Need some general router advise. Switching to Maxis for my family home Hopefully will be done next week. Thinking of getting a new router. Old one is some Asus RT-AC model (not Merlin compatible) that has probably stopped receiving security updates for a few years already.

Doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Just 2 people living there, 3 if I go visit. House is around 3000sq/ft, double storey terrace (technically semi-d since it’s a corner lot).

blacktubi visited your site and saw AX59u review. Seems decent. No antennas though, but I’m guessing coverage wise it will still be better than the old AC model in that house.. Mediatek chip seems to be capable of multi-threaded VPN performance (Broadcoms in higher end Asus routers are supposedly capped to one core), but there have been historical issues with wifi signal stability on Apple devices (usually solved by capping router to 80Hz, but this may be outdated info) with Mediatek based routers. Any thoughts?

VPN on router isn’t a priority for them (I already installed the VPN app on their devices) but with all the shenanigans being done by ISPs and MCMC, personally think it would be prudent to get a router I can setup as a WireGuard client in case things go full retard here.

Aside from Asus, is there anything else I can look at?

I was basically trying to decide between Asus, GL.inet or Ubiquiti Unifi Express. Budget would be 1k. Asus would be mid budget, GL.inet (Flint 2) and Unifi Express would be upper end.

Asus is known entity, reliable, easy warranty claims and I can use one of my older Asus units as an AiMesh node if needed. Only downside of the 59u would be lack of Merlin support, but not really an issue for this household (for my own place I’m waiting to replace my AX86u with the upcoming BE86u).

GL.inet hardware still has hardware durability question marks and PPPoE connection can be fiddly, but benefits are AdGuard Home, great VPN throughput and can easily replace with vanilla OpenWRT if support ends.

Ubiquiti I have no experience (most of my enterprise experience is with Peplink). Probably cannot cover whole home with such a small unit also. VPN throughput not the best. Also no idea how easy it is to PPPoE. Need to do more research.

This post has been edited by dev/numb: Sep 6 2024, 08:24 PM

Short review focusing on WireGuard VPN performance on the budget/midrange ASUS RT-AX59u, with the occasional comparison to my RT-AX86u (Merlin firmware) where applicable. Tagging blackbox14 because he was considering this model due to space and budget constraints.

Performance is more than acceptable. I can get very close to saturating a 500mbps Maxis Fibre (on TM infra) connection. Employing test servers on the usual suspects (SpeedTest, Librespeed, Cloudflare), I get between 300-480mbps download and 70-95mbps upload. CPU usage hovers under the 50% mark during the tests with the load alternating between the 4 cores. This is actually better than the AX86u in my own home which struggles to reach 350mbps download due to the WireGuard acceleration for its Broadcom processor being capped to single core (the AX86u is noted for having thermal issues, so throttling might also be factor) compared to the multi-threaded acceleration available in the AX59u’s Mediatek chip. Obviously not the whole story since the AX86u has double the RAM, so it likely will handle multiple VPN configurations running concurrently much better.

Another downside of the AX59u is the potentially higher bufferbloat (loaded latency) compared to the AX86u. Ping when connected to my provider’s SG WireGuard server was usually around 17-25ms unloaded, but loaded latency almost doubled. But I wrote ‘potentially’ because I’m still not sure if this is an ISP thing with Maxis or a bufferbloat quirk of the AX59u, because even the old AC model in this particular house (my mom’s place) exhibited lower loaded latency readings using TM Unifi previously. My own home (where the AX86u is) is on ViewQWest, so not exactly the same set of variables for me to work with. Either way it’s not a huge deal unless you’re gaming, I guess. Not a serious gamer so cannot give any insight on that.

VPN configuration on ASUS routers is still a bit finicky though. For starters, you must disable IPv6 on the router prior to setting up VPN profiles. If you don’t, you’re guaranteed to leak your ISP’s IPv6 address. Doesn’t matter if your VPN provider supports IPv6 tunneling (like Mullvad), because both ASUS VPN Fusion and Merlin’s VPN Director implementations do not support IPv6 in their configurations. An additional caveat of the stock firmware’s implementation on the AX59u is assignment of device priority. If you set up a profile targeting only certain devices, it will still end up tunneling every device on your LAN unless you make sure you go back to the “Internet” profile (basically your ISP connection profile) and enable it for all devices first until you see a ‘default connection’ bubble on top of it. Only then will your device split-tunneling stick after you reboot the router. Merlin’s VPN Director handles this bit much better.

As for wireless range of the AX59u, I suggest you read the detailed review by blacktubi on his world famous website. He goes into much more detail. I will say that I can easily get around 350mbps with VPN activated on my iPad mini (6th gen) while sitting one floor below where the router is placed. Obviously YMMV depending on size of your property.

Disclaimers;
1. No Adaptive QoS applied. In my experience, it’s useless with VPN profiles.
2. I left the AX59u in “smart dual band” combined Wi-Fi mode or whatever it’s called. Didn’t want to confuse mom.
3. Device binding for VPN profiles is done via MAC addresses, so take note if your device OS does periodic MAC address randomization (like in the new iOS/iPadOS 18 or MacOS 15) and disable the feature for your particular wireless network.

This post has been edited by dev/numb: Sep 24 2024, 04:00 AM

Before considering a new router, have you tried playing with the wifi channels on the BE230? It could just be a channel congestion issue (maybe neighbours using same channel range).

blacktubi
Have you returned the BE88u already? Can you remember if VPN Fusion on the 3.0.0.6 firmware has a toggle to enable a kill-switch for WireGuard configurations? Lack of that feature is my biggest complaint in the 3.0.0.4 firmware.