Asus AC68U, devices only connect at 144Mbps on 2.4ghz band.

[KGB7]

I've been trying to solve the issue for half the day today.

Router AC68U, firmware Merlin 384.18.

Ive set the 2.4ghz band to 40Mhz. Tried different channels. Wireless Mode - N Only. Tried Auto and Legacy.

Dell laptop connects at 300/300, 40Mhz
Apple laptop connects at 144/144. at 20Mhz.
Ipad 6, connects at 144/144.
Iphone 6S Plus connects at 144/144.

Ive ran multiple LAN and WAN speed tests. I'm getting up to 83Mbps on all devices listed above connected to 2.4ghz; WAN and LAN. Including Dell laptop even though it's connected at 300/300. At one point during testing, Dell Laptop was able to achieve 120Mbs speed, but shortly after speeds plummeted back to an average of 80Mbps.

Ive tested each device one at a time on a 2.4ghz band. I have 4 devices.

Tests are performed 5 feet away from the router with a clear line of sight.

Furthermore. I used an Asus RT-AC1200 router for the same tests, which has the latest Asus official firmware. Same exact wifi settings. Results were exactly the same as AC68U router on 2.4Ghz band.

For WAN speed test, I use OOkla Speed Test app on all devices. I used 3 closest servers and I tested each server 3 times.
For LAN test, I use a single 4-5GB file. In MacOS i used ActivityMonitor to monitor and record speeds and in MS Windows, I used Task Manager to monitor speeds.

Apple devices are running the latest version of macOS and ios.
Dell laptop has a fresh install of Win 8.1. I implemented every network tweak and registry tweak. Drivers are up to date and I've tried 4 different drivers for wifi card. I tested speeds before and after tweaks... made no difference.
On Mac, I tried SMB tweaks/commands in terminal. Still no joy.

Reset the router, flash it with firmware. Reset the router. Configure it as new. Test it. Reset it, flash it again, re-test it, set it up as new.

Aaargghh! Spent half a day trying to figure out the issue.

Please advice. I'm banging my head against the wall, trying to solve the problem. I know I'm missing something but I don't know what that "something" is.

Almost forgot to mention. There are no issues with the 5Ghz band mentioned above.

Thanks in advance.
Cheers.

 

[OzarkEdge]

I've been trying to solve the issue for half the day today.

Router AC68U, firmware Merlin 384.18.

Ive set the 2.4ghz band to 40Mhz. Tried different channels. Wireless Mode - N Only. Tried Auto and Legacy.

Dell laptop connects at 300/300, 40Mhz
Apple laptop connects at 144/144. at 20Mhz.
Ipad 6, connects at 144/144.
Iphone 6S Plus connects at 144/144.

Ive ran multiple LAN and WAN speed tests. I'm getting up to 83Mbps on all devices listed above connected to 2.4ghz; WAN and LAN. Including Dell laptop even though it's connected at 300/300. At one point during testing, Dell Laptop was able to achieve 120Mbs speed, but shortly after speeds plummeted back to an average of 80Mbps.

Ive tested each device one at a time on a 2.4ghz band. I have 4 devices.

Tests are performed 5 feet away from the router with a clear line of sight.

Furthermore. I used an Asus RT-AC1200 router for the same tests, which has the latest Asus official firmware. Same exact wifi settings. Results were exactly the same as AC68U router on 2.4Ghz band.

For WAN speed test, I use OOkla Speed Test app on all devices. I used 3 closest servers and I tested each server 3 times.
For LAN test, I use a single 4-5GB file. In MacOS i used ActivityMonitor to monitor and record speeds and in MS Windows, I used Task Manager to monitor speeds.

Apple devices are running the latest version of macOS and ios.
Dell laptop has a fresh install of Win 8.1. I implemented every network tweak and registry tweak. Drivers are up to date and I've tried 4 different drivers for wifi card. I tested speeds before and after tweaks... made no difference.
On Mac, I tried SMB tweaks/commands in terminal. Still no joy.

Reset the router, flash it with firmware. Reset the router. Configure it as new. Test it. Reset it, flash it again, re-test it, set it up as new.

Aaargghh! Spent half a day trying to figure out the issue.

Please advice. I'm banging my head against the wall, trying to solve the problem. I know I'm missing something but I don't know what that "something" is.

Almost forgot to mention. There are no issues with the 5Ghz band mentioned above.

Thanks in advance.
Cheers.

Convention is to use 2.4 fixed channels 1,6, or 11 at 20 MHz to minimize interference with other 2.4 WiFi. Channels 1,6, and 11 do not overlap at 20 MHz.

Clients with 2 antennas will appear to be about twice as fast as clients with 1 antenna. You can't change this.

OE

 

[Make WiFi Great Again]

Alot of modern devices will only use 20mhz on 2.4ghz by design amd this cannot be circumvented without a little software hacking This supposedly makes it neighbor friendly but its just one more thing we have given up control of to facelss buracrats who know whats best for you even more then you do!

Sence the advent of the internet of things and 5ghz is slowly getting crowded as well so how long before 80mhz is also banned

 

[KGB7]

Convention is to use 2.4 fixed channels 1,6, or 11 at 20 MHz to minimize interference with other 2.4 WiFi. Channels 1,6, and 11 do not overlap at 20 MHz.

Clients with 2 antennas will appear to be about twice as fast as clients with 1 antenna. You can't change this.

OE

The devices I mentioned in my original post, are capable of connecting at 300Mbps and getting speeds up to 300Mbps. Your suggestion does not resolve my issue, as to why my devices connect at 144Mbps, instead of 300Mbps.

