Wow! What a great video. You appear to be very good at reducing complex ideas down into easily digestible chunks. I learned a lot! (and that is saying something...I consider myself a bit of an expert in networking...but not necessarily routers). Thank you again for sharing your expertise. Please do more.
Behfor Jhom Mkia Can you setup aimesh mode and kept ethernet cable connect and can you have different ssid names and does this work good for wifi security cams..?
Unfortunately you cannot have different SSID names for the AiMesh nodes in the Asus AImesh System. It'll copy the primary routers SSIDs and broadcast the same SSIDs in the secondary router. If you need different SSID's though you might wanna look at the Access Point or the Repeater features. Please watch this video: ruclips.net/video/ic0bgo_ueQ0/видео.html As for the security camera, it should work fine however since all the routers have the same SSIDs the cameras might want to switch back and forth between the routers which is not very good for the video! I would personally prefer to use the Access Point mode so I can maybe dedicate a SSID or even a Wireless Router to the security cameras! Thanks!
Behfor Thx for your quick response...Thats what I thought..aimesh would not be the best setup for me..I have 2 asus routers which work great..and right now I have them setup with different IP’s and different gateways and they are connected via a cat6 ethernet cable with different ssid names..plus my ssid’s are hidden..the reason I set them up this way and not as a Access point or Repeater mode within the router is I would lose internet speeds on my secondary Router via wifi so setting them up as if they were the only Router I had allowed routers to keep the same speeds on both 2.4 &. 5ghz bands with different ssid names on different wifi channels..hopefully that makes sense...👍👍😄😄
@@Behfor your video's are excellent! I loved this one, very helpful with seeing Skype (real world app) vs ping, to understand what's going on. I'd be very curious in you comparing your AiMesh findings and an out of the box mesh router solution on the market. I wonder if Google WiFi or eero or Orbi, etc. do a better job of switching or if you'd still lose a ping packet?
Agreed. The two videos covers most of my questions/doubts as well, and the tests performed are very systematic, one I also would be inclined to do. Great job Behfor, and thanks a lot!
Thanks for the video. I just finished setting up AiMesh with two ASUS RT-AC1900P's and it seems to be working well. Nice tip about adjusting the roaming threshold.
This is an impressive testing and explanation on the AiMesh definitely feel more comfortable just getting another used ASUS then getting a standalone repeater. Thanks Man saved me about $150
I can’t thank you enough for taking out the time to think out this test and posting the video. I have a RT-AC86U and want to set up an Ai Mesh system and this video answered many of my questions. Well done! Certainly earned a like and a new subscriber.
Greetings from Norway! Thank you so VERY much for sharing your experience and clear and easy to understand test-results with us! You have convinced med to look for a 68u or 1900u to compliment my trusted 88u, instead of going the Google wifi or Lycra way. Again; thanks!!!
Hi there. I was thinking of getting a Rt-ac66u to add as a node in my aimesh paired to a RT-AX86U. Two questions : 1) do users have a choice which means to use as the back haul /connection between the two devices? 2) if a specific band is used as a back haul (say 2.4ghz), can a client still roam between the router and node on that same band?
Just setup an RT-AC86U router and was thinking of utilizing AiMesh. I had a UniFi Mesh as my AP before but thinking of getting another Asus AiMesh compatible router to expand the AiMesh system. After seeing your video, I think that's the route I'm going to take. Thanks so much for a very through explanation on how it works.
This is the answer to what i am looking for and your video explain it very well. It’s easy to understand with all that animations. You’ve done Amazing job. Thank you!
You are great. Thanks for the efforts and such nice explanation. I got GT AC5300 for just the reason to have AiMesh eventually. After viewing your video it gives me good confidence to go and buy another router for my office.
You are a very clever guy. Thanks for the final note about the secondary router losing connection twice in 10 days; that is a deal killer for me - worse even than my current repeater setup, which fails only about once a month. The propeller heads (PH) who design these things have no concept that the PH who buys the unit might not always be in the house when it fails. I love my ancient WRT54G, but its huge flaw is that it comes up much faster than the modem, apparently tests for the modem once, then gives up, as if it had something better to do. So after a power failure we have no network until I reboot the router. So now ASUS designs this thing so that you barely miss one ping switching access points, yet the remote unit cannot recover from a disconnect and thereafter you have 100% packet loss FOREVER until the PH who bought the unit shows up at home. Meanwhile his wife, who has no idea what "WiFi" even means, is dead in the water. Why is network reliability always at the bottom of product designers' priority lists?
By the way since watching your video I went searching for comment boards discussing this problem using "asus aimesh nodes offline" and found at least two boards (one on the ASUS support site and another elsewhere) in which at least some users are having really nasty experiences with remote units going offline, some even daily.
You actually mentioned a very important point. I think one big problem is that the companies nowadays do not take testing and quality assurance as seriously as before especially when it comes to home wireless networking. First of all it's a very time consuming process and it requires a lot of resources to be able to test the hardware in many possible real life situations, and with the competition out there, they just rather make the product ready and sell it asap and then fix the problems later on with firmware updates. I could be wrong though that's how I feel.
W. Edwards Deming, the master of reliability who taught the Japanese how to vanquish the American auto industry on its own soil by building reliable cars, said "You cannot inspect quality into a product. The quality is either there or it isn't by the time the inspection occurs." I've been a programmer for 40 years, and through the decades IT management has remained bamboozled by the ridiculous idea that if you just test something enough, it will turn into a quality product. You cannot force a product that was not designed for reliability to become reliable by merely testing and patching it, any more than you could convert a plastic bag into a fine purse. A reliable product (whether software or hardware) usually has a profoundly different design than a non-reliable one, because the reliability requirement must permeate the product. This requires much up-front thinking and careful design work. Today's project management does not conceive of the reliability requirement at the project outset, doesn't design it into the product (if any design is even done at all - most IT projects just code, code, code), and wouldn't think to test for such reliability in the end, since it was never imagined in the beginning.
