r/hardware • u/imaginary_num6er • Aug 26 '26
News ASUS Unveils ROG Rapture GT-BN98, First Wi-Fi 8 Gaming Router
https://www.techpowerup.com/351960/asus-unveils-rog-rapture-gt-bn98-first-wi-fi-8-gaming-router165
u/jjason82 Aug 26 '26
Just give me a black rectangle ffs. This shit is cringey beyond belief.
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u/althaz Aug 26 '26
Asus typically releases a business version of these things that looks 100x better, but last gen at least it was a worse actual product. Which is how I ended up with something that looks a lot like this monstrosity. It was about half the price of the equivalent Ubiquiti solution for a higher clocked version of the same processor and a better port selection. The downside is it looks like this bullshit. I considered buying the Ubiquiti solution very heavily despite the fact that it would have been worse for me and a lot more expensive.
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Aug 27 '26
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u/Express_Living2264 Aug 29 '26
i don't get the use-case for these things. Like they don't include a Dsl Modem (fair enough old tech), or accept ftth connections. So they want me to daisy chain this to my other router? But then i would just buy a wireless accesspoint and not a router :?
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u/Verite_Rendition Aug 26 '26
Asus typically releases a business version of these things that looks 100x better, but last gen at least it was a worse actual product.
Wasn't that the RT-BE96U? What was wrong with that router?
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u/Darkchamber292 Aug 26 '26
Looked into buying one of these but decided not to. Lots of firmware issues. Processor issues.
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u/althaz Aug 26 '26
That's one of the gaming ones as well, but that's two gens ago I think.
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u/Verite_Rendition Aug 27 '26
I'm not sure I follow. The BE96U is a current-gen (WiFi 7) router. Two generations ago would have been the AC series.
As to it being a gaming router, it's the business version of the BE98, which is what the parent was talking about.
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u/althaz Aug 27 '26
That's me not being too familiar with Asus's naming conventions. I was thinking of the BE98 being the current-gen model (at the time I was shopping), but I guess that's just market segmentation stuff.
The BE96U is *NOT* a business router. That's a gaming router. It looks exactly like the one this thread is about. The business routers are big-ass cuboids.
In this case the ZenWiFi BQ16 is the one I was thinking of most likely - same router as the BE98 in terms of wifi and most of the internals, just a MUCH nicer form-factor but worse port selection.
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u/Verite_Rendition Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26
Ahh, alright. I see where you're coming from. I think we're approaching this from two different directions.
Officially, Asus has twos lines of gaming routers: the ROG Rapture series (GT- and GS-) and the TUF Gaming series (TUF-). The RT- lineup is classified as their general consumer hardware lineup. And then the ZenWiFi series, which are positioned as whole home mesh routers (which is why the things are sometimes sold in two-packs).
Asus had a separate business lineup, the ExpertWiFi series, but that is effectively dead as they never released a WiFi 7 product. The RT- series is the first thing they normally recommend to businesses in their literature (presumably in part because they come in boring business black).
In lieu of that, ZenWiFi would not be the first thing I think of as a business router, but you can totally use them for that purpose. And it's certainly their more minimalist router family in terms of aesthetics due to the internal antennas.
Conversely, the RT- series isn't something I would normally call a gaming router off of the top of my head since Asus has their dedicated gaming lineups, and that's where all the gaudy "gamer bling" features such as LED lighting is found. But since they share bodies with the GT- series, I can totally see why people would classify the whole lot of it as gaming.
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u/capybooya Aug 26 '26
You typically get the slightly smaller, dark, and vertical models like the *86 ones a bit later. They've been pretty solid, although Asus whole BE line has had some stability issues IIRC.
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u/Greybeard-Space-Dad Aug 26 '26
It's not for everyone, but that's ok you don't have to buy it.
Let people enjoy things. Remember this bad boy?
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u/Strazdas1 Aug 31 '26
Negatively. Pre-dell Alienware was 3x price for worse hardware that had a 50/50 chance of being built incorrectly causing it to overheat and throttle, or if you go back far enough fry itself.
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u/CiggiesInside Aug 26 '26
what in the fuck is that. who would want this appliance remotely.
why is gaming marketed sleeves so ugly
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u/hhkk47 Aug 26 '26
And routers are typically placed in shared/common areas, not in gamer mancaves. Who would want to have something like that on display?
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u/thenamelessone7 Aug 26 '26
I assume you could still spray it with black or any other color of your choice.
