5ghz inconsistent on 380.65_4 RT-AC68R

[Shane01638]

I have a RT-AC68R running 380.65_4 of which I'm getting poor 5ghz performance. The signal strength is very low and changes from 1-2 bars consistently. I have had problems getting iPhones to connect, or stay connected to the 5ghz band. Also, I have had problems printing from my laptop using 5ghz sitting right in front of the printer which is Ethernet to the router and installed as a network printer using HP's driver software. I have tried different settings, but can't seem to find the sweet spot. I have had this issue for some time, but am finally tired of dealing with it. Please take a look at my settings and suggest any changes you think might help. v/r

 

[Shane01638]

Actually, it could be 380.65_0 as it is saying there is an available update.

 

[chibby]

I have better results with forced 40MHz Bandwidth rather than auto (which in my case chooses 80MHz).

Is there a specific reason why you force channel 149? I'm just guessing this is a bad channel, because only 20MHz bandwidth is supported and it's not supported by all regions (which may cause problems with some devices).

What are the reasons for:
- disabling TX bursting?
- disabling WMM APSD? (never heard of this power saving feature to cause problems?)
- disabling universal beamforming?

Try disabling Airtime Fairness, as this caused lags in my environment.

 

[joegreat]

I have a RT-AC68R running 380.65_4 of which I'm getting poor 5ghz performance. The signal strength is very low and changes from 1-2 bars consistently. I have had problems getting iPhones to connect, or stay connected to the 5ghz band.

When did you do the last time a factory reset and re-config the router manually? This will reset all the hidden/system setting of the WLAN drivers and should help.

In general iPhones have a very bad WLAN reception - with my Android devices I can use WLAN where my wife does not see it with here iPhone...

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Is there a specific reason why you force channel 149? I'm just guessing this is a bad channel, because only 20MHz bandwidth is supported

Simply NOT true. You can use 80 mhz on any 5 GHz channel. In fact no reason not to just leave it at 80 Mhz all the time.

 

[Shane01638]

I have better results with forced 40MHz Bandwidth rather than auto (which in my case chooses 80MHz).

Is there a specific reason why you force channel 149? I'm just guessing this is a bad channel, because only 20MHz bandwidth is supported and it's not supported by all regions (which may cause problems with some devices).

What are the reasons for:
- disabling TX bursting?
- disabling WMM APSD? (never heard of this power saving feature to cause problems?)
- disabling universal beamforming?

Try disabling Airtime Fairness, as this caused lags in my environment.

I changed to 40MHz
Set channel to auto (it selected 36)
Enabled TX bursting
Enabled WMM APSD
Enabled Universal beamforming
Disabled Airtime Fairness
I'll see how those changed affects it. I also plan on upgrading the firmware and doing another reset. When I update, I always reset to factory defaults and reconfigure everything. I did have 80MHz forced before, but changed to Auto when I was seeking a better connection.

 

[chibby]

Simply NOT true. You can use 80 mhz on any 5 GHz channel. In fact no reason not to just leave it at 80 Mhz all the time.

That would be like using ANY 2.4 GHz channel and don't care about overlap.
In the 5 GHz band only certain channels are designed to be used with 80 GHz: overview

Also with higher bandwidth you get more noise when manually selecting a channel with noise nearby in the frequency spectrum.
Had this problem with a badly shielded HDMI cable nearby the router - 80 MHz bandwidth was a lot worse than 40MHz on the same channel in that scenario. But then again this could be circumvented by letting the router chose the channel and hoping it does it's job well