4 walls / ceilings and the whole house is now getting 400-500 Mb/s off a BT 500 service plan. Approx. 50 smart devices and at any one time 1-3 4k or HD streams and downloading going on with barely a noticeable dip in performance.
Best point for me though, I am getting 30Mb/s in the non-connected garage where I got nothing before.
So have managed to replace a four node powerline system, 1 in the garage and two in bedrooms that had brick walls surrounding them that were very poor for wifi before.
The app IMHO is miles better than the Netgear with more functionality and I really only had to switch to the web interface 2-3 times for the more advanced features I needed. For a typical home that just wants to setup and go I think the app is probably all you’d need.
Very pleased no hesitation in recommending this even at this high price.
As I upgraded to Virgins 1gig broadband, I needed to upgrade my previous AMPLIFI HD mesh system to fully utilise the upgraded speed. Our house is fairly large and have over 52 devices connected to the router ( WiFi & Ethernet) the old mesh system was for example giving me speeds up to 200 mbps via 5ghz which ok is not too bad but like I said if you have 1019gig speed coming into your router, you want to make the most of it. I knew when I upgraded that the new mesh system had to be tri band and have WiFi 6 connectivity to future proof. I did my research and settled on the ASUS purchase. As the price tag of 592 for 3 nodes is quite high, I thought let me purchase and if the difference is noticeable then I would keep, if not then I would return. Received package and set up was done within a few mins. My tip is to separate out each channel (2.4ghz, 5ghz & 5.2 ghz) have smart features off and when connecting all the nodes initially, have them close by and then move to desired location. I ran the same test speed on the same device, location etc and instead of 200mbps, I was now getting around 700mbps! Safe to say after fully configuring and re linking all devices to the mesh system that I am keeping the system and I cannot highly recommend it enough. The set up is a breeze and it’s a big investment however it should keep for a long time and worth it!
I live in a fairly large house with thick walls and heavy concrete slab between the floors
(>4,000 SQ.ft.). Previously had a draytek firewall with 4 access points, patchy, not completely satisfactory. APs stopped receiving firmware update so needed to replace. Suitable replacement draytek system with wifi6 would have cost in excess of 1,500 ( house wired with CAT6, i installed previous system and found the process not user friendly. I was not eager to repeat).
Replaced with 3 of these. Setup very easy through app. Straightforward to modify setting through app or web GUI. My skills in this regard are overall very modest, general knowledge only. I can follow instructions, that’s about it.
Setup<30 minutes, more from me taking my time than anything else. Slight delay in installing initial firmware update, but not a big deal. "Router" in main living room, connected to ISP router via switch in garage (previous cabling installed by prior owner, not a good place for useful wifi coverage). I expected to need to use an Ethernet backhaul, but was delighted to find that it was not in any way required. Wireless 5-GHz-2 backhaul more than adequate. You might need to use wired connection if you have>500Mbps connection and connection speed is absolutely crucial in all parts of your house, otherwise it’s unlikely. 1 node in study at front of house, second in central position upstairs. The house is bathed in stable wifi with nearly no speed difference compared to direct Ethernet connection to ISP router. In addition, the garden has a stable wifi connection throughout. Good quality connection to approx 30 metres from any node through walls.
Included security software more than adequate for the vast majority of home users.
Some of the difficulties mentioned by other users could be due to prior firmware versions, which according to problems mentioned ASUS users forums may have introduced some issues. Current version (3.0.0.4.386_45934) seems stable without major issues.
I would recommend without hesitation, especially if you have a house with internal architectural “complexities”. Much easier than using a standard firewall with wired access points, also much cheaper. Expensive by compared to other available mesh systems for sure, but worth it.
Setup was a breeze, unplugged the old router, connected these and within around 6-7 minutes was up and running (the longest part was the firmware update). Everything managed through the app and the good thing was it was the same app as the previous Asus router.
These XT8s extended the coverage of WiFi significantly around the house (3 bed semi). Not only that, speeds are a lot more consistent. The original Asus router speeds dipped a little as expected depending on where you were. The XT8s are expensive (I purchased these when they were on offer but still). However, the difference these make is unreal.
As a side note, I still could not get a steady connection to the garage at the rear of the house which was frustrating (outside was weak but inside would drop). I eventually took the hit and purchased the smaller XD4s to supplement the XT8. Not only did they pair within minutes with the XT8s, the signal now to the garage is incredible. With more and more emphasis on wireless outdoor cameras etc. yes this was an expensive outlay but definitely worth it in my opinion in the long run. Hope this helps
Living in an older house with all brick walls the Virgin Hub 3’s wifi I was using before was pretty terrible. I could get close to 200 mbs over WiFi if stood next to the hub which is in the middle of the house. The kitchen and lounge frequently had no connection or was very slow, maybe 1 mbs. The back rooms and upstairs had no connection at all. Coupled with this, the virgin hub’s WiFi would just drop out for no reason, sometimes multiple times a day. Virgin is the only ISP providing fast broadband in the rural area where I live so I had to find a way to make it work.
I was kind of getting by with some power line extenders, but they were pretty flakey, and could not be trusted for work etc.
I bought a 2 pack of these, and crikey they are unbelievable. 10 mins to set up and I now have 220 Mbps in every room in the house and have had zero drop outs since I got them. Moving around the house works seemlessly, and I’ve had no issues when going from one router to the other. Bandwidth is amazing with many devices connecting simultaneously.
I don’t know how they do it, but it’s like magic. It’s a bit of a cost outlay, but already proving to be so worth it.
Virgin will try and sell you their own mesh wifi devices, and will charge you a monthly fee for the privilege, but I can’t imagine they will come close to these, plus I’ll have these ready to go if I switch ISP in the future.
From my experience, if you are struggling with WiFi coverage / reliability, these will change everything and having super fast WiFi everywhere just becomes the norm.
We used to have an Orbi mesh system, and after that I had purchased the Netgear Nighthawk..