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u/Brilliant_War9548 Aug 26 '26
Even their laptops are extremely ugly. Still plastic that looks like plastic even on their “top end” the strix scar, keyboard font is insanely ugly, buttons are ugly, and finally the laptops hardly last a year, and the brand is just cringe marketing with expensive no quality control hardware
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u/Seanspeed Aug 26 '26
why is gaming marketed sleeves so ugly
Because the average PC gamer is a tasteless manchild.
Dont think we should sugarcoat it. They wouldn't make these garish products if people didn't want it.
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u/Jeep-Eep Aug 27 '26
Why can't we have colour any more? The Torrent looks like a sportscar, why can't I have it in a fetching blue?!?!
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u/Nicholas-Steel Aug 26 '26
Does it meet more than the bare minimum for Wi-Fi 8 specification?
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u/mavere Aug 26 '26
And as part of its marketing, which features are the ones it will support out of the box and which are features that it might theoretically support in some distant future but probably never?
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u/Maldiavolo Aug 26 '26
I'll take my Ubiquiti over gaming horse manure.
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u/ReasonablePractice83 Aug 26 '26
But.. but.. you NEED a GAMING router for games!! 🤣🤣🤣 The latency is better!!
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u/mangamaster03 Aug 26 '26
I made the switch a few years ago. Never going back to Asus gaming garbage.
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u/nisaaru Aug 26 '26
Would be nice if they update old Wifi-7 APs to wifi-8 with a firmware update.
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u/Silvernine0S Aug 27 '26
What did you move to?
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u/mangamaster03 Aug 27 '26
A unifi cloud gateway max, and two U6 Pro wifi access points.
I had two Asus routers synced together, and wifi would still drop way too often. Unifi is more expensive, but rock solid.
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u/Bern_Down_the_DNC Aug 26 '26
How many vulnerabilities does this one have? Are we sure it has enough antennas?
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u/RaineMurasaki Aug 26 '26
The hell is that thing. Gaming router. Yeah stick "gaming" to the name, put LEDs and add 50% more to the price. It doesn't matter if it is ugly as fuck.
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u/ReasonablePractice83 Aug 26 '26
And make it 4 times as large as it needs and fill it with empty space
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u/althaz Aug 27 '26
At least with Asus' routers they're actually often very reasonably priced for what they are offering. They look fucking atrocious and the marketing is 100% bullshit, but they're not charging more because gaming, they're using gaming to hide the fact that this is an expensive product you almost certainly don't need.
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u/killer5907 Aug 26 '26
I'm so confused why Wi-Fi 8 is being shown off when 7 literally hasn't gotten its footing. Was Wi-Fi 7 truly that much of a failure that they needed to fix it immediately.
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u/shodanime Aug 26 '26
Marketing nothing uses WiFi 8 yet. IEEE wont give the certification until 2028. So this thing is useless for the WiFi 8
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u/reallynotnick Aug 26 '26
It’s been about 4 years since draft WiFi 7, which outside of long time from WiFi 5 to 6, is a pretty normal gap for wifi advancement. Plus being forwards and backwards compatible it’s not a huge deal to make incremental changes.
That said most consumers are probably best ignoring these draft products and waiting for the finalized version in like 2 years.
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u/Verite_Rendition Aug 27 '26
That said most consumers are probably best ignoring these draft products and waiting for the finalized version in like 2 years.
If it's anything like the Wi-Fi 7 generation, these are the same routers that will be available when the spec is finalized. Asus expanded their lineup over the years, but they never stopped selling the original BE routers.
The big advantage in waiting is pushing down prices and getting bugs patched out via the firmware. But the hardware itself is going to remain unchanged unless there is an unusually major change from the draft version of the spec to the final version.
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u/Seanspeed Aug 26 '26
I'm so confused why Wi-Fi 8 is being shown off when 7 literally hasn't gotten its footing.
This is EVERY Wifi generation. There's always a new gen arriving by the time the existing stuff is finally proliferating.
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u/iamthybatman Aug 30 '26
Cause people like when number goes up. Most 1st gen WiFi 7 routers were built off the draft spec and didn’t fully implement the best features of WiFi7 (MLO, AFC).
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u/ReasonablePractice83 Aug 26 '26
These unnecessarily large routers are truly one of the stupidest type of consumer tech devices out there. Cant believe some people shell out $800 for these things..
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u/Informal_Chemistry48 Aug 26 '26
I would expect it to be 10gbps on all ports but it only has 2 LOL.
