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[banger]

I bought a DSL-N55U in 2015 on recommendation of someone on another forum. It was ok as a modem/router but excellent as a router. I converted the it into a pure router in 2015 and never looked back. Wifi has been rock solid over the past 5 years but security updates stopped in 2016 with a beta firmware where a few security holes were fixed.

Having had good service from the hardware of the N55U I decided to upgrade to faster wifi as I had purchased a laptop with ac wifi and the N55U is only N. After trying the ZyXel VMG3925-B10A (second hand) and VMG-8924-B10A both had weak wifi performance. So I decided to buy new as I had no come back on Second hand out of manufacture routers.

So I intially went for RT-AC58U but after a week found the wifi unreliable and TV streaming was dropping out. So I did some research and located a review that recommended the RT-AC1200G+ so sent the AC58 back for refund and bought the 1200G+ in Feb.

Every now and then when downloading a 1gb file on the 1200G+ on a wired connection it would get to 886mb then the PPP session would drop. This was usually after the router had been idle overnight. I could then download the same 1gb file after the PPP session had re-connected several time and it was fine.

This became annoying when I was trying to update my laptop to Windows 10 2004 over wifi as it would download updates but the PPP session would fall over and the setup would fail so I decided after advice from Asus Technical support to return the 1200G+ for replacement. Which I did.

The replacement turned up on Saturday gone, (kudos Amazon) and has been on test since then. I did a basic Quick setup not using any of the advanced features like IPV6 or QoS. So far so good. After lots of testing the PPP session has stayed up through lots of large downloads and large file transfers over wifi which would also make the last one fall over too. I will test for a week before I start changing configuration gradually but I have noticed that when downloading on the faulty 1200G+, CPU use on the router was 100% but with this basic config and the new router the CPU use is 20% when downloading the same 1gb file.

The testing continues, so far so good.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Sounds like perhaps NAT hardware acceleration was not working on the original router, maybe some part of the configuration turns it off without telling you?

This is why I hate consumer routers, they use hacks to achieve high speed NAT on relatively weak CPUs otherwise.  Those hacks don't necessarily work with all configuration options.

[banger]

Sounds like perhaps NAT hardware acceleration was not working on the original router, maybe some part of the configuration turns it off without telling you?

This is why I hate consumer routers, they use hacks to achieve high speed NAT on relatively weak CPUs otherwise.  Those hacks don't necessarily work with all configuration options.

Looking at switch control in the GUI, NAT Acceleration and Cut Through Forwarding are on. Actually the option is Auto or Disable currently set to Auto unless it is not actually working.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Looking at switch control in the GUI, NAT Acceleration and Cut Through Forwarding are on. Actually the option is Auto or Disable currently set to Auto unless it is not actually working.

To be fair, it shouldn't really have been necessary on 80Mbit, it should only be needed for really high speeds.

In my own testing even cheap single-core TP-Link routers (that have no NAT offloading) can handle up to around 150Mbit with QoS.

[banger]

Been experimenting and with QoS off download CPU use is 20%, with QoS on it is 80%. I am thinking of turning off QoS as everything seems normal with or without QoS.

[Alex Atkin UK]

QoS AFAIK is what turns off NAT acceleration although it shouldn't be a problem unless you are hitting close to 100% CPU.

[banger]

QoS AFAIK is what turns off NAT acceleration although it shouldn't be a problem unless you are hitting close to 100% CPU.

Cheers for the info Alex. So far so good.

[j0hn]

The latest version of Asus firmware (on most devices but not all, particularly some older models) now tell you if NAT acceleration is actually active or not.
As shown in my screenshot below.

In the past you had to set Auto and manually check QoS and bandwidth limiter were turned off and just hope it was active.

If I enable QoS the text in yellow changes to tell me packets are being handled by the CPU.

[banger]

Thanks for that John. I have the latest for my model but it may not be up to other models.

[banger]

Well I have tested a 1gb download while transferring 4gb over wifi and so far it seems stable, little bit of a slowdown on the 1gb file when uploading over wifi but no problem when downloading over wifi the 1gb remained constant speed.

[banger]

Further info after 2 days uptime downloads slow down to about 44mbps and after a reboot back to 65 mbps. Going to try another 2 day uptime see if it is repeatable.

[banger]

Well that is 2 days 3 hours up time and downloads and wifi transfers still ok. I think if I make a reconfig I will have to do a full reboot as well. See how long it goes.

[banger]

To heck with it, I have ordered a new AC68U from Amazon and will be returning the 1200G.

[spudgun]

Make sure you check out the Merlin firmware for the AC68U - i've found it to be excellent, although I do prefer John's fork of the older build with the latest security updates

[banger]

Thanks @spudgun. That is the trouble with the 1200G no merlin fork, at least there is some alternative on the AC68U.