ASUS ZenWiFi Tri-band Mesh WiFi 6E System ET9

Great performing 2-node mesh system. WiFi 6E isn’t really faster than with my old WiFi 6 Netgear access point, but is more stable, and 2.5 GBPS Ethernet backhaul has sped up my LAN by reducing congestion. Having integrated and fairly comprehensive control of WAN, LAN and WiFi parameters all in one place is great.

While waiting for the router system to arrive, I read thru the on-line FAQs, and so had an idea of what to expect from the setup process, and was able to pre-decide on some setup options (not enabling Smart Connect, WPA2 vs WPA3, reusing SSID names, how to connect wired backhaul, etc.) Setup with the Android app went smoothly, including simultaneously installing a firmware update on both the main router and remote node. I set the 2.4GHz band to allow WPA2 using the backwards-compatible “WPA2/WPA3 personal” mode, so 2.4GHz WPA3-capable devices can still use the more secure mode, without locking out IoT and older devices, and WPA3-only for 5GHz and 6GHz bands. When the new mesh network came up, all of my WPA2 devices quickly reconnected on their own with no intervention on my part. My WPA3 devices detected the change to a new network, and all had to be individually reconnected.

When I brought up the nodes with Ethernet backhaul, they connected great at 2.5GBPS, and Auto backhaul select chose the faster Ethernet over slower 6GHz backhaul. Ethernet backhaul works fine through an unmanaged 2.5GBPS switch. The key thing is to make sure you connect the remote node’s 2.5GBPS WAN port to the main router’s 2.5GBPS LAN port.

WiFi 6E isn’t faster than good WiFi 6, it just adds the extra 6GHz band for backhaul, or the few devices that can use it. My Pixel phone connects fine at 6GHz, at 1.2GBPS. 5GHZ connections are solid and fast throughout my house. 2.4GHz devices have solid connections, even cameras mounted on outside walls of the house. Initially, the AI system tended (sometimes illogically) to connect nearly everything to the “main” router, but over the course of a week or so of use, has transferred several connections to the node router, where they logically belong. One can also bind specific devices to a specific node, if one doesn’t like the AI’s choices.

The Android app interface works well, with the settings and information most people need available. The Web interface is much more comprehensive, with much more in depth control settings, and a lot of good system reports. There is a built-in Ookla Speed Test app, measuring from the router WAN port being much more accurate than from a PC a couple of layers down in the network. The WAN settings allow DNSSEC and DNS-over-TLS encryption to be enabled. There is also available WAN-level, no-subscription, TrendNet malware/bad site blocking protection – can’t comment on it’s effectiveness, as there’ve been no hits in the month or so it’s been on-line.

Me gusto mucho el equipo, fácil de configurar con la app, si quieres hacer algo ma avanzado puedes hacerlo desde una PC. Excelente señal, velocidad sin problemas de conexión. Mi primer router Asus y no me arrepiento.

Liked everything

The Asus ZenWiFi Pro ET12 is an excellent router. I purchased a two-pack for our 3,300 sq. ft. single story house. We get our full internet bandwidth of 300+ Mbps in every room of our house, with dozens of connected devices. All the devices, including our older 2.4 GHz thermostats, show strong signals.

Each mesh node is the same hardware device, so adding an additional node is as simple as purchasing an additional ET12 unit.

The initial setup is very straight-forward, and will get you operational in just a few minutes.

Initial configuration is accomplished via the Asus Router app. A nice feature is that no registration with Asus is required to use the mobile app, unlike with some other companies.

The lower-level technical aspects of your home network configuration is managed through the Asus router webpages. So, you can uninstall the Asus Router mobile app after initial setup if you want, unless you want to access your network configuration remotely (which requires enabling remote access in the webpages).

For my uses, network configuration via webpages is a huge plus – After spending an hour or two fine-tuning my configuration, I always like to save my home network configuration settings locally, just in case I need to reset and restore my network settings for some reason in the future. With mobile app-only router configuration, I haven’t been able to export / import my configuration, and some of my configuration settings have been lost in the “cloud”.

NOTE: One truly excellent feature on the Asus ET12 that I haven’t seen on other routers (so far) is the capability to connect to all three WiFi frequencies (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz) using a single SSID for your mesh network. For some reason, other manufacturers’ routers have required the newer 6 GHz band to use a different SSID than the rest of the mesh network, which defeats a good chunk of having a mesh network in the first place. To enable this functionality, you need to switch the “Smart Connect” option to “Tri-Band Smart Connect”. Once it is enabled, the Asus ET12 handles the WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E handoffs seamlessly with a single SSID.

The only minus (and, it’s a tiny one) is that the ET12 doesn’t support an IoT network. That’s OK, if you configure your Guest network to be isolated from your Intranet (the default setting). Assigning our IoT devices to the Guest network assigns the guest and IoT devices to a different IP address range than your main network, so your main LAN network is not accessible to the guest / IoT devices. A separate IoT network would provide additional isolation between devices, but having the Guest network on a different IP address range is still decent security. I am glad to see the different IP address range for the Asus ET12 Guest network, since some other manufacturers don’t always do this. When other manufacturers assign all devices to the same IP address range, you have to rely that the manufacturer has properly isolated the Guest and IoT devices in their firmware somehow instead of relying (partly) on IP Address isolation.

Overall, the Asus ET12 is a great 6E Mesh system, with plenty of functionality and bandwidth to cover our needs for many years to come.