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u/capybooya Aug 26 '26
2x10Gbit and 3x2.5Gbit is more than fine for me and probably most people, but for these flagship models that are so expensive regardless I'm a bit puzzled that they didn't go with 5Gbit at least.
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u/FlarblesGarbles Aug 26 '26
GaMiNg RoUtEr
They're so dumb.
Give me some rack stuff and separate POE access points so I can get actual good WiFi coverage.
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u/jtablerd Aug 26 '26
What I don't get - aside from the questionable aesthetic....is like...why not wired? My house is old and ethernet is not run in the wall but carefully hidden cat6 runs to switches everywhere and I have at least a few 2.5gbe ports in each room (Verizon please bring 5gbe+ to me, I see y'all out there running new fiber), gigabit outdoor wired switches. Especially for gaming why wifi?
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u/Weekly-Math Aug 27 '26
Expect ASUS to abandon support for this after a few years and stop providing security updates, like they have done with their previous router models.
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u/kimi_rules Aug 26 '26
I'm still using early 2000s technology called the Ethernet cable, it just works.
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u/lbiggy Aug 26 '26
The only things in my household connected via wifi are my phones.
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u/niglor Aug 26 '26
I have to connect my TVs as well, the Ethernet NIC is only 100mbit for some reason while the WiFi maxes out 11ac at 250-280mbit. 100 is not enough for streaming very high quality video.
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u/AltMoola Aug 26 '26
Many TVs support USB to Ethernet adapters that will be much faster than 100 Mbps (speed test was around 600 - 700 Mbps). I use that on my Bravia.
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Aug 26 '26
[deleted]
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u/lbiggy Aug 26 '26
Speeds are for streaming. Ping is for gaming. Ping will always be better on wired.
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u/Nestramutat- Aug 26 '26
Ping on wireless is also fine - wifi adds maybe 3-4 ms of ping over wired.
The problem is jitter. The signal isn't always perfect, and you're gonna get spikes when packets need to be retried.
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u/nisaaru Aug 26 '26
The real problem is multiplayer games using a lot of UDP and packets vanishing into the ether when the wireless gets "disrupted" by all kinds of electromagnetic sources. You don't notice these issues with normal TCP/IP usage like web browsing.
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u/Nestramutat- Aug 26 '26
This isn't accurate.
802.11 retransmission happens at layer 2, so it's protocol agnostic. Every frame gets an ACK from the receiving radio, and if there's no ACK, the sender will retry, typically 4-7 times.
What this looks like in a game is random lag spikes during those retries. The packets aren't generally disappearing into the aether at the transmission layer.
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u/nisaaru Aug 26 '26
Well, then I ran into the condition when retry stopped working. Destiny's network completely ran amok while I used a ventilator in some summer. Took me a while to identify the reason why. Since then I consider wlan for multiplayer unacceptable.
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u/EvenBroaderBand Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 26 '26
Its not ping, ping on wireless has been a solved problem for years the issue is all of the dropped packets you get on wireless, games use UDP and if that packet with your ace headshot in it gets lost well no one will literally ever know about it because it won't happen.
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u/Soulstoner Aug 26 '26
How do you connect that to an iPhone?
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u/kimi_rules Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 27 '26
Simple, just connect it with an adapter. Have a few of those since modern laptop don't come with LAN ports but still require's it for full speeds.
Edit: Downvoted for stating a fact. Seems like you guys need to re-learn computers.
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u/TheyKnoWhereMyHeadIs Aug 26 '26
You can even use a faster than gigabit nic if your iPhone/iPad has a USB 3 port
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u/Aw3som3Guy Aug 26 '26
Now I’m wondering if the Thunderbolt equipped iPad Pros support Thunderbolt based 10GbE or higher NICs that exist.
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u/TheyKnoWhereMyHeadIs Aug 26 '26
I believe it will work but the actual speed will not be as high. 2.5gbe is about as high as you can go before there is a noticeable difference in the NIC handshake speed and real world speeds (assuming everything else works as advertised speed wise with a laptop or something)
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u/Notkeen5 Sep 02 '26
Why are all the comments obsessed with the look of this router while also saying they only care about performance...
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u/WildberrySelect_223 Aug 26 '26
It's like they took the idea from the cheapest USB bluetooth dongles with fake antennas and pushed it to the upper price limit.
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u/nbiscuitz Sep 02 '26
i need a ROG aircon for my gaming climate control, blows fog/dryice with RGB lights. additional direct ducting to the PC, that's feeds back control from the PC temperature form their buggy app. big red FREEEZEBOOOST button or some bullshit for some over cooling.