Both of them had their hiccups, the nighthawk being a royal pain to set up and had constant stability problems.
I’ve had the ASUS XT-8 for nearly 2 months now and I can say i’m super impressed.
We have Ethernet ports in some rooms in our ~100 sq m apartment so I decided to set these up in AP mode. One on either side of the apartment (As the bedrooms are one end and living/kitchen the other side – the middle has a hall, toilet and storage areas so no need for great Wifi coverage – but it’s still there). I believe I have at least 30 devices connected at any given time and I rarely ever notice a drop in performance or stability. Devices roam freely between the two nodes and there is not a single blind spot in the apartment.
I must say I was weary because it had one less node, but the performance and range seem better than the 3-node nighthawk!
The only reason I wrote this review was because yesterday my Girlfriend unplugged one of the two nodes by mistake and it was the first time i saw less than full bars on the wifi signal since we bought the ASUS. In fact, it was the first time since buying them that I had a single problem or had to restart or, well, do anything to be honest.
At least, for my property size and needs – unbelievably great!
We have a virgin hub 3.0 500mbps package and use 20+ wifi/smart devices around the house. We were experiencing constant cut outs in internet and our wifi wouldn’t reach the far ends of the house (3 bed house), and also we wouldn’t get anywhere near the broadband speed we paid for. We had virgin engineers out two times, they gave us wifi extenders for free but nothing seemed to help and we just suffered through the wifi cut outs and poor performance on simple things like wifi video calls.
I did a bit of research and came to realise that the virgin provided router is too simple to deal with the number of devices we relied on for wifi and that could be the reason for the cut outs in internet and slow network, let alone the poor wifi range, so i decided to look into buying a good router. After a lot of research i came decided on the Asus ZenWifi TX8 as it was amongst the top in all reviews with free parental control and no need for subscriptions and a more “reasonable” albeit still expensive price, and I am glad I did!
Setup was very simple, logged on to my virgin hub and switched it to modem mode, disconnected all the ethernet wires from the virgin hub, connected the asus routers as advised and using the asus app (which by the way is very easy to use and i like that you can see the number of devices connected the signal and which node they are connected to and use parental control etc, very nice and easy) and it was all set up and ready to use in no time and im not a techy person or some sort of expert on these things, but had no trouble at all. The handy thing is i named the ssid and pass same as my virgin hub and that helped avoid reconnecting my 20+ devices .
It ticks the boxes on all accounts wifi range (now reaches all far corners of the house including back garden), the speed we are getting is closer to the 500mbps we are paying for (although this is device dependent I believe – on my iphone i get 500mbps but my old laptop only about 200mbps but still better than before) and most importantly we have not experienced any cut outs in internet so far (using for 1 week now), before we’d get a cut out 2-3 times a day!
Overall ecstatic about this purchase, kicking myself for not having done it earlier! Suffered through poor zoom calls and slow/poor connections throughout the whole of lockdown. I can now have video calls with great picture quality and reliable connection. I would definitely recommend.
Theoretically, the Asus ZenWiFi XT8 is tri-band ethernet wireless at 6.6Gbps with a 2.5Gbps WAN ethernet port and three Gbps LAN ports. But within our wireless configuration was 1201Mbps OFDMA 2 antennae manual channel selection 36-64 only, and channel selection restricted in the router interface. And 2402Mbps OFDMA 4 antennae channels 100-140 only, and channel selection restricted in the router interface. And 286.8Mbps on the 2.4Ghz band at 20Mhz channel width but it will support 40Mhz width.
Note: The Asus XT8 does not support 5Ghz band C channels 149 to 161 which is permitted without a license in the UK at 200mW or lower indoors with TPC, and I wish Asus would keep up with the licensing law for wireless in countries, so if you need to use those 5Ghz band C channels don’t buy this router. I don’t know if all Asus wireless routers have the 149 to 161 channel restriction but it should be removed for the UK to 200mW with transmit power control (TPC) or 100mW without it on wireless band C 5Ghz.
Attention is lost in the router interface and it isn’t as good as open-source router interfaces, but I know zero open-source routers that support 802.11ax wifi 6 standards and this is the main reason one would buy this wireless router for future-proofing.
It has a quad-core 1.5Ghz processor, 512MB of random access memory, and six antennae for wireless and is housed in a nice-looking box that stands upright, eg it will keep the wife happy without protruding antennae for they are enclosed in the unit and comes in white or black colour. It has a USB 3.0 port for a 4G dongle or USB storage device as local cloud storage.
The unit runs really cold without generating almost any heat. And it has a 3-year warranty in the UK, but I think it’ll last longer than that with its lack of heat generation.
The radiated power of the 5Ghz DFS band B channels is higher than the restricted power output channels 36 to 64 band A that we noticed with the Asus XT8 router. It absolutely bangs out a signal on 5Ghz between channels 100-140 band B for good area coverage and is the best I’ve seen for a 5Ghz wireless router on these channels. And I suspect it is transmitting more than 200mW for the power is permissible to higher levels, 1W, on DFS band B but most wireless routers don’t do it for simplicity. It would perform beautifully in an area of 25 metres cubed through two brick walls and likely better than that in reality at lower speeds than 200Mbps throughput on 5Ghz band B channels (5Ghz-2).
For 802.11ac clients, the bandwidth would be 866.7Mbps and 1733Mbps respectfully on the 2 and 4 antennae (streams) at 80Mhz, so bear this in mind if you have lots of 802.11ac clients its 256QAM OFDM streams but some 802.11ac clients do support 1024QAM as a none standard modulation for 802.11ac.
The router does support a 160Mhz wide channel on a 5Ghz-2 band (4804Mbps OFDMA) which is reserved for the backhaul wireless mesh if you have more than one unit and it connects as a wireless mesh node(s). And 40Mhz width channel (601Mbps OFDMA 1024QAM) on the 2.4Ghz band. The 2.4Ghz band radiated signal wasn’t as good as other 2.4Ghz wireless routers I’ve seen.
