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

The Trustport GUI does not look like the NOD32 GUI at all in the screenshot here:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/trustport-2015-line-released.372440/#post-2471230

I see 8 square boxes, NOD32's GUI got none of that design. I don't understand where you see any similarities between them, they are so different. I like the NOD32 GUI, but not that one, not a chance.

 

Wasn't talking about the main GUI, I meant the settings.....

 

Well, to be honest 3/4 settings look like that...

 

Right, you meant the advanced setup tree in NOD32. Yes, they look a bit similar.

 

Just did a test on www.pingtest.net to see if AiProtection slows anything down.....

With AiProtection....

Jitter = 9 ms

AiProtection disabled.... then rebooted the router

Jitter = 9 ms

Flashed to the latest firmware before they implemented AiProtection in the AC68U.

Jitter = 3 ms


browsing now feels so much snappier, there was about a 0.5 to 1 ms delay with the AiProtection enabled firmware but now when I click on any of my bookmarks, the webpage starts loading instantly with 0 lag

Being a snapiness freak, I will do without AiProtection although the performance hit isn't much for what it does, every second matters to me....I love the snapiness of my router without AiProtection

 

Uuuhm, I cannot feel any slowdown here... for sure I cannot really appreciate the delay of 0.001 seconds.
Must be the age.....

 

Maybe it's too much work, but I urge you to run a test on www.pingtest.net (must have Java installed and enabled to calculate packet loss) and tell us your grade (A, B, C, or D) with and without AiProtection. Although I didn't notice any improvement even when I disabled AiProtection until I actually reverted back to a firmware that doesn't have AiProtection at all. But in the case of the AC87U there is no firmware without AiProtection which makes me believe your scores would be the same with it disabled or disabled.

 

LOL.

But yea, nothing like 0.001 seconds to make someone OCD, right? I'd imagine my UTM/NGFW adds a few milliseconds to everything, but you know what? The protection it offers is worth it. If it's that much of an issue just run a NAT router and be done with it, but don't complain when your Layer 2 firewall gets walked all over by threats. Plain NAT will likely always be 'slightly' faster than any UTM/NGFW, but nobody really thinks NAT works anymore.

 

Agreed re the trade off, although i do wonder if replacing the HDD in my UTM box with an old SSD next time i replace one will make an appreciable difference, as looking at the logs it doesn't appear to be the CPU maxing out and there is some page file usage.
No way to speed up the process in an Asus router though you'd imagine, aside from hoping Asus improve it in future firmware (lol). I suppose the extra CPU power of the 87U could make it less of an issue compared to the 68U Mortal? Would be interesting to see if there is a difference between the speeds with AIProtection on between the 68U, 87U and 68P (Best Buy exclusive version of the 68U but with the faster 87U's CPU).

 

From what I can tell, the 68u was 'barely' able to run AiProtection, and the 66u was not capable of doing it. I assume he's seeing performance hit because of the aged, lower powered 68u hardware compared to the 87U. I feel the 87u/r is a very solid platform, with exceptionally strong hardware. At least as good, if not better than some of the FortiAP, Meraki, and Ruckus I have deployed. I assume AiProtection can offload more processing to the spare CPU's in the 87?

 

To be honest, I don't think the AC68U has enough juice to run the AiProtection without the performance hit, maybe that's why others aren't complaining because they have an AC87U which I will never buy after having a lot of disconnections with the AC87U and AC3200. This AC68U never ever disconnects and to me that is more important than any security or speed (not saying the AC68U is slow it's one of the fastest routers I've used without AiProtection that is)

 

This

 

That's kind of why i mentioned the 68P, i figured it might be a best of both worlds for you?

 

indeed mate

 

New Beta
http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/92745584-post2489.html

 

Note the 2nd fix.. I reported this 3 months ago. Essentially on Guest-Accounts, if you restrict LAN access, the product is NOT restricting lan access. Which basically breaks my ghetto-vLAN technique, and is a pretty nice security hole. Which is why I do not trust consumer routers. It's amazing ASUS lets this many FW bugs marinade for so long.

Right now I use it as a WAP, and have local Lan restricted for everyone unless I have a policy in place. This is through my Sophos UTM.

 

On the positive side... the router is getting better and better, already with build 4608 it is rock solid (at least here). Also new firmware seems to appear very frequently. Something you can forget with other brands of home routers.

 

That reminds me, did you end up getting a chance to report that DHCP related bug a while back? I remember you were trying to move the ASUS to another point within your network and that when you disabled DHCP, it was still forcing it, if I remember correctly. There has been a few firmware releases (as well as beta releases) since that time but I haven't noticed anything specific in the release notes regarding that issue. Would that still be beneficial for you, given the change in your setup by adding the Sophos UTM? I'm just trying to visualize how that might work for your current hardware setup.

EDIT:

That is an excellent point, most router manufacturers rarely update their firmware. So that is a very positive thing for ASUS, despite the bugs. Also, I suppose that they probably have to update the firmware more often for the AiProtection definitions anyway.

 

As far I can see some definitions (likely the vulnerability protection and infected device prevention) are downloaded locally without user intervention. For example here, with the previous firmware, definition moved from 1.032 to 1034 without me doing anything. Other definitions are checked directly over the cloud, on-the-fly (malicious site protection).

 

Background Trend technologies are updated automatically. I can see them come through my Sophos UTM, almost hourly during outbreaks, but usually a few times a day. So at least the Trend stuff is constantly updated in the background.

 

Well, this is one of the most expensive consumer routers, so one would expect frequent updates. But then again there are tons of really expensive devices with nearly no support, so yeah...

 

The AC3200 is even more expensive and hadn't had an update since ages despite ASUS knowing that it has serious disconnection issues. I sold it because I got tired of waiting and thank God I did, even till this date they didn't release an update.

 

I had ASUS Essence STX soundcard and it was jolly expensive, the most expensive consumer sound card at that time and it too hardly ever got any updates. Price doen't equal better support, but it does make users more angry when you pay that kind of money for something and you get a poor product with poor support.

 

I'm actually starting to hate ASUS.

This router truncates admin passwords.. So if I make a 30char password it takes it, then locks me out of the router due to some 'unknown' truncation issue. The reason I changed it was because I decided to upgrade firmware, despite only using this thing in AP-Mode, I figured I would upgrade firmware, then lock it down with a longer password. But ASUS was going to have none of that, and decided to lock me out of it due to password truncation. What a pile of dung! Ironically, the HARDWARE is amazing - this is the best WAP for the money - bar none.. I have Meraki's, FortiAP's and Ruskus units sitting here, and this outperforms all of them in AP mode. But the software is BARGAIN BASEMENT CRAP. If I wasn't used to this stuff I wouldn't have made a configuration backup prior to all of this, so I need to factory reset, then restore configuration. Nevertheles, ASUS should be ashamed of their abysmal software development team. They should all be fired, and replaced with Merlin, paying Merlin 300K a year to fix this garbage.

 

LOL.... you are starting to sound like the legendary Mortal one.

But that's good. People who are beholden to and continue to justify their purchase decisions in the face of contrary evidence -- are lame.

Will be watching if you elect to get a new router... as I'll be in the market soon.