AC68U - 384.11 Beta2 upload faster than download

[Rain]

Hey people, for some reason my upload on wifi 5ghz is like 3-4 times faster than download.
I looked at other threads with this problem but they all have different specs and stuff that doesn't apply to me I guess.

Running;
Macbook Pro, AC68U with latest 384.11 beta2 merlin.

Thing is it only happens on wifi, when I connect cable it goes with full speed ~1gbps symmetrical
I get that even though its 5ghz, cable is still better but I remember I was able to pull like 700/700+ easily on wifi on this pc and currently I'm seeing speeds like 200/600 which literally triggers me >.>

I didn't factory reset and I'd prefer to avoid it because there are quite some devices in the house and family will bother that things got disconnected and well, I'm lazy to be honest to fix it all.

Some most important settings;
QoS is off since its 1gbps network, its pointless to set it up.
Jumbo frame - enabled
NAT Acceleration - Auto (CTF and FA are enabled.)
Spanning-Tree Protocol - disabled

Band settings:
Wireless Mode - N/AC mixed
Channel bandwidth - 80 MHz
Control channel - Auto

Enable IGMP Snooping - disabled
Multicast Rate(Mbps) - auto
AMPDU RTS - enabled
Enable TX Bursting - enabled
Enable WMM - enabled
Enable WMM No-Acknowledgement - disabled
Enable WMM APSD - disabled
Optimize AMPDU aggregation - disabled
Optimize ack suppression - disabled
Airtime Fairness - disabled
802.11ac Beamforming - enabled
Universal Beamforming - enabled
Tx power adjustment - performance

Firewall enabled with DoS protection
No usb devices, no web history, no AIprotection etc.

I can't think of anything else that would affect speed of wifi.
Any ideas what could be changed or cause a problem?
Tried to disable beamforming, nothing changed at all.

Thanks if anyone has idea.

 

[Vexira]

Have you tested flashing the new relase firmware?

Aslo play with changing the wifi channels.

 

[L&LD]

Hey people, for some reason my upload on wifi 5ghz is like 3-4 times faster than download.
I looked at other threads with this problem but they all have different specs and stuff that doesn't apply to me I guess.

Running;
Macbook Pro, AC68U with latest 384.11 beta2 merlin.

Thing is it only happens on wifi, when I connect cable it goes with full speed ~1gbps symmetrical
I get that even though its 5ghz, cable is still better but I remember I was able to pull like 700/700+ easily on wifi on this pc and currently I'm seeing speeds like 200/600 which literally triggers me >.>

I didn't factory reset and I'd prefer to avoid it because there are quite some devices in the house and family will bother that things got disconnected and well, I'm lazy to be honest to fix it all.

Some most important settings;
QoS is off since its 1gbps network, its pointless to set it up.
Jumbo frame - enabled
NAT Acceleration - Auto (CTF and FA are enabled.)
Spanning-Tree Protocol - disabled

Band settings:
Wireless Mode - N/AC mixed
Channel bandwidth - 80 MHz
Control channel - Auto

Enable IGMP Snooping - disabled
Multicast Rate(Mbps) - auto
AMPDU RTS - enabled
Enable TX Bursting - enabled
Enable WMM - enabled
Enable WMM No-Acknowledgement - disabled
Enable WMM APSD - disabled
Optimize AMPDU aggregation - disabled
Optimize ack suppression - disabled
Airtime Fairness - disabled
802.11ac Beamforming - enabled
Universal Beamforming - enabled
Tx power adjustment - performance

Firewall enabled with DoS protection
No usb devices, no web history, no AIprotection etc.

I can't think of anything else that would affect speed of wifi.
Any ideas what could be changed or cause a problem?
Tried to disable beamforming, nothing changed at all.

Thanks if anyone has idea.

Agree with Vexira, flash the new release 384.11 and then change the following:

1. Universal beamforming - disable
2. Smart Connect - disable
3. Wireless Mode - Auto
4. Control Channel - choose manually. The lower numbered channels will penetrate walls better than the higher numbered channels.
5. Don't use a 'wifi' app to choose a channel. Testing all available 5GHz channels in your environment is the only way to pick the fastest, most responsive channel that gives the best coverage too (at least, at your most used locations and preferred devices).

 

[Rain]

Have you tested flashing the new relase firmware?

Aslo play with changing the wifi channels.

Agree with Vexira, flash the new release 384.11 and then change the following:

1. Universal beamforming - disable
2. Smart Connect - disable
3. Wireless Mode - Auto
4. Control Channel - choose manually. The lower numbered channels will penetrate walls better than the higher numbered channels.
5. Don't use a 'wifi' app to choose a channel. Testing all available 5GHz channels in your environment is the only way to pick the fastest, most responsive channel that gives the best coverage too (at least, at your most used locations and preferred devices).

Seem like stable came just today, it wasn't out when I was writing post.
Well, flashed, didn't change anything.
Universal beamforming diabled, no changes.
Smart connect... Uh I don't have such feature I think.
Wireless mode is auto.
Control channel doesn't changes anything, set it on 40, tried 52, tried 80+ its all the same, I don't need to penetrate walls, I'm 2-3m from router in same room.
Speed is same, I don't know, weird...