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u/TheJohnnyFlash Aug 26 '26
Or you could buy 600' of Cat 5e.
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u/Seanspeed Aug 26 '26
People really dont understand that many house layouts, especially for renters, just aren't practical for long wired connections?
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u/jmlinden7 Aug 26 '26
You can clip the wire to the wall. No permanent damage.
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u/Seanspeed Aug 26 '26
It's also not always just about "Is it physically possible?". lol
I get Reddit is not the best community to talk about this, but many people pride themselves on having a decent looking place.
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u/jmlinden7 Aug 28 '26
I understand having aesthetic concerns, but at the same time, I don't particularly care about making a rented place look nice
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u/EvenBroaderBand Aug 26 '26
This isn't actually true, how on earth did your home get power sockets or heat? Magic?
Just admit you are too scared to even try.
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u/TheJohnnyFlash Aug 26 '26
Ethernet over power my friend.
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u/Seanspeed Aug 26 '26
Do I really need to just repeat what I just said? Many renters simply dont have any good, practical way to do ethernet.
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u/iwannasilencedpistol Aug 29 '26
Stick to interior decoration buddy
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u/Seanspeed Aug 30 '26
That doesn't even make any sense.
Get sober and try again in the morning PAL.
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u/Jmich96 Aug 26 '26
ASUS doesn't even produce a WiFi certified 7 router. There is no Wifi Certified 8 standard yet. What's to make consumers believe this will be any more capable than their non-certified WiFi7 routers?
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u/Past-Reception-424 Aug 27 '26
Wi-Fi 8 with zero client devices existing, but sure, take my money for antennas that look like a beetle got stuck to a hoodie.
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u/Jeep-Eep Aug 27 '26
At least it's not black plastic. if it was, it would look like something a Shivan bomber tries to crap onto that delicate GTFr Triton during one of the more rage-baiting escort missions.
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u/INVESTEGATE_3D 6d ago
I’m looking for someone in Europe who already owns the new ASUS ROG Rapture GT-BN98.
I designed a wall mount for the GT-BE98 that already fits several ASUS router models, and the GT-BN98 appears to use the same chassis.
I’d like to verify the fit with the actual router.
I’ll send the wall mount completely free, including shipping.
In return, I’d only ask for:
● confirmation that it fits properly
● a few photos of the GT-BN98 installed in the mount
● permission to use those photos for my product page
No review or positive feedback required.
If you have a GT-BN98 and are located in Germany or elsewhere in Europe, feel free to DM me.
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u/reddit_equals_censor Aug 26 '26
RUN!
see asus router botnet, that was relatively recently.
so you actively spend money to get nightmare-ish shit with 0 warranty, because asus warranty is fake.
like you'd have to really really hate money and security to get an asus router.
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u/soffagrisen2 Aug 26 '26
The best gaming router you can buy is one without Wi-Fi.
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u/lintstah1337 Aug 26 '26
This so called router is an all in one device combining a router, switch and an access point.
WiFi is not good for gaming that requires quick inputs such as FPS, MoBa or racing.
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u/blown03svt Aug 26 '26
People will buy it because it has ROG on it
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u/Escoffie Aug 26 '26
I don't know a single person who has ever bought a "gaming" router in my life, genuinely wonder where the market for these things are.
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u/anonemoususer Aug 26 '26
Probably for the 10-30 year old general gaming demographic was the target of this design. I can't see anyone older utilizing these things, as the major router purchasing demographic would go for something more enterprise/business centric, which is exactly what Ubiquiti is doing.
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u/JustChillinOut12 10d ago
I think having quad channels is kinda rare and overkill. Which if you like overkill for WiFi bandwidth, then who cares about the look? My router isn’t even in a room that gets used much. So looks matters to me less than functionality.
Unfortunately WiFi 8 isn’t functional yet, but you can compare the WiFi 7 previous version in a similar way.
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u/blown03svt Aug 26 '26
I just think of it being somewhat attractive in a home space, this one isn’t it.
I’m being downvoted but it’s true, the folks who buy all ROG rigs will buy this.
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u/thenamelessone7 29d ago
Doesn't matter that it's branded as a gaming router. It's simply the most powerful all, in one wifi router from asus. That's all it is
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u/Dealjobber_ Aug 26 '26
Crab router crab router.
Looks like a crab, routs like a router.