Asus RT-AC3200 issues and impressions

[Deleted member 22229]

Just ordered this thing from the egg. It arrives Tuesday. Boy oh boy, now I'm really worried.

Be afraid very afraid.. Just kidding hope it works out for you.

 

[dlandon]

Not seeing dropouts

I am not seeing the dropouts that others are seeing. I have smart connect turned off and have set the wireless channels manually. You might find that the auto setting for the channels is not making a good choice. I find that routers usually only select channels 1, 6, or 11 in auto mode. In my area, channel 9 is a better choice - less traffic and interference. Wireless is a finicky thing and you should try manual channel settings and possibly adjusting the antennas. inSSIDer can be a good tool to see the wireless traffic in your area. You might want to try a different location for the router and confirm that there is no interference from phones or other electronics. The issues you see may not be the router.

 

[jerry6]

I set everything manually , never use auto . Disconnects in minutes sometimes 20 seconds others . No signal within 1/4 mile of my house so it's not a crowded environment
TRY some large file downloads , look to see if there are stops in the process , nothing in the logs indicate the drops

 

[jerry6]

Completely new architecture . Its not like all the had to do was stick another radio in the case.

With all the disconnects that sounds exactly like what they did .

 

[Deleted member 22229]

There will always be those that defend or rebel a new device. My thought is if said device can NOT do what it says on the box at purchase it should not be on the shelf.

 

[jerry6]

There will always be those that defend or rebel a new device. My thought is if said device can NOT do what it says on the box at purchase it should not be on the shelf.

Agree 100% , but in Asus defence at least they support products for a good while , I have netgear and linksys routers that have lost fw updates after 1 year on the market or 1 revision of the router , Netgear wrt3700 v1 and linksys wrt600 v1 both had 2 or 3 FW updates then nothing . Bought my Asus rt n16 about 3 months after the netgear and it still get FW updates , so I'll let Asus slide a bit on this early release .

 

[sybergeek]

Hardware issue ?

If it's just Firmware thing, I can probably wait..

But this could be hardware issue as well with the first lot they manufactured .. If that's the case.. is it not better to return this router and purchase it say after 6 months or so .. ?

My concern is that even if return this to Asus after 6 months, I am more likely to get refurbished, buggy version again...

 

[jsquaredz]

I would like to see them also allow smart connect to be only on the 5 ghz bands. So if the did a 2 band or 3 band smart connect (user selectable)

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Agree 100% , but in Asus defence at least they support products for a good while , I have netgear and linksys routers that have lost fw updates after 1 year on the market or 1 revision of the router , Netgear wrt3700 v1 and linksys wrt600 v1 both had 2 or 3 FW updates then nothing . Bought my Asus rt n16 about 3 months after the netgear and it still get FW updates , so I'll let Asus slide a bit on this early release .

No doubt about that. It's not just Asus there are many manufactures doing the same thing. I guess it's a trend that probably wont end anytime soon as long as people keep laying down the money to buy it.

 

[jsquaredz]

If it's just Firmware thing, I can probably wait..

But this could be hardware issue as well with the first lot they manufactured .. If that's the case.. is it not better to return this router and purchase it say after 6 months or so .. ?

My concern is that even if return this to Asus after 6 months, I am more likely to get refurbished, buggy version again...

Pretty sure its firmware only issues.

 

[sybergeek]

Pretty sure its firmware only issues.

For me it's unusable as of now.. Somehow my laptop is not disconnecting may be I sit/work close to router but other laptops/iphones at home are disconnecting.

I have observed that when I go to farthest room my iPhone would see Full bars of Wifi signal but many a times my videos/FB stops working and many a times I find that my iPhone is not connected to Wifi anymore.. I need to manually select Wifi network and connect again.

My wife uses iPhone and she is screaming at me that her videos not playing and/or she is not able to Chromecast to TV anymore (phone losing router connection)..

Don't know what to do .. Keep using my old n good ac66u and keep this rt3200 aside and wait for new firmware to come and resolve issues.. But how long to wait ?

I really wish ac3200 had 'SOS' mode that would disable all new/fancy features and just provide a stable connection.

 

[jsquaredz]

For me it's unusable as of now.. Somehow my laptop is not disconnecting may be I sit/work close to router but other laptops/iphones at home are disconnecting.

I have observed that when I go to farthest room my iPhone would see Full bars of Wifi signal but many a times my videos/FB stops working and many a times I find that my iPhone is not connected to Wifi anymore.. I need to manually select Wifi network and connect again.

My wife uses iPhone and she is screaming at me that her videos not playing and/or she is not able to Chromecast to TV anymore (phone losing router connection)..

Don't know what to do .. Keep using my old n good ac66u and keep this rt3200 aside and wait for new firmware to come and resolve issues.. But how long to wait ?

I really wish ac3200 had 'SOS' mode that would disable all new/fancy features and just provide a stable connection.

Im getting disconnects too, but not unusable as you are describing. Maybe try to reset to factory (30-30-30) and try again.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

30/30/30 Resets do NOT work with Asus routers.

 

[jerry6]

Maybe not , but 30 second reset is in the playbook , check out instructions sent to me by Asus support
""Thank you for contacting ASUS technical support.

After reviewing your email I understand that your keeps disconecting every 10 - 20 minutes some clients do not re establish connection some do using latest FW and did a factory reset. I apologize for the inconvenience caused.