 

[L&LD]

Seem like stable came just today, it wasn't out when I was writing post.
Well, flashed, didn't change anything.
Universal beamforming diabled, no changes.
Smart connect... Uh I don't have such feature I think.
Wireless mode is auto.
Control channel doesn't changes anything, set it on 40, tried 52, tried 80+ its all the same, I don't need to penetrate walls, I'm 2-3m from router in same room.
Speed is same, I don't know, weird...

With your results continuing to be 'weird', I would recommend following the M&M Config in my signature below to get your router to a good/known state again. It doesn't seem to be there right now.

Before you do though, did you reboot the router and wait at least 10 minutes after it booted up before testing again?

You may be too close to the router. Have you tried adjusting the power level down a bit, reboot the router and after waiting 10 minutes test again?

Control channel 52 (and 80+?) is a reserved DFS channel range, don't use those channels.

Test Control Channels 36 through 48 and 149 through 161 only.

Is your Channel bandwidth set to 20/40/80, or 20, 40, or 80? Test those settings too.

Adjust the Tx power adjustment slider to a lower level, you may simply be too close to the router with the settings you've chosen.

 

[Rain]

With your results continuing to be 'weird', I would recommend following the M&M Config in my signature below to get your router to a good/known state again. It doesn't seem to be there right now.

Before you do though, did you reboot the router and wait at least 10 minutes after it booted up before testing again?

You may be too close to the router. Have you tried adjusting the power level down a bit, reboot the router and after waiting 10 minutes test again?

Control channel 52 (and 80+?) is a reserved DFS channel range, don't use those channels.

Test Control Channels 36 through 48 and 149 through 161 only.

Is your Channel bandwidth set to 20/40/80, or 20, 40, or 80? Test those settings too.

Adjust the Tx power adjustment slider to a lower level, you may simply be too close to the router with the settings you've chosen.

I guess I didn't wait whole 10 minutes, like 5.
It told to reboot manually after flashing so I waited a bit.
I don't think I'm too close, if I go farther its same until signal dies.
Okay will test given channels.
Bandwidth is 80.
Like I said, farther signal simply dies and there are quite some devices connected, sometimes more than 20 (tested without any though) so probably high power level should be right for it.

I guess only thing I can do is now reboot for 10 mins and test other channels, hella weird that it happens, its just a router, it doesn't even has that many settings... Maybe I should just build my own..

 

[L&LD]

I guess I didn't wait whole 10 minutes, like 5.
It told to reboot manually after flashing so I waited a bit.
I don't think I'm too close, if I go farther its same until signal dies.
Okay will test given channels.
Bandwidth is 80.
Like I said, farther signal simply dies and there are quite some devices connected, sometimes more than 20 (tested without any though) so probably high power level should be right for it.

I guess only thing I can do is now reboot for 10 mins and test other channels, hella weird that it happens, its just a router, it doesn't even has that many settings... Maybe I should just build my own..

Haha. Just a router.

I'm sure the whole Asus developers team along with RMerlin, john9527, GNUton, Voxel and the countless others making scripts to enhance the routers base performance and features don't feel like that.

 

[Vexira]

I guess I didn't wait whole 10 minutes, like 5.
It told to reboot manually after flashing so I waited a bit.
I don't think I'm too close, if I go farther its same until signal dies.
Okay will test given channels.
Bandwidth is 80.
Like I said, farther signal simply dies and there are quite some devices connected, sometimes more than 20 (tested without any though) so probably high power level should be right for it.

I guess only thing I can do is now reboot for 10 mins and test other channels, hella weird that it happens, its just a router, it doesn't even has that many settings... Maybe I should just build my own..

Are you running adaptive QoS by any chance?

 

[Rain]

Are you running adaptive QoS by any chance?

Like I mentioned in first post, QoS is off.

 

[Vexira]

Like I mentioned in first post, QoS is off.

Sorry what I meant to ask is have you tried turning it on and using the freshjr script

 

[Rain]

Sorry what I meant to ask is have you tried turning it on and using the freshjr script

I feel like its pointless to bother with QoS at 1gbps connection, like come on, router should be able to handle it. Definitely my pc can so its something with settings.
I know it was able to handle it before just fine and I didn't need to run idk what scripts on it and bother with QoS.
I'm not that much into modding routers. In worst case I'll just factory reset it and setup again or just flash different firmware.
Though it worked on merlin with just fine speeds thats why I got confused and decided to ask if anyone knows whats up.

 

[sinshiva]

hey, do you recall the most recent firmware you used that could attain those speeds? you may want to try reverting if following L&LD's method doesn't pan out

 

[Rain]

hey, do you recall the most recent firmware you used that could attain those speeds? you may want to try reverting if following L&LD's method doesn't pan out

Sadly nope, I'm very rarely in house where this router is and most of time I don't have control over whats going on.
Just it happened that I need to spend here few months so I decided to update anything possible if I have to live with it, but well, no idea what I upgraded it from... maybe like 384.8 beta2? Could be something around that, its pretty old though...

