Asus RT-AC68U modem and slingshot gigabite plan

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Asus RT-AC68U modem and slingshot gigabite plan

aooni

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#259916 30-Oct-2019 17:09

any pro who reads this message....hopefully you can help me out...please...

I'm on slingshot giga plan and I found it weird that using a non-slingshot modem which provides inconsistent speed in contrast to the slingshot modem which seems pretty stable at 800+/400+

my modem is ASUS RT-AC68U, firmware updated to the latest by the way, it mostly provides 300+/400+, although sometimes it can go up to 800+/400+ without changing any settings.

can someone please help if you know what's going on? slingshot denied that there's anything on their side that would cause the issue, but I found it weird
PS: I also found one thing that's also mind boggling, is that the internet keeps dropping if I change WAN Service Type to PPPoE with username and password as instructed at https://help.slingshot.co.nz/hc/en-us/articles/360000242853-Setting-up-a-non-Slingshot-modem , but if I set it to automatic, it has no problem, any idea why?

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#2346381 30-Oct-2019 17:16

Also have the same setup, get the same speeds (around 500/500) not overly worried about it really as it still streams 4k netflix on 3 different devices at once with no noticeable slow down to others.

cyril7

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#2346402 30-Oct-2019 18:09

Hi try turning any QOS settings off these routers will struggle if it's on which I think it is by default.

Cyril

JaseNZ

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#2346409 30-Oct-2019 18:52

cyril7: Hi try turning any QOS settings off these routers will struggle if it's on which I think it is by default.

Cyril

Yup I would check that.

You could also try a custom firmware, I have Asuswrt-Merlin on my AC68-U (spark), gives you a lot more functionality.

https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/

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aooni

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2346715 31-Oct-2019 11:28

cyril7: Hi try turning any QOS settings off these routers will struggle if it's on which I think it is by default.

Cyril

its off and no port forwarding

sbiddle

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#2347017 1-Nov-2019 07:20

Your router is not particularly hign end and will struggle on a Gigbit plan. If seeing Gigabit speedtests is important to you then use the Slingshot suppled Netcomm which is far superior.

aooni

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2347024 1-Nov-2019 07:46

sbiddle:
Your router is not particularly hign end and will struggle on a Gigbit plan. If seeing Gigabit speedtests is important to you then use the Slingshot suppled Netcomm which is far superior.

thanks for the reply
slingshot modem doesnt work well with my arlo system , they seem incompatible to each other , could you please suggest a modem ?

I also tried nighthawk one, cannot remember which one , its a gigabyte router as well , same result hence I finally bought asus.

please suggest a good modem , Ill give it a try

Kiwifruta

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#2347030 1-Nov-2019 07:59

There is an entire ‘router guide’ thread here https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=66&topicid=197871

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karni

50 posts

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#2347032 1-Nov-2019 08:00

I was noticing similar things with the same modem on Spark. The speed test wasn't really concerning me because it's not like I'm going to be able to use the full speed anyway but I saw a deal with Orcon for 6 months at half price and also being an Orcon customer you can buy Google WiFi 3 pack for $400 so I jumped across as my house is a rectangle and WiFi at either end is spotty.

noroad

949 posts

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#2347041 1-Nov-2019 08:29

aooni:

can someone please help if you know what's going on? slingshot denied that there's anything on their side that would cause the issue, but I found it weird

Nothing weird about it at all, you are choosing to use a device that does not have the ability to sustain gigabit speeds. If you use the supplied router it will sustain gigabit speeds as your ISP certifies it to do so. ISP supplied routers are often simple in their feature set as they need to affordable in bulk quantities for the average user but they are pretty much always rated to sustain the plan the ISP is selling to the customer. If you want high throughput rates with lots of features you are going to have to either roll your own device (using something like pfsense) or pony up some decent cash for a high end device. Personally I bought a Fortigate on Amazon and love it, but as always you get what you pay for.

aooni

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2347070 1-Nov-2019 09:45

sbiddle:

Your router is not particularly hign end and will struggle on a Gigbit plan. If seeing Gigabit speedtests is important to you then use the Slingshot suppled Netcomm which is far superior.

although...RT-AC68U is 300+ dollar modem...how is it not as superior as the one IPS provided?

I just need a modem that works well with the my arlo system, decent speed, decent wifi range, no need for all the other jazz , any suggestions?

noroad

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#2347072 1-Nov-2019 09:48

aooni:

I just need a modem that works well with the my arlo system, decent speed, decent wifi range, no need for all the other jazz , any suggestions?

Sure, what's the issue with the ISP router (NF18) with your arlo system?

sbiddle

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#2347074 1-Nov-2019 09:51

aooni:

sbiddle:

Your router is not particularly hign end and will struggle on a Gigbit plan. If seeing Gigabit speedtests is important to you then use the Slingshot suppled Netcomm which is far superior.

although...RT-AC68U is 300+ dollar modem...how is it not as superior as the one IPS provided?

I just need a modem that works well with the my arlo system, decent speed, decent wifi range, no need for all the other jazz , any suggestions?

The simple answer? Because.. Price has nothing to do with router quality, there are still plenty of "expensive" (even $500+ devices) that will not perform as well as a much cheaper RSP supplied device.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel and discuss the pros and cons of different routers, there are huge numbers of threads on here that already discuss that so it's probably worth spending an hour of so reading something such as this https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=66&topicid=197871

aooni

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2347075 1-Nov-2019 09:55

noroad:

aooni:

I just need a modem that works well with the my arlo system, decent speed, decent wifi range, no need for all the other jazz , any suggestions?

Sure, what's the issue with the ISP router (NF18) with your arlo system?

arlo system cannot connect to the internet for some reason

noroad

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#2347076 1-Nov-2019 09:56

arlo system cannot connect to the internet for some reason

Well, the suggestion would be debug and fix that then... Just saying

allio

885 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2347077 1-Nov-2019 09:58

The AC68U will do full gigabit with hardware acceleration/CTF enabled, and somewhere in the region of 400-450Mbps without it. I have an R7000 (basically the same hardware as the 68U) and get full 950/450MBps speedtests with CTF on.

Can you give some examples of the kind of traffic where you are seeing "high" speeds and "low" speeds?

Every consumer router relies on CTF to achieve near-gigabit speeds, by the way. I'm not sure what Slingshot uses, but taking the HG659b as an example - that's a 400Mhz dual-core SoC while the AC68U is a dual-core 800Mhz SoC with more than double the raw routing throughput. So, if you're doing traffic that doesn't benefit from CTF (e.g. anything requiring inspection of the incoming packets) you're unlikely to actually see better real-world performance with an ISP-provided router, despite that being Geekzone's standard suggestion.

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