I set up an AIMesh using a brand new GT-AC5300 Rapture and an RT-AC66U-B1 as the node. I only had it running for a short time before I became frustrated with the whole thing and removed it. Went back to using a Repeater instead of the AIMesh. The setup was easy, it worked as advertised but it killed my network speed both internally and from the Internet. I have a 300Mbps internet connection that I have always been able to get full speed from to my laptop (ROG G522 with Intel 73265 Wifi). As soon as the mesh was up and running the best I could do from ANY device in my home both wired and wireless was 130Mbps. My network speed from my laptop to my Server went from 75 MBps to 32 MBbs. I would have to conclude that the mesh setup may work but be aware that there are significant differences to you network speed if you use it. I was not aware it would be as bad as my tests have shown. Perhaps a newer router than the AC66U-B1 would give better performance but I won't spend any more time or money on it. My RE650 as a repeater works a lot better.
Very very good videos. You got a subscriber. And only dropping 1 ping while swapping nodes is very good in my opinion. I'm setting mine up this weekend 😁
Behfor, thanks for a great review. On the strength of this video I have decided to purchase this router. Im in the computer store as i write this but was undecided. Now i'm clear. Thanks again.
Thanks! Very helpful for setup and config. Especially the tips on the OS queries to the comm ports. There's an ASUS blog group that also has a bunch of good tips for config and optimization. As you wisely pointed out at teh beginning, YOUR radio environment may be very different in terms of obstacles, interference, traffic, etc so one needs to have a set of tools to tweak to address these situation specific challenges. EG channel choice. Great job!
Thanks for the tests done , and the schematic explinations. AImesh is very promising compared to the usage of the 2nd ASUS router in AP mode, but the downside currently is that we lost a lot of the controls to the nodes. it is currently not even possible to reboot them remotely, or check the LAN port speed.
You're right in the web interface there isn't much we can do to the nodes. However I am still able to SSH or Telnet to the nodes if SSH or Telnet is enabled on the Main router and I can use the "reboot" command in case I need to reboot the router but of course it's going to work as long as the nodes haven't lost their connectivity! Hopefully they will add some more controls for the nodes in the web interface in the future firmware updated! Thanks!
This is an amazing video. I noticed that you tansfer speeds were rated as 300 down and 300 up during the walk about test. How does that compare to your plan from you ISP?
Nice video! Very helpful! Thank you. PS: I wish I saw your video a few days earlier...I updated my fully working AiMesh routers with latest firmware. I know now why my T-Mobile TM-AC1900 is now out off my mesh network. :(
You're very welcome! Thanks for watching! Yeah unfortunately that's the case with T-mobile TM-AC1900 now and hopefully there will be a workaround soon.
Thank you so much! I'm very happy you liked this video! The second video is already available: ruclips.net/video/5sagIw6_ofE/видео.html In this video I'll test the AiMesh system and compare it with Repeater and Access Point features! Thanks :-)
Dude, I felt soooo much doubt after watching another AiMesh video. YOU SQUASHED ALL THAT. You explain things so clearly. And the music choice dare i say MESHED smoothly. Found a cheap SECOND HAND RT-AC68U to mesh with my existing GTAC5300. Liked and subbed.
@@BehforNp. Did you ever look into doing the mesh with an AX? Looking to have the primary as AX and wonder if the RT-AC68U as a scondary could mess up the OFDMA.
Pretty good video, however it would have been a lot better to test with computers using an AC chipset (which is the newer standard used in the routers use to achieve 1300mbps on 5ghz [using 3x3 MIMO]). I could see the max link speed was only 300mbps (2x2MIMO). Also AC wifi will generally have shorter latency and is just more stable in real world testing.
I know this is an old video but, when you decrease client rssi on primary router, you're also decrease the distance of your primany to secondary ai mesh. So it a catch 22. I also try the network tools link steering which is similiar to this and that also experiencing the same problem. So the best option will be to set it on client side. Now what if its a phone? Well you are SOL and will suffer from what call sticky node.
Thanks for sharing, the bottom line is in dual-band mesh systems if you want to use wireless backhaul, you are gonna face many issues that's why it's recommended to use a wired backhaum, however in tri-band mesh systems where you can dedicate one band to the backhaul, things are much better and even if you change the Tx power for the bands used for the clients, the 3rd band dedicated for the backhaul is untouched. Thanks.
@@Behfor I do have 2 AX-11000 routers and they are set as default 5ghz for back haul and still having the issues I mention above. Yes, wired is only if in a perfect world but most cases wireless is the best option.
Thank you for this video! The very last thing I want to do is build my own mesh system that doesn't work on the "edge" use cases. Ugh! I'll stick (for now) with my Airport Extremes and if I go mesh go with an out-of-the-box system and accept whatever compromises I get from an an out-of-the-box system vs. the interruptions and screams of "the internet is down" that I'd hear from those dependent on my network. Ugh!
Incredible!! Question you connected primary and secondary with Ethernet cable. Can you go from the secondary to a third with an Ethernet cable? It would go from my house (primary) to my shop secondary and then past my shop to outdoor kitchen (third)
I am new to setting up Asus Aimesh & just happened to discover ur RUclips. Thanks for ur informative sharing. U have mentioned in the clip that to enhance a seamless roaming between the primary router and node, sometimes it needs to change the "the roaming assistant RSSI to a lower number" such as
I've just recently completed installing an AiMesh system with an RT-AC86U router and 5 nodes (1 RT-AC86U and 4 RT-AC3100 nodes, all but 1 hard-wired), and the number clients shown connected on the 'Network Map' varies all the time, with a high of 93 and a low of 45. And despite the ASUS devices being spread out all over my 4,000 sq. ft. home, a few devices are showing only 1 or 2 bars. Any ideas as to why these things are happening? And thanks for all your informative videos on the ASAU AiMesh network.
