AiMesh - 5ghz-2 is now dedicated backhaul after recent firmware? (wired backhaul)

[OzarkEdge]

You don't need to justify your choices to me.

I'm not. I was asking you to justify your advice. You've raise some considerations... thanks!

OE

 

[L&LD]

The 'professionals' just want to have the least handholding possible for users. They are not looking for the best performance possible for them.

I have zero customers that are running a single SSID. Even the ones that thought they wanted it were convinced after they tested two instead.

 

[Smokindog]

The 'professionals' just want to have the least handholding possible for users. They are not looking for the best performance possible for them.

This is the furthest thing from the truth. Most professional installations have management systems and multiple SSIDs would be no extra work at all. They do it because it provides the best overall user experience as well as use/performance of the network.

Again, if you're happy with those choices then that's great. It's just not in line with best practices.

 

[L&LD]

No, most professionals won't use consumer routers in the first place. For their equipment and systems, it may make sense. But still, ultimate performance is not what drives their methods either. Their marketing may indicate that, but number one is to have the least user interaction because that costs money which they can't bill for.

Best practices for me is to have the right balance of hardware, firmware, and configuration. A single SSID throws that configuration variable out of balance for most installs when compared to an SSID per radio band. This is not a matter of what makes me happy. Its what makes my customers happier because the network works much better (faster), for a much longer period of time and is much more stable too.

 

[Smokindog]

No, most professionals won't use consumer routers in the first place. For their equipment and systems, it may make sense. But still, ultimate performance is not what drives their methods either. Their marketing may indicate that, but number one is to have the least user interaction because that costs money which they can't bill for.

Best practices for me is to have the right balance of hardware, firmware, and configuration. A single SSID throws that configuration variable out of balance for most installs when compared to an SSID per radio band. This is not a matter of what makes me happy. Its what makes my customers happier because the network works much better (faster), for a much longer period of time and is much more stable too.

Sounds like you're trying to convince yourself because you're not convincing me. As I've said multiple times. You're the one who said professionals only want a simple solution. I simply responded. Now you want to tell me why professional wouldn't use consumer grade equipment. You won't get an argument from me. I said the same thing.

I'll never do it and I'll never recommend it and I don't believe it is proper practice but if you are good with it, have at it. I'm not trying to convince you. I simply provided my view and as I've said repeatedly it's worth the price you paid.

Now, back to the OP, IMO he should abandon AiMesh, use AP mode, use a single SSID, manually assign channels, and enjoy his routers.

Again, my opinion and my feedback. I'm not criticizing your opinion, just disagreeing.

 

[DarnellG]

Thx for the info. right now I need the wireless backhaul to work because its winter time here and I'll only run the cat cable this spring. The problem I am having right now is both routers are side by side of each other and its defaulting to the 2.4Ghz backhaul. The 5Ghz only have 1 bar during the connection phase after a power cycle of the node, shortly thereafter it changes to the 2.4Ghz band with full signal. I have been having issues using the upper 5Ghz channels even before when I was just using the AC5300. I ended up just disabling the 5Ghz-2 channel and manually set the 5Ghz-1 to use channel 40 @80Mhz. I didn't know if it the router or interference but the wifi scanner showed nothing there. I bought this AX88U to replace the AC5300 as my main router but the same thing happened. I had set it up to auto choose the channel and at first it chose 44 and everything worked fine. I couple hours later my wife started complaining she could watch netflix and when I logged into the router I noticed the channel was running on 161. I was getting the same problem with this new AX88U as I was with the AC5300. Now by using the AX88U as the main router and the AC5300 as the node in this AIMESH setup I have lost the ability to manually select the channel of the 5Ghz-2 band. I am going to reset my AC5300 and try to figure out why I cant use the upper 5Ghz channels.

 

[Smokindog]

My mistake, I thought you already had everything connected via wired backhaul. As you can tell, I'm not a fan of AiMesh after my struggles with it. It's not an optimal solution for a two radio device.

Personally, I'd wait it out until I could run the wire. Don't know why the weather is preventing you from running the wire but I don't need to. I'd do whatever I needed to expedite!

I personally don't think AiMesh is ready for primetime!

Good luck. Lot's a smart people here, just make sure you take and collate all the data for yourself. After all, you're the one that needs to be happy!

