Description
The ASUS RT-AC86U is a consumer 802.11ac router built on the Broadcom BCM4906 + BCM4366c0 chipset that has become a de facto reference platform for infrastructure-side CSI extraction thanks to nexmon-csi support. Mounted as a real AP (not a sniffer-only host), the RT-AC86U serves dual duty: provides Wi-Fi to clients while extracting per-frame CSI from the same traffic — the closest you can get to "deployed AP that does sensing" on commodity gear today. Several CSI sensing papers and at least one thesis-relevant deployment cite this exact model.
Specs / capabilities
- Broadcom BCM4906 (1.8 GHz dual-core ARM) + BCM4366c0 5 GHz radio + BCM4365 2.4 GHz radio
- 802.11ac 4x4 MU-MIMO at 5 GHz (up to 2.1 Gbps)
- 802.11n 3x3 at 2.4 GHz (up to 750 Mbps)
- 4 × Gigabit Ethernet LAN, 1 × Gigabit WAN
- Asuswrt-Merlin third-party firmware widely used as base for Nexmon
Tooling
- nexmon-csi build for BCM4366c0
- Asuswrt-Merlin firmware: https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/
Used by (papers)
- 802.11ac CSI sensing papers using the BCM4366c0 chipset
- Real-AP-as-sensor thesis-relevant deployments