ASUS ExpertWiFi EBA63 AX3000 Dual-Band Access Point

I am not an IT pro or networking expert. I just needed an easy-to-install wired router for my small home office, which has one or two PCs running at a time. This router fits the bill perfectly. This is a big deal because there seem to be very few routers that meet these simple criteria (wired and easy to install). In fact, as of this writing in September 2024, this is the only one I could find. It seems the tech industry has decided everyone using the internet at home wants wifi. And anyone who doesn’t want wifi must be a networking expert. What they are missing is that there are some important reasons why a home user who is not a networking expert might prefer a wired router:
– Faster internet speeds.
– Superior security.
– No additional radio waves bouncing around the house, a potential technical or health issue.

Pros of this unit:
– Wired only. No wifi capabilty without adding other components.
– Plug-and-play simplicity, if that’s what you want. Seriously, I simply plugged everything in and it worked flawlessly.
– Fast internet speeds. Provided the highest internet speeds I’ve ever seen through a router.
– Tons of advanced networking features if you need them. There are web and mobile interfaces you can use to access the well-designed online dashboard. Honestly, most of the settings there were over my head. It appears you don’t need to use the interface at all if you don’t want to.
– Physical design is clean, simple, and compact. The case is metal, believe it or not, which I think is great.
– Provides immediate connection when started up, unlike some other wired routers that reportedly take a few minutes to start delivering data.

Cons:
– It isn’t designed for desktop use. Rather, it seems like it’s meant to be screwed to a wall in a server room or something like that. I say this because it doesn’t really have a “front”, unless it’s the top where the name is printed. There are screw slots on the bottom. Power input and internet connections are on opposite sides of the unit. For SOHO use (small office / home office), it would be nice to have all the wires going into one side and indicator lights on the other.
– Confusingly, it has “Wifi” in its name. Apparently ExpertWifi is the name of the product line, which does include some wifi components. By itself, to be clear, this unit has no wifi capability.
– It comes with a comically simple quick start guide that basically just says to plug everything in and then check out the user interface. A little more plain-English explanation for the non tech-savvy would be cool.

All in all, after many hours of searching online and reading articles, I’ve concluded this router is in a class by itself: a simple, efficient, plug-and-play wired router. Thank you, ASUS!

The router is great. Very easy and familiar setup and web interface. Stable and works great.
2.5Gb or 5Gb ports would be nice.
Hopefully Asus can provide 10 years of firmware updates so it doesn’t become ewaste too quick.

Why is it that 99% of home routers have WiFi?! It took me forever to find this, without buying an expensive Fortigate firewall/router with a stupid expensive subscription…

I prefer to have my home network like an enterprise network, where you have separate components. Like a router/firewall, PoE switches, and separate WiFi access points. Like in my case, I’m running this here ASUS unit, TP-Link 48 port PoE Switches, with 5x Extreme AP305C WiFi WAPs in my house.

I love the fact that there is NO subscription needed and the unit actually works. More manufacturers need to make non-WiFi firewall/routers again.

Very happy with this firewall/router. Easy to setup if you know what you are doing.

Beware if you need your devices on different VLANs to talk to each other. Inter-VLAN traffic is not allowed by the firewall or some other setting in the router that is not accessible via GUI/browser-based configuration.

I have a managed switch with Basic 802.1q tagged VLANs that was connected to this router via a single trunk line. I can say with certainty that inter-VLAN doesn’t work because I checked everything many many many many many times while wasting a full week troubleshooting. I also wasted 35 minutes creating a support ticket with Asus (never did hear back). 35 minutes because the rep didn’t know what a VLAN is and could barely talk, so I was placed on hold four times just trying to tell them the issue until finally he just created the ticket that Asus support never responded to. I additionally got nowhere by posting to Zentalk networking forum.

After those 7 days of major frustration, I gave up on this Asus router and bought a TP-Link ER605 V2 for 60% less cost and had everything up and running in an hour. Inter-VLAN works great, but I also have a firewall robust enough to restrict what I want to restrict.

My ordeal with this router:

The devices on VLANs had internet access, they just couldn’t talk to each other. No pinging, shared folder access, etc.

Tagging and the trunk port configuration were absolutely good. When replacing this Asus router, I made 0 changes to the switch VLAN config… just plugged it into the replacement router and configured VLAN settings on the new router and it worked.

IP/subnet settings were 100% good too. I set up the same networks and addresses in the new router without issue.

Static routes did not enable inter-VLAN. Created routes for both subnets first, then for both hosts when subnet routes didn’t fix the issue.

Tried every possible setting for the SDNs/VLANs to include enable/disable “Access Intranet”

The firewall is so limited that you can’t create rules to allow ICMP for pinging (and there is no setting anywhere in config related to ICMP): All you when creating rules are:
-IP
-Mask
-TCP/UDP for protocol (where’s my ICMP??? Nowhere in the settings at all)
-Port RANGE (but really you can only enter ONE port per rule because you can’t type symbols in the field….. how can you type a RANGE with nothing but numbers??)

I created firewall rules for each subnet. That didn’t work so I added rules for the hosts as well. I had maybe 25 rules JUST to enable SMB file share access. Ended up with rules for both hosts and both subnets for ports 137-139, 445, etc for UDP and TCP, for both hosts and both subnets.

Because I couldn’t ping to test connectivity, I tested by trying to access a shared folder on my HTPC on VLAN1 from desktop PC on VLAN2……. MANY MANY TIMES while changing settings.

Finally, I turned off the firewall and inter-VLAN traffic immediately started working.

Take my advice and buy a “business” router with real VLAN support. I learned over the past week that many consumer/prosumer router manufacturers make promises about VLAN support that they have difficulty keeping. I can attest to the truth of this through my experience with this Asus AND a Netgear RAX50 I bought yesterday because it promised VLAN capability while I was replacing this router. It only took 5 minutes in the config pages of that one to learn there was no VLAN support at all beyond for WAN/IPTV!

I will never buy consumer-grade network gear again in my life.