Thanks so much for the video and all the testing, from your spective did you see much of an improvement in speed before and after you dialed the distance setting?
Great video. I have linksys mesh and hate it. It’s not seamless. As I walk from living to my bedroom. It keeps me connected to living room router and is soooooo slow. And the bedroom nod is right next to me. I have to turn WiFi off and back on to make it connect to bedroom. And I’ve spoke with links many times. The don’t have a way to allow you to change RSSI value. So after all your experience with this. What’s the best route to take. I will run backhual cables to each router and plan on having 3. I also have a decent amount of smart home devices like google hub and WiFi light switches and outlets. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. What model routers would you buy for primary and secondaries ??
is one mesh / ai mesh a superior range extender in terms of speed compared to power line adaptors and other alternatives? great video, really thorough testing! I may return my onemesh system and go with ai mesh using two routers after watching your videos.
I am thinking of trying this with my new asus AX11000 and my older GT-AC5300 on a floor above the 11000. I need to get better speed to a desktop on the 2nd floor that uses wifi (in a location that is hard to get an ethernet cable to so far).
Excellent video and presentation. Roaming assistant does not work for me, no matter what I do. Today I tried enabling it and it would not even let me connect to the wireless networks even at perfect signal. It's frustrating that this is the case in 2020, asus and other router manufacturers need to get their stuff together.
Hello! Thank you for your video!! I have a doubt regarding setup! You have wired the second router as AiMesh in a WAN port, when usually we setup access point and mesh networks at LAN port! Please can you describe to me why you have setup like that or in a LAN port as AiMesh will work at the same way! Because I want all devices to get IP from the main router and not from the second. Thank you
Hi! This is how you should connect the secondary router to the main router in the AiMesh system! The secondary WAN port goes to the Primary LAN! This is how the AiMesh system works and it is not some method that I created! This way the secondary router receives it IP address from the main router. Thanks!
Thank you for your videos, sir. I have a weird problem with my AiMesh system (wifi only) and I wonder if you can reproduce this: Most of the Time I am unable to reach devices in my home network via IPv4-Address, if they are connected to different nodes after roaming. Connecting via IPv6 works just fine and by hostname. I also observed that the hostname resolution sometimes give you a v4 address and sometimes a v6 address. Hope you can help... I have a AC88U as root and two AC68U's as child nodes.
Yes you'll need 2 triband routers in order to dedicate one of the 5 GHz bands to backhaul. Now if one of them is triband and the other one is dual band, unfortunately I'm not quite sure how would the AiMesh system behave, because I haven't tried it myself. Thanks.
I have a question you may be able to answer regarding AiMesh. Do you know of a way to manage the Ai Router and Ai Nodes wireless settings independently? I've noticed that no matter what IP address I connect to, it always bumps me back to the Ai Router's GUI, therefore not allowing me to change things like the wireless channel each node is operating on. If would appear as though, no matter what I do, every router and node end up on the same channel, which only causes contention and negates the "best practice" approach or not having all access points on the same frequencies/overlapping. This is especially important when you have neighbours with mesh systems of their own and there is a need to isolate frequencies based on location in or around the home. Thoughts?
Thanks for the question. Unfortunately it's not possible to change the channels for each node. The reason for that is because a wireless router can only use one channel at the same time for each frequency band ( For example channel 6 for 2.4 GHz and channel 40 for 5 GHz radio in a dual-band wireless router). An AiMesh node is already connected to the primary router using whatever channel the primary router is broadcasting on, so it can only use the same channel to rebroadcast the wireless network. I'm not exactly sure what would be the behavior of the AiMesh System when using Tri-band wireless routers (because I don't have any yet) apparently it is supposed to dedicate one 5GHz band to the inter-router communication, but I'm not sure if it would use a different channel for the other 5GHz band to rebroadcast or not!
Behfor Thanks for the quick and factual response. Perhaps the tri-band would enable a workaround that scenario. However, at those prices, a person may as well invest in an enterprise level mesh solution.
You're very welcome. Yeah I agree with you those are very expensive right now! I'm personally not a big fan of mesh networks anymore because of its downsides including the unavoidable interference! I would use mesh network as a last resort only if cabling is not possible!
I have WiFi-dependent devices at home. I might be away for weeks at a time and need to communicate with them. A mesh network (or repeater) that drops after a week is useless to me, because I'm not in the house to fix it. Can you comment on the ability of ASUS repeaters and/or AiMesh nodes to remain up for weeks at a time with no human intervention? This would include automatically recovering from power failures. Thanks!
the setup for the aiMesh is that once you tell a router to be a node, and the main router to find the node, it picks up the node automatically if you unplug the node and plug it in somewhere else. It seems to be designed so you never have to think about the node again, can't imagine blackouts being any different, nothing is stored in volatile memory and routers do not have a software shutdown button (so once the power comes back on for a blackout, it's on again because the switch it in the on position). I'm not sure if it's applicable but a UPS is also cheap, a $100 UPS will power a router for an hour or two as it would any wifi device with similar power requirements.
What if I put the secondary router near my upstairs desktop, and then connect the desktop to the router using ethernet instead of wifi? Would that ethernet connection be better than a good wifi adapter?
hi, i bought 2 asus router TUF AX-3000 which support AI Mesh. I'm wondering if i should connect the secondary router (node) using wifi or ethernet cable? my ISP plan is 800mpbs 1. If I connect the secondary router (node) using wifi, does the speed drop at the secondary router? or i still get fully 800mbps same as the main router? 2. If i connect using ethernet cable, do I get the same speed at the node as the main router at 800mbps? the distance between both router is around 20 m (65 feet). Thank youuu.
