ASUS ZenWiFi XT9 Tri-Band WiFi6 Mesh System

I purchased the XT9 2-pack mesh system after having issues getting acceptable service from the Verizon CR1000A and extender mesh. I had an older ASUS router when I was at a different home (and had the Comcast router on Bridged mode) and I had nothing but good experiences. I did a lot of research on mesh systems in general and found the Eero, Google and even the TP Link were lacking in the customizable features and included parental controls that the ASUS still had – so then I did research comparing various ASUS routers. I thought about the XTE12 but that just seemed overkill for me – and at twice the price-point of the XT9, I wasn’t biting.

At first, I only setup one XT9 router to replace the Verizon CR1000A router and extender I was using – and I noticed an immediate improvement with just a single XT9 router in speed and signal strength (range through walls/floors) vs. the meshed Verizon system.

After a couple of days, I setup the 2nd AP using wireless back-haul (dedicated 5-2Ghz channel) and moved the 2nd unit around to figure out where it provided the best overall coverage. What I quickly realized – and ONLY due to where I had the initial router setup – I would actually benefit from a 3rd XT9 and a 3-unit mesh system, so I ordered a 3rd unit. Was it overkill – likely yes 🙂 … but I have 3 teens with 8-10 devices each and I wanted to ensure things were as good as they could be. Plus it was a combination black-friday cyber-monday deal so I was able to bag all 3 units for less than a single XTE12 normally retails for.

With the 3rd unit, I was able to setup units 2 and 3 on opposite ends of the house (router is in the office, which is pretty much front-middle of my house). I kept all 3 units on the main/entry floor – as I noticed the signal to the basement and to the 2nd floor was just fine, especially with 3 units covering both ends and the middle.

I receive 1GB service from Verizon – and, depending on the speed test server I connect to, time of day, overall external traffic, etc. – I can see download and upload speeds in every room of the house using the 3-unit XT9 mesh of up to 800MBps – although the usual speeds I’m seeing (on average) are 350 +/- 100. And that’s quite acceptable for wireless backhaul and wireless device connectivity.

A couple of things I ran into, though. First – I live in a neighborhood with a lot of traffic and I noticed, with the Mesh enabled, the entire network would disconnect for 1-2 minutes randomly, but often (I’d say every 1-2 hours). This was clearly not acceptable. I did some research and found I needed to (a) disable the roaming assistant, and (b) use a downloadable app like WiFi Analyzer to figure out what 2.4 and 5 channels my neighbors were flooding so I could manually change the channels my routers were using – and ever since those two changes, I’ve had amazing and consistent speed and connectivity for all of the devices in the house.

I decided to leave the Verizon CR1000A router broadcasting it’s IoT (2.4) signal for all of my smart devices, which also means they don’t clutter the view of connected devices when I use the ASUS router app. I also have a Verizon Extender which is wired-backhaul via the coaxial so the wife and I have ethernet connections for work-from-home, and one MoCa adapter that can be used by the kids for wired-backhaul gaming. They can fight over who gets to use it (hahaha).

Finally – I didn’t like the auto-assignment of some stay-put devices in my home moving from one AP to another, so – for a select few devices like TVs, Echo Dots, etc. that stay in a single room, I bound them to specific AP’s so that the bound devices are pretty evenly distributed across the 3 XT9 routers. I also turned on website logging (parental controls), assigned the kids devices to various “family groups” so I could pause one kid at a time if need be, and used the QoS feature to change the bandwidth usage priorities so WFH was #1 (sorry kids). I quickly realized this feature could also be used to push “Gaming” priority way down the list if wife and I were looking to get the kids off the games without them knowing we paused them. Nothing worse than lagging games – and if it’s “Verizon’s fault” (they have no idea) maybe it’s best to just give the games a rest and come watch a movie with us! Sneakily encouraged family time.

The kids are happy – nobody is complaining anymore. Next on my list of potential add-on’s would be (a) hard-wired back-haul – which should be pretty straight forward in my house; and (b) opening up the 5-2GHz channel for device consumption. I may also consider getting a couple more MoCa adapters so the kids don’t have to share for PC-based or console-based gaming.

If you want something that is fast, straight forward, easy to setup, and reliable, this is not your router. I don’t mind tweaking settings left and right when I have the time, but sometimes you just need something to work right out of the box.

My connection is completely unstable. I split the channels, so the 2.4GHz and 5GHz each have their own SSID. Most of our IoT devices are still 2.4GHz and I didn’t want to run them on the same network as my computers so this seemed like a good idea. The 2.4GHz Band drops multiple times a day disconnecting all home devices.

The 5GHz band has horrific speeds. Right now I am running 24Mbps when on a 6 year old mesh system, I was running 200Mpbs. I have two XT9s in a mesh located 15 feet apart (directly above and below) and the connection between the two is dropped frequently and I see a flashing light instead of a solid white light. My connection strength is always week. Connection strength drops off dramatically if I step outside.

I have been troubleshooting this system for a couple of months now and I am about ready to scrap it even though it was rather expensive.