Solved ASUS RT-AC86U wifi speed on 5GHZ Fixed - Full speed attainable

[Tech9]

I can get 550Mbps from AC86U to 2-stream AC client. I don't use home routers in my network setup, but have AC86U in my routers collection and along with AC68U it's a common test platform for new firmware releases. I get ~500Mbps with AC68U as well. @Sachb, you were the one securing WAN with Wi-Fi password, so any king of non-router related issues are expected. Just use the router you like better, sell the other one.

Port forwarding through 2 routers

Port forwarding through 2 routers For years I was trying to Port forward through 2 routers. 1) Main router (Hall) 2) Second router (room) May help someone THIS IS A SITUATION WHEN THE 2ND ROUTER IS CONNECTED TO THE FIRST ROUTER. (Via Extender, Powerline, Ethernet, etc) Solution: Step 1: You...

www.snbforums.com

 

[shoman94]

@Sachb

If you want true performance don't use crap you can buy at your local electronics store.

Buy a router to be a router / firewall and handoff to an actual AP not a router repurposed to be an AP.

I can hit 1.2gbps+ on the LAN and my uptime on the devices are typically 1 month plus between reboots for FW / network changes.

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Couldn't agree more! I just picked up 2 Zyxel NWA210AX APs and I am now seeing as high as a 940mbps via wifi on my Galaxy smartphone... lol I never thought wifi could be so good.

 

[Tech9]

I'm not saying the router cannot achieve full speeds which is close to 600 Mbps it just falls to 200 Mbps with not much WiFi activity.

Not in my experience with AC86U. But feel free to replace it with what works better for you.

 

[Sachb]

Not in my experience with AC86U. But feel free to replace it with what works better for you.

Even their WiFi adaptor (USB-AC68U) couldn't achieve full speeds. Asus is flawed when it comes to networking. I would actually love to keep the Asus but it just doesn't work in my environment. I guess the EU version is bad. The US version is the one to go for, but I'm not in the US. Channel 112 is my last channel, I can't see channels higher than 112 but on the Dlink I can see 149- 165 which again is surprising since both were purchased in the same region.

I will soon be buying the RAX80 to use it as the main router. My plan is to keep R7800 in the room since it's WiFi 5.

Dlink DAP 1860 could be upgraded to AX but in my region only AX WiFi extender I have seen is from TPLINK which I avoid.

DAP 1860 is the best plug in type WiFi 5 extender that does MU-MImo and has 4x4 stream capabilities. The extender has 2600 Mbps of total speeds which is Highest seen in a plug type WiFi extenders.

The reason I need high speeds is cause I perform full backups every week.

 

[Tech9]

I would actually love to keep the Asus but it just doesn't work in my environment.

Okay - just replace it with what works in your environment. No need to complain 10 times.

 

[tgl]

Couldn't agree more! I just picked up 2 Zyxel NWA210AX APs and I am now seeing as high as a 940mbps via wifi on my Galaxy smartphone... lol I never thought wifi could be so good.

Hey, that's the second vote of confidence I've seen lately in that model, so I'm getting interested because I've about had it with my XT8s' poor and unreliable performance. What I need is two units that (a) can serve wireless clients and (b) can bridge between two wired LAN segments. (No lectures about a wired connection being better, please, it's just not practical in my house.) I can't find anything on Zyxel's website that says positively that their gear will do (b) --- are you using them that way?

 

[shoman94]

Hey, that's the second vote of confidence I've seen lately in that model, so I'm getting interested because I've about had it with my XT8s' poor and unreliable performance. What I need is two units that (a) can serve wireless clients and (b) can bridge between two wired LAN segments. (No lectures about a wired connection being better, please, it's just not practical in my house.) I can't find anything on Zyxel's website that says positively that their gear will do (b) --- are you using them that way?

AiMesh works but it isn't good IMO. I've tried multiple routers and even a bought Mesh setup from Asus..... The Eero Pro 6 is the only consumer Mesh setup I could recommend now. Otherwise SMB APs are the way to go.

I have not used it in this manner but yes it can be setup to work that way.

 

[tgl]

I have not used it in this manner but yes it can be setup to work that way.

Thanks for answering! I couldn't read the smaller text in your screenshot, but for anyone else following along, I found the page you mention:

https://community.zyxel.com/en/disc...w-to-extend-wireless-coverage-with-smart-mesh

What's bothering me is that down near the bottom, that says
"Note 2. When you want to build the smart mesh with wireless bridge, both “root” and “repeater” AP support wireless bridge and enable it."

I found the user's guide for the NWA210AX on Zyxel's website, and it says "WDS bridging mode" is not available on that model, but it is available on the nearly-identical-but-significantly-more-expensive WAX610D model. Could you clarify whether there's an "Enable WDS Wireless Bridging" option in the Configuration > Wireless > AP Management menu on your units?

 

[Sachb]

I have finally solved the issue, there were a few settings that I had changed on both the routers and also upgraded the Dlink Wifi Extender's firmware.

