It’s worth mentioning that if you decide to keep it on your desk, the RT-AX58U is not going to move around regardless of how many cables you connect to its rear end and that’s thanks to the four silicone feet (and its weight of 18.9 ounces). Well, since we’re still staring at the bottom of the router, it’s also worth noting the huge amount of ventilation cut-outs and you can get a peak at a large heatsink, so Asus seems to have taken very seriously the heat management of this device. That’s not all, since you can also see some vent cut-outs on the sides, as well as on the rear side, next to the top surface.

On the top of the Asus RT-AX58U, towards the front, there are eight LED indicators that show the status of the device (and the network): from the left, there’s the WAN LED followed by four LED, each corresponding to one LAN Ethernet port; the last three LEDs show the status of the 5GHz network, the 2.4GHz network (when the LED flashes, it means that the data is being transmitted) and the Power. UPDATE 05.06.2020: The Asus RT-AX58U and the RT-AX3000 are not identical hardware-wise and the difference can be seen on the PCB, where the latter has a couple of Skyworks front-end modules for the 2.4GHz wireless chipset (special thanks to the user jsz for pointing it out).

RT-AX86U

The RT-AX59U introduces a novel upright tower design, with rounded ends and a corrugated exterior effect to add visual interest. It stands on a simple plastic base; if you prefer to attach it to a wall, you can easily unscrew this, and pop off two covers on the side to reveal a pair of mounting points. performance is a little slower, but that’s to be expected given how congested this networking band is. I measured throughputs of 107.58Mbit/s at close range, which is fast; at 5m speeds dropped to 52.44Mbit/s; at 10m speeds of 31.35Mbit/s are fine for basic uses.

The AX3000 did not have any issues connecting 15 or more devices for video conferencing, chatting and video streamings, however, majority of the devices were connected to 5Gs, 2.4Gs; was pathetic, the range of 2.4G cannot even cover my 100sqm home. The far end corner of the master bed (which is about 30+ft away and 2 concrete walls from the router) I could only get 1-2 bar (between -70 to -60dBm) & most of the time it got disconnected, whereas the 5Gs connection got (about -40 to -50dBm) and never had problems of disconnection. Not sure why the 2.4Gs range is worse than 5Gs, it was worst previously before disabling the 802.11ax. If you are an early adopter of this new tech and already have some devices with an AX WiFi adapter, the ASUS RT-AC58U promises to offer the OFDMA technique which subdivides a channel for multi-user access (should not be mistaken for MU-MIMO), the support for both 160MHz bandwidth and 1024-QAM modulation and some other goodies to improve the wireless performance and the bandwidth – of course, ASUS also added the support for AiMesh, so it hasn’t given up on the dream. To test the performance of the RT-AX59U, I installed the router in the study of my own home, using default settings for internet access and Wi-Fi. I hooked up an Asustor Drivestor 4 Pro NAS appliance to one of the LAN ports and connected to the 5GHz wireless network from a test laptop equipped with a 2×2 Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E network card.

The app includes plenty of other useful features too, including the ability to create a temporary guest network, and use QoS - quality of service - to prioritise certain types of online services, such as streaming video or gaming, that really need top performance. As I’ve hinted at, the TR-AX59U’s nearest rival is its older stablemate, the RT-AX82U. The two routers performed similarly at close range but the RT-AX82U managed to keep up higher speeds as I moved further away. That probably has much to do with the bigger antenna array of the RT-AX82U, and its 4×4 MIMO support surely doesn’t hurt either.

Before unboxing it, I expected the router to be large and imposing, but no, it’s actually a lot more compact than your regular routers which is interesting considering that it’s supposed to be far more powerful than the dual-band AC alternatives.You do get the 1024-QAM technology which should ensure an increase of about 25 percent in data rate over the WiFi 5, but you will see a better throughput only in close proximity to the client, when the interference is kept to a minimum and most importantly, the client devices need to be equipped with compatible WiFi adapters. That’s also the case with MU-MIMO, the 160MHz bandwidth support and the BeamForming technology (which has the role of targeting the signal at the connected clients instead of broadcasting it everywhere). There are two USB ports at the rear, too. One USB 2.0 and one faster USB 3.0. These can be used for sharing printers or storage, if needed. There have been discussions that the RT-AX58U was equipped with an Intel Lantiq GRX350 CPU (like the NETGEAR RAX40) which would cancel the possibility of it being supported by Merlin, but, since it’s now confirmed that the router is Broadcom-based, it should receive the Merlin custom firmware at some point this year. Two things that I find comfort in the AX3000 router….. 1) AIMESH and 2)AIprotection. I placed those feature as important as the WIFI performance.

It’s nice to have these options, as you can start with a simple router and then can add range with a simple upgrade later on. Too bad that the RT-AC58U cannot AIMEsh. But, I could buy AX1800 to mesh with the AX3000 to have better coverage, maybe ASUS wants their users to do that, as a result, WIFI is weaker in those router with AIMESH capabilities. The range of controls and features on offer is impressive. Indeed, it’s exactly the same as you’ll find on Asus’ most expensive domestic routers. That means you get extensive traffic monitoring and management tools, a built-in firewall and Asus’ outstanding VPN support, which lets you route nominated devices through up to 16 different VPN gateways, as well as running an inbound VPN server to allow secure access to your own LAN. Fixed null pointer dereference vulnerabilities. Thanks to Chengfeng Ye, Prism Research Group - cse hkust contribution. Once the router was found, the app took me through configuring the wireless networks. The default option is to combine the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands together under one network name, letting the router guide devices as they connect. However, the network can also be split into 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, which can be a good choice if you want to choose where devices will connect.

The ARP response issue has been resolved, along with the connection issue between the router and the ROG Phone 6 and 7.