I have no doubt this wireless router mesh would work lovely in a mesh with 2 units for larger 4-6 bedroom houses over 5Ghz in those houses where running ethernet cables is difficult but it was not tested in a wireless mesh setup. But that is where the Asus XT8 excels on the 5Ghz performance on the 5Ghz-2 band B wireless whether reserved for the wireless mesh or wireless clients in its own right as in our case for power, coverage, and throughput.
One of the reasons for obtaining an 802.11ax was for power saving on wireless clients, eg: an iPhone 12 Pro Max, and the battery when on 802.11ax wireless is lasting almost three times as long as when it was and does use 802.11ac standard wireless routers!
If you have only 1 unit or the backhaul is ethernet cabled then all three wireless transceiver bands are available for the wireless clients, and this is the configuration we have in use. We had the channels and bandwidth set to automatic, and it set the 2.4Ghz at 20Mhz width and 5Ghz both bands to 80Mhz width in our environment which is a high population wireless area.
Effectively the maximum theoretical throughput for all the wireless bands at maximum bandwidth 160Mhz (5Ghz-2 Band B), maximum 80Mhz (5Ghz-1 Band A), and 40Mhz (2.4Ghz) is 6.6Gbps for those environments that have the frequency available and the clients, 802.11ax wifi 6, with 1024QAM with little to no wireless interference. But don’t expect to get anywhere near those wireless speeds in real-world environments or the widest width channels on automatic channel width, and the ethernet ports don’t support those speeds.
The Asus XT8 supports 802.11ax and therefore WPA3 security out the box, we have a wireless transceiver, the widest and highest power with 4 antennae on WPA3 AES security, and two 2.4Ghz & 5Ghz transceivers (2 antennae) on WPA2 AES security for clients wireless devices that don’t support WPA3, eg: separate SSIDs. We have an array of some 25 wireless clients or so with some 2.4Ghz only and 802.11ac & 3 * 802.11ax client standard devices and experienced no issues connecting clients to their respective wireless band and security (WPA2/WPA3) and WPS worked flawlessly even with the oldest 2.4Ghz wireless band printer whilst pairing. Over half of the selection of wireless clients we use are Apple equipment.
The quad-core 1.5Ghz processor didn’t seem stressed at all with most of the features enabled including deep packet inspection (DPI) for adaptive QoS and application flow monitoring which is very demanding processor-wise. The Asus adaptive QoS and scheduler are very good.
The wireless router settled on channel 9 (2.4Ghz 20Mhz), channel 40 (5Ghz-1 80Mhz), and channel 112 (5Ghz-2 80Mhz) respectfully for each wireless transceiver after 2 days of operation. It is recommended you leave the router alone and settle on automatic wireless channels for about 4 hours at least before performing throughput speed tests, eg: it takes that time to sort itself out on the best channels.
I did notice that the latency for 802.11ac clients was quite high on the 5Ghz wireless band at around 4ms to 11ms periods. But the latency on 802.11ax wireless clients was quite remarkable at under 2ms and very consistently low with almost zero spikes/peaks, well, to be truthful, I couldn’t get the latency over 2ms to a client on the LAN from wireless on an 802.11ax wireless client with every client wirelessly connected. If you can only use wireless for a gaming console or gaming laptop and it has 802.11ax wireless then that’s the way to go, and I do have a gaming laptop with 802.11ax wireless in use.
In real tests of throughput the Asus XT8 router gave a performance on 2.4Ghz on 802.11ax to iPhone 12 Pro Max 65Mbps with ten or so clients connected with a great deal of interference, and our maximum easily achieved at 220Mbps throughput for our broadband speed on either of the 5Ghz wireless bands under 802.11ax wireless standard with 15 clients or more connected with the test being done on 802.11ac & 802.11ax 80Mhz wide channel; this was throughout our 2 bedroom house. We are pretty sure it will outperform throughput requirements for mosts people on wireless even at 500Mbps or even higher with all tri-bands for clients in a 3 to 4 bedroom house…
At 25 metres from the router through two red solid bricks walls, it achieved a throughput speed of 160Mbps on DFS channel 112 (80Mhz wide), and the whole of the back garden our speeds was maximum for our broadband at 220Mbps throughput through one solid red brick wall with the iPhone 12 802.11ax Pro Max. The wireless router is centrally located in the house on a shelf in the living room and performs best on 5Ghz-2 banging out a signal on DFS band B wireless channels.
The parental control system was a bit of a waste of time in our case, we basically have some guests that visit the house and we wish to restrict their access to less than pleasant social gathering material, eg: very adult and pornographic material! This was not possible by SSIDs but only possible by MAC address by either reject or accept which is pointless in this day and age with rotating MAC addresses for privacy on smartphones. Take note router manufacturers’ parental control needs to restrict access by guest SSIDs and SSID solely reserved for children on wireless as well as fixed MAC address filtering that can of course be spoofed or rotated for privacy by almost anyone, eg: with the SSID the user connects to cannot be spoofed so it’s more full-proof internet filtering for wireless at least and it would put those 9 guest SSIDs available to some use. Fortunately, we have an upstream firewall that does excellent internet filtering, timed and very accurate, and with little chance of bypass.
The DPI, QoS, 2-way IPS, and monitoring use Trend Micro for classifying, prioritizing, filtering for threats, and monitoring respectfully, and those parts are excellently implemented in the firmware. And the Trend Micro service is free for the life of the router. The DNS resolver for the router isn’t the best in the world as it will not support DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS, something that could be easily added for privacy.
The router has 3 types of VPN functionality both in and out, eg: OpenVPN, IPSec VPN, PPTP, and a proprietary Instant Guard Asus VPN. And it can be controlled by an Alexa or IFTTT routine(s).
Firstly, this is a premium price for a good product. The plastic feels a bit cheap but this is compensated with the less intrusive design.
Pros:
Easy set up with Virgin Media in modem mode. One is in the front room, one in the sun room. I don’t experience much loss and approx 210mb across my 4 bed detached.
