AC56U issues

[Lukaszenko]

Router: AC56U
Firmware: 3.0.0.4.374_134 (latest)
Clients: 2x laptops w/ AC7260 wireless card, 1x Android w/ N 5 GHz), 1x Android w/ N 2.4 GHz, multiple wired.
Other info: The cable modem is also a wireless router. AC56U was assigned IP other than default.

Hello, I recently bought an AC56U router as an upgrade to my N56U. Mainly I was interested in higher NAS speeds but also overall throughput, since my connection is supposed to be 110 Mbit/s.

I’ve been a little disappointed though, and I’m running into MANY issues. I even fear if I list them all here, then I will scare off any potential answers. But I need to try, and I’m sure I’m not the first or the last one to run into these. So here goes, please help with any individual one if you can.

1) At AC 5 GHz it seems slower than the N56U: around 80 Mbit/s, whereas the N56U was hovering around 100 Mbit/s. I guess I’m still not certain if it’s the router or something else there, but that’s not even my greatest concern….

What really disappointed me was the 2.4 GHz band. The signal is weak and slow. If I’m in the same room it’s ok I guess, although my wifi analyzer shows that the neighbor’s is actually stronger. But, in the next room I can’t do much of anything, I’m lucky if I get a bar or two and a Mbit/s. The N56U was still flying in this location.

I haven’t changed any of the original settings as I’m not sure what half of them do. I did try to increase the transmit power and changed the channel, but that didn’t make any difference. I’m having a hard time believing that this is how it’s supposed to be.

2) Another issue is the USB 2.0 drives I plugged into the router. When they work, I can read them at maybe 17 MB/s (Megabytes/sec). Ok, maybe I need USB 3.0 to see higher speeds, I guess. But, the next thing I know they are undiscoverable on my network! I can’t use them at all. When I log into the router, they are still mounted and indeed one of them is downloading stuff through Download Master…but on my computer they are nonexistent. I reset/ remount, and the same story repeats: first day it works, second day it doesn’t. I kind of recall the same issue on the N56U when I first got it, but it settled down after a month or so. EDIT: Solved issue 3. See below.

3) On top of all, I get this weird thing where my SSID doesn’t match my, well, my SSID. When I log into my router it tells me one SSID, but my computer sees another. The N56U actually always had an identical issue. I had to trick it into giving me the SSID I want, but it seems like it always wants the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz SSIDs to match. It even highlights the SSID and password fields in red. Not sure if this makes sense. I added a picture to clarify.

On the one hand I think it’s a faulty router, on the other I can’t help but feel I’m doing something wrong. One theory is it has something to do with my cable modem also being a router…so maybe I’m supposed to run AC56U in a different mode? But I don’t recall doing that with N56U. Anybody have any insight? I’m sure some things I didn’t explain right or don’t make sense. If so, please ask me what info I could provide. I feel like I could spend a weekend trying to figure this out and I wouldn’t get anywhere, or maybe I’ll just end up returning the thing and wait another wifi generation or two

 

[Marinemaster]

Can you disable the wifi on your built in other router ? Did you update to latest firmware ? How is the wired connection ? Set the wifi to a specific channel, try different channels.

 

[Igb]

I see lots of issues there, far more than normal, maybe I wont be able to help in all of them, anyways, lets try:

First of all, specially if you upgraded from old firmwares (but do it anyways), clear nvram, you can do it with the "restore defaults" option in firmware. I'm seeing some weird issues, one of them is your third problem, and if you look at the top of the page, the router still shows ASUS_5G as his own SSID (even if it's changed on the menu). You will lose more time triying to solve the problem than configuring it back.

About the usb performance, it's still not very good, the dual core CPU helps, but despite being better than it was on AC66U it's still far from the performance of a real computer, I don't see yours as a really bad result (usb 2 usually caps at arround 25mbps on a computer despite theoretical numbers suggest faster speeds). USB3 sequential performance is about 50-ish mbps, in this case is indeed far from computer standards.

Anyways, check the reset. It may fix some of the problems at least.