In this case I request you to hard reset the router and change the chennel on the router page by following the instructions given below:

To reset the router kindly press and hold the reset button in the router for 30 seconds and release it. Now follow the steps below to reconfigure the router.

Step 1: Open your internet browser and type '192.168.1.1/index.asp' in the address bar and hit enter.

Step 2: Type 'admin' in the Username field and 'admin' in the Password field and click ok. Now you will be in your router information page.

Step 3: From the Navigation Panel, go to Advanced Settings > Wireless > General Tab.

Step 4: Select 2.4GHz or 5GHz as the frequency band for your wireless Network.

Step 5: Assign a unique name containing up to 32 characters for your SSID (Service Set Identifier) or Network Name to identify your wireless network. Wi-Fi devices can identify and connect to the wireless network via your assigned SSID. The SSIDs on the information banner are updated once new SSIDs are saved to the settings.

Step 6: In the Hide SSID field, Select 'No' to automatically detect your SSID.

Step 7: Set 'Auto' in the Wireless Mode option.

Step 8: Select any of these Channel Bandwidth to accommodate higher transmission speeds:

Step 9: 20MHz(default): Select this bandwidth if you encounter some issues with your wireless connection.

Step 10: 40MHz: Select this bandwidth to maximize the wireless throughput.

Step 11: Select the Control Channel for your Wireless Router. Select Auto to allow the wireless router to automatically select the channel that has the least amount of interference.

Step 12: Set Authentication method to WPA2-personal(This option provides very strong security)

Step 13: Set WPA Encryption to AES.

Step 14: Enter 8 to 16 alpha numeric charecters in the WPA Pre Shared Key, this is your SSID's password.

Step 15: Then Click Apply and Reboot the router.

Then follow the instructions to change the channels:

If you are using 2.4 GHz then please try the channels 1, 6, 11. If you are using 5 GHz then please try the channels above 40. To change the channel in the router page please follow the instructions:

1. Please launch a browser and go to the default website of ASUS router’s settings page which is http://192.168.1.1

2. Click the button "Wireless" below the advanced settings.

3. You will see Channel bandwidth option please set it to 20/40 MHz.

4. Then below that you will see "Control Channel" select it and set the different channels given above (1, 6, 11).

5. Then click "Apply" and now check the connection.

This is the case number: .

If you have further queries feel free to contact us.

Thank you very much.

 

[RMerlin]

One thing to test for those of you using Smart Connect and having too frequent bouncing around, try disabling all the steering trigger toggles, so in theory, clients would get assigned to a specific band at connect time, and stay there. (I'm just not sure if it would properly assign high speed clients to the right band - give it a try).

This is all pure theory, since I don't have any documentation as to how these settings actually work. I'm trying to deduce how it works based on the description labels on the page. Still worth a try.

 

[jerry6]

One thing to test for those of you using Smart Connect and having too frequent bouncing around, try disabling all the steering trigger toggles, so in theory, clients would get assigned to a specific band at connect time, and stay there. (I'm just not sure if it would properly assign high speed clients to the right band - give it a try).

This is all pure theory, since I don't have any documentation as to how these settings actually work. I'm trying to deduce how it works based on the description labels on the page. Still worth a try.

That steeering page sure is confusing , I have no clue where to set things , have a feeling using that page is going to cause more trouble than anything . Wish they had CLEAR instructions on how each setting affects signal , for now I'm leaving it set to defaults , if I use smart connect .

 

[RMerlin]

That steeering page sure is confusing , I have no clue where to set things , have a feeling using that page is going to cause more trouble than anything . Wish they had CLEAR instructions on how each setting affects signal , for now I'm leaving it set to defaults , if I use smart connect .

I have a feeling Asus themselves might not know all the details themselves. It's very similar to their motherboard BIOS, where they expose a crapload amount of settings, with descriptions along the lines of "This setting enables or disable gizmo_timing_setting", and they leave it to enthusiasts to experiment with these, and post their findings on online forums.

I wanted to take a look at Linksys's band steering implementation on their EA9200 to compare it with Asus's, but they still haven't published any GPL. Browsing through the binary firmware seemed to indicate that they use two band steering instead of three bands, but no idea what trigger/steering values they use.

As for Netgear, they seem to still be using their own derived band steering daemon. Again, no idea what's different in their implementation, or what steering values they might be using.

I recommend you contact Asus's tech support regarding your particular disconnection issues. Also double check that all antennas are properly screwed in - there's been more than a few cases of users having a lot of connectivity issues caused by one of their antennas being loose. With as many as 6 antennas on this device, it increases the chances of having one of them loose.

 

[jerry6]

Thanks , I'll check the antennas . Maybe the 2 channel steering is the way to go , one less thing to go wrong . Hope the get this right , when it is working I'm getting great results .

 

[james dab]

I chose yes and it easily updated itself. there are a lot of variables outside the router's control that affect smooth channel transition.

 

[dlandon]

AC3200 Smart Connect Rules

I've started a new thread here http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=22823 where we can discuss the specifics of the Smart Connect Rules. It will be much better to keep the Smart Connect discussion in a separate thread.

I suspect that RMerlin is correct in saying that ASUS probably doesn't understand all the settings for Smart Connect and Broadcom has not given them much documentation.

I have experimented with the Smart Connect Rules and have gotten Smart Connect to work much better in my environment. I'm sure over time, others will offer suggestions and we can improve on Smart Connect.