@Behfor can you have a device plugged into the ethernet lan ports of the node device when the connection from the main router to the node is through wifi?
I’m thinking of getting two of the same routers you have from Asus, one to plug into my Modem and the second for my games room 20 metres away because the signal strength is weaker there. Can I use an Ethernet cable from the second router to my PC after doing this?
Im a bit disappointed in AIMesh, the mesh technology is supposed to handle the roaming problems, and not have you tweak settings. Might as well use two cheaper access points.
is there anyway to test cable connected to router max speed and min ping it is capable of ? 1 only got one pc ! i need test my cable if its doing 1gb and low ping properly. got asus 58u and 5e and cat 6 cable ( upgrading today). from isp i am not on 1 giga plan :P
If I run the aimesh system without connecting them together with an Ethernet can I hard wire my Xbox to the secondary router( the one not connected to my modem) or is it wireless only. Thanks.
I have two AC1900 ASUS router(Tmobile version). Instead AiMesh, I used the secondary ASUS router as a bridge mode and then connected to the main router wirelessly. I have noticed that some latency problem while I play Online Game using my laptop(wired to my secondary router). If I set AiMesh network, can it be a better than bridge mode that I am using? Or will be same result?
It's hard to predict if AiMesh would give you any better results! The thing is you should find the root cause of the problem. Is it the Internet, the wired connection, the wireless connection or the laptop itself! If it is the wireless connection, is it the 2.4GHz network or the 5GHz network, maybe there is an interference on the channel you use. I would give AiMesh a try and since AiMesh has some level of intelligence in choosing the best connection between the routers it might fix your issue (if the issue is related to that of course)! Thanks!
You don't have to, they can connect to each other wirelessly too. However, if possible, it is recommended to connect them with an Ethernet cable (CAT5 is really old so CAT6 is recommended) as well. Thanks!
Troy Rx Better yet, Cat7 is now the standard. As you saw in his video the Cat5 bottlenecks the performance to under 100M, that is not what you would want to do.
![AiMesh vs. Repeater vs. Access Point [ASUS RT-AC68U Operation Modes]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ic0bgo_ueQ0/mqdefault.jpg)
![AiMesh vs. Repeater vs. Access Point [ASUS RT-AC68U Operation Modes]](/img/tr.png)
![Asus AiMesh 2.0 [Whole Home WiFi System]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kPVpsXb6ejU/mqdefault.jpg)
Wow! What a great video. You appear to be very good at reducing complex ideas down into easily digestible chunks. I learned a lot! (and that is saying something...I consider myself a bit of an expert in networking...but not necessarily routers). Thank you again for sharing your expertise. Please do more.
Awesome! I'm glad this was helpful for you and you liked it! Please stay tuned, more videos coming soon! :-)
Behfor
Jhom Mkia
Can you setup aimesh mode and kept ethernet cable connect and can you have different ssid names and does this work good for wifi security cams..?
Unfortunately you cannot have different SSID names for the AiMesh nodes in the Asus AImesh System. It'll copy the primary routers SSIDs and broadcast the same SSIDs in the secondary router. If you need different SSID's though you might wanna look at the Access Point or the Repeater features. Please watch this video: ruclips.net/video/ic0bgo_ueQ0/видео.html
As for the security camera, it should work fine however since all the routers have the same SSIDs the cameras might want to switch back and forth between the routers which is not very good for the video! I would personally prefer to use the Access Point mode so I can maybe dedicate a SSID or even a Wireless Router to the security cameras! Thanks!
Behfor
Thx for your quick response...Thats what I thought..aimesh would not be the best setup for me..I have 2 asus routers which work great..and right now I have them setup with different IP’s and different gateways and they are connected via a cat6 ethernet cable with different ssid names..plus my ssid’s are hidden..the reason I set them up this way and not as a Access point or Repeater mode within the router is I would lose internet speeds on my secondary Router via wifi so setting them up as if they were the only Router I had allowed routers to keep the same speeds on both 2.4 &. 5ghz bands with different ssid names on different wifi channels..hopefully that makes sense...👍👍😄😄
@@Behfor your video's are excellent! I loved this one, very helpful with seeing Skype (real world app) vs ping, to understand what's going on. I'd be very curious in you comparing your AiMesh findings and an out of the box mesh router solution on the market. I wonder if Google WiFi or eero or Orbi, etc. do a better job of switching or if you'd still lose a ping packet?
Thank you so much. You manage to answer all my questions, regarding the Asus AiMesh system, in just two videos. Great job, my friend.
You're very welcome! I'm glad this was useful and answered your questions :-) Awesome!!!
Agreed. The two videos covers most of my questions/doubts as well, and the tests performed are very systematic, one I also would be inclined to do. Great job Behfor, and thanks a lot!
Cool! Thanks for your comment! This makes me happy and gives me energy to do more videos like this :-) Thanks again!
Thanks for the video. I just finished setting up AiMesh with two ASUS RT-AC1900P's and it seems to be working well. Nice tip about adjusting the roaming threshold.
Great! I'm glad the AiMesh system is working fine and you liked this video :-)
Your videos helped me setup my Aimesh this week using two RT-AC68U routers. Thanks
Great to hear! :-)
Like!!! I didn't know that AiMesh works with Lan cable... Awesome!!!
Wish I could have found this channel a long time ago. Explains EVERYTHING I needed to know..... clearly👍🏾
Glad you liked the channel, thanks!
This is an impressive testing and explanation on the AiMesh definitely feel more comfortable just getting another used ASUS then getting a standalone repeater. Thanks Man saved me about $150
Glad it was helpful! Thanks :-)
I can’t thank you enough for taking out the time to think out this test and posting the video. I have a RT-AC86U and want to set up an Ai Mesh system and this video answered many of my questions. Well done! Certainly earned a like and a new subscriber.