 

[ColinTaylor]

The devices I mentioned in my original post, are capable of connecting at 300Mbps and getting speeds up to 300Mbps. Your suggestion does not resolve my issue, as to why my devices connect at 144Mbps, instead of 300Mbps.

Under the wireless settings what do you have the Channel bandwidth set to, 40 or 20/40?

Under System Log - Wireless Log check the "Chanspec:" is still set to 40 and hasn't changed to 20.

What is your WAN download speed when tested from a wired device?

 

[OzarkEdge]

The devices I mentioned in my original post, are capable of connecting at 300Mbps and getting speeds up to 300Mbps. Your suggestion does not resolve my issue, as to why my devices connect at 144Mbps, instead of 300Mbps.

Sorry, I don't know what your clients are capable of. If they have one antenna, they won't do 300 Mbps at 20 MHz bandwidth wireless-n.

Also try disabling Universal Beamforming per band... some wireless adapters don't like it.

OE

 

[KGB7]

Alot of modern devices will only use 20mhz on 2.4ghz by design amd this cannot be circumvented without a little software hacking This supposedly makes it neighbor friendly but its just one more thing we have given up control of to facelss buracrats who know whats best for you even more then you do!

Sence the advent of the internet of things and 5ghz is slowly getting crowded as well so how long before 80mhz is also banned

My Dell Laptop is almost 9 years old (wifi nic Intel 2230) it connects at 300/300, but is not able to get speeds better than 80/80. Which is the same up/down speeds as my newer Apple devices, which are fully capable of connecting at 300/300, but only connect at 144Mbps.

As I mentioned earlier my Dell laptop, for some fluke reason, I was able to achieve transfer speeds of 120Mbps, but shortly after, for some reason that I still can't figure out, the speeds plummeted to around 80Mbps.

Unfortunately, my Dell laptop NIC card is a single band and I have no option to connect to 5Ghz band.

 

[KGB7]

Under the wireless settings what do you have the Channel bandwidth set to, 40 or 20/40?

Under System Log - Wireless Log check the "Chanspec:" is still set to 40 and hasn't changed to 20.

What is your WAN download speed when tested from a wired device?

I did manually set Channel Bandwith to 40Mhz on 2.4Ghz band.

I cant find "Chanspec" in Wireless Log. Where do I find "Chanspec"?

Wan download speed is an average of 240Mbps, using 6 closest geographic servers.

 

[ColinTaylor]

I cant find "Chanspec" in Wireless Log. Where do I find "Chanspec"?

OK I guess Merlin doesn't show that information anymore?


Can you do a screenshot of your wireless log so I can see what you see.

 

[L&LD]

@KGB7, curious why your client devices have an internet-facing IP address?

 

[KGB7]

OK I guess Merlin doesn't show that information anymore?
View attachment 29789

Can you do a screenshot of your wireless log so I can see what you see.

This is what is what i see in my log.

 

[KGB7]

@KGB7, curious why your client devices have an internet-facing IP address?

What makes you say this??

 

[L&LD]

Because the screenshot you posted previously was 192.160.xxx.xxx

 

[KGB7]

Dell laptop connected at

Because the screenshot you posted previously was 192.160.xxx.xxx

Thats an internal LAN IP of my Asus router that I chose to use. I could have chosen any IP; 150.1.10.1 etc etc.

 

[L&LD]

And that one would still be a public/internet facing one too, no?

 

[KGB7]

And that one would still be a public/internet facing one too, no?

No.

Can you explain your reason behind your thinking? Im honestly curious.

 

[ColinTaylor]

This is what is what i see in my log.

I can't think of any logical reason why your Apple devices can't connect at 300 but your Dell can. I've observed that some of my clients will only show a higher link rate when they are actually transferring a lot of data.

What model of Apple laptop do you have?

Thats an internal LAN IP of my Asus router that I chose to use. I could have chosen any IP; 150.1.10.1 etc etc.

It's generally considered bad practice to use a public IP address range (that in this case is owned by Wayne State College) for an internal network when there are millions of private address ranges to choose from.

 

[KGB7]

I can't think of any logical reason why your Apple devices can't connect at 300 but your Dell can. I've observed that some of my clients will only show a higher link rate when they are actually transferring a lot of data.


It's generally considered bad practice to use a public IP address range (that in this case is owned by Wayne State College) for an internal network when there are millions of private address ranges to choose from.

1. Yeah, that's what I can't figure out. Perhaps there is an issue with Merilin firmware itself..?

2. Ive used the same or similar internal LAN IP for over a decade without any issues.

3. Its a 2014 MacBook Air laptop. It has latest MacOs Big Sur 11.1. It has a BCM94322MC Airport wifi nic.

 

[ColinTaylor]

1. Yeah, that's what I can't figure out. Perhaps there is an issue with Merilin firmware itself..?

3. Its a 2014 MacBook Air laptop. It has latest MacOs Big Sur 11.1.

If it's an Apple-compatibility issue it wouldn't be restricted to just Merlin's firmware as he uses the same wireless drivers that the stock firmware has. The only thing you could do in that case would be to update to the latest firmware and hope that it was a problem fixed upstream by Asus.

2. I used the same or similar internal LAN IP for over a decade without any issues.

Oh it will work OK, provided you never need to access some server at Wayne State College. It's just that in networking terms it's "not correct" because it violates the agreed network standards.

 

[L&LD]

@ColinTaylor stressed my reasoning too.

2. None that you know of.