I also use it with NordVPN through OpenVPN protocol and this was easy to set up for novice like me.
Cons
I tried to do the split set up with 2.4ghz and 5ghz signals as recommended in other review. However this kept dropping the signal on my phone or laptop. I had to turn on/off the WiFi on device to get back on. Having a one signal with combined frequency has resolved this.
Parental controls are good which is main reason why I purchased it. Its easy to switch off all devices for bedtime or restrict certain devices. You can also prioritise devices for when you work from home.
I would have liked another router for upstairs although it doesn’t appear to be an issue.
Fianlly, documentation (or lack thereof) could have been better.
I would buy again.
Purchased to replace a basic (cheap!) dual-band mesh system I’ve been running with for a couple of years which was starting to throw up some issues, particularly regarding slow device handover and Apple HomeKit disconnections and automation failures.
Installation of the ZenWifi with my existing modem/router should have been easy once I connected the supplied ethernet cable to my existing modem/router. However after almost 4 hours of multiple resets, retries with iPhone app, connecting with laptop, trying different setup configurations, the ZenWifi units would just not connect to the internet. At this point I had the packaging all ready for a return when I thought ‘one more try’ but, this time, I disconnected the SUPPLIED ethernet cable connecting the master unit to my TP-Link modem router and used an old one of my own – bingo! – had the units setup and connected in a couple of minutes. Moral of this story is to never fully trust a connecting cable supplied with the product!
The difference compared to my old setup is phenomenal. Full internet speed via wifi with all iOS and MacOS devices everywhere in the house, including the back garden, despite the fact that the house is 18th Century with 2 foot thick walls. All IoT devices work flawlessly. Wireless file transfer to my NAS is 4 to 5 times faster that with the old mesh system. Stability seems as solid as a rock. Haven’t even bothered to ‘tweak’ any settings as the default out of the box configuration seems to work just fine – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!. In saying that the configuration options are plentiful, either accessed via the phone app or the web interface.
In summary, although relatively expensive, this system is worth every penny if you have a need to bolster your WiFi and have a multitude of devices to connect, including some with WiFi 6. Just be wary of using the supplied ethernet cable if you have setup problems! Highly recommended.
Firstly these are so much better than the XT8s that i tried around 18 months back. On paper there is not much difference between the two but in real life this couldn’t be further from the truth. The XT9s were a breeze to setup and I was up and running in 15 mins. I live in a 950
Sq ft apartment in London with brick walls and found the range and speed to be consistent. There were no black spots. I have a Virgin 500 mbps plans and I got speeds around 250 – 400 depending on my location. No drop outs, however I did find the satellite using the 2.4ghz randomly for wireless backhaul connection. This impacted the overall speed and this was despite me setting 5ghz-2 as a dedicated wireless backhaul band. This happened a number of times and was sorted by scheduling an auto reboot every 24 hours on the app. The app is good you can do loads of tweaking if you want to. The XT9s are a far better choice than the Eero Pros, Deco X90 and X95. Better/consistent performance for lesser money. I got a great deal on these on prime day.
I have given it 4 stars and not 5 as I could not achieve full speed even seated next to the router.
Nice solid mesh system. Not the best of speeds but certainly up there with the best. No problems with WiFi5 clients connecting on a WiFi6 setup. The WiFi backhaul is stable and overall system performance is great. Some clients are not discovered right away even if they are pinging just fine. For example, one NAS on a wired connect came up on the client list right away while another of the same brand and same model, also a wired connect came up on the list of clients after 3 days.
However, one thing the XT8 does not like is any other brand extender being present on the network. It allows the extenders to get connected and stay connected. After a few minutes of random time period, clients connected to the extender do not have internet access. I have tested by setting up the same name SSID with same credentials as well as a different named SSID for the extender. It is as if that traffic to and fro from the clients on the extender is blocked! Basically ASUS is telling you to get additional ASUS nodes ONLY if you wish to extend the WiFI coverage. Therefore you might as well throw away your collection of extenders if you wish to fancy a WiFi6 mesh network brought to you by ASUS. Please note that the extenders cannot be a part of the mesh, and the XT8 want no part of them in any which way.
IMHO ASUS should be upfront and say that they do not permit any other brand extender to be a part of the ASUS WiFI network.
I am an experienced IT pro, so I expected to do a fair bit of customization on this unit. More on that later.
The basics:
Initial setup is pretty easy. The app finds the devices and the node attaches to the master pretty easily as part of the setup. As we are all advised, I updated the firmware during initial install, to get off on the right foot. This went well, except the node had a bit of a meltdown and needed to be manually powered off and restarted, after which everything went well.
One problem I did run into related to power. These things are really hard to find right now. I bought mine from the Amazon UK store, but they were shipped from the EU with EU-style 2-prong plugs. So, I went back to Amazon and bought a pair of EU->UK adapters. Problem solved.
Next came placement. You want to strike the balance between the devices being widely enough separated to cover the whole space, but close enough that they maintain good communication with each other. I am in a 250 year-old set of cottages with 18-inch thick solid stone walls, so this is not a trivial challenge.
Initially, I tried to live with just the Wifi backhaul between the nodes. This was OK but the layout of the property really compromised the signal. (If you click on AIMesh in the control interface – app or web admin page – It will classify the connection OK/Good/Great, so it’s pretty easy).
So, next I tried a hard-wired backhaul using NetGear PowerLine adapters to pipe Gigabit over the house electrical wiring. This improved the backhaul connection considerably. However, the connection is not always really stable and this caused a number of remote mesh node dropouts, with consequent internet disconnection for any clients attached to that node. It also sometimes caused the remote node to lose its mind a bit and need rebooting.
So, eventually, I caved, bought a really long Cat6 ethernet cable and wired them together. The ASUS picked up the connection instantly and connectivity between master/node is excellent. Since I have had this arrangement in place, everything has been super stable and performance excellent. As a bonus, I have been able to mess around with placement, since Cat 6 cables can be really long, and I have been able to find unobtrusive locations for master and node but still get excellent signal coverage.