You're very welcome! I'm glad you liked this video and it could answer many of your questions, thanks 👍
Greetings from Norway! Thank you so VERY much for sharing your experience and clear and easy to understand test-results with us! You have convinced med to look for a 68u or 1900u to compliment my trusted 88u, instead of going the Google wifi or Lycra way. Again; thanks!!!
You're very welcome sir. I'm glad you liked this video and it was useful for you :-)
AWESOME testing - and great explanations and illustrations.
Glad you liked it , thanks 👍
Hi there. I was thinking of getting a Rt-ac66u to add as a node in my aimesh paired to a RT-AX86U. Two questions :
1) do users have a choice which means to use as the back haul /connection between the two devices?
2) if a specific band is used as a back haul (say 2.4ghz), can a client still roam between the router and node on that same band?
You rock man, I watched the into video and about to ask you about this comparison. Boom there you go and you got this. Love your explanation.
Thanks so much, glad you liked the video 👍
indeed one of the best videos i have seen to help us understand this easily with demo.
Thanks, glad you liked it 😀👍
Just setup an RT-AC86U router and was thinking of utilizing AiMesh. I had a UniFi Mesh as my AP before but thinking of getting another Asus AiMesh compatible router to expand the AiMesh system. After seeing your video, I think that's the route I'm going to take. Thanks so much for a very through explanation on how it works.
Great video!
Even losing a package, that wasn't enough to drop the Skype call.
Great way of testing!
Thanks! 👍
Earned a like a a subscriber. You have a great way of explaining things where the average person can understand
I really appreciate it and very glad you liked this video :-)
Awesome video ... I'm working on my AiMesh now and really excited about this ...
Thanks and good luck 🙂👍
I'm replacing a fully working rt 68 with an rt 86 and your video convinced me to keep my old router around for mesh. Good video!
Great! I'm glad this video was useful :-) Thanks!
This is the answer to what i am looking for and your video explain it very well. It’s easy to understand with all that animations. You’ve done Amazing job. Thank you!
Great to hear That! Thank you so much for letting me know :-)
What program/apps did you use to check the RSSI?
You are great. Thanks for the efforts and such nice explanation. I got GT AC5300 for just the reason to have AiMesh eventually. After viewing your video it gives me good confidence to go and buy another router for my office.
You're very welcome! I'm glad you liked thus video and found it useful :-) Good luck with your future AiMesh system 👍👍
You are a very clever guy. Thanks for the final note about the secondary router losing connection twice in 10 days; that is a deal killer for me - worse even than my current repeater setup, which fails only about once a month. The propeller heads (PH) who design these things have no concept that the PH who buys the unit might not always be in the house when it fails. I love my ancient WRT54G, but its huge flaw is that it comes up much faster than the modem, apparently tests for the modem once, then gives up, as if it had something better to do. So after a power failure we have no network until I reboot the router. So now ASUS designs this thing so that you barely miss one ping switching access points, yet the remote unit cannot recover from a disconnect and thereafter you have 100% packet loss FOREVER until the PH who bought the unit shows up at home. Meanwhile his wife, who has no idea what "WiFi" even means, is dead in the water. Why is network reliability always at the bottom of product designers' priority lists?
By the way since watching your video I went searching for comment boards discussing this problem using "asus aimesh nodes offline" and found at least two boards (one on the ASUS support site and another elsewhere) in which at least some users are having really nasty experiences with remote units going offline, some even daily.
You actually mentioned a very important point. I think one big problem is that the companies nowadays do not take testing and quality assurance as seriously as before especially when it comes to home wireless networking. First of all it's a very time consuming process and it requires a lot of resources to be able to test the hardware in many possible real life situations, and with the competition out there, they just rather make the product ready and sell it asap and then fix the problems later on with firmware updates. I could be wrong though that's how I feel.
W. Edwards Deming, the master of reliability who taught the Japanese how to vanquish the American auto industry on its own soil by building reliable cars, said "You cannot inspect quality into a product. The quality is either there or it isn't by the time the inspection occurs." I've been a programmer for 40 years, and through the decades IT management has remained bamboozled by the ridiculous idea that if you just test something enough, it will turn into a quality product. You cannot force a product that was not designed for reliability to become reliable by merely testing and patching it, any more than you could convert a plastic bag into a fine purse. A reliable product (whether software or hardware) usually has a profoundly different design than a non-reliable one, because the reliability requirement must permeate the product. This requires much up-front thinking and careful design work. Today's project management does not conceive of the reliability requirement at the project outset, doesn't design it into the product (if any design is even done at all - most IT projects just code, code, code), and wouldn't think to test for such reliability in the end, since it was never imagined in the beginning.
Amazing video! Answered a lot of questions for me. Thank you for posting. 🙂
Glad to hear that 😊
Wow this answers pretty much all the questions I have for aimesh
Awesome! I'm very glad it was useful for you :-) Thanks!
I was actually looking for this video, and just have found it here! Great job.
Awesome! I'm glad this was useful :-)
FYI DO NOT UPDATE THE T-Mobile TM-AC1900! Asus has put a counter measure in new firmware to disable Aimesh on the unit. It is not re downgrade able!
Thanks for the heads up! I haven't updated yet. I'll wait to see what happens. Thanks!
Hack done for this
I set up an AIMesh using a brand new GT-AC5300 Rapture and an RT-AC66U-B1 as the node. I only had it running for a short time before I became frustrated with the whole thing and removed it. Went back to using a Repeater instead of the AIMesh. The setup was easy, it worked as advertised but it killed my network speed both internally and from the Internet. I have a 300Mbps internet connection that I have always been able to get full speed from to my laptop (ROG G522 with Intel 73265 Wifi). As soon as the mesh was up and running the best I could do from ANY device in my home both wired and wireless was 130Mbps. My network speed from my laptop to my Server went from 75 MBps to 32 MBbs. I would have to conclude that the mesh setup may work but be aware that there are significant differences to you network speed if you use it. I was not aware it would be as bad as my tests have shown. Perhaps a newer router than the AC66U-B1 would give better performance but I won't spend any more time or money on it. My RE650 as a repeater works a lot better.