Thx for the info. right now I need the wireless backhaul to work because its winter time here and I'll only run the cat cable this spring. The problem I am having right now is both routers are side by side of each other and its defaulting to the 2.4Ghz backhaul. The 5Ghz only have 1 bar during the connection phase after a power cycle of the node, shortly thereafter it changes to the 2.4Ghz band with full signal. I have been having issues using the upper 5Ghz channels even before when I was just using the AC5300. I ended up just disabling the 5Ghz-2 channel and manually set the 5Ghz-1 to use channel 40 @80Mhz. I didn't know if it the router or interference but the wifi scanner showed nothing there. I bought this AX88U to replace the AC5300 as my main router but the same thing happened. I had set it up to auto choose the channel and at first it chose 44 and everything worked fine. I couple hours later my wife started complaining she could watch netflix and when I logged into the router I noticed the channel was running on 161. I was getting the same problem with this new AX88U as I was with the AC5300. Now by using the AX88U as the main router and the AC5300 as the node in this AIMESH setup I have lost the ability to manually select the channel of the 5Ghz-2 band. I am going to reset my AC5300 and try to figure out why I cant use the upper 5Ghz channels.

 

[DarnellG]

ok I've been doing some testing. My AX88U is running the home network right now and beside it I have the AC5300 that I just reset and loading it with merlin's latest firmware and started playing around with the channel numbers on the 5Ghz-2 band.

If I manually set the bandwidth and lower it from 80Mhz to 40Mhz I can choose any of the available upper channels and I get about 250Mbits/sec using iperf between my samsung S10 and my pc connected to the router. IF I increase the bandwidth to 80Mhz the signal strength drops significantly and the bandwidth is less than 10Mbits. On my AX88U running on ch40 @80Mhz I get up to 550-750Mbits

During my SSID scans I noticed the 5Ghz-1 had chosen ch 44@ 80Mhz bandwidth and during the wifi scan you could see that the power output was almost non existent and was occupying the same channel and bandwidth as my AX88U. I think I read somewhere that the wifi driver detects overlapping competing signals and reduces the power output automatically so that the first router can work. Just for the fun I reduce the bandwidth on the 5Ghz-2 band to 40Mhz on the AC5300 and boom the signal strength went back up to normal even though it was still within the channel space of the AX88U albeit only occupying half the width. It acts like this for the 5Ghz-2 band too but I'm not detecting any APs in this space. This is puzzling

 

[L&LD]

@DarnellG, you shouldn't be using two routers on the same channels. I'm guessing that at 80MHz channel width, they're interfering with each other (as you can see). How far apart are the routers during your testing?

 

[DarnellG]

My routers are not more than 2 or 3' apart. The AX88U is running on ch40@80Mhz and of course running another router on the same channel this close isn't something you would do in real life. I was going to disable the 5Ghz-1 and just screw around with the 5Ghz-2 radio to find out why I can't use the upper channels but out of curiosity I observed that when I overlapped the radio signal on the lower channels it acted exactly the same on the upper channel except My AC5300 should not be competing with any other APs in the upper channels. It's like there is some phantom AP haunting me in the upper channel bands LOL

 

[DarnellG]

ok so keeping in mind my previously discussed issues where I cannot use the upper 5Ghz channels @80Mhz, I tried switching and making the AC5300 the main router and making the AX88U the node so that I could have access to the 5Ghz-2 band of the AC5300 and set it at 40Mhz.

I was at least successful successful in getting the 2 routers to use the 5Ghz backhaul channel but I'm bottlenecking my whole system. I got better results yes but this also forces the AX88U to abandon the very fast lower 5Ghz channels @80Mhz and use the upper 5Ghz channels @ 40Mhz in order to establish the backhaul channel with the AC5300. Not only is the AX88U using only half of the crippling 40Mhz to host clients but it uses the other half for the backhaul. I am effectively hosting clients on the AX88U on 5Ghz@20Mhz and the backhaul using the other 20Mhz . This is totally unacceptable but AIMESH is not my problem.

The route of my problem is this. I tested both the AC5300 and AX88U independently and found that I cannot use the upper 5Ghz channels at 80Mhz. There must a some sort of bug that affects both routers because my SSID scans do not show anything that would affect my router. I'm going to start a new thread as I would really like to find out what my problem is that is causing my upper 5Ghz channels to become unusable @80Mhz.

 

[Smokindog]

I"m not saying it's your problem but I just noticed you said your routers are 2-3 feet apart. Put some more distance between them. OH, make sure you're not sitting in the middle

Also, if you're working with stock firmware, open a ticket up with ASUS. If you're not using stock firmware, do so until you get things working the way you think you should.

