Asus AiMesh

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chevrolux

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#238118 3-Jul-2018 21:34

Just watched a Linus Tech Tips video (was on Floatplane, not sure if on YouTube yet) about Asus' latest addition to the lovely new world of wifi mesh products.

Really nothing different technically from what I can tell at a glance (it's still a craptastic mesh network). But what I thought was cool was that you can use just about any existing Asus router as a mesh device. Just a simple firmware update to get the feature, and then it's all GUI driven to set up the mesh network.

They show the RT-68U as one of the routers which I know lots of people have used on here.

So yeah, just worth a thought I guess if you want (for some bizarre reasom) to do a mesh network, this could be a cheap option!

l43a2

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#2048652 3-Jul-2018 22:20

whats wrong with a mesh network? :P

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michaelmurfy

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#2048655 3-Jul-2018 22:31

I quite like this YouTuber as she does a proper test with standard consumer based hardware. It actually doesn't look too bad as a product.

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Crowdie

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#2049163 4-Jul-2018 17:31

As we have found out with the Amplifi product everything looks good until you get it in the lab. We would need to get hold of one and run it past spectrum and protocol analysers to get any idea of how good it actually is.

hio77

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#2049183 4-Jul-2018 18:56

Crowdie:

As we have found out with the Amplifi product everything looks good until you get it in the lab. We would need to get hold of one and run it past spectrum and protocol analysers to get any idea of how good it actually is.

i'd love to see these lab results....

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Crowdie

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#2049232 4-Jul-2018 20:25

hio77:

Crowdie:

As we have found out with the Amplifi product everything looks good until you get it in the lab. We would need to get hold of one and run it past spectrum and protocol analysers to get any idea of how good it actually is.

i'd love to see these lab results....

As stated in another thread:

I did some testing on the Amplifi product this week and I found:

The Amplifi commonly selected non-optimal channels. You would expect this during discovery (i.e. when the AP is first turned on) but after twenty minutes of operation the mesh AP didn't change channel.
The transmit power of the mesh APs is too high. Normally an access point would reduce it transmit powers to improve client roaming and avoid radio overdriving (when one radio is "shouting" at another radio causing distortions in the amplifier). The Amplifi system did not resulting in all three 2.4 GHz channels appearing solid red in the spectrum analyser and poor client roaming.
Every few minutes a single mesh AP would transmit across the entire 2.4 GHz spectrum. This caused frame loss on a streaming video service we were using as part of the testing.
The Amplifi transmits outside the 20 MHz channel boundaries. You would expect the transmission to be 20 or 40 MHz wide but I captured the Amplifi transmitting from channel 7 to channel 13. This will adversely affect other access points, including neighbours, transmitting on channel 6 (in this example).
The mesh control data plane appears to remains in the 2.4 GHz spectrum with no link to the SSID broadcast spectrum selection. I would expect that the spectrum for the mesh control plane is configurable.
The throughput of the Amplifi system is poor. After initial testing with three mesh APs I dropped to a single mesh AP and the throughput will still poor. The testing was completed in the same room as the mesh AP with clear line of sight.

hio77

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#2049264 4-Jul-2018 21:04

Crowdie:

As stated in another thread:

hm, i missed that thread.

Seriously interesting testing though - do you do 5ghz testing aswell?

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Crowdie

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#2049357 4-Jul-2018 23:13

You can select the spectrum the user data is carried in but the mesh control plane is always in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. The 5 GHz performance is better than the 2.4 GHz as the user data doesn't have to compete for airtime with the mesh control plane.

I started testing the Amplifi system due to its poor performance and interference to neighbouring wireless networks. It reminded me of that old quote "The only thing worse than owning an Amplifi system is owning an Amplifi system next door to somebody who owns an Amplifi system" (I might be paraphrasing).