Thank you for vey good video! Easy, understandable!!!! Regards from Lithuania!
Glad it was helpful! Cheers! :-)
Very very good videos. You got a subscriber. And only dropping 1 ping while swapping nodes is very good in my opinion. I'm setting mine up this weekend 😁
dude well done on this video - congrats!
Thanks! I'm glad you liked it :-)
Great review!!! Haven't used mesh, but in plans.
Thanks 👍
Behfor, thanks for a great review. On the strength of this video I have decided to purchase this router. Im in the computer store as i write this but was undecided. Now i'm clear. Thanks again.
Another great video. Thanks!
Thanks for your nice comments all the time! I do really appreciate it :-)
Thanks! Very helpful for setup and config. Especially the tips on the OS queries to the comm ports.
There's an ASUS blog group that also has a bunch of good tips for config and optimization. As you wisely pointed out at teh beginning, YOUR radio environment may be very different in terms of obstacles, interference, traffic, etc so one needs to have a set of tools to tweak to address these situation specific challenges. EG channel choice.
Great job!
Thank you so much, I'm glad you liked this video 😀👍
Very interesting and throughly tested, thank you!
Thanks! I'm glad you liked this video! :-)
Thanks for the tests done , and the schematic explinations. AImesh is very promising compared to the usage of the 2nd ASUS router in AP mode, but the downside currently is that we lost a lot of the controls to the nodes. it is currently not even possible to reboot them remotely, or check the LAN port speed.
You're right in the web interface there isn't much we can do to the nodes. However I am still able to SSH or Telnet to the nodes if SSH or Telnet is enabled on the Main router and I can use the "reboot" command in case I need to reboot the router but of course it's going to work as long as the nodes haven't lost their connectivity! Hopefully they will add some more controls for the nodes in the web interface in the future firmware updated! Thanks!
thank you so much for this info... answered so many questions about aimesh
You're very welcome! I'm really glad you found it useful :-) Thanks!
Great video, it definitely helped me decide to buy a second asus router and try aimesh.
Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked this video and found it useful! Good luck with the AiMesh System :-)
This is an amazing video. I noticed that you tansfer speeds were rated as 300 down and 300 up during the walk about test. How does that compare to your plan from you ISP?
Nice video! Very helpful! Thank you.
PS: I wish I saw your video a few days earlier...I updated my fully working AiMesh routers with latest firmware. I know now why my T-Mobile TM-AC1900 is now out off my mesh network. :(
You're very welcome! Thanks for watching! Yeah unfortunately that's the case with T-mobile TM-AC1900 now and hopefully there will be a workaround soon.
This test is the best thing I can get about Ai Mesh!
Can you do Test #2 ? Thanks!
Thank you so much! I'm very happy you liked this video! The second video is already available: ruclips.net/video/5sagIw6_ofE/видео.html
In this video I'll test the AiMesh system and compare it with Repeater and Access Point features! Thanks :-)
Excellent video!!
Thanks so much :-)
Thank you for this video. Very helpful.
You're very welcome, glad it helped 👍👍
U are really cool man! U first and best in that topic!
Really appreciate it, thanks 👍
Great testing... thanks.
Thanks so much :-)
Great test, tx!
Thank you. Really useful.
Glad it was useful, thanks 👍🏻
Dude, I felt soooo much doubt after watching another AiMesh video.
YOU SQUASHED ALL THAT.
You explain things so clearly. And the music choice dare i say MESHED smoothly.
Found a cheap SECOND HAND RT-AC68U to mesh with my existing GTAC5300.
Liked and subbed.
Excellent test. Helped a lot deciding. Thanks a lot.
Glad to hear that! Thanks for letting me know 😀👍
@@BehforNp. Did you ever look into doing the mesh with an AX? Looking to have the primary as AX and wonder if the RT-AC68U as a scondary could mess up the OFDMA.
Hopefully as soon as I get an AX router, I'll give it a try! The OFDMA would work for the AX clients connected to the AX router.
Excellent Test, Great Job, Thanks
Thanks, glad you liked it 👍
Pretty good video, however it would have been a lot better to test with computers using an AC chipset (which is the newer standard used in the routers use to achieve 1300mbps on 5ghz [using 3x3 MIMO]). I could see the max link speed was only 300mbps (2x2MIMO). Also AC wifi will generally have shorter latency and is just more stable in real world testing.
awesomw video!
Thanks so much :-)
Very well made video. Thanks for sharing
You're very welcome! Thanks for watching :-)
Thank you. Very clear and informative.
I know this is an old video but, when you decrease client rssi on primary router, you're also decrease the distance of your primany to secondary ai mesh. So it a catch 22. I also try the network tools link steering which is similiar to this and that also experiencing the same problem. So the best option will be to set it on client side. Now what if its a phone? Well you are SOL and will suffer from what call sticky node.
Thanks for sharing, the bottom line is in dual-band mesh systems if you want to use wireless backhaul, you are gonna face many issues that's why it's recommended to use a wired backhaum, however in tri-band mesh systems where you can dedicate one band to the backhaul, things are much better and even if you change the Tx power for the bands used for the clients, the 3rd band dedicated for the backhaul is untouched. Thanks.
@@Behfor I do have 2 AX-11000 routers and they are set as default 5ghz for back haul and still having the issues I mention above. Yes, wired is only if in a perfect world but most cases wireless is the best option.
Great Video, thanks!
