ASUS RT-AX88U 802.11ax Router Launches With Copious 6,000Mbps Bandwidth
ASUS's new RT-AX88U WFi router is now available from purchase from major retailers in the United States. This router supports the new 802.11ax Wi-Fi standard, which enables ultra fast data transfer speeds and is set to become the new standard for high-end networking devices.
The new RT-AX88U is the latest addition to ASUS's wireless router product line, and its design closely follows that of its predecessors such as the RT-AC86U and RT-AC88U. It has four large external antennas that support AIRadar beamforming technology that helps to strengthen the connection to devices at longer distances.
Built with a new Broadcom chipset to support the new RT-AX88U network protocols, this router is able to support a 160MHz bandwidth and 1024-QAM, which enables blazing fast Wi-Fi speeds of up to 6,000Mbps. This is achieved using the 2.4GHz band to handle 1,148Mbps and the 5GHz band to transfer data at up to 4,804Mbps. Bandwidth using the older 802.11ac standard is also high at 4,333Mbps using the 5GHz band.
"Consumers demand reliable Wi-Fi at home -- whether they are streaming from their smart TV, playing video games or uploading to their cloud," said Greg Fischer, Broadcom Senior Vice President and General Manager, Broadband Carrier Access. "Broadcom closely collaborated with ASUS on the RT-AX88U to deliver the world's first fully compliant Wi-Fi 6 product to market. The RT-AX88U will provide consumer with faster, more seamless wireless connections to more devices in every corner of the home."
ASUS claims that this new router is overall capable of pushing data at 2.3 times the speed of the fastest competing 802.11ac routers. The company also claims that new features such as OFDMA and MU-MIMO bring up to a four fold increase in network efficiency. The OFDMA features is chiefly responsible for this increase in efficiency thanks to the way it changes how the router sends data to devices.
In a traditional network model, each band just connects to one device at any given time.The router quickly switches from all connected devices, which creates the allusion of everything being connected at the same time. This connection scheme works, but it causes increased latency, and bandwidth is wasted whenever the router is connected to a device that doesn't need much data. OFDMA divides the data channel into multiple smaller separate channels, which enables more devices to be connected at a single moment. It also allows the available bandwidth to be split between multiple devices, so less bandwidth is wasted at any given second.
A new feature supported by the 802.11ax standard known as Target Wait Time (TWT) can also improve battery life on wireless devices connected to the router. Essentially this feature extends the time an idle devices can wait between connections to the router, which ASUS claimed can result in seven times better battery life.
ASUS also implemented a number of gaming related features such Gamer Private Network (GPN) by wtfast looks for the shortest available route to send data, which minimizes ping time and reduces packet loss. The router also supports ASUS's high-end AIProtection Pro security system which is powered by Trend Micro and provides commercial grade security for all devices on your network. Free security updates to this service will be provided for the lifetime of the router.
The router has eight LAN ports to support a wide number of wired devices, and there are two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports to support local network resources such as network storage and printers. To help drive all of these features ASUS equipped the router with a 64-bit quad-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz and 1GB of RAM.
With so many cutting edge features packed into this next-gen router, it shouldn't be surprising that the router also comes with a fairly high price tag of $349.99. The router is available starting today from major retailers including Amazon.
Built with a new Broadcom chipset to support the new RT-AX88U network protocols, this router is able to support a 160MHz bandwidth and 1024-QAM, which enables blazing fast Wi-Fi speeds of up to 6,000Mbps. This is achieved using the 2.4GHz band to handle 1,148Mbps and the 5GHz band to transfer data at up to 4,804Mbps. Bandwidth using the older 802.11ac standard is also high at 4,333Mbps using the 5GHz band.
"Consumers demand reliable Wi-Fi at home -- whether they are streaming from their smart TV, playing video games or uploading to their cloud," said Greg Fischer, Broadcom Senior Vice President and General Manager, Broadband Carrier Access. "Broadcom closely collaborated with ASUS on the RT-AX88U to deliver the world's first fully compliant Wi-Fi 6 product to market. The RT-AX88U will provide consumer with faster, more seamless wireless connections to more devices in every corner of the home."
ASUS claims that this new router is overall capable of pushing data at 2.3 times the speed of the fastest competing 802.11ac routers. The company also claims that new features such as OFDMA and MU-MIMO bring up to a four fold increase in network efficiency. The OFDMA features is chiefly responsible for this increase in efficiency thanks to the way it changes how the router sends data to devices.
In a traditional network model, each band just connects to one device at any given time.The router quickly switches from all connected devices, which creates the allusion of everything being connected at the same time. This connection scheme works, but it causes increased latency, and bandwidth is wasted whenever the router is connected to a device that doesn't need much data. OFDMA divides the data channel into multiple smaller separate channels, which enables more devices to be connected at a single moment. It also allows the available bandwidth to be split between multiple devices, so less bandwidth is wasted at any given second.
A new feature supported by the 802.11ax standard known as Target Wait Time (TWT) can also improve battery life on wireless devices connected to the router. Essentially this feature extends the time an idle devices can wait between connections to the router, which ASUS claimed can result in seven times better battery life.
ASUS also implemented a number of gaming related features such Gamer Private Network (GPN) by wtfast looks for the shortest available route to send data, which minimizes ping time and reduces packet loss. The router also supports ASUS's high-end AIProtection Pro security system which is powered by Trend Micro and provides commercial grade security for all devices on your network. Free security updates to this service will be provided for the lifetime of the router.
The router has eight LAN ports to support a wide number of wired devices, and there are two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports to support local network resources such as network storage and printers. To help drive all of these features ASUS equipped the router with a 64-bit quad-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz and 1GB of RAM.
With so many cutting edge features packed into this next-gen router, it shouldn't be surprising that the router also comes with a fairly high price tag of $349.99. The router is available starting today from major retailers including Amazon.
