ASUS RT-AX92U AiMesh loses considerable speed out to the devices

[Viper1972]

Hi!

I have set up an AiMesh with 3 RT-AX92U nodes and am generally happy with it. However, lately when measuring the speed the routers seem to eat a lot of it before delivering it to the connected devices.

I have a 500Mbps service and measuring the speed in the ASUS Router admin interface it clocks it around 498Mbps which is fine. But then if I measure the same over my laptop or my mobile (using an online speed measuring service) I get at most 148Mbps. I've tested couple of different sites and they are consistent in their results so it's not the service.

Have read online and clicked through all menus in the admin pages but can't figure out where the bottleneck is. Any ideas where I can look and what it might causing this?

Thanks in advance,

Viper

 

[Avantu]

First of all speedtest on AX92U is performed on the router itself so it has whole bandwith from WAN for itself, where you lose your speed is wireless connection between router and devices. Also this bulitin speedtest is fake for me, because it chooses my ISP server to test the speed and it goes EVEN over my 400/400mbps limit because connecting to my ISP doesn't have bandwith limit, so also keep that in mind that this speedtest often chooses destination close to you and it can be your ISP which will show full speed for sure. Test you do on your laptop or mobile can be also connecting to other server so results will be diffirent. But most likely you lose your speed on wireless connection. You should use 5GHz network and it should do 500mbps without any problems, but only if your client device is good enough and there are no obstacles or distance between router and devices.

 

[Viper1972]

Thanks Avantu!

I too suspect that the built-in test is just sniffing the service terms and not giving the true picture. As for the rest, I've actually tested the speed while checking which connection the device is on. It's a brand new HP laptop connected through a 5 GHz channel (have dynamic 2.4/5 setting for the nodes) less than 4 meters from the node (clear site, no major obstacles in between). That's why I thought that a drop from 500 down to 150 was unreasonably much. Will experiment a bit more and see if how it turns out.

 

[alba666]

How are your nodes connected (wireless or wired)? If wireless, how many walls/floors between nodes?

 

[leerees]

You need to enable 160mhz on the backhaul and then give the clients access to share the backhaul.

That will give you 1gbps.

 

[Viper1972]

How are your nodes connected (wireless or wired)? If wireless, how many walls/floors between nodes?

They are wireless, so I'm aware of the fact that the backhaul takes some bandwidth (using the dedicated 5GHz-2 channel). The main node is in that hallway (3-4 meters from where I'm sitting), the second node sits almost just above the primary on the second floor (RSSI 46dBm) and the third one is in the kitchen (RSSI 39 dBm). So there are some obstacles in the way, but according to the readings both have excellent connectivity to the primary router.

 

[alba666]

I have found with node signal that strong, you may not need the nodes or your nodes are too close to the main router. I would test your service quality with the nodes off.
In my case, I have an old AC88 configured as a node that I only turn on when I need Wifi in the backyard. I previously had it directly above the main router like you have one of your nodes. Things actually ran better for my bandwidth hogging daughter without it.

 

[Viper1972]

I have found with node signal that strong, you may not need the nodes or your nodes are too close to the main router. I would test your service quality with the nodes off.
In my case, I have an old AC88 configured as a node that I only turn on when I need Wifi in the backyard. I previously had it directly above the main router like you have one of your nodes. Things actually ran better for my bandwidth hogging daughter without it.

I have to admit that if there's anything I'm disappointed with the RT-AX92U it's the range. It's not even close to what ASUS says it is. Originally I thought that two nodes would do just fine if the range delivered what the configuration said. But I still have shadows in the far ends of each floor. The idea with the third node (in the kitchen on the wall facing the backyard) was that it would cover the adjacent dining room (which it does now) but that I would also have connectivity in the backyard which I had not earlier. But, even if there's only one wall in between, I hardly have any WiFi in the backyard, about 20 m away (the configuration says that a node would have a range up to 100 m, obstacles considered of course), which is far from the truth.

 

[alba666]

Outside walls are way worse than inside walls for WiFi signal. Line of Sight > Door > Inside Wall > Outside Wall.

 

[joncamfield]

I am having a similar issue, but with an ethernet backhaul - direct connection to my main router (AX88U on Merlin 386.5_2 ) and/or via switch - full speed; but adding a mesh node halves (or more) the speed, and adds 20-30% packet loss, and /murders/ my upstream. I have two different routers I am using as nodes (an RP1900 and an AC66U). I've done both "factory" and "hard" resets to them, and I don't suspect hardware failures of both. I have not done a complete rebuild/reset of my main router, though I guess that's next. Even reconnecting them as just independent APs seems to eat a ton of bandwidth, but I've only tested this with wifi so far (all other tests are wired) Remove the node and the network's fine again. This started being a problem ~2-3 releases back in Merlin for me, but I'm not convinced the problem is there. I already have a ticket with ASUS ongoing on this and will share here if I get anything from them.

 

[ComputerSteve]

It’s something with tri-band. I also experienced this. 5GHZ-2 doesn’t work correctly. 5GHZ-1 I always get fast speeds.

 

[joncamfield]

Well, for me the speed and packet loss issues even occur wired in to the mesh nodes, with a wired backhaul.

 

[ComputerSteve]

Well, for me the speed and packet loss issues even occur wired in to the mesh nodes, with a wired backhaul.

Exactly its a bug I've had all my nodes wired and nodes always cut the 5GHZ-2 band to like half speed for some reason. I notice when I re-setup everything it works for a bit then it cuts the speed after some time.

 

[joncamfield]

Have you tried it with stock ASUS? If not I can add that as a testing step when I get around to doing a full reset and rebuild

 

[ComputerSteve]

I have resorted to actually downgrading all my nodes that used to be triband / to dual band and my main router to a dual band as well and now it works perfect. When I had the AX11000 and the AC5300's connected with ethernet backhaul all the 5300's would eventually start to be so slow on the 5ghz-2 band. I couldn't fix it with doing stock firmware / doing factory resets. The only thing that resolved the problem was going full dual band.

 

[joncamfield]

Interesting, I will try that and see if it helps (though my issue also is with wired connections through the mesh nodes, not just wireless ones)

 

[ComputerSteve]

AS I said I had the same thing all my nodes are hard wired / I had only one wireless that I got rid of to see if that was causing the issue. It still doesn't work with a hard wired backhaul.

 

[joncamfield]

Sorry, I mean I have devices which are wired to the nodes which are wired to the router, and those devices also experience bad speed and packet loss, even though there is no wireless in the mix anywhere.

 

[ComputerSteve]

OH gotcha that wasn't my problem.. My problem was the wireless 5GHZ-2 radio always seemed to cut speeds by a lot even hardwired / the hardwired devices I had to the nodes / routers worked perfect meaning they had full speed.

 

[Avantu]

I have this router and for me 5G-2 works very fast (atleast 1000mbps connection) but there is packet loss due to DFS radar working all the time. At least on my AX92U in Europe I can't use nonDFS WiFi6 5G-2 band which is so stupid IMO.