Now, configuration:
To set the context, here are the things I needed to set up:
1. Custom LAN subnet and DHCP configuration, including many static leases
2. Virtual server port forwarding to Kubernetes and OpenVPN server
3. QoS to keep my son’s gaming habit from overwhelming everybody
4. DoS protection
5. Custom SSL certificate and CA for device management
6. Multiple guest networks
7. Dynamic DNS
I quickly found that I didn’t like the app for managing all of the above. Others with simpler configurations may like it just fine. Or perhaps it’s just that I am too used to the more traditional management UIs using an embedded web server. Anyway, I abandoned the fancy app and HTTP’d directly to the master node (immediately reconfiguring it to HTTPS only) from where I found myself in the excellent, familiar, but subtly expanded web admin interface. Everything an experienced ASUS user would expect to find is exactly where it should be. (I don’t understand why some vendors think it’s a good idea to continually rearrange an established UI.). You will also find new areas to manage things like the mesh. (The Traffic Analyzer is particularly nice – good job ASUS.)
So, in summary, an excellent, capable, powerful mesh router, but you probably want to find a way to leverage the hardwired ethernet backhaul to get all of its potential.
After much research, I decided to spend a bit more to get the latest WiFi 6 mesh technology.
The XT8 set seemed to be a good option for me, as it included 2 mesh points, latest standards, and subscription free parental controls.
My setup is a virgin media SuperHub 3 in modem mode, 500mb connection, and the ASUS routers connected to each other via wireless backhaul.
When connected to the mesh point with an iPhone 12 (so I assume using WiFi 6), I am able to see 520mb+ in speed test apps.
My devices all seem to get really good speeds regardless of where in the property I am, and it has around 30 devices in total connected.
I also use some of the port forwarding etc, which all works great.
The downside to this great kit though is that it can be unstable.
I’ve tried various configurations, but every once in a while it just crashes and disconnects every device. This is not ideal when everyone is so reliant at the moment.
A simple hard reboot solves the issue quickly, but my previous Ubiquity kit just worked consistently without issue.
On balance, the kit is really good, so the stability may be tolerable. But I’m hoping a new firmware will be made available to resolve the root cause.
Waited two weeks for the second one. Thus set up the first one in the meantime so didn’t pair out of the box. The trip point on why the 5 ghz backhaul isn’t used is on the Asus page Google asus support FAQ 1012132
If you have set up the hub with smart connect set off, you have to set it back on with Smart Connect Dual-Band Smart Connect (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) and Band 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Save etc. You do the pairing as per the instructions but toggle the Smart Connect to on if you have turned it off in the meantime by separating the bands.
That triggers the backhaul on the 5ghz-2 band if you dont do that the backhaul wont be enabled on the 5ghz-2 band, backhaul may use the 2.4ghz band. That’s what happened to me, said the signal was weak and was using the 2.4ghz band for backhaul. Didn’t make sense to me says it was showing 800+ on the 5ghz band connection speed on the old router on line of site through a thin wall, across the landing and lounge – the two position points. Toggling changed this to “good” on the aimesh network app map shows this (green line). Bit of classic screwy programming telling you the connection was weak when it wasn’t connected correctly.
You can then change enable smart connect to off thereafter if you want to customise the 2.4Ghz channels. Use 20mhz band with for a upnp renderer so switched this back to off. Kept the SSIDs on the 2.4ghz and 5ghz-1 band as the same. Turned off the broadcast SSID of the 5ghz-2 so it’s invisible… but you don’t need to do that. It is the backhaul band since it moans if you try to rename it to the same as 2.4ghz / 5 ghz-1 telling you the backhaul band must have a different name.
Bit more reading you can also use the backhaul band as well on devices other than backhaul (needs to be enable above as 160mhz when configured above to max out). Reckon best not to use it for devices just keep that for backhaul if you arrnt using wired ethernet to connect the mesh, which is why I hid the SSID. Any wifi 6 devices you could use on that I guess as the lower 5ghz band could get crowed but if you haven’t got any, not an issue.
I also enabled WiFi agile on the 2.4 GHz band. Asus says it works better on your modern internet devices quickly switching nodes. Internet of things devices. Thought this might be better on the Humax eye camera, boiler heater switch and Airstream upnp renderers. I had been watching via the app whether they had been connecting to the logical closest node. Seems about right now. I didn’t tune up the switching parameters on RSSI left those as predefined. Just WiFi agile as described, the smart toggle as described else the backhaul wont connect on the 5ghz-2 channel if you are manually pairing the Mesh routers and using wireless backhaul. I tend to pick my own WiFi channels using InSSIDer rather than use the auto feature. Take up squatter rights on 1, 6 or 11 on the lower bandwidth. Ditto on 5ghz-1. Signal isn’t propagated so far so isn’t an issue. Left the backhaul band 5ghz-2 on auto select.
My 5 ghz tablet I take to bed faithfully changes nodes between the upstairs lounge node and the office hub which serves the bedroom side of the house. The upstairs lounge node serves the downstairs kitchen and dining room. Open balcony affair with a wrap around upstairs lounge, antrim dining room / sun room. Upstairs office hub serves the five bedrooms (Office one) on two floors. Utility room gets the signal from the lounge mostly. So the house divides into two discrete areas. The backhaul 5 ghz top band linking through the office wall across the landing across the lounge to the node. No way you could install Ethernet cable into the office from the lounge without it showing. Had been using power line adaptors for this link and others but too problematic having pinned the issue down to ripples in the power. Get the BT Ethernet internet from the Smarthub2 on the lower floor just below via one BT black disc bought from Amazon into the Asus hub in the office. The BT disc ethernet port at the back is cabled into the Asus hub (both sit on top of a tall Ikea office unit). It was that using a powerline adaptors throu the house wiring that was causing grief with my old Asus tri band 3200 and TP link setup to the office. Basically power line adaptors turned out to be unreliable in the house with frequent glitches, mesh and wireless is better.
