bought an ASUS AC-87U Router, do I still need an AV?

No need for me to purchase a new router, as I said - for the last 6 months I have kept this router in AP-Mode. It's hardware is remarkable as a WAP! My router is a Sophos UTM 9.3 NGFW Layer-8. That will not be changing anytime soon. Prior to that I ran ZyXEL and Fortigate's (enterprise), and most recently Untangle due to the ridiculous subscription charges on vendor-locked devices. Also the fact I run 180Mbps now, and I need a really expensive UTM to keep up.. Sophos UTM 9x is ... Perfect.

I suspect everyone holding out with these as their router will get their payoff in the end as a few more incarnations of firmware iron out the last bugs.. At that point, this will quite easily be the best consumer router in the world.. I'll guess - around Nov/Dec of this year they will be fully ironed out.

 

Now I know the rule, when ASUS releases a router I won't buy it until it has marinated for 8 months, they still haven't released a firmware update to fix their flagship and most expensive router the AC3200 for more than 3 months now

 

It seems as though ASUS follows a similar strategy to Microsoft, by allowing their customers/consumers do all of the QA for them. The hardware is clearly phenomenal though.

 

Sure.... The only individuals who are "holding out", are the one's that are aware of the problem..... What about many other consumers that are not aware of this.... and still buying them?

I remember the first day that Linksys WRT1900AC router went on sale at BestBuy.... They all got pulled off the shelf. Their sales staff explained that Linksys realized that there was a flaw in their firmware.... They were all being shipped back to be re-flashed.

Maybe ASUS shouldn't be selling them... until the firmware is corrected.

 

And here you have another beta out today... with impressive changelog
http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/92870195-post2600.html

 

I wish QoS control would be like in TomatoRAF and not like on DD-WRT (current). Flexibility of Tomato's QoS is soooooo much better. With it I was actually able to download from P2P, Steam, browse, stream stuff and it would ALL work perfectly. here, even if I use Adaptive QoS, I ALWAYS get stalls on streaming stuff, be it Twitch or Youtube. And if I try to set it manually, I just can't, because Youtube and Twitch don't go by the ports but I always controlled them through Layer7. No such thing with DD-WRT style of QoS. Still waiting for TomatoRAF to support this router, but it'll take forever it appears...

 

In my case Adaptive QoS (official firmware) works beautifully, the best QoS experience I had since my last Netgear, Belkin or Linksys.
But I guess, as for software and hardware, we cannot generalize...each system reacts differently.

 

My asus 65u router is very instabile on the Wifi network i tried a lot but nothing helps. Anyone has a idea?

 

1) are you connecting to the 2.4 or 5 GHz network? Does it even support 5 GHz networks?

2) what firmware are you on? Official or Merlin and what version?

3) Did you try a factory reset?

4) How far is the router from your computer?

please answer all the questions so we can help you troubleshoot

PS: are you sure of the model number? I thought ASUS had a 56U not 65U

 

thank you for reply.

-It suports 2.4 and 5.0ghz.
-it is on official firmware because i don't know if merlin supports it.
-i did try a hard reset didn't work too.
-the computer and phones are about 5 meters from the router.

It is the 65u model yes they do exist

 

Strange, and when you say it's not stable does it keep disconnecting? If yes, then does that happen on both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands? Since when has this been happening?

 

Yes it is disconnecting and i need too connect it again and then is goes good for a hour . It happens on both bands.

 

just like what used to happen to my on my AC3200 so I finally gave up and sold it due to lack of firmware support. I would sell it if I were you and get an AC68U which is rock solid stable or an AC87U

 

I hope that the Merlin software could run on the router.

 

Pls contact Merlin on Twitter and ask him to support your router. He's a very helpful guy:

https://twitter.com/RMerlinDev

 

Does anybody have used the software of Andy padavan? Because Merlin advised me that.

 

Do a wireless survey of your area, sounds like a conflict. Remember, stronger IS NOT always better! Stronger can create overlap issues. 1, 6, 11 are the only TRUE non-overlap channels, RRP can cause overlaps. But if you find out what's in your area you can improve stability by changing out of RRP and manually setting channels.

For example RT-AC87 started cutting out on me, and I found out the issue was a second AP I added in lockdown mode for security cameras was on the same channel - 11.. I moved one of them to 1, and the problem went away. The more routers in the area, the worse it becomes. This happens with $400, $900, even $1900 access points, it's nothing new really.

 

New Firmware for the AC87U v3.0.0.4.378.4950 :

Changelog:

ASUS RT-AC87U Firmware version 3.0.0.4.378.4950
Release note
[Important] Because added the patch for 5GHz, please press and hold the reset button more
than 5 seconds to reset the router after firmware updated to avoid compatibility issue.

