ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 Tri-band WiFi 6E Extendable Gaming Router, 6GHz Band, 2.5G Port, Triple-level Game Acceleration, VPN Fusion, Subscription-free Network Security, AiMesh Compatible

So along with other reviewers this is useless with the firmware above version ending in 6436. The speeds suffer dramatically but it can easily be fixed and reverted down to any firmware version you'd like.Version 7xxx introduces WPA3 WiFi security, the first time I've ever seen that implemented. However speeds from the router drop by 90% which is why it isn't yet ready for general use.I'm on virgin using their really terrible hub 3 which cannot reach my whole home.Prior to that I was using, very successfully, the BT included smart hub 2 which was so good I discarded the Plusnet hub when I switched in favour of the by hub which I reconfigured easily to distribute Plusnet internet. That's my last 3 years of internet experience with WiFi routers!The Virgin hub3 is terrible. Speeds are good to you're standing right next to it but for your generally larger than 1 bed home, don't bother using it.I bought the GT ax 11000 to use and easily connected it to the hub3 in modem mode.To do that you wire the devices together after choosing modem mode in the Virgin hub 3 settings page, you can use any rj45 socket and cable (gen 7 is cheap now), switch on the router first, then after a minute or so switch on the Virgin hub 3, so that it finds the router in a state of grace. It then allocates an IP address to the router which then begins broadcasting internet. The Virgin hub3 turns a solid red after cycling through some green colours which means things are good.I have paired this with 2 AX92Us in my 3 floor townhouse and the performance is superb with excellent cover all over. On its own, it covers all but the 4th corner bedroom top floor, where speeds drop to 20mbps from the 213mbps everywhere else.Initial impressions: a beast of a router. It's huge. The box is beautiful, the Rog sign is aura compatible when wired into my custom-built-by-myself Asus Rog PC apparently, but I haven't tried that yet. You can switch the light off completely along with the white LEDs on the front. The 8 antennae state 'asus high performance antenna' on each. They screw in and click fold in at 45 degree or 90 degree from a flat 180 degree extension. It's quite heavy in total.Hardware: The 4 core CPU runs at 5% utilisation most of the time and the ram runs at 60%. When paired with the AX92Us the ram utilisation is 94% with no performance degradation. There are 2 usb 3.1 gen slots for adding in wired hard disk drives which I have done and use as network Lan or FTP if you are adventurous. There is a 2.5gb port which is really good if you know what it does, and 4 other standard Lan ports.Setup: is a breeze using the 'Asus router' app. You can, if not wanting an app, use your computer or mobile device and make your way to router.asus.com or 192.168.50.1 which is what the default base address is. The settings homepage seems formidable at first, but easy to understand once you tinker about. You can save the settings file to your computer and restore if needed, but you need to restore using the same asus firmware you saved them in. Firmware is easily updated by using the app or using the administration tab in the WiFi settings.The way Asus have built these things is really cool. The Aimesh really is a good idea. You can use any old Asus routers you have lying around to form an extended mesh. Obviously I've used 2 new ax routers to ge the best speeds possible for gaming using a hardwired connection to one of them, but I don't have any WiFi capable devices yet for the WiFi 6 protocol this has. Some friends will turn up with latest iPhones and will notice a difference!Quite expensive for what it is, in essence, a router, which is why I bought a used Amazon warehouse item for almost half price at £197. I wouldn't dare buy this at full price ever, instead I'd buy the AX92Us for the offer price of £266, which happens every 3 months or so, which is what I got them for new.

I got this to control multibe networks for my iot devices, kids network and primary network. To start the setup is easy and your up and running within 10 minutes usually but this is depending on the settings your ISP use.For what i needed it was great value for money and it is fast and handles crowded network signals really well in that there has not been a noticable performance hit over wifi.The device is regually recieves firmware updates and is still very much supported by Asus, the network segregation adds little to the security of the network but it does allow you to manage these seperate networks differently.It works well with older Asus mesh products but i did find the additional network ID's i had put in place did not play well with the older devices on older firmware. The feature i was interested in was the guest network pro which gave me the ability to control my kids network availability time but it also had limited support over older AI mesh devices.This is a top product for the price and the wifi speeds are as advertised for us but this will vary per household.

All-in-All this is a wicked Powerful & Fast bit of kit.I have been using ASUS products for over 2 decades now, which should say a thing or two about how I find ASUS products in general and as important is how Asus apply cutting edge Technology into their consumer devices.The Asus RT-AX89X specifically has what I want in-terms of Physical networking/Routing functionality offered via either the 8x1G Ports and or the 10G Copper/10G Fibre SFP+ port.The combination of ports deployed on this device coupled with the Wireless feature set was enough to make this purchase a no-brainer.This router is is acting as a 10G backhaul via Structured CAT6A cabling to a secondary wireless AP. The WiFi Speeds are very good. The Signal is again very powerful and can manage an average Large Family home needs in terms of number of connected devices which is does with ease. No bottlenecks. Things just work as expected with high speeds.Physically this devices footprint is quite large especially when you consider that you can have up to X10 thick and quite stiff CAT6A cables coming out of this thing, in cramped places this could be an issue, fortunately this is not the case for me..Downsides=========Firmware: There is only one real downside and that is not really a negative as such more of a missed chance because at present this router is NOT supported by Merlin's Custom AsusWRT firmware. This doesn't run on Broadcom's SOC chipset but instead its powered via Qualcomms SoC Chipset. So, if you were looking to be running Merlin's Firmware on this device at the time of writing this its not possible.Wi-Fi 6 Downside is this router is not Tri-band router and does not support the latest WiFi 6E specsthere is 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands but no 6GHz band.Internal Fan: This router has an internal fan which can be controlled via the GUI and probably via the Terminal.. This makes sense as under load this will generate enough heat that traditional thermal measures used in other devices would not be sufficient to keep this thing cool especially during the warmer months. I see this as a plus side as opposed to a negative, It shows Asus have considered this aspect in the design stage and have provided a solution, a solution with a shelf life tied to the fan's life but a solution none the less..Summery========All-in-All this is a wicked Powerful & Fast bit of kit.Security: There is powerful 2-way IPS and Malicious website blocking and infected device blocking all managed and monitored through AIProtect.VPN: Easily create PPTP/OpenVPN/IPSec VPNs and Instant Guard.Adaptive QoS with App InsightsOpen NAT / Simple 3-steps Port Forwarding Setup for Gaming Rules for port forwarding.AICloud 2 with all the usual stuff. Can easily turn this device into a NAS server, etc..Traffic Analyzer Monitor and StatisticsSmart Home: Alexa & IFTTT ("if this then that.") SupportedEtc..