All is good now. Think this is where people have issues where they can’t get the backhaul working correctly since its not enabled when they add an aimesh to an existing configured hub. The Asus FAQ above “[Wireless] How to configure the Smart Connect on ASUSWRT?” is the key. Wonky programming…. best described as a feature. So you got to configure that correctly if you manually add a mesh unit unit rather than the two pair out of the box purchase and set up. Think this is why the reviews split into good and bad. The bad reviews trip on getting the backhaul to work correctly since they have manually configured and not stumbled over the secret that they need to toggle smart connect on during the pairing of the Mesh, as per the FAQ referenced for exact parameters, the unit is listed in that FAQ. The good reviews are either not using wireless backhaul or purchased two units together and used the automatic pairing.
Useful tools obviously inSSIDer and Fast.com app.
Footnote.
On use for a month had one instance where the backhaul was triggered to orange on the app rather than green. The original issue. Needed the node switched on and off cleared it. Software reboot didn’t. Two months in all very stable and reliable.
Did an over the air firmware update on both nodes in situ, all ok. Did the original one out of the box on both units before pairing. Originally due to the second unit getting lost in the post configured the white unit destined for the office as the hub. Backed that up. Restored that on the black unit and did a factory reset on the white one, then did the pairing.
The node has a spare Ethernet port which you can also use, giving one aditional Ethernet ports on the node unit, you can use a network switch to give additional ports, use network switches on both units in the lounge and office for traditional Ethernet cabling of devices. The USB port which can be used as a music server is only available on the hub. The other USB port on the node isn’t available for use. Obviously the hub one supports upnp across the mesh.
USB port can also be used with a 4g dongle, did test, works like my old Ac3200. Hopefully BT Openreach is reliable enough not to need to use it.
All in all impressive mesh solution.
Footnote 2 (November 2021) now on full fibre to the premises (FTTP)
Reviewed the wireless backhaul speed on the net since it wasn’t shifting the data fast enough. The tip on the net works. You make Wireless Mode “Ax only” on the backhaul band. Enable 802.11ax / Wifi6 mode, 20/40/80/160 Mhz and enable 160 Mhz band (force the bandwidth to 160 Mhz for Max speed, not Auto). Think it’s the Ax only forces it into the top speed but getting the other parameters right helps. Now speed tests show similar whether it’s on the backhaul or not.
Also need to ensure Smart Connect toggle is set to on and activate the management settings. This steers your device between nodes (Asus material on that). The defacto settings work. Originally it appears I had this setting off which left the devices to use their own intelligence, fine with slow broadband. Once on full fibre to the premises you need to ensure that Smart Connect is set on via the WiFi setting screen and the toggle shows the band’s bunched together. This is critical since the devices stopped being steered without this (probably with the higher bit rate the intelligence I was using in the devices by themselves failed to jump to the best node). You can alter the default steering property parameters, seemed complex but doable if required. Left as is and see how it goes. My tablet is now moving around the house to the nearest node, it had stopped. That goes for all other devices in the house.
I’d also take it off automatic band selection. Test bands as to which are the best, keep it manually set. Getting a wired connection out of the node on backhaul fast.com test checks whether the backhaul is good. First footnote and WiFi speed checks on the normal 5ghz band.
Footnote 3. Bought another node now. Disconnected the Smarthub2 on FTTP go in via WAN setting PPPoE, login [email protected] password bt. That is a fixed built in login that’s default if you replace the BT supplied router. So back to where I was with Virgin 200 Mbit/s service in London, own equipment, but in rural Wales with FTTP and an Asus xt8 mesh rather than the rt3200 in London. Speeds 800 and 700 in the office and lounge nodes. Three WiFi points in the property. The house is like two detached houses in size so needs good coverage. Interesting the master “home” supplies the two nodes via the backhaul going up on one and across the property on the other, not daisy chaining. The mesh management screens work well. A development from the original Asus software. For backhaul connection you hit the optimise button and it selects the best connection for the mesh topography, although you need to work on the settings for a bit e.g. ax only, 160 Mhz bandwidth etc for the backhaul. Having found the best mesh backhaul route you can then twig the direction of the devices to help it along a bit. Between floors the backhaul with the fast.com test reveals the full 900 Mhz speed. Across the house, diagonal to the other node, 720 Mhz. The Asus menu via PC gives backhaul rates. As said in the text, good to check the node via link for green connection equals good but the Asus software also grades the links.
Footnote 4 June 2022
All was going well till Asus released “ASUS ZenWiFi XT8 Firmware version 3.0.0.4.386.48706 (2022/05/03)” this is buggy I reverted back to 3.0.0.4.386.46061. Useful forum snbforums look under AsusWRT Official. They have threads running on each software version for the XT8. The 3 series are the official releases you pick up from the software firmware updates from the Asus site – can get back releases from the Asus site. I reverted each node back to the 3.0.0.4.386.46061 early 2022 release. No issues with that there after. Expect the fix for 3.0.0.4.386.48706 July time 2022 or so. Will go back to the current released when fixed.
Doing a manual firmware update isnt that difficult, just fiddly. To May 2022 since I’ve had it all of the delivered firm updates have been fine. Possible the historic negative reviews were using a buggy release of the firmware similar to 3.0.0.4.386.48706. Something to watch out for, negative reviews on a duff quarterly or so firmware update.
Seems a good idea to keep an eye on the snbforums for the Asus XT8 if you get issues after a firmware update. I’m eyeballing that to see what they will say about the next release. It was the WiFi backhaul that was effected by this release in question and long passwords, two issues.
The other recent issue I had was with the top band 5GHz backhaul getting knocked out and the network running slow. The app under the network view picture, if it doesn’t show the green link and “good” means the backhaul is degraded. Fast speedtests will show a drop of speed.