 

[Asusnet]

On the top of the screen, it's showing ASUS_5G, so that is why it is connecting to ASUS_5G. When you connect to ASUS_5G, is it using the password for "Dawaj 5G"? I can add Dawaj 5G to the SSID without issues but I am not using the same password you. See what happens if you change the password. Is the password the same as your 2.4Ghz network?

Also try entering in the address bar in Windows Explorer "\\RT-AC56U" or "\\192.168.x.x" (your IP address for the router). This should bring you to your USB drive.

 

[RogerSC]

Try "Dawaj-5G" or "Dawaj_5G" instead of "Dawaj 5G" for your SSID. The router UI may not like to have a space in an SSID, so it defaults back to "ASUS_5G" (which is the default SSID that it uses before you supply your own SSID).

Just a thought.

 

[speedingcheetah]

I cam to the AC56U from the N56U....and i mostly agree...I had the micro build of Padavan firmware on my N56 and that thing was killer. Wire lan speed was great (about 113MB's) wifi (5ghz) about 20-24MB's while transferring files (Win 8).

When I first got my AC56U....I had some issues...performance was quite poor....I tried Merlin firmware...but had even more issues....it eventually got to the point where the wifi was stuck in 20hz mode....and once my lan speed was under 50mb's....

I booted the router to recovery mode and flashed the newest stock firmware image. Ever since then...it has performed just fine....speeds arn't quite as steady and consistent and with my N56U was...but they do burst faster.

On the 56U....transferring a 1gb file to and from my server and 5ghz laptop(Intel 6235)...it started maxed out at 20-24MB's and stayed there the entire transfer.....with the AC56U and my Intel AC7250....it ramps up...starts kinda slow...but goes up to around 30-40MB's when transferring file to laptop....But, transferring file from laptop to server... on the other hand, is hangs around the 15-25MB's....and is quite inconsistent with uplink is speeds...sometimes is fast, other times, its sluggish.

I recently updated the firmware on the AC56U to ver 3.0.0.4.374.158(via web config of router, its not listed on Asus website as of yet) Things seem a bit more stable.

 

[speedingcheetah]

Router: AC56U
Firmware: 3.0.0.4.374_134 (latest)
Clients: 2x laptops w/ AC7260 wireless card, 1x Android w/ N 5 GHz), 1x Android w/ N 2.4 GHz, multiple wired.
Other info: The cable modem is also a wireless router. AC56U was assigned IP other than default.

Hello, I recently bought an AC56U router as an upgrade to my N56U. Mainly I was interested in higher NAS speeds but also overall throughput, since my connection is supposed to be 110 Mbit/s.

I’ve been a little disappointed though, and I’m running into MANY issues. I even fear if I list them all here, then I will scare off any potential answers. But I need to try, and I’m sure I’m not the first or the last one to run into these. So here goes, please help with any individual one if you can.

1) At AC 5 GHz it seems slower than the N56U: around 80 Mbit/s, whereas the N56U was hovering around 100 Mbit/s. I guess I’m still not certain if it’s the router or something else there, but that’s not even my greatest concern….

What really disappointed me was the 2.4 GHz band. The signal is weak and slow. If I’m in the same room it’s ok I guess, although my wifi analyzer shows that the neighbor’s is actually stronger. But, in the next room I can’t do much of anything, I’m lucky if I get a bar or two and a Mbit/s. The N56U was still flying in this location.

I haven’t changed any of the original settings as I’m not sure what half of them do. I did try to increase the transmit power and changed the channel, but that didn’t make any difference. I’m having a hard time believing that this is how it’s supposed to be.

2) Another issue is the USB 2.0 drives I plugged into the router. When they work, I can read them at maybe 17 Mbit/s. Ok, maybe I need USB 3.0 to see higher speeds, I guess. But, the next thing I know they are undiscoverable on my network! I can’t use them at all. When I log into the router, they are still mounted and indeed one of them is downloading stuff through Download Master…but on my computer they are nonexistent. I reset/ remount, and the same story repeats: first day it works, second day it doesn’t. I kind of recall the same issue on the N56U when I first got it, but it settled down after a month or so.