You're very welcome! Thanks for watching 👍🙂
Dude AWSOME video - thanks u
Thank you for this video! The very last thing I want to do is build my own mesh system that doesn't work on the "edge" use cases. Ugh! I'll stick (for now) with my Airport Extremes and if I go mesh go with an out-of-the-box system and accept whatever compromises I get from an an out-of-the-box system vs. the interruptions and screams of "the internet is down" that I'd hear from those dependent on my network. Ugh!
Incredible!! Question you connected primary and secondary with Ethernet cable. Can you go from the secondary to a third with an Ethernet cable? It would go from my house (primary) to my shop secondary and then past my shop to outdoor kitchen (third)
Yes that's possible however, the best practice is to connect the nodes directly to the primary. Thanks.
Wired is always a higher priority because wifi is always more vulnerable in terms of security.
Great channel and video
Saw you on Reddit - subbed (gently) and liked (aggressively)
have a great day!
Thank you so much for subscribing (gently) :-) I'm glad you liked my channel (aggressively) LOL I really appreciate it (truly)
Thank you so much man!!
You bet! I'm glad you liked it :-)
I am new to setting up Asus Aimesh & just happened to discover ur RUclips. Thanks for ur informative sharing. U have mentioned in the clip that to enhance a seamless roaming between the primary router and node, sometimes it needs to change the "the roaming assistant RSSI to a lower number" such as
I've just recently completed installing an AiMesh system with an RT-AC86U router and 5 nodes (1 RT-AC86U and 4 RT-AC3100 nodes, all but 1 hard-wired), and the number clients shown connected on the 'Network Map' varies all the time, with a high of 93 and a low of 45. And despite the ASUS devices being spread out all over my 4,000 sq. ft. home, a few devices are showing only 1 or 2 bars. Any ideas as to why these things are happening? And thanks for all your informative videos on the ASAU AiMesh network.
Thanks so much for the video and all the testing, from your spective did you see much of an improvement in speed before and after you dialed the distance setting?
Great video. I have linksys mesh and hate it. It’s not seamless. As I walk from living to my bedroom. It keeps me connected to living room router and is soooooo slow. And the bedroom nod is right next to me. I have to turn WiFi off and back on to make it connect to bedroom. And I’ve spoke with links many times. The don’t have a way to allow you to change RSSI value. So after all your experience with this. What’s the best route to take. I will run backhual cables to each router and plan on having 3. I also have a decent amount of smart home devices like google hub and WiFi light switches and outlets. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. What model routers would you buy for primary and secondaries ??
Best video on this topic
Thank you, that explains a lot.
You're very welcome! I'm glad you liked this video :-)
is one mesh / ai mesh a superior range extender in terms of speed compared to power line adaptors and other alternatives? great video, really thorough testing! I may return my onemesh system and go with ai mesh using two routers after watching your videos.
grate vid ty for the help
and v2 yes yes yes :)
Thank you! I'm glad you liked this video. The ver 2 video is ready, here is the link ruclips.net/video/5sagIw6_ofE/видео.html Thanks :-)
I am thinking of trying this with my new asus AX11000 and my older GT-AC5300 on a floor above the 11000. I need to get better speed to a desktop on the 2nd floor that uses wifi (in a location that is hard to get an ethernet cable to so far).
Excellent video and presentation. Roaming assistant does not work for me, no matter what I do. Today I tried enabling it and it would not even let me connect to the wireless networks even at perfect signal. It's frustrating that this is the case in 2020, asus and other router manufacturers need to get their stuff together.
good video. Didn't need music
Thanks!
Thanks for the great video. Jz a quick question, the roaming threshold must be set up on both routers or only on the primary router?
I would say so, yes
Hello! Thank you for your video!! I have a doubt regarding setup! You have wired the second router as AiMesh in a WAN port, when usually we setup access point and mesh networks at LAN port! Please can you describe to me why you have setup like that or in a LAN port as AiMesh will work at the same way! Because I want all devices to get IP from the main router and not from the second.
Thank you
Hi! This is how you should connect the secondary router to the main router in the AiMesh system! The secondary WAN port goes to the Primary LAN! This is how the AiMesh system works and it is not some method that I created! This way the secondary router receives it IP address from the main router. Thanks!
Thank you for your videos, sir.
I have a weird problem with my AiMesh system (wifi only) and I wonder if you can reproduce this: Most of the Time I am unable to reach devices in my home network via IPv4-Address, if they are connected to different nodes after roaming. Connecting via IPv6 works just fine and by hostname. I also observed that the hostname resolution sometimes give you a v4 address and sometimes a v6 address. Hope you can help... I have a AC88U as root and two AC68U's as child nodes.
thank you bud.
NP! Thanks for watching! :-)
Do you need 2 tribandw routers to have a dedicated wireless back haul channel ?
Can I have one dual and one Triband?
Yes you'll need 2 triband routers in order to dedicate one of the 5 GHz bands to backhaul. Now if one of them is triband and the other one is dual band, unfortunately I'm not quite sure how would the AiMesh system behave, because I haven't tried it myself. Thanks.
Fantastic
I have a question you may be able to answer regarding AiMesh. Do you know of a way to manage the Ai Router and Ai Nodes wireless settings independently? I've noticed that no matter what IP address I connect to, it always bumps me back to the Ai Router's GUI, therefore not allowing me to change things like the wireless channel each node is operating on. If would appear as though, no matter what I do, every router and node end up on the same channel, which only causes contention and negates the "best practice" approach or not having all access points on the same frequencies/overlapping. This is especially important when you have neighbours with mesh systems of their own and there is a need to isolate frequencies based on location in or around the home. Thoughts?
