ASUS N66W Woes (Help!)

[Dagr]

Hi guys... new to the forums and hoping you can help me out. I'm having various reoccurring problems with my ASUS N66W.

What is happening is that intermittently my devices drop to half signal strength and eventually drop / disconnect. Upon reconnecting they seem to be "ok". This seems to happen repeatedly until a router reboot, and happens multiple times a day.

The router also seems to occasionally reboot itself, causing the network to lose connectivity.

I'm sort of guessing it is getting overloaded by devices / requests? I know the N66 has limited RAM/processor in comparison with some newer devices.

I have tried multiple firmware versions, resetting to factory settings, changing lots of different settings on/off in regard to the 2GHz and 5GHz bands.

I am currently running the latest Merlin firmware and am at basic stock settings (I did a reset after upgrading to Merlin). This has been more reliable, but the problems still persist (usually when I least want them to happen of course).

Any ideas? I really don't want to shell out $200 for another router like the Netgear Nighthawk (which I have heard very positive things about). I'm also not sure the upgrade is really worth it in terms of performance / stability... but I'm currently going a little nuts with my N66.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Nullity]

How many devices are accessing the router?

I have 12-15 wireless devices connected through my RT-N66U with great reliability.

Whenever I experienced wireless problems it was usually because of a client's outdated operating-system or outdated/buggy wireless drivers.


I would go through the router's settings and disable any features you are sure you don't need. The CPU on the router is pretty good but if you start making it run a bunch of non-essential features (media server, download master, openvpn, etc) it can bog down the router and even overload it.

 

[Dagr]

I'd say 12-15 is my normal device usage. I'm not using any non-core functionality so I'll try to disable that (I have done this in the past but without much difference). The main admin website often hangs on me too depending on what page I go to (that drives me nuts).

 

[Nullity]

I'd say 12-15 is my normal device usage. I'm not using any non-core functionality so I'll try to disable that (I have done this in the past but without much difference). The main admin website often hangs on me too depending on what page I go to (that drives me nuts).

Is there anything interesting in the router's logs?

Could you access the router via SSH or telnet? If so, connect and then run "top" (interactive view of running processes) then press "t", which will sort by the total amount of CPU-time used since boot. The processes listed at the top will be the most likely culprits for causing your poor performance.

Happy holidays!

 

[Dagr]

I'll take a look at the logs... nothing popped out at me at last glance (it just happened again).

I did notice that what seems to happen is that it shows a full strength signal, then immediately a very weak signal as soon as a client attempts to connect. (And with some devices that keep trying this causes an odd signal flopping).

Does the log reset on reboot? (It appears to for me)...

 

[Nullity]

I'll take a look at the logs... nothing popped out at me at last glance (it just happened again).

I did notice that what seems to happen is that it shows a full strength signal, then immediately a very weak signal as soon as a client attempts to connect. (And with some devices that keep trying this causes an odd signal flopping).

Does the log reset on reboot? (It appears to for me)...

Yeah. They reset on reboot.