 

[sinshiva]

Sadly nope, I'm very rarely in house where this router is and most of time I don't have control over whats going on.
Just it happened that I need to spend here few months so I decided to update anything possible if I have to live with it, but well, no idea what I upgraded it from... maybe like 384.8 beta2? Could be something around that, its pretty old though...

try 384.10_2 (3-Apr-2019)

correction: 384.9 (2-Feb-2019)

384.8_2 (8-Dec-2018) < i believe this puts you into john's LTS fork.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/fork-asuswrt-merlin-374-43-lts-releases-v39e3.18914/

 

[L&LD]

try 384.10_2 (3-Apr-2019)

correction: 384.9 (2-Feb-2019)

384.8_2 (8-Dec-2018) < i believe this puts you into john's LTS fork.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/fork-asuswrt-merlin-374-43-lts-releases-v39e3.18914/

Why?

 

[RMerlin]

Jumbo frame - enabled

Disable that. Jumbo Frame brings very little benefits these days, as back in the day it was mostly to compensate for slower CPUs. Getting *everything* on a network to handle the same jumbo size is simply not worth the trouble, and mismatched MTUs will have a negative impact on performance.

Universal Beamforming - enabled

Disable that as well, can cause compatibility issues since it's not standard. Might be worth disabling 802.11ac Beamforming as well to confirm it's not a compatibility issue with the Mac's NIC. Beamforming provides very little performance benefit anyway.

Control channel - Auto

Test with channel 36 - it's the most "compatible" channel, to rule out any compatibility issues with higher numbered channels (my Zenpad used to have major performance issues when using a channel in the 144+ band).

You also want to keep QoS disabled to ensure you can use both CTF and FA. Adaptive QoS would limit performance of that router to around 650-750 Mbps.

 

[maxbraketorque]

Always interesting to read about these speed reduction issues. How is your speed test performed - speedtest.net or something like that? If yes, you should devise a test that assesses performance within the LAN so that you can determine if its a LAN or WAN connection issue. Your LAN test should utilize a computer connected to the LAN via ethernet. Both the wifi computer and the etherneted computer should have SSDs.

 

[maxbraketorque]

Disable that. Jumbo Frame brings very little benefits these days, as back in the day it was mostly to compensate for slower CPUs. Getting *everything* on a network to handle the same jumbo size is simply not worth the trouble, and mismatched MTUs will have a negative impact on performance.

Disable that as well, can cause compatibility issues since it's not standard. Might be worth disabling 802.11ac Beamforming as well to confirm it's not a compatibility issue with the Mac's NIC. Beamforming provides very little performance benefit anyway.

...

Actually Jumbo Frames can help a lot even these days. The first NAS I set up about 1.5 yrs ago was mirrored raid using only two drives total. Without jumbo frames, I could only reach about 80 MB/s, but with jumbo frames, I could saturate the 1 gbps network. That aside, if the network isn't completely set up for jumbo frames, there will be speed issues.

 

[Rain]

try 384.10_2 (3-Apr-2019)

correction: 384.9 (2-Feb-2019)

384.8_2 (8-Dec-2018) < i believe this puts you into john's LTS fork.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/fork-asuswrt-merlin-374-43-lts-releases-v39e3.18914/

Downgrading is bothersome, I'd really prefer to avoid it. Also seriously, why would newest stable version not work, I don't get it.

Disable that. Jumbo Frame brings very little benefits these days, as back in the day it was mostly to compensate for slower CPUs. Getting *everything* on a network to handle the same jumbo size is simply not worth the trouble, and mismatched MTUs will have a negative impact on performance.



Disable that as well, can cause compatibility issues since it's not standard. Might be worth disabling 802.11ac Beamforming as well to confirm it's not a compatibility issue with the Mac's NIC. Beamforming provides very little performance benefit anyway.



Test with channel 36 - it's the most "compatible" channel, to rule out any compatibility issues with higher numbered channels (my Zenpad used to have major performance issues when using a channel in the 144+ band).

You also want to keep QoS disabled to ensure you can use both CTF and FA. Adaptive QoS would limit performance of that router to around 650-750 Mbps.

Tried with disabled jumbo frame but it has no effect at all.
Tried to disable beamforming completely, tried to disable one of them, it has no effect.

Always interesting to read about these speed reduction issues. How is your speed test performed - speedtest.net or something like that? If yes, you should devise a test that assesses performance within the LAN so that you can determine if its a LAN or WAN connection issue. Your LAN test should utilize a computer connected to the LAN via ethernet. Both the wifi computer and the etherneted computer should have SSDs.

yeah speedtest. If I connect thru cable, router gives full 1gbps easily. Only wifi causes problems now. And I assure pc is capable of wifi speeds because it was pulling at least ~700mbps before on 5ghz.

So only problem is wifi, I really tested sooo many different options, nothing works.

Seem like restarting and channel 36 boosted it up to 380mbps. Still... where is my missing at least 200mbps...

 

[sinshiva]

Downgrading is bothersome, I'd really prefer to avoid it. Also seriously, why would newest stable version not work, I don't get it.

yeah, ignore that for the most part lol. it may be worth retesting on 10_2 later, though. the rest of that was a selfinflicted feedback loop lol