Thanks for the question. Unfortunately it's not possible to change the channels for each node. The reason for that is because a wireless router can only use one channel at the same time for each frequency band ( For example channel 6 for 2.4 GHz and channel 40 for 5 GHz radio in a dual-band wireless router). An AiMesh node is already connected to the primary router using whatever channel the primary router is broadcasting on, so it can only use the same channel to rebroadcast the wireless network. I'm not exactly sure what would be the behavior of the AiMesh System when using Tri-band wireless routers (because I don't have any yet) apparently it is supposed to dedicate one 5GHz band to the inter-router communication, but I'm not sure if it would use a different channel for the other 5GHz band to rebroadcast or not!
Behfor Thanks for the quick and factual response. Perhaps the tri-band would enable a workaround that scenario. However, at those prices, a person may as well invest in an enterprise level mesh solution.
You're very welcome. Yeah I agree with you those are very expensive right now! I'm personally not a big fan of mesh networks anymore because of its downsides including the unavoidable interference! I would use mesh network as a last resort only if cabling is not possible!
I have WiFi-dependent devices at home. I might be away for weeks at a time and need to communicate with them. A mesh network (or repeater) that drops after a week is useless to me, because I'm not in the house to fix it. Can you comment on the ability of ASUS repeaters and/or AiMesh nodes to remain up for weeks at a time with no human intervention? This would include automatically recovering from power failures. Thanks!
the setup for the aiMesh is that once you tell a router to be a node, and the main router to find the node, it picks up the node automatically if you unplug the node and plug it in somewhere else. It seems to be designed so you never have to think about the node again, can't imagine blackouts being any different, nothing is stored in volatile memory and routers do not have a software shutdown button (so once the power comes back on for a blackout, it's on again because the switch it in the on position). I'm not sure if it's applicable but a UPS is also cheap, a $100 UPS will power a router for an hour or two as it would any wifi device with similar power requirements.
DO you suggest best Aimesh router? I am interested in router to router setup.
What if I put the secondary router near my upstairs desktop, and then connect the desktop to the router using ethernet instead of wifi? Would that ethernet connection be better than a good wifi adapter?
hi, i bought 2 asus router TUF AX-3000 which support AI Mesh. I'm wondering if i should connect the secondary router (node) using wifi or ethernet cable? my ISP plan is 800mpbs
1. If I connect the secondary router (node) using wifi, does the speed drop at the secondary router? or i still get fully 800mbps same as the main router?
2. If i connect using ethernet cable, do I get the same speed at the node as the main router at 800mbps?
the distance between both router is around 20 m (65 feet). Thank youuu.
Hello Behfor. Can you help me with my "kinda" problem ? Can I connect tv-box in my bedroom using cable from my secondary router ?
Hi, yes you should be able to connect any wired network devices to the LAN ports of the secondary router. Thanks.
@Behfor can you have a device plugged into the ethernet lan ports of the node device when the connection from the main router to the node is through wifi?
pakostevens absolutely
Excellent video! Practical daily life scenarios explained so easily! Thank you!
My node keeps going on and offline. I’m using the same to routers you are. Have you had this problem ever?
I’m thinking of getting two of the same routers you have from Asus, one to plug into my Modem and the second for my games room 20 metres away because the signal strength is weaker there. Can I use an Ethernet cable from the second router to my PC after doing this?
Yes you can use the Lan ports of the routers to connect your computer
@@Behfor thanks 😊
At 6:15, how can you tell which router the roaming laptop is connecting to?
Im a bit disappointed in AIMesh, the mesh technology is supposed to handle the roaming problems, and not have you tweak settings. Might as well use two cheaper access points.
Great 🙂👌👍
How often do you roam in the house?
is there anyway to test cable connected to router max speed and min ping it is capable of ? 1 only got one pc ! i need test my cable if its doing 1gb and low ping properly. got asus 58u and 5e and cat 6 cable ( upgrading today).
from isp i am not on 1 giga plan :P
I don't need to know how to works, i just plug the cables in and hope for the best!
I have ASUS DSL-AC68U Router can I flash it with Asus RT-AC68U Wireless Router firmware?
Hi, is there any speed, range difference, if I connect my second asus router in repeater mode vs mesh mode. Thanks
ASUS RT-AC87U don't have Aimesh??
I don't think so. It is not listed on their website (www.asus.com/AiMesh/)
If I run the aimesh system without connecting them together with an Ethernet can I hard wire my Xbox to the secondary router( the one not connected to my modem) or is it wireless only. Thanks.
You sure can hard wire your Xbox to the secondary router even if the connection between the routers is only wireless! Thanks
Behfor awesome thank you
You're very welcome :-)
My primary router is Xiaomi Ax36000 z can I set Asus as aimesh to primary router ?
No AiMesh is only for Asus devices.
@@Behfor inset as repeater only ....great
I have two AC1900 ASUS router(Tmobile version). Instead AiMesh, I used the secondary ASUS router as a bridge mode and then connected to the main router wirelessly. I have noticed that some latency problem while I play Online Game using my laptop(wired to my secondary router).
If I set AiMesh network, can it be a better than bridge mode that I am using? Or will be same result?
It's hard to predict if AiMesh would give you any better results! The thing is you should find the root cause of the problem. Is it the Internet, the wired connection, the wireless connection or the laptop itself! If it is the wireless connection, is it the 2.4GHz network or the 5GHz network, maybe there is an interference on the channel you use. I would give AiMesh a try and since AiMesh has some level of intelligence in choosing the best connection between the routers it might fix your issue (if the issue is related to that of course)! Thanks!
Do you need to connect the two routers with a cat5 cable?
You don't have to, they can connect to each other wirelessly too. However, if possible, it is recommended to connect them with an Ethernet cable (CAT5 is really old so CAT6 is recommended) as well. Thanks!
Troy Rx Better yet, Cat7 is now the standard. As you saw in his video the Cat5 bottlenecks the performance to under 100M, that is not what you would want to do.