It's so FAST!!! - ASUS ROG GT-AX6000 WiFi 6 Router
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,517 words · ~12 min read
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- Today's sponsored unboxing of the Rapture GT-A6000 Wireless Router
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is gonna be a little more interesting than usual because I've equipped myself
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with a regular old residential internet connection to test some of the features
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that ASUS says makes this thing great for gamers. With one being super easy port forwarding,
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especially, for game consoles. Honestly, it's something that doesn't come up
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that often today, since a lot of it can be done automatically.
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But when you do have to do it manually, it can be enough of a pain in the butt
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to really turn off, especially, novice users.
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So, this is one of those videos, where you might watch going, "Hmm, I'm interested in this for myself,"
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or you might watch it going, "Hmm, I'm interested in this for a friend
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"or family member who I don't want "to help every time they can't connect
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"to the multi (indistinct) "or whatever their case may be." - [Andy] Linus, my internet!
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- No, your internet is fine. Your port is just blocked.
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Wow, they have really gotten the next level with their crab-shaped designs.
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They've also gone next level with the hardware. It's a quad core processor in here.
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It supports Wi-Fi 6 up to a maximum of six gigabit per second over the airwaves.
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Now, obviously that is not just to one client,
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and that is under absolutely ideal lab conditions,
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but I still would expect it to be extremely fast.
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And for nerds like me, perhaps more importantly,
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it's also got support for 2 and 1/2 gig LAN and not just one port.
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Now, ASUS has some detail about this in their documentation,
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but I'd actually like to poke around on the firmware and see exactly how it works,
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but basically your WAN port. You know how normally on a router, you've got one that's labeled WAN,
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so that's the one that's gonna connect to your ISP provided cable box,
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or ADSL Modem, or whatever the case may be. We can go ahead and connect that.
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Now, they've got a second 2 and 1/2 gig port,
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presumably, for a preferred client. Say, for example, if you had your gaming PC
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and you were to upgrade the router, well, why does everyone else who rooms with you get
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to have 2 and 1/2 gig internet or whatever?
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But then again, most people don't even have 2 and 1/2 gig internet speeds available.
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So, what I wanna know is if I can configure one of the 1 gigabit LAN ports to be the WAN port,
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so that I could use these 2 and 1/2 gig ports as maybe for my preferred client,
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maybe I have like a video editing workstation, and I have a high-speed NAS.
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I don't wanna store all my video footage just on my boot drive on my computer.
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I'd love to see if it could be used for a use case like that.
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Some other cool gaming oriented features are packet prioritization to particular devices,
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packet prioritization according to the application.
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So, you could say, "Okay, look, "I want my gaming PC to be preferred,
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"and I want these particular games to be preferred." ASUS also provides what they're calling a gaming VPN
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that supposedly reduces ping times to game servers.
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This is something that can be done. I'm not sure how good their implementation of it is.
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But I have actually noticed that when I VPN, for example, to our office,
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I actually get lower latencies to many game servers than I do just using my residential connection at home.
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And the reason for this is kind of complicated.
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iTel explained it to me once. That's our ISP here at the office. But in a nutshell,
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when you're on an enterprise connection or like commercial grade connection,
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sometimes you will get better prioritization so that you're taking fewer hops
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to get to whatever your main local hub is. And a lot of your game servers
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or even local content servers are going to be at those hubs. So in our case, the nearest big hub is VANIX,
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the Vancouver Internet Exchange. So, our office, even though it is actually farther from VANIX,
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actually, has lower latency to VANIX than my residential connection at home.
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Do you know that Jonah? - [Jonah] No. - Interesting, right? Another cool feature of the AX6000
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is that it supports WAN aggregation. So, if you have two internet connections,
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usually for redundancy or low balancing,
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you can't just have two internet connections and expect your internet speed
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on a single device to double. So, it would be for multiple devices running
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or in case one goes down. So, if you've got two internet connections
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that can actually balance between them. This used to be the kind of thing
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that you had to load up third-party OpenWrt,
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or Tomato Firmware, or whatever else in order to have.
