ASUS AC2900 WiFi Gaming Router RT-AC86U

I got these as I needed more coverage around the house. I am really happy as it gave me great speeds. I got a notebook and walked around the home and I could get very good signal strength and sustained transfer speeds. The lowest speeds on the graph image were on the corners of the basement.

É muito bom, eficiente , fácil de instalar e monitorar. Ele nunca foi barato mas entrega em qualidade. Atualmente está um pouco defasado pois não entrega wi-fi 6G , mas se o custo estiver bom é uma excelente opção. Se a internet for rápida e os switchs que estiverem sendo usados forem giga, o resultado surpreende!

Have this paired with modem netgear cm-1200, ASUS extender rp-ac1900 (Ethernet back on for the ai mesh system). And Comcast gigabit internet. And all Ethernet cables are cat7.

Always have 2 wired desktop PCs, 9 wireless connections.

I recommend for any gamer.

I love this router!

Super easy set up, easy mesh setup. If you do wifi mesh you will drop a lot of MB’s. I only got 150 after wifi mesh. But it was solid and reliable. So I went with Ethernet back haul and got 600+on the other end of my house (60ft away from router.) 650 on the same side of the house as the router. 998Mbs lan to pc. I also only use the 5G wifi. Turned off 2.4G.

After a month I had the issues everyone else had. Actually had it on the last router cause this was its replacement (old:asus ac-68u). Still had internet wifi issues.

Had Comcast come out and look things over. They said since I just replace the router my less than 1 year old arris sb-8200 modem was the issue. Yeah, ok… So I bought the net gear cm-1200 to make sure. Still had issues. I really wanted to solve this wifi dropping the internet issue.

Found a connection for the cable out side my house, looked good but when the problem happened if I disconnected it and reconnected it the issue would go away for a few days. I replaced the cable with a 100’ Kable direct cable and ran directly from the modem to the isp connection. Never had an issue again. Has been 12 months no problems. Have had the router for 16 months.

Great features on the ap. Firmware updates via the app. I love this router.

All in all, the issues I had was all the bad reviews on all sites. Turns out it was just a bad connection to isp. How many others have this issue and don’t know/think to check the connection to the modem from isp.

Also this router has a feature called Dfs to change the frequency of the wifi. Found a really old thread on Reddit about a50s losing connection to base station due to wifi interference. And Omg my gen 2 asto A50s work again no cutting out. Who would of thought. That router signals was what was causing the astro a50s to lose connection to base station. Even better for ASUS to put that Dfs button click to fix the issue instead of trying to change the frequency manually.

After all of that having solid internet and then getting to use my a50s again was total bonus!

I thought I had reviewed this router some time ago, but apparently I forgot to do it. I bought one in December 2017 and one in March, 2018. Both are being used and are set up in my two-story, 3100 sq-ft house, in router+AP mode to provide high strength 5 GHz coverage for the entire house. I’m not using AiMesh mode and haven’t tried it. These have been great routers for my needs. Fast, inexpensive, reliable.

I started with just one RT-AC86U that replaced my RT-AC3100 that had replaced my RT-AC68U, and I found that, overall, RT-AC86U provided better range and speed for both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands than either of those two routers for multiple types of devices (Mac laptop, Android phone, iPad). I did a fairly extensive set of tests that can be found on the SNB forums. I was able to connect in the far bedrooms on the 2.4 GHz band with just a single router and had no problem doing typical internet surfing, but while the connection strength and speed was better than the two previous routers, it still wasn’t what I wanted.

After doing a fair bit of reading, I realized that no single router would provide the 5 GHz coverage that I wanted in the far bedrooms, so I bought a second RT-AC86U, and set it up in AP mode at a location suitable to provide good signal strength in the far bedrooms. Running in main+AP mode requires a dedicated ethernet connection between the two routers. Running this cable is easy for some, but not others. AiMesh is an option for those who don’t have the option of running an ethernet cable. For the main AC86U, I have both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios enabled, and the satellite AC86U has only the 5 GHz radio enabled. I did this because the 2.4 GHz band on the main AC86U does sufficiently cover the entire house.

This dual router setup has been 100% reliable since the day I set it up. My router settings are fairly simple. No attached storage because I have a dedicated NAS. I have several ports on my “server” computer forwarded. The VPN server on the router is enabled, and I use it routinely without issue. Most of the other bells and whistles are disabled. I’m not using traffic monitoring, nor am I using AiProtection. No gamers on my network. I have a typical range of devices connecting – several computers, several phones, security cameras, NAS, printer. All work without issue. WiFi speeds with a strong signal are as good as can be expected. My MacBookPro with 3×3 5 GHz consistently has a 1300 mbps link speed in the vicinity of either router, and transfers to/from my server computer from this laptop go at 70 MB/s. LAN speeds over ethernet are quite fast. If I set up jumbo frames, I can saturate the 1GB/s ethernet between my server computer and NAS in both read and write mode. Its a bit slower with a standard MTU.

I will say that obtaining good hand-off between the two AC86Us as people move from location to location in the house took a bit of tuning. I had to enable the Roaming Assistant option on the main AC86U to kick devices off it when the 5 GHz signal strength falls below -66 dBm. Something like this has to be done because most devices don’t readily disconnect from one access point until signal strength is in the pits, even when there is another high strength access point in the vicinity.

To summarize again, this is a great, inexpensive, high performance router in my experience.

04/05/2020 UPDATE

I’m puzzled by the nearly 20% 1-star reviews because I now have four of these in service, two at my house and two at my cabin (large property), and all of them work perfectly. Either I’ve been really lucky with all four, or there is something about the settings and/or other equipment for some people that is causing issues.

07/21/2021 UPDATE

My four RT-AC86Us continue to work flawlessly. Performance and functionality of the devices continue to improve as ASUS and Merlin continue to improve the firmware for this router and other ASUS routers. At the current price of $150, this is an outstanding router to have even considering that AX (WIFI 6) routers are now available. IMHO, WIFI 6 is a bit of a gimmick. 98% of people will not benefit from WIFI 6 even if your laptop/phone/tablet are WIFI 6. There just aren’t many needs for that kind of speed, and the reality is that the half-duplex nature of all wifi along with the additional error checking result in a data transmission latency that reduces the value of a very high speed wifi protocol.