Saturday, October 26, 2019

Review: Asus RT-AX88U Router

After 7 years on the Asus RT-AC66U router, I decided that it was time to upgrade to the latest and greatest Asus RT-AX88U. I want to improve 2.4G and 5.0G coverage, have faster overall speeds, and better protection against hackers, Trojans, and viruses.

The Asus AX supports the latest 802.11ax standard for up to 6 Gbits of maximum transfer speed. I was also looking forward to using all 8 LAN ports - as the 4 LAN ports on my AC66U were fully occupied.


Although I could get almost everything working, I could not get the Asus RT-AX88U to detect and recognize my Synology NAS DS1815+ plugged into any LAN ports. Though the Router panel showed the 1 Gbps LAN port as connected, the RT-AX88U would not recognize it. I checked cables and tried multiple LAN ports and firmware versions. No progress!

When I switched back to my older RT-AC66U router, the Synology NAS was immediately identified. Despite trying multiple settings on RT-AX88U, I could not get it to work with my Synology NAS. It's too bad, as I started to like the RT-AX88U router.

Advantages
  • On the iPhone 11, I did notice more responsive loading of web pages
  • Numerous AI protection features for detecting viruses, trojans, vulnerabilities
  • Support for all the latest WiFi standards, including WiFI 6
  • 8 LAN ports
  • Supposed max of 6 Gbps 

Disadvantages

  • The AX88U does not recognize my Synology NAS DS1815+ plugged into any of the LAN ports (using either the latest Asus Firmware or the Merlin version)
  • The Router is much larger than the RT-AC66U
  • Overall, WiFi coverage did not appear superior to RT-AC66U
Because I could not resolve the connectivity issue with the Synology NAS, I decided to return the Router to Amazon

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