- Improved 5GHz stability.
- Fixed the denying intranet access issue in 5GHz guest network.
- Fixed the UI issue when switched to AP mode from media bridge mode.
- Supported ZTE MF193A USB LTE dongle.

MD5: 242fe3dd0acfc7b4e129edd453ccb278

 

New Merlin Firmware for most Routers v378.52:

Asuswrt-Merlin Changelog
========================

378.52 (3-Apr-2015)
- NEW: Merged with Asus GPL 378_4608
- NEW: Added ECDHE support to the webui (when accessed over HTTPS)
- NEW: The DHCP server can now provide a second DNS to its clients
- NEW: You can tell the router not to advertise itself as a DNS
- NEW: Experimental Tor support (feature originally developed by
Asus, but not available yet on stock firmware). You can
enable it in the VPN section of the webui.
- CHANGED: Updated miniupnpd to 1.9.20150309
- CHANGED: You can no longer disable the JFFS2 partition if
Traffic Analyzer is enabled. Likewise, you can
no longer enable Traffic Analyzer if the JFFS2
partition is disabled.
- CHANGED: The selected refresh rate of the Wireless Clients
page will be saved to a cookie
- CHANGED: Removed obsolete (non-safe) ciphers such as RC4
from the router's https webui
- CHANGED: Updated OpenSSL to 1.0.0r
- CHANGED: Removed Turbo button support from webui, as that feature
doesn't work with the current bootloader everyone is
using now (RT-AC6
- CHANGED: Performance optimization to the httpd, dropbear
and rc services
- FIXED: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz-1 clients were swapped on the
Sysinfo page (RT-AC3200 only)
- FIXED: Wifi PSK wasn't blurred until activated (regression
from 378.51)
- FIXED: Samba's custom config/postconf were ignoring the
state of the global option to enable them (they
would always be used)
- FIXED: Samba's custom config/postconf usage wasn't logged
- FIXED: Some services would fail on their first attempt
to start at boot time due to the QTN subsystem
taking too long. Implemented patch from Asus
which eliminates the long QTN stall at boot
time. This resolves the issue where some users
had trouble connecting their WAN at boot time (RT-AC87U)
- FIXED: NAT rules could occasionally fail to be applied
(patch by john9527)
- FIXED: The Apply button on the Adaptive Bandwidth page
had a clickable area so wide that it even covered
part of the left side menu. (Asus bug)
- FIXED: USB menu was removed instead of Parental Control on
DPI-enabled models
- FIXED: QoS page was still available on the AP/RP modes on
DPI-enabled models
- FIXED: Error on OpenVPN Server page if using a DHCP pool for
connected clients.
- FIXED: UPNP would be reported as enabled on the security report
if it was enabled on the secondary WAN even if Dual WAN
itself wasn't enabled. Now we check that Dual WAN itself
is also enabled before reporting so. (Asus bug)
- FIXED: mtd-erase was unable to erase the brcmnand partition, which
is used as the JFFS2 partition starting with the RT-AC66U
(patch by benoitm974)
- FIXED: JFFS2 partition couldn't be formatted for all routers but
the RT-N66U (wrong partition name). Also resolved the case
where a second reboot was required to mount it.
- FIXED: RT-AC3200 port numbering was reversed on the Sysinfo page.

 

I wanna see try add air protection to the ap mode. That be really kool

 

That'd be something!

 

Right now in running my pfsense firewall and my AC87 in wap

 

Just updated my RT-AC68U to this Merlin Firmware and contrary to the past, where the AiProtection slowed things down so much, now I tried it and it didn't. I even got a B Grade in www.pingtest.com just like before without AiProtection so it's only improving! Another layer of security back to my setup

 

AC87 is probably one of the best WAP's out there. I deal with Meraki(some), and FortiAP's, and it's pretty funny to see the low cost AC87 (in comparison to commercial AP's) function much better. I tried a few lower end AP's at the home and they were garbage, constantly dropping, requiring reboots. Yet I can run the AC87 for MONTHS without any issue. Having AIProtection on the AP would be remarkable, hopefully they tick this on.

 

New Merlin Firmware 378.52_2

Change Log:

378.52_2 (5-Apr-2015)
- CHANGED: Updated AiCloud prebuilt binaries for MIPS models
- CHANGED: Applied kernel patch for MIPS kernel ported from 376_3861,
related to CTF support
- FIXED: AiCloud would fail to start unless you had HTTPS enabled for
the webui (causing the key/cert to be missing)
- FIXED: DDNS hostname would become corrupted after backing up
your router configuration (Asus bug)