Asus AX6100 (two AX 92U routers)

[Don Earnhardt]

I purchased this AIMesh system a few months ago. The main unit is in my office on the first floor at one end of the house. The satellite unit is at the other end of the house on the second floor. In my office, I have a desktop PC wired to the router. Upstairs, I have another desktop PC wired to the satellite router. Then I have many devices connected via wifi, iphones, ipads, roku devices, a roku tv, a bose wifi speaker, an amazon echo show, and a couple echo dot devices.

The backhaul channel is wireless, not wired.

When I first installed the mesh system, I was getting 5G speeds of 300+ throughout the house and 2.4G speeds at 50-75. Several weeks later, I've noticed that the speeds have reduced considerably, with 5G speeds at 50 or so, and the 2.4G speeds in single digits at times. I cannot understand why this is happening. Roku devices are buffering a lot when they were not before. Today, my Amazon Echo Show froze completely.

Today I ran speed tests on the PC attached to the satellite router and the first one was over 300. Continued to run several more tests and the speed slowed down each time, finally to less than 100. I would appreciate any ideas about why this has happened and what I could do to get the speeds back to where they were initially.

 

[Gouldin]

Most of the time, WiFi interference is too high and also the distance is too great. Any possibility of putting one of them closer to the other?

Also, if you go into aimesh on the web UI or on your phone app, what are they saying the signal strength is for aimesh node as ideally to get any decent link and speed it want to be between 40-50db , higher numbers going into the 60's and the link speed will reduce the throughput and the stability also.

 

[Deleted member 67504]

go into the 5ghz-2 backhaul advanced settings.. disable ofdm and mu-mimo, look at my settings and change the two i highlighted also look at others.. if you really want copy my settings..you can always change back if it doesnt work. I had drops and stuff with this set up until i changed these two settings i highlighted... i'm surprised i get the signal and consistency that I do with these babies.
I used to use a dsl ac68u with two rt ac68u as nodes and the nodes would drop like mad.. it drove me nuts.

 

[Don Earnhardt]

Most of the time, WiFi interference is too high and also the distance is too great. Any possibility of putting one of them closer to the other?

Also, if you go into aimesh on the web UI or on your phone app, what are they saying the signal strength is for aimesh node as ideally to get any decent link and speed it want to be between 40-50db , higher numbers going into the 60's and the link speed will reduce the throughput and the stability also.

 

[Don Earnhardt]

Although the WiFi indicator shows 4 bars, the iPhone app showed -64dbm. I found a WiFi analyzer that showed there are a large number of competing networks around me using all the channels, some more than others and some stronger than others. I have moved the node closer to the router, and I have been experimenting with changing the channels but about the best I can get is -55dbm. This allows a 5G speed of about 100 give or take. The thing that really puzzles me is that for a couple weeks after I installed these units, I was getting 5G speeds around 300 consistently. I don’t know what has changed. I will continue to experiment and see if I can find other solutions.

 

[Don Earnhardt]

go into the 5ghz-2 backhaul advanced settings.. disable ofdm and mu-mimo, look at my settings and change the two i highlighted also look at others.. if you really want copy my settings..you can always change back if it doesnt work. I had drops and stuff with this set up until i changed these two settings i highlighted... i'm surprised i get the signal and consistency that I do with these babies.
I used to use a dsl ac68u with two rt ac68u as nodes and the nodes would drop like mad.. it drove me nuts.

 

[Don Earnhardt]

I tried your settings but it didn’t make much difference. Not quite sure where to go now.

 

[Gouldin]

Out of interest, for a speedtest try using ubiquitis wifiman app and run the speed test from there as I've found speedtest.bet and fast.com to be very hit and miss in terms of providing enough bandwidth for my 330/45 connection

 

[theirongiant]

Homes are all constructed differently. Materials and the stuff inside the walls / floors plays a major role in wireless signals.

I purchased this AIMesh system a few months ago. The main unit is in my office on the first floor at one end of the house. The satellite unit is at the other end of the house on the second floor.

You've said that the satellite unit is "on the other end of the house." Approximately how long / wide is your house? With two stories I'm guessing it's well over 2,000 square feet. You're going across multiple rooms, through a stone subfloor, and past all the plumbing and electrical wires...

 

[Don Earnhardt]

I would guess the distance is about 45 feet. Both units are in the front of the house. There is no concrete in the house. I moved the node to probably 15 feet from the main router and not much changed. I did find something very interesting. See my reply to Goulding that I will enter next.

 

[AndreiV]

I've found speedtest.bet and fast.com to be very hit and miss in terms of providing enough bandwidth for my 330/45 connection

Try something better , you can select your target server.

https://www.nperf.com/en/

 

[Don Earnhardt]

That is quite interesting. Ubiquiti WiFiman shows speeds in the 300s for 5G as I had seen upon initial installation. Now I’m not sure what to believe or which speed test can be trusted.

My ISP is NorthState Communications and they have their own Speedtest site with a server in the same city where I live. I have fiber to my house and 1 GB service. The NorthState speedtest site has always provided the best results and I have relied on it until now.

I have tested many different speedtest sites and found that the results change drastically when you select a different server. I have one PC wired to my router and previously saw speeds in the 800-900 range using the NorthState site. Now I’m seeing results in the 400-500 range. I have not tried WiFiman from the wired PC yet but I’m guessing the results will be higher than from NorthState. Now I am thinking something has changed with NorthState.

