ASUS RT-N66U's 2.4GHz band is giving me extremeley low speed

[Remode]

Hey guys,

I recently purchased this router and while the 5GHz band is giving me speeds up to 100+, the 2.4 band gives me no more than 10 and usually 1-6. This is even slower than my old router which gave out around 15-20mbps which is why I'm so surprised the speed is this low.

The firmware is set to the latest stock and I have tried switching the channels between 1.6,11, however even if that were the problem I'm not sure why I would be getting even lower speeds than before. Any tips or suggestions? B/g protection mode is also off I should add.

Thanks.

 

[coldwizard]

Here is a guide for wireless problems

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/guide-troubleshooting-wifi-issues.12825/

I assume that you did a reset to factory defaults and re entered all you settings by hand (no restore settings from file).
On your devices, you forget the network, and re-establish it.

For the N66U new firmware is not necessarily better. If you don't need the new features an older version may work better for you. I am running John's fork update-07, (not even the newest of that fork) as a I wait for a little to let others work out any problems.)

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/fork-update-for-374-43-available.18914/

 

[sm00thpapa]

Good luck. I've had nothing but problems with my N66U since Asus went to the SDK6 driver. This router was a beast when it first launched with SDK5 drivers and now it's meh. Just my opinion.

 

[Remode]

Good luck. I've had nothing but problems with my N66U since Asus went to the SDK6 driver. This router was a beast when it first launched with SDK5 drivers and now it's meh. Just my opinion.

Damn, well I guess I'll look at returning it and getting another one. I can't believe that a router worth this much has this issue. Thanks for the replies.

 

[Nullity]

Hmm. My RT-N66U works fine. 100Mbit/s+ 40ft through 4 walls (drywall) on both 2.4 and 5Ghz with mostly default wireless settings. My wireless clients are the Asus USB-N53 2x2 and an Atheros 2x2 (9462 maybe?). All my PCs are Unix-based, so wireless support is usually not as good as Windows'.

I have tried almost every AsusWRT firmware and I never saw any measurable difference in throughput. Range registered a few % better with sdk5 but throughput did not improve.

Wireless is finicky. Trouble-shooting it is a nightmare.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Hmm. My RT-N66U works fine. 100Mbit/s+ 40ft through 4 walls (drywall) on both 2.4 and 5Ghz with mostly default wireless settings. My wireless clients are the Asus USB-N53 2x2 and an Atheros 2x2 (9462 maybe?). All my PCs are Unix-based, so wireless support is usually not as good as Windows'.

I have tried almost every AsusWRT firmware and I never saw any measurable difference in throughput. Range registered a few % better with sdk5 but throughput did not improve.

Wireless is finicky. Trouble-shooting it is a nightmare.

Wireless on 2.4GHz is my problem and range on 5GHz is very poor. But than again I have a 2 story home. I switched to the AC68P and all problems are solved.

 

[geo44]

Wireless on 2.4GHz is my problem and range on 5GHz is very poor. But than again I have a 2 story home. I switched to the AC68P and all problems are solved.

Are you running merlin or stock on the AC68? Im assuming AC68P and AC68U are the same?

 

[jlake]

Are you running merlin or stock on the AC68? Im assuming AC68P and AC68U are the same?

https://wikidevi.com/wiki/ASUS_RT-AC68P

https://wikidevi.com/wiki/ASUS_RT-AC68U

Merlin usually uses the same wifi driver as ASUS stock firmware, so it wouldn't matter...in most instances.

 

[jlake]

Damn, well I guess I'll look at returning it and getting another one. I can't believe that a router worth this much has this issue. Thanks for the replies.

There's a lot of people that bought the RT-N66U because of the hundreds (thousands) of reviews about the great range of 2.4 Ghz. And that was true for a while. It's not true anymore due to firmware updates (and lawsuits etc..). The RT-N66U has run- of -the- mill 2.4 Ghz range based on my observations/comparisons.

 

[L&LD]

I don't have any issues with the latest RMerlin or the fork based off of hggomes.

The range and throughput may be very slightly lower, but nothing like people seem to be experiencing on this thread. What the latest firmware does offer is the most stable and consistent speeds I have seen from this router in almost two years of ownership.

 

[wouterv]

I don't have any issues with the latest RMerlin or the fork based off of hggomes.

The range and throughput may be very slightly lower, but nothing like people seem to be experiencing on this thread. What the latest firmware does offer is the most stable and consistent speeds I have seen from this router in almost two years of ownership.

I agree, I have the RT-N66U since firmware .260.
There have been firmware releases with 5 GHz connection issues.
2.4 GHz was allways and still is stable, with reasonable range (located at the lowest floor, covering the 3 stories of our house, with 2 concrete floors in between). Range maybe a little less then it was with .270.
We have a variety of clients: Windows, Android, IOS, Playstation 4 and a Linksys WRT54GL.

2.4 GHz issues are related to neighbors using the same channel, that will significantly decrease the performance. In the past we had older 802.11g clients that could break 2.4 GHz by pulling down the rate to 1 Mbps (reboot of such a client was the fix).
My general advise: set 2.4 GHz to a bandwidth of 20 MHz, check neighborhood channel use (pick the least used channel out of 1, 6 or 11) and use 802.11n clients only.

Range of 5 GHz was allways the same for us and as expected: practically only the floor were the router is located.

 

[SirDarvin]

Have you tried tweaking your wireless advanced settings with the N66U? My N66U used to have slow throughput speeds on 2.4GHz until I tweaked the Wireless Advanced settings with Tomato Shibby firmware. On 2.4GHz, it used to fluctuate between 6 - 300 mbps and would eventually be stuck at 6 mbps on some of my devices. You should also test the channel width at 40MHz instead of 20MHz if you don't have a crowded neighborhood on 2.4GHz; it maximizes the throughput speeds, but takes over more channels and could cause interference with neighborhood routers.

My Tomato Wireless Advanced settings:
Beacon Interval: 500 (default was at 100)
DTIM Interval: 30 (default was at 1)
Transmit Power: 80 mW

My TX/RX Rates usually stays close to the max throughput speed for all my Wi-Fi devices and none of them ever falls down to 6 mbps anymore.

I was about to return my N66U due to the low throughput speeds on 2.4GHz, but eventually found this fix on another forum.