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But nowadays you can just have it with the Stock Firmware.
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Speaking of Stock Firmware, this particular one is not on OpenWrt supported list yet,
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but I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up, because ASUS routers are pretty darn well supported
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by the project. - [Andy] Can you flip the router upside down? - Can I flip it upside down?
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You just want me to show it and it's like scuttle crab-- - [Andy] Crab rave!
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- Half-life mode. (indistinct) (Andy and Jonah laughing)
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I guess I should show some of the physical aspects of it.
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So, you got ventilation holes on the bottom. You got some more ventilation holes at the front,
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along with your indicator LEDs and your WPS button.
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No, that's not it, that's the WPS button. This is to turn the LEDs on and off,
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if you do not prefer to have your LEDs on. At the back, we've got our power in power button,
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2 and 1/2 gigs/1 gig, a reset switch, you've got four, 1 gig ports,
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and then you've got a USB 3 and a USB 2 port for configuring like a USB hard drive
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as just chip or NAS running off of your router, if you're into that sort of thing.
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It really is a nice way to save a buck. But from my personal experience,
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I've found that if that's really what you're after, you're probably better off
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just getting a less expensive router and like getting a NAS versus the more expensive routers
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to support the feature. Then again, there are some cheap ones that support it,
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but they're often really slow at it. So, your mileage may vary.
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Wait a minute, was this that simple?
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This is super cool, guys. So, my browser just, (snaps fingers) automatically,
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kind of like when you're on hotel Wi-Fi or whatever, just grabbed this local portal and was like,
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"Hey, do you wanna create a new network?" I'm like, "Heck yeah!" Okay, RoG24.
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ROG... You know what, let's pick something simple.
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I like pickles. They do not like that password.
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It says, "Danger." (Andy laughs)
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- [Andy] I like pickles. - I do like pickles though. I'll always remember that.
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I prefer to have a separate 2.4 and five gigahertz network. They do support QoS.
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So, if you have like a bunch of security cameras, or smart doorbells, or whatever else,
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like IoT devices, theoretically, those should be lower priority.
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But because those devices can grab
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onto the five gigahertz network, I mean, and there's no reason they should be there whatsoever,
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I like just manually putting them all on 2.4, where they'll have better range
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and they don't need the additional throughput anyway. So, do you wanna be an ax/Wi-Fi 6 mode?
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Heck, yeah! Login name, admin. Password.
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(Linus laughs) We suggest you try a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols.
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Do you wanna continue? I mean, it's good they have these prompts though.
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That's what we're looking at right now, this is nice. So, they've got this little dashboard,
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where you can see your aggregate download and upload speeds, monitor your network ping and ping deviation.
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I'm not sure exactly what they're pinging.
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Maybe that's just between your router and your device.
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Actually, it seems a little high. Is it just telling you how long it's taken to reach
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just generally the services that you're using? That's kind of neat.
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I hear my fans working real hard. We might just be CPU limited. Oh, okay.
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(Linus chuckles) Between OBS and Steam,
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it's struggling a little bit. Well, you saw it here first, folks.
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My laptop is bottle-necking my wireless router.
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(Linus chuckles) Okay, this is quickly becoming a mess of wires, but there we go.
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Wait a second, that's pretty impressive.
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Hold on a second. I'm not screening recording on this. So, Andy, you're gonna have to grab it.
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Let me just turn up my brightness a little bit here so you can see this better.
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I'm on Wi-Fi pulling down the entire rest
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of my gigabit internet connection here. Oh, hold on, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry.
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(Andy chuckles) Yeah, let's make it. Let me be very clear that this is not on a wired connection.
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Freaking nuts! I think that's the highest I've seen
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to a single client, so far. I mean, I'm obviously right next to it,
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but sometimes that's not even an advantage. Like there's...
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You wanna be a little bit farther away. So, I'm just gonna...
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I'm gonna go over here, and this 81.
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76, okay we dropped.
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74, 75. I'm gonna maybe go hide around a corner or something.