 

[DarnellG]

Sorry for the consfusion. When I testing the AC5300 on sunday I had both routers running but on the AC5300 I disabled the 5Ghz-1 radio and was only using the 5Ghz-2 radio on the upper channels with a unique SSID. The only time I had the 5Ghz-1 channel on and running on the same channel as the AX88U was to see how it would react and the signal strength on the AC5300 dropped just like it does on the upper channels. This is why I am thinking this is an interference problem but my wifi scanner isn't showing any conflicts

On Sunday, The AX88U was manually set on ch36@80Mhz running my home network so my wife could watch netflix. The other times I did testing was with only 1 router on at one time but the problem was identical in all situations.

 

[Smokindog]

Do you have any "site survey" information for the area in question. For instance, here's my Family Room area for 5GHz. I have my main router upstairs in my wiring closet which is slightly offset to center. My Family room is beneath but a little offset to one side. I've got long narrow "boomerang shaped" 2 story so I've alternated 4 nodes up/down with wired backhaul at roughly equal horizontal intervals to cover the main house and the attached garage. The network extends out to a bus garage and the back yard but the 5Ghz from those nodes doesn't "make it" to this location.

The connection is to an AC3100 located in a desk area in the kitchen on the same floor. The strong signal next to it is the main router which is upstairs. Horizontally I'm pretty much in the middle of the two.

 

[DarnellG]

I found my problem. My Astro A50 wireless headset runs on the upper channels of the 5Ghz band but it doesn't use normal WiFi protocol so it was undetected in my site surveys. My mesh system works great now.

 

[chinusa]

So as of today April 26, 2020, we are still losing the 5GHz-2 channel even when we have Ethernet backhaul for our Aimesh nodes...what has Asus been doing?

 

[Kenneth Rouwen]

Was looking around at this thread with similar problems. Running an AX88U as main router and AX58U as node with ethernet cable. I noticed with WIFIanalyser app the node was only broadcasting a 2.4 Ghz network. After switching to AP mode for the node and then switching back to AImesh mode the problem was gone. Now I have two 2.4 Ghz networks and two 5 Ghz networks again.

Only thing I changed later was setting connection priority to ethernet instead of auto. But can't imagine this was playing a role.

 

[OzarkEdge]

Was looking around at this thread with similar problems. Running an AX88U as main router and AX58U as node with ethernet cable. I noticed with WIFIanalyser app the node was only broadcasting a 2.4 Ghz network. After switching to AP mode for the node and then switching back to AImesh mode the problem was gone. Now I have two 2.4 Ghz networks and two 5 Ghz networks again.

Only thing I changed later was setting connection priority to ethernet instead of auto. But can't imagine this was playing a role.

Are you saying that once you set your wired AiMesh node connection priority to wired/Ethernet, you regained your tri-band for client use... that AiMesh no longer reserves the third band making it unavailable for client use?

OE

 

[Kenneth Rouwen]

Are you saying that once you set your wired AiMesh node connection priority to wired/Ethernet, you regained your tri-band for client use... that AiMesh no longer reserves the third band making it unavailable for client use?

OE

No I don't think both the AX88U and AX58U are tri-band routers. The problem I had was that I lost the 5 Ghz band on the AIMESH node entirely.

 

[Noisrevid]

Just thought i'd throw something out there that worked for with my GT-AX11000 paired to a RT-AC88U with ethernet backhaul.. which caused my 5ghz-2 (third band) to be usable, but unable to use 160mhz and DFS channels. Asus likes to "disable" any technology that the slower/older AiMesh router cannot handle or use. Here's the steps I made to take full control of my 5ghz-2 (third band) back:

1) Factory Resetted BOTH Routers
2) Do basic Wifi config on Main router, then pair to the AiMesh second Router (Make sure you're already ethernet backhauled)
3) Did my Advanced WAN/LAN/DHCP Scope/Wireless Network changes (Notice that your 5ghz-2 band has limited functionality)
4) UNPAIR your secondary AiMesh Router (this will cause your AiMesh Node to Factory Reset automatically)
5) Notice that your 5ghz-2 band has it's full capabilities and settings back, I changed mine to 160mhz ONLY and DFS Channel
6) Restart Main Router
7) Pair back up with your AiMesh Node
8) Notice that your 5ghz-2 band settings appear to stay this time
9) Test connection and speed (iPerf/etc.) on your 5ghz-2 band and notice it's actually working and running at the settings you intended

So far so good here.. Haven't had my 5ghz-2 band become unusable or changed even after restarting BOTH the main router and aimesh node. I use my 5ghz-2 as a PURE 160mhz DFS band (and it also doesn't attempt to route to my AiMesh Node when i'm connected to the SSID) so I can have my full 2.4gb wireless bandwidth when I need it (AX201 on my Laptop).