My investigation of this issue started when my Roku box on my TV started buffering a lot and losing communications with my router. That seems to have improved and the Roku box now reports signal strength as Excellent.

I’m wondering if the changes I have made really did provide improvements that I could not see using the NorthState speedtest facilities that I thought I could rely on.

I think I will just watch this for a while and see how things go. I will move my node back to its original location because I Have a PC there that I wire to the node and That has worked very well. If my speed tests still look good after moving the node back, I will leave it there.

I really appreciate all the responses to my post here, they have been very helpful. I will post my results in a few days.

 

[Gouldin]

​

Try something better , you can select your target server.

https://www.nperf.com/en/

Seems like a nice site, thanks

 

[Gouldin]

That is quite interesting. Ubiquiti WiFiman shows speeds in the 300s for 5G as I had seen upon initial installation. Now I’m not sure what to believe or which speed test can be trusted.

My ISP is NorthState Communications and they have their own Speedtest site with a server in the same city where I live. I have fiber to my house and 1 GB service. The NorthState speedtest site has always provided the best results and I have relied on it until now.

I have tested many different speedtest sites and found that the results change drastically when you select a different server. I have one PC wired to my router and previously saw speeds in the 800-900 range using the NorthState site. Now I’m seeing results in the 400-500 range. I have not tried WiFiman from the wired PC yet but I’m guessing the results will be higher than from NorthState. Now I am thinking something has changed with NorthState.

My investigation of this issue started when my Roku box on my TV started buffering a lot and losing communications with my router. That seems to have improved and the Roku box now reports signal strength as Excellent.

I’m wondering if the changes I have made really did provide improvements that I could not see using the NorthState speedtest facilities that I thought I could rely on.

I think I will just watch this for a while and see how things go. I will move my node back to its original location because I Have a PC there that I wire to the node and That has worked very well. If my speed tests still look good after moving the node back, I will leave it there.

I really appreciate all the responses to my post here, they have been very helpful. I will post my results in a few days.

On pc, that link Andreiv recommended seems quite decent, another useful one is the ubiquiti one for pc's: https://speed.ui.com uses the same servers as the wifiman app.

Ideally a better test for wifi would be to copy off a pc/nas to a laptop and check the actual transfer speeds as web traffic and servers are way too incostent to reliable info 100% of the time.

 

[someuser08]

go into the 5ghz-2 backhaul advanced settings.. disable ofdm and mu-mimo, look at my settings and change the two i highlighted also look at others.. if you really want copy my settings..you can always change back if it doesnt work. I had drops and stuff with this set up until i changed these two settings i highlighted... i'm surprised i get the signal and consistency that I do with these babies.
I used to use a dsl ac68u with two rt ac68u as nodes and the nodes would drop like mad.. it drove me nuts.

Would you mind sharing your WiFi setting for other bands as well? Thanks.

 

[Deleted member 67504]

yeah sure

 

[Deleted member 67504]

I noticed.. if i enable apsd on the (5ghz-2 the back channel aka wifi 6) the router goes down and up many times for some reason was quite strange didn't expect that,
need to find out if there is actually a benefit to most of these settings like wmm apsd.. or the new wifi 6 settings like ofdm and mu mimo.. in my experience there is actually a performance loss but like most things these new features are actually just BS to make you think its better.
ill need to check my line speed over the network but the speed is pretty damn good I can max out my ISP download speed with steam when downloading games about 5~MBps

 

[Don Earnhardt]

Most of the time, WiFi interference is too high and also the distance is too great. Any possibility of putting one of them closer to the other?

Also, if you go into aimesh on the web UI or on your phone app, what are they saying the signal strength is for aimesh node as ideally to get any decent link and speed it want to be between 40-50db , higher numbers going into the 60's and the link speed will reduce the throughput and the stability also.

 

[Don Earnhardt]

Very interesting. My speeds are back to where they were when I initially installed this router system. Not really sure what changed, but things are much better. So I guess I’m good for now. Through my post on this forum, I learned of a number of helpful tools so I’m happy about that. Thanks to all who responded.

 

[KevinM99]

go into the 5ghz-2 backhaul advanced settings.. disable ofdm and mu-mimo, look at my settings and change the two i highlighted also look at others.. if you really want copy my settings..you can always change back if it doesnt work. I had drops and stuff with this set up until i changed these two settings i highlighted... i'm surprised i get the signal and consistency that I do with these babies.
I used to use a dsl ac68u with two rt ac68u as nodes and the nodes would drop like mad.. it drove me nuts.

Hi Steve,

Just came across this post, as I have two 92U's, and have been having hit/miss performance, and return date is coming up quick. Do you have your devices wired backhaul or wireless? I'm wired, and running Router + Access Point. Using different SSID's for the 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz-1 and 5Ghz-2 bands on the Router, and then replicating those same three SSID's on the Access point. Most settings in auto mode. Seem to have good performance at first, and then things degrade over a few days. After about a week, was experiencing half speeds across all bands (and running the latest firmware). I'm considering trying your settings, and seeing what happens. Did you experience gradual speed slowdowns over time?