Asus RT-AC5300U 802.11ac Router - 4x4 MU-MIMO with Broadcom XStream
by Ganesh T S on September 2, 2015 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Networking
- Asus
- Broadcom
- 802.11ac
- Wi-Fi
Asus announced the RT-AC5300U 802.11ac router using Broadcom's tri-band Wi-Fi chipset at IFA 2015 today. This is meant to be a flagship router with AC5300 speeds (1000 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band and 2167 Mbps on each of the 5 GHz bands for a total of 5333 Mbps theoretical bandwidth). The router uses Broadcom's latest Wi-Fi chipset along with the XStream platform concept.
As a recap, Broadcom's XStream involves combining two discrete 802.11ac radios in a single board, thereby allowing for two different channels to be simultaneously active in the 5 GHz band. Essentially, this concept combines two Wi-Fi routers in one. Initially introduced in a six stream configuration using Broadcom's second generation 802.11ac chipset, it was even demonstrated by Asus at Computex 2014. At CES earlier this year, Broadcom updated their 802.11ac portfolio with some new products sporting Wave 2 features. D-Link also simultaneously announced their ULTRA series using Broadcom's chipsets. The DIR-895L AC5300 was the flagship that combined the Broadcom 4x4 MU-MIMO solution with the XStream concept. The Asus RT-AC5300U being announced today uses the same platform (BCM4709, a 1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 based processor combined with three BCM4366 radios) and has similar features.
Broadcom's proprietary NitroQAM / TurboQAM technology helps in low-latency and high bandwidth requirement scenarios (as long as the client side also has Broadcom silicon). The router sports eight external dual-band detachable antennae. Internally, there iis 128 MB of flash and 256 MB of DDR3 RAM. The other features are standard - 1x WAN and 4x LAN Gigabit ports, 1x USB 3.0 and 1x USB 2.0 port.
The router will be available for purchase sometime in Q4 2015. There is no information on the pricing yet.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
40 Comments
View All Comments
phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, October 14, 2015 - link
But you do need MU-MIMO clients in order to get the benefits of MU-MIMO on the AP. MU-MIMO is different from regular MIMO.jeffkibuule - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
I feel like we really need something better than just 1Gbps wired link for typical parts if routers are actually capable of dishing out that much bandwidth to clients.Aoleus - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
The industry is working to standardize 2500BaseT and 5000BaseT over existing Cat5e/6 cables to feed these faster wireless routers, without incurring the expense of a move to 10GbE. But with the number of companies involved, it's not a quick process.There's a group of companies that formed an alliance to push this at:
http://www.nbaset.org
ZeDestructor - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
Just suck it up and move to 10gbit already. It's really not _that_ expensive anymore.jdub_06 - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link
idk what fun fantasy world you live in but 1) the switches are still expensive. 2) then the bigger issue that arises is that the cat 5e cable installed in most buildings wont handle 10gbe. Even cat6 maxes at like 35m of length if its bundled with other cable. To get the equivalent length of a cat 5e cable @ 10gb/s one must install cat6a ...regardless of what type of wire ive seen it estimated that the labor cost of replacing a cable in a large existing building is roughly $300 a run. that all adds up a lot quicker than replacing just the switches with the new 5gbe standard that can use cat5eCaedenV - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
Personally I would be pretty satisfied with 5GbE as that would be faster than my home server could read and write to disk (~500MB/s)... but at the same time, if 10GbE were to become more mainstream the price really would come down and not be that big of an issue.I just want a nice little 8 port 10GbE switch for my home network for $300 or less that will get me through the next 8-10 years. Is that too much to ask?
bigboxes - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
Man, that is one ugly router. Look at the footprint of that thing. Think they could attach a few more antennas to the casing? LOLIt's got more Gee Bees!
SpartyOn - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link
If you fold those antennae flat, you could turn this into the flying Frisbee of Doom. Imagine whipping this at your Ultimate Frisbee mates.yy0c - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link
It looks so ugly...Asus they're good at technology, but they don't have any tastes...Valantar - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link
I'm starting to seriously question the design philosophies of router companies - not just this from Asus, but the latest top-of-the-line models from Dlink and others too. Sure, these are over-the-top, enthusiast products. But they're still designed in a way that makes it utterly impossible to place them unobtrusively. Which is an absolute must for a product thata) needs to be placed according to what gives the best signal, not where it looks the best, and
b) is essentially a home infrastructure component.
Also, am I right in thinking that the tri-band nature of this means that it'll provide three separate SSIDs? I get the need for this kind of solution with dual band tech, but this is starting to get silly. I just don't see the gain - even with a gigabit internet connection (which, in the real world, nobody has), you won't be consistently saturating even a single of those AC connections. Unless, of course, you're running a server business, or something. In which case you wouldn't be using a wireless network at all.