AC68W Losing internet connection after firmware upgrade to _7266

[pdoyle]

90 year old 2-story smaller house with thick plaster/lath walls and large heating brick flue right in center of each floor; thoughts on moving it from 1st floor, to 2nd floor; even though I also need wifi coverage for basement? I guess the question is, will I keep good wifi connectivity in basement if router is two floors above?
Reasonable thing would be to relocate the router and then test for coverage; but it's so hard to snake the Cat5E ethernet cabling through old-house dropped ceiling and also walls; just an adventure, don't know what you'll find. I've read the signal travels best downward...any thoughts? thanks!

 

[TonyH]

My house is stick house with stucco exterior fairly new. Always located router on the 2nd floor loft. No issues with two computers in the basement on wireless.

 

[pdoyle]

Thanks, that is useful! I've read that wifi signal travels better through floors, than through walls (laterally; inter - room, on same floor) .

 

[wouterv]

My RT-AC68U with stock firmware is on the lowest floor of a Dutch brick house with concrete floors, the router is located near the open stairs construction to the next floors.
On the floor with the router both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz are optimal.
On the first floor 2.4 GHz is still optimal, 5 GHz is fair.
On the second floor 2.4 GHz is fair and 5 GHz is gone.
You may be able to give it a try with a long patch cable up to ~100m/300ft, temporary routed the shortest route.
Once you found a proper router location, you can route a permanent cable.
For the permanent cable I suggest shielded Cat6 (connectors with a metal shield, both ends of the shield shall be electrically connected through the cable shield).

 

[dlandiss]

Thanks, that is useful! I've read that wifi signal travels better through floors, than through walls (laterally; inter - room, on same floor) .

That really depends on what the floors and walls are made of.

For example: If the floors are wood but the walls are plaster over expanded-metal mesh, just guess what happens!

 

[pdoyle]

Curious for your expert opinions. Shall I expect improved 5GHz signal on second floor Galaxy S7 AC device, after Asus RT-N66R in AP mode is added on second floor, connected to LAN port of the RT-AC68W on first floor? Currently with just first floor AC68W wifi I'm getting 650 Mbps at 100% first floor, but only 200 Mbps at 75% on second floor. Network is only as strong as its weakest component; will adding the weaker N66R for access point, will that slow the wifi signal even from the AC68W?
Also, I'd be connecting AP LAN port to a Gigabit switch, to main router LAN port. Any problem with using a switch? The alternative is I could replace the Gigabit switch with the AP router using the AP's LAN ports to ethernet the 3 desktops currently connecting to the Gigabit switch. Is that a better option, in that there's one less switch device in the network? The complete CAT5E network run is 225 feet.
I did try temporarily relocating the main router AC68W to the second floor, from the first; but the 5GHz signal becomes too weak for first floor laptop. So I need to keep main router on first floor.
thanks!

 

[wouterv]

Extending the wireless coverage is best done as you describe: adding wireless Access Points (your RT-N66U in Access Point mode) that have a wired connection to the router (your RT-AC68U in Wireless Router mode).
Set the RT-N66U and RT-AC68U to different 5 GHz channels with each a unique SSID and each will offer their maximum speed to supported clients (the RT-N66U up to 802.11n and the RT-68U up to 802.11ac).
Both the RT-N66U and the RT-AC68U will have 4 LAN ports available for wired clients or your Gigabit switch, for performance reasons I would try to hook up most (or the most demanding) wired clients to the RT-AC68U (direct or through the Gigabit switch).
The maximum length for one Cat cable is about 100 meter / 300 ft.

 

[pdoyle]

Please advise how to set AP mode on Asus RT-N66R? After pressing reset button, I'm selecting AP mode instead of Wireless Router. Then the GUI asks ?Get LAN IP automaticall? I'm selecting No; then changing the IP address to one that is outside of the DCHP range of the main router AC68W. Press Save; it's rejected as invalid IP address.

 

[pdoyle]

Update: I've successfully saved AP mode. on LAN page of GUI I changed the IP address to 192.168.0.1; which is outside the range of the main router's DHCP server 192.168.1.2 - 192.169.1.254; but the Gateway shows as 0.0.0.0 and saving is rejected, "invalid address 0.0.0.0". Does the main wireless router RT-AC68W need to assign the static IP to the AP using the AP's MAC address?

 

[CaptainSTX]

Update: I've successfully saved AP mode. on LAN page of GUI I changed the IP address to 192.168.0.1; which is outside the range of the main router's DHCP server 192.168.1.2 - 192.169.1.254; but the Gateway shows as 0.0.0.0 and saving is rejected, "invalid address 0.0.0.0". Does the main wireless router RT-AC68W need to assign the static IP to the AP using the AP's MAC address?

If your primary router's LAN DHCP range is 192.168.1.2 - 192.168.1.254 your AP's LAN IP must be in that range.

Normally people limit their DHCP range to no more than 20 - 50 addresses particularly since a WiFi radio can't efficiently serve more than 20 clients.

Set your DHCP range on your primary router to 192.168.1.100 - 192.168.1.150 then you can use the remaining addresses outside that DHCP range for static assignments. I would suggest that you set you LAN's AP as 192.168.1.2 so it is easy to find and you can administer it.

 

[pdoyle]

Thanks! success