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$683|WWW.ASUS.COM/AU/Asus AiMesh AX6100
Wi-Fi System
Our new favourite wireless router.
T
hanks to their
range and
performance, AX
routers have been
destroying the mesh Wi-Fi
market so our first thought
was, “What’s the point of
having AX-based mesh
Wi-Fi?” Could this be more
Asus overkill? It didn’t take
us long to find out what the
fuss was about.
We’ve been testing Wi-Fi
equipment in various
Sydney premises for a long
time. In recent years, testing
has distilled into running
Ookla’s Speedtest over
WLANs because it provided
the simplest, most relatable
and most reliable method of
comparing relative
networking performance
across devices. Throughout
this time, however, our
primary home PC has been
sat, two floors up, connected
via powerline adapters
because the resident gamers
could not rely upon the best
wireless devices to beam a
robust-enough gaminghome even when
simultaneously streaming
4K video to a TV and
YouTube to the kids’ ancient
Android tablets.
Next we tested the PC.
Over the powerlines,
internet performance
fluctuates between 70Mbps
and 90Mbps with a ping that
varies between 12 and 16ms
but it’s otherwise solid
enough for gaming.
However, with Asus’ AX
Mesh setup, ping was a
constant 12ms and internet
speeds were consistently
maxed out with no
discernible fluctuation. We
performed a 40GB FTP file
transfer from a directly-
connected USB 3 drive and
achieved consistent 48MB/s
transfer speeds (386Mbps).
While this is some way
below the theoretical
maximum of AX Wi-Fi (even
AC Wi-Fi) the reality is that,
for the first time, the
AX-based, 4804Mbps-rated,
backhaul connection
provided wire-like stabilitysignal up two flights of
stairs. Was today the day?
Each of the RT-AX92U
nodes is a mini router,
complete with WAN port
and four Gigabit Ethernet
ports. Both are significantly
smaller than traditional
routers despite offering
comparable performance
and features. We plugged
one into our Telstra cable
modem which offers reliable
115/5 Mbps speeds and
placed the other next to our
primary PC. This
configuration is usually not
permitted by two-node
Mesh networks as having a
node-less coverage gap on
the first floor usually
decimates top-floor
performance. Even with
three nodes (one on each
floor) you get some drop off
as you go up.
Nonetheless, with the
two-node, wide-gap, mesh
activated we experienced
bomb-proof maximum
internet speeds, across all
devices, at all points of ourtwo storeys above our
modem. So, for the first
time, we didn’t miss having
an Ethernet cable.
Everything is simple to
set up and, with the
exception of the elaborate
gaming settings, it sports all
of the security and network
management features that
its ROG Rapture cousin
provides. Everything can be
easily managed via browser
or smartphone app.
It’s not cheap but we’ve
finally cut the cord to our
primary gaming PC and if
you’ve felt limited in a
similar way, theAsus
RT-AX92U 2 Packcanprove
to be liberating. Nick RossVerdic t
Not cheap, but it will likely be the only
home networking equipment that you’ll
ever needROUTER