Asus ZenWifi XT8 - wifi speeds after latest firmware update

[cafesociety]

A week ago i took delivery of the twin pack of XT8's.
After doing much research and watching countless videos and reading several reviews i'd decided that this route would hopefully give me the stable network i so desired.

I unboxed and configured the kit and was up and running in 10 minutes - Quickly setup all the parental services and named all devices on the network.
The control and management of the network was great and gave me much greater ability to set time limits for our son and his time spent online.

The only initial problem i encountered was our TV system was causing drop outs - we use Sky Q here in the UK - the way this system works is it creates its own mesh system to allow the TV boxes to communicate around the house. Using wifi analyser i could see that the Sky Q system was appearing as an additional strong signalled network in direct competition with my new ZenWifi mesh. After reading up, one soluition was to use powerline adapters for the TV boxes and turn off its wifi features. This was done and the drop outs stopped.

All appeared well until a new firmare was released last week which i installed and things seamed to go downhill for the wifi network since that point.

Setup -
3 floor house - internet comes in as fibre on the top floor office with 750/375 speeds.
The secondary node is on the ground floor and connects fine with the router at the top of the house.
Both units when connected to direct via ethernet obtain the speeds I am paying for, in fact slightly better sometimes - on average 775/325

Since the firware update , my wifi speeds around the house appeared to drop.
It is very rare that i can reach anything above 350, even when sitting on top of one of the nodes, either upstairs or downstairs.

I have read lots of threads within this forum and tried tweaks here and there with nothing really having any great impact on the wifi speeds i can obtain.
I even reverted the firmware back from 386.41994 to 386.41157 and still the same issues. Should i stick with the latest update??

I'm at the stage now where i'm considering either a factory reset and starting from scratch or sending the boxes back for a refund and reverting back to the Netgear Nighthawk router with mesh extenders and no parental controls.

If anyone can offer any advice of areas i should start looking at in terms of gaining better wifi speeds i would very much be thankful,
I have attached wifi analyser screen grab to show just how uncongested my neighbourhood is - and also some of my current settings for the 5g network


kind regards
Jon

 

[RogerSC]

I would try reverting to firmware version 26044, stabilized things for me. All of the AiMesh 2.0 firmware releases have had problems for me, including crashes, inconsistent speed test results, and odd system log messages. I can ignore odd system log messages if everything else is working, but that hasn't been the case.

Everything's working fine on firmware version 26044, though. I'd love to move forward, but am waiting for a stable release that supports AiMesh 2.0.

 

[cafesociety]

I would try reverting to firmware version 26044, stabilized things for me. All of the AiMesh 2.0 firmware releases have had problems for me, including crashes, inconsistent speed test results, and odd system log messages. I can ignore odd system log messages if everything else is working, but that hasn't been the case.

Everything's working fine on firmware version 26044, though. I'd love to move forward, but am waiting for a stable release that supports AiMesh 2.0.

Many thanks for the msg Roger, - I actually saw one of your replies on another post from this week and put some of those recommendations re: frequency and mhz into action and my speeds increased slightly.

I did try going back to 26044 but couldnt see any improvment, I've ended up with 41793, seems pretty stable and no dropouts.

Lastly - are there any settings you would recommend under the professional setting of wifi?

 

[Tucu]

Many thanks for the msg Roger, - I actually saw one of your replies on another post from this week and put some of those recommendations re: frequency and mhz into action and my speeds increased slightly.

I did try going back to 26044 but couldnt see any improvment, I've ended up with 41793, seems pretty stable and no dropouts.

Lastly - are there any settings you would recommend under the professional setting of wifi?

ax/ac beamforming should be enabled (keep universal beamforming disabled)

 

[RogerSC]

Many thanks for the msg Roger, - I actually saw one of your replies on another post from this week and put some of those recommendations re: frequency and mhz into action and my speeds increased slightly.

I did try going back to 26044 but couldnt see any improvment, I've ended up with 41793, seems pretty stable and no dropouts.

Lastly - are there any settings you would recommend under the professional setting of wifi?

I don't do much with the professional settings...just set "short preamble" on 2.4GHz., and have "universal beamforming" disabled, and the wifi-AX/AC beamforming enabled for all radios. That's about it. I'm happy with the wi-fi speeds that I get, so don't feel the need to fine tune those settings.

 

[radiomyke]

I originally had problems using my XT8s and Sky Q. Like you I recognised that the Sky Q mesh was probably interfering with the XT8s so I disabled the 5Ghz Auto channel selection on the XT8s and selected C64 for the control channel. I think I did a couple of reboots at the time (and have definitely rebooted several times since, usually after installing new FW). I've not had a problem since, the Sky Qs are fine connected via wi-fi and the wi-fi speeds around the house are between 550-650 depending on how far/close I am from one of the nodes. I'm currently using the latest FW having updated last week.

 

[rjbarker]

Why disable Universal Beam forming? Just curious...I noticed in my default settings both AC/AX Beamforming is enabled and also Universal Beamforming is enabled.

 

[Tucu]

Why disable Universal Beam forming? Just curious...I noticed in my default settings both AC/AX Beamforming is enabled and also Universal Beamforming is enabled.

It is propietary AP-only implementation for use with what are by now legacy client devices. It is known to have compatibility issues so it is usually better to have it disabled.

 

[rjbarker]

^^^^ Ok thanks!

 

[asususer2008]

Many thanks for the msg Roger, - I actually saw one of your replies on another post from this week and put some of those recommendations re: frequency and mhz into action and my speeds increased slightly.

I did try going back to 26044 but couldnt see any improvment, I've ended up with 41793, seems pretty stable and no dropouts.

Lastly - are there any settings you would recommend under the professional setting of wifi?

This might be a noob like question, so sorry in advance, is going back to an older firmware as easy as downloading it and then uploading it? And do I have to do all my nodes or just the main router or will doing it to the main router push it out to the other nodes? Or best to turn off nodes? Thank you in advance.

 

[Piel]

You'll have to do it manually to all your nodes

 

[RogerSC]

With only two nodes, I generally will flash/revert the remote node first, and then do a reset to factory defaults on that node. Then flash the router node, and do a factory reset to defaults on it. Then use the smart phone app to get the mesh up again fairly quickly. Followed by detailed config changes using the web admin GUI. And after a few minutes, power-cycle both nodes. Works for me, doesn't take long for me to do the detailed configuration, pretty easy at my place *smile*.

 

[Piel]

Do you force any of your devices to connect to a particular node? I have a four node system with many devices that I force onto certain nodes and it feels like it would be a pain in the neck to have to go through this every single time there's a firmware upgrade.

 

[RogerSC]

I have one device that stubbornly stays on the router node that's about 40' away from it. When the remote node, that's about 4' away from that device comes onto the mesh, the device doesn't switch over to the remote node. So I've bound that device to the the remote node, and that took care of that. The rest of my devices do the right thing. Not really a problem to remember that one, all I have to do is to look at the client list on the network map, and I immediately know what to do *smile*.

One of my objectives when configuring routers is to keep the configuration as simple as I can (but no simpler *smile*).

 

[Daylight_Invader]

I have found the latest firmware to be extremely solid, but ONLY after doing a full factory hard reset. I then had to setup everything manually. Doing a simple upgrade only cause the router to be extremely flaky.

FWIW, this latest firmware drop appears to finally solve a whole bunch of weird bugs I had with this router. I also no longer need to set up the nightly reboots.