Beamforming Gone after 374.43

[Scamp]

I purchased an AC66R recently and loaded a few of the latest builds (378.xx), and noticed beam-forming was missing from the Pro options.

Since this is my first time with Merlin, I researched for hours to see if anyone else had reported this as a bug. There is spotted mention of other people missing the BF feature after a certain build date (late 2015), however it seems that most folks on the same hardware version, chipset, etc - still had the BF option available to them - while others with identical hardware complained that it was missing for them.

I am using an RT-AC66R with hardware ver: A1

I took a good hour to load every major version of Merlin and found the last available version when BF is available is 374.43

A move to 376.44 and it's missing. Any release after 6-6-2014 (376.44) and it does not re-appear.

Is anyone else experiencing this, or is it just me? It seems the 376.44 build is when support for the AC87U was added, and a new wireless driver was introduced.

Attached are screenshots of 374.43 vs 376.44

 

[highwire]

My AC66U is the same - it had beamforming in the 5GHz professional page at one point and then it disappeared.

 

[RMerlin]

That chipset does not support beamforming. The fact the setting was visible for a while was a bug.

 

[Scamp]

Thx, I figured that was the case - even though I couldn't find anything definitive online to say that. So, I guess AIRadar on the retail box lied to me? =)

 

[RogerSC]

Thx, I figured that was the case - even though I couldn't find anything definitive online to say that. So, I guess AIRadar on the retail box lied to me? =)

Don't know what AIRadar was. They've used the term "AIRadar" in marketing both the RT-N56U and RT-N66U (both pre-beamforming) as well, but I never found out what it was, or if it made any difference. I kind of think that it was a cool marketing term, not actually anything useful *smile*.

I did think that the RT-AC66U supported beamforming, at least you see references to that on the internet, but I guess not.

 

[RMerlin]

AiRadar isn't just related to official beamforming, it includes various techniques that improve coverage, all under that marketing term.

 

[sfx2000]

That chipset does not support beamforming. The fact the setting was visible for a while was a bug.

If it helps - RMerlin's comments are indeed correct based on my independent code review of this feature...