3) On top of all, I get this weird thing where my SSID doesn’t match my, well, my SSID. When I log into my router it tells me one SSID, but my computer sees another. The N56U actually always had an identical issue. I had to trick it into giving me the SSID I want, but it seems like it always wants the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz SSIDs to match. It even highlights the SSID and password fields in red. Not sure if this makes sense. I added a picture to clarify.

On the one hand I think it’s a faulty router, on the other I can’t help but feel I’m doing something wrong. One theory is it has something to do with my cable modem also being a router…so maybe I’m supposed to run AC56U in a different mode? But I don’t recall doing that with N56U. Anybody have any insight? I’m sure some things I didn’t explain right or don’t make sense. If so, please ask me what info I could provide. I feel like I could spend a weekend trying to figure this out and I wouldn’t get anywhere, or maybe I’ll just end up returning the thing and wait another wifi generation or two

Did u set up the Ai Disk? and enable the share.....u need to set up an account in usb app-Servers Center-Network Place(Samba) Share / Cloud Disk tab.

Also, can u put our isp router in bridge mode and have the Asus authenticate with the ISP and not the modem(I don't have much experience with cable internet and modem...i use DSL...so...not sure if tha twill work or not...depends on the ISP)

 

[faekie]

My AC56U came with 3.0.0.4.374.134 and I updated to 3.0.0.4.374.158 as soon as I installed it.
However, both of theese build seems to have a huge impact on 2.4 GHz b/g range and performance for me. After a certain range the b/g link speed dropped drastically and I only got ~11 Mbps link speeds.

I downgraded to 3.0.0.4.374.37 and that seems to fix my 2.4 b/g range/performance problems. After downgrade I got 48-54 Mbps link speed on g client at twice the range that I only had 11 Mbps with latest fw.
Haven't compared 5 GHz range or performance between the builds yet.

 

[NightOwl326]

Makes me believe the RT-AC68U will be a firmware nightmare when it comes out next month and not ready for prime time since the have not even worked out the bugs on the 56U yet. ASUS is starting to remind me of Netgear. Just starts with an A instead of an N. "Oh its only a couple hundred bucks, we will fix it sooner or later"....

 

[Lukaszenko]

Thank you all for the help. I haven’t tried everything yet but I will post the results when I do.

I DID finally figure out the SSID problem, however. Something one of you said jogged something in my head, and made me realize the simple cause: I have “Lastpass” installed. It saves and automatically fills in passwords to sites whenever I log in. I guess when I was setting the SSID at some point long ago, it thought I was logging in

Things I tried:
Entering “\\RT-AC56U" or “\\192.168.x.x” to access USB drives: drives not found
Try different channels: nothing
Changed firmware to 3.0.0.4.374_158. See results in next post.
Wired connection: ~95 Mbit/s. 5 GHz = ~80 Mbit/s
note: USB speeds, when working , are ~17 MB/s
note: ISP is "110 Mbit/s"

Things I still need to try:
Disable wifi on modem
Restore defaults, although I already did that once or twice previously.
Bridge mode
Ai Disk, Enable share I thought this was only for other accounts/ accessing usb drives from WAN? My usb drives WERE discoverable on network for a day or so.

 

[Lukaszenko]

So I updated the firmware yesterday. Lo and behold the usb drives started to work again! I don't know if it's because of the firmware or the reboot (which didn't work before), but there they are.

BUT, now AC56U doesn't see a hard-wired WD TV Live w/usb drive! It ALWAYS saw this drive.

Aaaaaand....here's a new thing! A few minutes later I have no internet access! AC56U sees the WAN and downloads things off of it with Download Master. Laptop sees AC56U and its usb drives. But, laptop doesn't see WAN. BOTH my laptops and my Android don't see WAN. How strange is this...

So yeah, I'm starting to think based on my experiences and posts in this forum, that AC56U still needs alot of work in the firmware department. I still don't know if to keep it or what.