RT-AC86U (Fixed) Speed fixed:

I'm uncertain as to which of them was the fix, but here are the changes that I've made:

1) Changing RTS/CTS threshold on Router 1 (Netgear R7800) to the default value (2347)

2) Disabling IPv6 Firewall on Router 2 (ASUS RT-AC86U)

3) Changing the DHCP query frequency to Normal mode

4) Disabling Universal Beamforming on both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz

5) Upgrading Dlink DAP-1860 Firmware to the latest

Hope this helps those who have Wifi speed issues on 5 GHz, I'm not at all interested in 2.4 GHz as that network is pretty much congested anyways.

 

[shoman94]

Thanks for answering! I couldn't read the smaller text in your screenshot, but for anyone else following along, I found the page you mention:

https://community.zyxel.com/en/disc...w-to-extend-wireless-coverage-with-smart-mesh

What's bothering me is that down near the bottom, that says
"Note 2. When you want to build the smart mesh with wireless bridge, both “root” and “repeater” AP support wireless bridge and enable it."

I found the user's guide for the NWA210AX on Zyxel's website, and it says "WDS bridging mode" is not available on that model, but it is available on the nearly-identical-but-significantly-more-expensive WAX610D model. Could you clarify whether there's an "Enable WDS Wireless Bridging" option in the Configuration > Wireless > AP Management menu on your units?

WDS wireless bridge is a different mode than the Smart mesh mode. WDS is strictly a bridge. Smart mesh is wireless mesh.... A bridge and repeater combo.... That's how I understand it.

You can easily ask the question in their forum if you want to be sure. I am using the cloud to manage my APs and I also don't want to go changing around my config to test for that sorry.

 

[tgl]

I found the user's guide for the NWA210AX on Zyxel's website, and it says "WDS bridging mode" is not available on that model, but it is available on the nearly-identical-but-significantly-more-expensive WAX610D model. Could you clarify whether there's an "Enable WDS Wireless Bridging" option in the Configuration > Wireless > AP Management menu on your units?

I was reminded of this old thread today, and now I can answer that question, in case anybody cares. I did buy a couple of Zyxel NWA210AX APs, and I can report that they don't have anything about "WDS bridging" in their web GUIs. Nonetheless, the functionality seems to be there. They do have WDS (a/k/a root and repeater APs, a/k/a wireless backhaul), and if you plug machines into a remote node's LAN port it will pass data to them. If you want a true media bridge that serves no wireless clients, I suppose what you would do is not set up any client SSIDs on the remote; I've not tried that though. (The backhaul data seems to pass across a semi-hidden WDS SSID, but that's not explicitly configurable anywhere on the remote.) So I'm not sure what other secret sauce "Enable WDS Wireless Bridging" might provide, but these do everything I need.

Worth noting that these are only dual-radio APs, so the backhaul traffic has to share airtime with 5GHz clients, meaning that you're not going to get the same performance with wireless backhaul as you could with a three-radio AP. It's fine for what I need though --- all my high-bandwidth clients typically hang out near the main AP.

 

[Tech Junky]

@tgl

I've noticed some stuff is more configurable from the CLI when you SSH into them. The GUI is somewhat limited in what you can accomplish with certain things.

SSH >> enable >> conf t >> commands

There's a bit more power to configure things and clean up the config from CLI. I haven't done any "bridge" stuff with them though but, IIRC there's a bridge option in the GUI as well. I've been pondering picking up one of the NWA220AX-E versions for 6ghz since there's no one using it around me just to see how it performs. Amazon has them for $180 which isn't too bad of a deal. The only thing that's odd about the 220 is you get 5 OR 6 not both / tri-band.

 

[tgl]

The only thing that's odd about the 220 is you get 5 OR 6 not both / tri-band.

Yeah ... that's mighty weird though. If I were designing a two-radio AP in 2023, I'd think of providing 5GHz and 6GHz and forget 2.4GHz. It's going to be a decade at least before it could be sane to not have 5GHz client support.

Perhaps the 220-E could make sense as part of a mesh where some nearby AP supports 5GHz, but I'm having a pretty hard time seeing the use-case TBH.

Another angle here is that at least with Apple client gear, a standalone 6GHz broadcaster just plain doesn't work, because the clients don't do traditional scans of the 6GHz spectrum. They look for 2.4GHz/5GHz APs that are broadcasting RNR reports saying "btw, I also have a 6GHz radio on this channel". Depending on your setup, it might work to have one AP broadcasting RNRs that refer to another AP, but I bet that a lot of lower-tier gear is not going to have the ability to do that. So I think 3-radio 2.4/5/6GHz APs are going to be pretty much the minimum spec for useful WiFi 6E/7 support.

 

[Tech Junky]

@tgl

For me it would be fine not having 5ghz and my primary laptop and phone use the most bandwidth. Everything else on 2.4 doesn't need that bandwidth. Laptop using an AX411 card combines 2.4+5 or in this case 2.4+6 would still give me 1.5gbps. in more interested in BE though as that would double the bandwidth on 6 to 320mhz. That's still aways off though. I could put everything onto tmhi though for 2.4/5 if need be.