ASUS Router - What's The Catch?

[Greenside]

Looking for an ASUS router with 8 Gigabit LAN ports and if possible Link Aggregation.  The ASUS-AC88U-router-AC3100-Dual-Band-Gigabit-WiFi-Gaming-Router seems to fit the bill (I don't care about Wi-Fi 6, before anyone mentions it!) but there seems to be a large number of suspiciously cheap listings on Shopee - including the link above - which have no sales and no ratings.  Given the price is a lot less than half of others, that in itself is a red flag.  Has anyone bought one of these and was it working and genuine?

[Mavideol]

25 minutes ago, Greenside said:

Given the price is a lot less than half of others, that in itself is a red flag.

you already answer your own question.... seller no ratings, nothing sold and the seller's account created 8 days ago

[Crossy]

End of line perhaps?

 

I've had a genuine one of these units for a while works reasonably well.

 

But, I've never managed to get link aggregation to work reliably, even with the Merlin firmware. So, if that's an essential feature for you ...

[lopburi3]

14 minutes ago, Greenside said:

Given the price is a lot less than half of others, that in itself is a red flag.  Has anyone bought one of these and was it working and genuine?

As the member name is different than the store name (which has 500 products) and both only member of Shopee for 8 days with 0 sales suspect more than one red flag.  As nothing in description providing model or if new and only mention of unit starts with "F..." would be more than a bit concerned.

[Greenside]

Thanks for the contributions.  End of line had occurred to me as the AX version has been available for some time and there appears to be more than one vendor offering these. Even though the risk is relatively small I think I'll steer clear.

 

Crossy, what device were you using link aggregation with?  My old(ish) QNAP TS-651 supports Port Trunking and it would be helpful if Lightroom didn't slow down even more should my daughter decide that Streaming Gatcha Life videos is essential at the very moment I need to use it...

[g man]

I have two of them and they are rock solid and reliable. Work very well with Merlin firmware and diversion ad blocking. Never tried them for gaming.

If you don't need 8 LAN ports, go for the RT-AC86U, it gas a supercharged CPU with Advanced Encryption Standard AES-NI and is very efficient at managing cipher overhead, the AC88U struggles with this.

 

They are available for about 11,000 baht in Thailand.

http://i.nvade.it/6HN

 

[degrub]

You will find a lot of help here, both Asus , Qnap, and others

 

www.snbforums.com

 

[Jerno]

Suspiciously cheap.  Dead giveaway....avoid it.

[Crossy]

@greenside are you looking for WAN aggregation/load balance (dual WAN) or LAN aggregation (use two gigabit LAN ports like a single 2 gigabit port)?

 

I never tried LAN aggregation but this article suggests that it works https://dongknows.com/dual-wan-vs-link-aggregation-explained/

 

The same article suggests that he has dual WAN working but I could never make failover/failback work reliably. Didn't try load balance.

 

We have a TPlink TL-ER6020 which does WAN failover perfectly (and supports up to 4 WAN connections if that's what floats your boat), seamlessly switching between our ToT fibre and an AiS 3G router which runs as the backup link. I've not tried load balance on it either, but I see no reason why it shouldn't work as advertised.

[Greenside]

I use snbforums often and, as you say it's a useful resource.

 

The article that Crossy linked to is the best explanation of Bonding and Aggregation that I've come across - thanks for that.  I'm not planning to get another WAN line - just wanted to improve the connection between the router and my NAS although I can see now that it will only help if someone else is streaming from the media server on the NAS.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed ????

[degrub]

Yeah, lagging only helps if many users are trying to access the server simultaneously. Pretty difficult to saturate a Gbit line. Usually, something else causes the issue - disk access, client device, buffer capacity in the nas, etc.

 

for working on photos, direct attached storage  with TB 3/4 or added nvme device internally would be best.