Asus RT-AC66U great signal strenth, poor internet throughput

[TechNerdCA]

Hi All,

This afternoon I set up an Asus RT-AC66U for a client in an approximately 4000sq. ft. brand new custom built home. I chose this router over the RT-AC68U, the Netgear R7000, and the Linksys WRT1900AC as I've used it before as I've used it in a similar sized house that's less than 10 years old, and had great results there. I went with the router I was familiar with.

I did a site survey with Net Surveyor from Nuts About Nets, and the wireless environment was relatively clear, so I chose channel 1 for 2.4GHz and ch. 36 (I think) for 5GHz. Modem and router are in the basement by the demarc.

Most of the house gets good to excellent signal strength and quality, however, while wired speeds are great (over 30Mbps down, and 5Mbps down on a 30x5 connection from the cable company), wireless speeds are slow. I'm getting between 2 and 10Mbps down and consistently 4-5Mbps up. Pings are in the 10-12 ms range. I tested to multiple local servers on speedtest.net. The firmware should be the latest (the router prompted to do the update during the initial set up).

Normally it's the upload speeds I have to troubleshoot, not the download.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I know I will have to install another AP as there is at least one dead spot, unless switching to the Linksys or Netgear AC routers (or another high end N router) will do a better job with the range needed. There will be 8-10 wired devices connected next week, including 5 or 6 smart TVs, so it needs to be able to handle multiple HD video steams (most likely Netflix).

I'll be there tomorrow to do further troubleshooting.


Thanks for any and all help

 

[L&LD]

I would not have chosen this over the RT-AC68U and I would not install it in the basement either.

Move the router to the highest central location possible, install the 374.43 RMerlin firmware (make sure to do a reset to defaults afterwards), change the channels you've chosen (11 and 44 or 48 would be my first choices for maximum range and throughput) 20MHz width for the 2.4GHz band and 20/40/80 MHz for the 5GHz band.

I would also set the Tx power levels to 200mW and disable implicit beamforming (or both).

Make sure to use WPA2 AES and leave the wireless mode to Auto too.


I would also not count too much on signal strength readings (from any software you may have available) and instead concentrate on simple throughput tests from a wired to a wireless client as you test different channels and options in the router settings.

The RT-AC68U router is especially superior to the older RT-AC66U in the 5GHz band - in both range and throughput. It won't hurt to have one with you to test at this specific location tomorrow.

 

[TechNerdCA]

Hi,

Thanks for the response.

Your suggestions of higher frequency channels seems counter-intuitive as lower frequencies penetrate walls and travel further (hence the range and building penetration advantages of cellular signals on 700MHz and 850MHz compared to AWS bands, but you lose the bandwidth advantages, etc.).

Could you please elaborate on why you suggest channel 11 over channel 1? Channel 11 also has potential for congestion.

As for location, I made the suggestion to the customer, but they insisted on the basement. I always prefer to install on at least the main floor, but preferably the second floor.

As for testing between clients, the customer hasn't moved in, so I don't have other clients to test, just my laptop (and my BB Z10), and we're not worried about internal speeds, these seem fine although not tested, it's external speeds that are most important, so testing file transfer speeds between a wireless client and a wired client wouldn't help much.

I have WPA2-PSK with AES enabled.

I'm also hesitant to install 3rd party firmware on a a brand new router that I can not monitor on a daily basis (although my past experience with DD-WRT on a WRT54G and WRT54GS were great, rock solid, never had an issue).

So you're suggesting I return the 66 and get the 68? What about the Netgear R7000 or Linksys WRT1900AC?

 

[htismaqe]

So you're suggesting I return the 66 and get the 68? What about the Netgear R7000 or Linksys WRT1900AC?

Depending on features you need, the WRT1900AC might not be a good choice. It doesn't have VPN support for example. It also has a crashing issue related to the GUI. I have found that if I don't access the GUI at all, I have zero problems with it. It sounds like you might be in a "set it and forget it" situation, so the WRT1900AC may work just fine for you.

The AC68U and AC66U, as far as firmware and features, are nearly identical from my understanding. I don't have any experience with the AC66U but I have to believe that L&LD is correct. I have to believe there are similar differences between the AC66U and the AC68U as there are between the Linksys EA6900 and the WRT1900AC. The difference is noticeable between the latter two.

Unless you're comfortable with DD-WRT, I wouldn't recommend the Netgear R7000 at this point. If you can wait a week or two, they released new firmware 2 days ago and it appears to fix several issues. We'll know more about the stability of the device in the next few days.

 

[sfx2000]

Good rule of thumb - 1500 square feet of coverage on a flat plane - in other words, good performance within about 38 ft radius of a given access point for 2.4GHz - for 5GHz, cut the radius in half, so again, location is important.

So to light up a 4000 sq ft house - 2 to 3 AP's - one per floor - close to central of the dwelling as you can get, ethernet or homeplug/MoCA backhaul.

good luck!

 

[azazel1024]

Good rule of thumb - 1500 square feet of coverage on a flat plane - in other words, good performance within about 38 ft radius of a given access point for 2.4GHz - for 5GHz, cut the radius in half, so again, location is important.

So to light up a 4000 sq ft house - 2 to 3 AP's - one per floor - close to central of the dwelling as you can get, ethernet or homeplug/MoCA backhaul.

good luck!

I'll second that. Especially since you are talking 5dBi omni antennas on the AC66u, the vertical gain is low, so between that and a couple of floors, anything on the top level is going to have really crap reception.

Really you need an AP per floor with the size of the house you are talking about. You could get away with just two with one on the top floor and one in the basement maybe, or one of the top floor and one on the main level if basement reception isn't too much of an issue. With my basement router, if I turn my main level AP off, across the house (~40ft away) on the main level my signal strength is low enough about all I can manage even on 2.4GHz is around 15-20Mbps. If I move behind my chimney that drops to around 5-10Mbps. With my main level AP turned on, the slowest speed in the house isn't below around 40Mbps in the worst location and 95% of the house is over 50Mbps with probably 75% of the house over 70Mbps (these are N600 APs).