APC Australia - September 2019

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$8

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Asus ROG Rapture

GT-AX11000 802.11ax

Tr i - B a n d G a m i n g R o u t e r

Huge in every way.

D

espite the rather

huge size of this,

Asus’ gargantuan

gaming router only

has four Gigabit Ethernet

ports though there is a

2.5Gbps W/LAN port to

complement the primary

WAN. The main features lie

inside and a quick glance at

the browser-based Dash

Board is instructive. The

homepage displays the all

the main statuses plus live

graphs showing network

traffic, average network

pings, ping deviation(!),

global game server pings

plus Aura RGB lighting

effects for the top logo and

settings that configure a

programmable button on

the chassis. This is in

addition to 21 other

submenus.

Automated port

forwarding is an impressive

gaming feature. Rather

than researching your

favourite game’s ports and

There are VPN

terminations, USB file

server features and every

other network tool you

might want.

The Wi-Fi 6 performance

blitzed our tests in that it

managed to transmit our

115/5 cable internet

connection two floors up

without any need for

extenders. It even did so

with 1ms faster ping than

rivals. However, the

potential throughput is

massive with the ‘11000’

moniker reflecting the

(theoretical) potential

megabits per second it can

manage. That’s thanks to

tri-band compatibility

(2.4GHz plus 2x 5GHz)

married to an illegal-in-

some-countries 160MHz

frequency band. In real-

world tests it was hitting

120Mbps transfers over

2.4GHz (which is around

three times faster than

predecessor technologies)

fiddling with IP addresses,

the Rapture shows you a

picture of the game, lets you

choose which platform(s)

you’re playing it on and then

prompts you to choose your

device from a dropdown

menu. The Game Radar

section expands on the Dash

Board’s mini-view where

game servers in various

countries are pinged for

performance monitoring.

There are plenty of other

networking features. One is

AiProtection which provides

Trend Micro-backed

network security plus

parental controls.

There are all kinds of

network monitoring tools

that are presented in a way

that makes it easy to

identify bandwidth hogs

and roadblocks. They can

also track which devices are

visiting which websites

which might be handy for

concerned parents but gave

us serious privacy concerns.

and 500Mbps in 5GHz

(which is about the same).

However, if you have

supporting client

technology (like Wi-Fi based

upon Intel’s 9260 chipset)

which supports 160Mhz

transmission, you can reach

insane wireless transfers of

almost 1200Mbps (upstream

and downstream).

Unless you’ve been

counting the days for such

peak wireless throughput,

everything about this router

is overkill and not nearly

worth the money. But that

doesn’t meanwe’renot

impressedbythe

technology. Nick Ross

Verdic t

Performance that’s ahead of its time.

But few will get value from buying this

absolute unit.

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