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This is crazy, still half a gigabit.
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Two walls! 60.
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66. 68.
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- [Andy] One more. - [Linus] Nope, it's not gonna make it.
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68 only. - [Andy] Oh.
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- [Linus] 69! - [All] Yeah! - It's kinda cool.
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I remember chatting with Joel Crane. I forget where he works now,
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but he used to be at this place that makes Wi-Fi tester dongles.
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And he was telling me that one of the really cool things about Wi-Fi is the way
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that it can kind of bounce signals around on things.
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And then it'll kind of figure out, "Okay, what's the timing?" And it'll sort of optimize it so that everything
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sort of arrives in approximately the right order. And when you're moving, it can't do that.
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So what's neat is that even when I'm closer,
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like getting closer to the access point, you'll see these dips,
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because it can't use those optimizations.
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Whereas when you're holding still, that's when you're gonna be at your best, 86, 90, 93.
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Are you freaking serious right now?
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Are we gonna hit? Oh, I plugged in, I plugged in. (Andy laughs) I was like, "What?"
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And it's just super cool. We've done a dedicated video about this, but basically what it is is instead of buying
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like a mesh Wi-Fi system in a box,
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you just upgrade your old ASUS router to the newest ASUS router,
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and then you put your old one in mesh mode. And you just kinda keep going like that
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and your coverage can never get any worse. You just put your highest performance access point
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in your most high traffic areas, and then you just kinda scatter your other ones around.
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Super cool. AiProtection is a Trend Micro collaboration
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that attempts to do things like blocking malicious sites, parental controls.
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Man, I'm so glad these weren't this good when I was a kid. So you can block websites, block apps.
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I mean, here we can try it. Okay, so do I like try to view adult content at work?
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- [Andy] Sure. - I mean, I guess so, right? We're tryna test this thing.
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Whoa, okay. - [Andy] Whoa! (Andy and Jonah laughing)
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- Well, ASUS, I think you got some work to do on the whole adult content thing.
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No, it's definitely not working, Jonah.
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I don't think we need to try anymore than we already have.
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I mean, you can if you want, but I haven't set it up on your device though, so.
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- [Jonah] Oh. - Yeah, won't do anything, and I'd have to set it up again.
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So, there's all your QoS.
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Hassle-free way to create port forwarding rules for online games, optimizes routing packets (indistinct).
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So, lots of different games here.
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That's fantastic, you just add them and (fingers snaps) it automatically opens up the necessary ports.
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Wow, that's really awesome. Oh, that's cool.
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You can do a site survey to basically see what else is around you
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and help optimize your Wi-Fi settings. That can be really important
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if you've got a lot of neighbors. VPN Fusion is a feature that allows you
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to configure some clients to use a VPN and other clients to not,
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if you don't want the performance hit. I'm not gonna dig into that now though.
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Oh, this is cool. Being able to switch modes so quickly and easily like this,
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that is freaking awesome. So, just AP mode,
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if you just wanna use it as an access point. Repeater, media bridge.
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So, a media bridge would use the Wi-Fi
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as like a back haul, and then you'd take like everything nearby
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and you'd plug it in over a wire. Obviously, there's a performance disadvantage,
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but it means that any of those devices could talk to each other over a wire,
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and then everything gets consolidated wirelessly.
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AiMesh node, that's really cool. All right, well, it doesn't excuse
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the adult content filter not working, but it appears as though the reason
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I can't get any ports open on this laptop
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is that I have our corporate anti-malware security solution
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installed on it, so. Well, I've tried everything I can think of.
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I've disabled UPnP, I tried to full cone NAT.
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I saw some people suggest that maybe the ISP is actually not providing you a true public IP.
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I have no way of validating that right now. But one thing I did check is whether you can set
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one of the gigabit ports to WAN. Unfortunately, I didn't see an obvious way to do that,
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But either way, when it comes to performance, this thing put up numbers that I've never seen before.
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So, you guys can check it out at the link in the video description. Thanks for ASUS for sponsoring this video.
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Thanks to you for watching it and get subscribed.