There were two things going on when this happended, big military operations going on at the local live firing range and a new HP laptop top I had put on the network. One of the two. The world of WiFi some bands use “DFS” frequencies. DFS is used by radar, so a shared frequencies. The router will once a day tests whether a DFS frequency is being used if tuned into it and on automatic channel selection move off this. I use manual channel selection which the experts on said forum say is better. Always have. The 5ghz-1 band not backhaul, and 5ghz-2 band was on a high DFS channel. DFS marked channels are country dependent. I moved the 5ghz-1 back to channel 32 which is an non DFS channel in the UK. Had shifted it out of the way of BT Smarthub2 router which don’t use those shared frequencies in the UK. So back to 32. Rural area, wide housing distance have never seen anybody else use the 5Ghz band, in London it was cluttered.
The issue might have been a radio harmonic generated by the HP laptop which clashed with the backhaul messing up the DFS daily check on the 5Ghz-2 band which took down the link or that 3 week military local training operation. All is now fine and stable. Fingers crossed.
The other thing I did was to put the 5ghz-2 backhaul beacon slap in the middle of the top band. So I moved that up from the lower point away from the 5ghz-2 channel. Wiki provides tables of Wifi frequency allocation by country. I set the beacon to channel 112. The whole 5ghz-2 backhaul band in the UK is taken up by the mesh if you select 160mhz band which you should to force Wifi6 on the backhaul and also hide the SSID. That gives speeds that are way above 1Ghz wired Ethernet on the backhaul and will accommodate Openreaches FTTP 920 speed service to the premise. E.g.. it will give you a wired speed connection between the mesh nodes if the distances are not long. Wired PC into the mesh will show no speed loss on a speed test over the mesh. Lesser devices connected via the 5ghz-1 band I’ve only seen a top speed of 720. Obviously these issues won’t concern you if you haven’t paid for the RR broadband service from your provider. A good backbone speed does allow fast internal networking, printers, file transfer etc hence the need to get the 5ghz-2 backhaul band on wifi6 by forcing the 160 bandwidth, not automatic in the settings. Green is good on the network map from the app, not green the backbone is compromised.
Footnote July 2022 Firestick interference
Might not have been the military radar upsetting the backhaul so you lost the “great” connection shown by the green lines on the app e.g. the backhaul was degraded so it stops using the dedicated top band. If using an Amazon 4k stick with the Amazon remote that comes with it, it uses its own WiFi that transmits on the same channel as your router. You can see it on inSSIDer popping up. A Google of Amazon Firestick Inference on Wi-Fi reveals it. See Reddit posts. The fix is to buy a newer Amazon Alex Firestick remote, they use Bluetooth. Can go the hole hog and connect up with an Ethernet / USB converter. The first should do the trick thou. Pulling out the Firestick did stop the issue which started to become regular. Having another beacon clashing with the channels isn’t good that’s sitting close to the router. Something to watch out for if you use an Amazon Firestick. Only specific models use WiFi to connect the remote back to the Firestick, the 4k one, is one of them. That’s the story.
The low cost option to stop the pesky tranmission of the beacon from the Firestick when not using it you hit hibernate the Firestick rather than leaving it live. You press the centre home button to make it up again and up pops the beacon. Pausing / hibernating stops the beacon so in the night or whenever the mesh is auditing it’s backhaul it doesn’t get confused with the Firestick sitting on one of its channels. I believe this was the root of the issue.
Even with the Bluetooth remote the Firestick still puts out a WiFi SSID that is used for mirroring. Much message board stuff on that issue with people trying to get rid of it.
Don’t buy a Ethernet / USB stick with an OTG cable if not designed for the Firestick. Again that didn’t work. The Firestick must have a proprietary way of using Amazon’s own Ethernet / USB Firestick box they sell. Will test later. Waste of money if you try to mix and max yourself a Ethernet / USB adaptor with a cable and Firestick. You will find many posts of people having difficulties with OTG cables on the Firestick.
More testing. You can use the Amazon Firestick Ethernet accessory to sort out the issue. You connect up the accessory, pull the Ethernet cable out. Delete the WiFi connection to your router so it stops connecting that way. Plug Ethernet cable back in. Move the Asus routers channel off where it was. Had mine in 36, set to 52 away from it since the Firestick will still send out the Mirrorlink beacon SSID you can’t turn off. That then separates your mesh clashing with the beacon. All’s been good since then. Stayed “green” all the way on the app diagram. See picture. The SSID for the 5ghz is shown in the image. Firestick beacon on the left with the arrow (pesky broadcast that starts up and stops from time to time). Next the 5ghz-1 band you connect to on a three mesh system I have (middle bar) plus the backhaul channel beacon on the right – hidden SSID name. Image via InSSIDer app which is very useful to check neighbourhood channel layout.
So yes beware the Firestick on the Asus mesh but there are solutions. Connecting via the Amazon Ethernet accessory is the cleanest solution. Others to suspend the Firestick when not in use but obviously might effect things when it us turned on or stop broadcasting the Asus SSID, connect via Mac address and change channels… Just buy the 14 box and do what I said above, disable the Firestick WiFi and change router channels to leave the beacon you can’t turn off, merrily transmitting intermittently but off the manual assigned Asus channels .
Jury still out (August 2022) on whether it was the hot heat wave which made the backhaul disconnect and shift to the 2.4ghz band or DFS radar interference (local military radar and the local port). Now shifted the 5ghz-1 to a channel within 36 – 48 inclusive. Following UK regulations router software does not need to check for DFS transmission in that range, 52 and above it does. Suspect it was tripping up on the DFS test, fixed channel and gave up. You check the WiFi log. It did link the 5ghz-1 band channel and the 5ghz-2 with failure. Suspect tripped on DFS on 5ghz-1 and then closed down 5ghz-2 backhaul. Keep in the range 36-48 and this shouldnt happen.
