Asus RT-A56U 2.4GHz Performance

[Hopslam]

Hi SNB!

I know the general consensus on the 56u is that for whatever reason, the 2.4GHz frequency is poor. When I first purchased the 56u, my WiFi hardly even worked. It was abysmal, embarrassing actually, for a company to ship out a product with such an inoperable firmware. Thankfully, I found SNB and a dedicated user in RMerlin who provided custom firmware!!

I'm currently running Merlin build 374.38. I pay for 25MB download, and on the 5GHz channel I get ~28MB. However, on the 2.4GHz channel, I get about 10MB/s. I'm currently living in a college town apartment and my two other roommates have older laptops, so they can only utilize the 2.4GHz channel.. I'd like to improve their experience, and was thinking about upgrading the firmware. The only reason I'm writing this post is because I'm a little hesitant after skimming over some threads here where users bricked their routers upgrading the software.

My question is, will I see any noticeable improvements in upgrading from Merlin build 374.38, or even a more recent Asus build? Has the problem been fixed? And yes I do know about the 20MHz transmission option and inSSIDer.

Thanks in advance!!

 

[sinshiva]

the bricks are unrelated to any amount of firmware updating. considering your environment, i wouldn't expect much in the way of an improvement on the 2.4ghz band, regardless. This device really is best for use of the 5ghz band as far as wireless goes