Lasted a week now but then the hot weather has gone. Running latest firmware. Released in the summer had the same issue so either running hot in the hot weather or using a fixed channel in the 5ghz-1 band which shares with DFS solution put the beacon on 36-48 range. For the backhaul 5ghz-2 band use 160mhz bandwidth, WiFi 6 so you get 1ghz+ Ethernet backhaul speeds although on 160 bandwidth it takes over all of the UK top end band (5ghz-2). Don’t hide the SSID for that. July issue of the firmware tells you not to. It synchs up faster if you don’t hide it.
In summary for manual channel selection and wireless backhaul:
2.4ghz 1, 6, 11 (might need 20 mHz bandwidth if pairing upnp)
5ghz-1 32-48
5ghz-2 112 selecting 160 bandwidth, wifi6 for backhaul.
Was a simple installation and setup process, took max 10 minutes. It’s easier if you have a bit more technical knowledge, but can be done as a complete novice. Once you’ve used the mobile app to get the nodes paired, definitely go to the web app as it’s 1000x better and you’ve got a lot more options and gubbins that you can change to enhance performance.
Started out using the 5ghz band 2 as the backhaul link between satellites, and it worked for the most part, but my walls are made from concrete, so decided to go whole hog and put in an ethernet backhaul, which has improved performance from the satellites considerably.
They’re incredibly reliable, just remember to turn off the WiFi on your modem and not plug any other devices into it if you’re using the XT8 in router mode, otherwise you’ll run into IP assigning issues. The XT8 does not work well with DHCP turned off, and i lost all access to them when i tried to use the modem as DHCP server. Involved a factory reset of the whole system.
Performance is amazing, getting an extra 50mbps down when compared to my previous mesh system. These things really can handle anything you can throw at them. Receiving well over 850mbps down when using ethernet from one of the satellites as well, which is pretty decent. WiFi i get just over 600 mbps down, but i do not have a WiFi 6 network card in the laptop, so can be forgiven there.
If you’re looking for a top performance mesh system, this is definitely the answer!
Before installing this router I thought I explain my current setup. I have Virgin broadband to fix my black spots, I had connected a long cable from the router to another old SKY router upstairs. This router provided WIFI upstairs. For the back of the house and the garden I used another RJ45 slot on the back of the router to a powerline adapter. In the back of the house I had the powerline adapter this time connected to an old BT router. My son room need faster internet connection to play online, so he also has a wired connection from the router to a network hub in his room. This all worked fine but I did have 3 different WIFI SIDs. It was a pain keeping the other two routers updated.
Setup was easy, I just put my Virgin router into modem mode, then connected my ASUS router to Virgin. I rebooted the ASUS. I installed the app on my iPAD and went straight into setup mode.
With 1 router I now have no blackspot in the house. My WIFI 40% faster in almost every room. The one room that had no WIFI at all was my sons bedroom who plays xBOX. He can play online fine using the new WIFI. He switched from hardwired to WIFI and hasnt noticed any difference.
Overall I very happy with this device, it had made my network quicker and simpler to manage. Note I am only using the 1 router, so cant comment on how it performs with 2.
Expected more of a faff after reading the reviews, but found the setup reasonably straightforward. These were purchased to replace an old home LAN setup that was increasingly unstable, with intermittent dropouts.
Used the quick start guide – downloaded the phone app, plugged in the APs and updated the firmware in 10 to 15 minutes. I use double NAT, with the home LAN the only connection into the ISP modem. And with a few home devices set for 10.x IP range, needed to change the factory DHCP settings. Found it much easier to use the browser based manager, rather than the phone app, to do this. Still took a few goes to figure out (you have to reset the host / gateway IP on one page first, and then the DHCP range on another page second), but other than that it’s quite a nice and clear set of features, controls and monitors.
Am not currently using the Trend micro provided monitoring feature; if you would like to use the features must agree and consent to their data collection policy:
“Please note that your information will be collected by Trend Micro through AiProtection, Traffic analyzer, Apps analyzer, Adaptive QoS and web history. ”
Not all of those features should require Trend Micro to have access to your home LAN activity, so it loses a star for that.
Otherwise, solid and fast enough connection, with good coverage through several Victorian brick walls.
I have used a few routers in my time….BT home hub, Sky, and I am now on the Virgin Media 1Gbps with their super hub 4.
That is a very good router but failed to deliver signal – I live in a large Victorian House with extension and loft conversion and including a Garden Room leading to the medium sized garden….
I could not get WiFi in the 2nd reception room….or the loft or the Garden… I used power lines (due to our electrics would only connect downstairs and not to the upstairs sockets)
Boosters always needed restarting and were unstable…. then I found Mesh networks and ASUS ZENWiFI ….it just works !
I have put the VM router into modem mode…. using a primary ASUS node as the router, then connected the other 2 nodes within a couple of metres of the main node. (Once they set up unplug and find a suitable area for them further afield). It is important to actually put VM /BT /Sky router into modem mode then once it has restarted I turned everything off …then connected and turned everything back on and set up was then seamless.
One is placed on the first floor gaming room, and one is placed in the Kitchen…I am now getting maximum throughput to the point of 750Mbps in every downstairs room of the house. About 600Mbps on the first floor.
The Garden and Loft I get about 100Mbps (they are quite a distance from the node) so I then purchased a further 2 nodes (one for the Loft itself and one for the Garden Room) – so now I get 650Mbps in the Garden (right to the bottom of the Garden where we have another seating area) and the same speeds in the loft.
Very happy that we can finally connect everywhere and with all our devices (total of 60 devices within the household)
I also Game and I downloaded a 80GB game in about 15min !! (Connected to the node via 2.5Gb Wan port)
Very happy that these have enabled us to actually utilise the service we paid for from VM.
And obviously we can take them with us if ever we move.
One last thing : i think its always good to reboot once every 3-4 days so I have set up a timed reboot to occur Mon & Fri at 04:00am
The only minus point is lack of documentation for expert options.
Easy to set up
Stable
Look good out on the side or shelf as very stylish
Excellent speeds only bested by Orbi I am told)
Highly recommend 9/10