Buying a RT-AC68U now or wait?

[joegreat]

In comparison, the Asus RT AC68U yields a result of about 28mb/s with the 24ghz and 37mb/s with the 5ghz band. Note, both results kept all else constant with the only change being the router. The placement of the routers were the same, the same laptop and distance were also the same. Note, the distance for these tests were to my living which is about 25 ft away. Also, I live in a two story house and the router is located in the second floor, central in the house.

Hi,

Do not forget to reset (delete!) the profile of the client computers/laptops/tablets/smartphones!
Only if you reconnect to the router with a new profile all the low-level parameters will be set correctly by the client.

For the 2.4 GHz WLAN do not forget to find the less busy channel and avoid 40 MHz settings (in crowded areas with many WLANs around).

Then retest and see...

With kind regards
Joe

 

[fawiek]

I had a wd n750 also, briefly. It's an atheros unit which might be one of the difference. I also had t in the same location that my rt-ac68u occupies and it was worse than the asus.
Also try different channels. I don't know why but on the ac68u the best channel for me on the 2.4 ghz was the best as it was the less crowded one also.
The wd n750 was better on channel 9 even though it was more crowded.
I tried every channel and it gave the best range and speed but still no where as good as the asus.
Use inssider and experiment with channels and keep the 2.4ghz at 20mhz width.

Turbo qam from what I understand only helps if you have compatible clients.

Try RMerlin's fw. Nothing to lose no penalty I going back and forth.

Thanks for the info.
I installed the Merline software for the RT 68U. I did notice a higher speedtest rate using the laptop.
So the new result using the RT68U with Merlin yields 44mb/s download @2.4ghz band and full 10-11 mb/s upload.
Also, the full 49.6mb/s download and 10-11mb/s upload @5ghz band. I'm quite happy with that! I also like that the Merlin fw keeps the stock and easy to understand UI.
Thanks, glad I installed it

 

[fawiek]

Hi,

Do not forget to reset (delete!) the profile of the client computers/laptops/tablets/smartphones!
Only if you reconnect to the router with a new profile all the low-level parameters will be set correctly by the client.

For the 2.4 GHz WLAN do not forget to find the less busy channel and avoid 40 MHz settings (in crowded areas with many WLANs around).

Then retest and see...

With kind regards
Joe

Hi Joe,
Thanks for the feedback. A bit of a newb question--hope you dont mind. But, what do you mean by "reset (delete!) the profile of the client computers/laptops/tablets/smartphones"?

My laptop yields good speeds now (check above post), but I noticed my cell phone (Nexus 5) yields just 28mb/s download and 10 mb/s upload from the same place the laptop tests were done. Any ideas why? I thought the Nexus 5 was compatible with this new AC network setting...any ideas why the Nexus (using speedtest.net) yields such a slow result. Also, just to be clear, the Asus f/w and the Merlin seems indifferent to the Nexus 5.

 

[L&LD]

Handheld devices like tablets and cell phones are not the best devices to use to test wireless speeds. Many reasons for it with maybe the biggest being that in addition to being limited to a single antenna, they are also power limited so as to not burn out the battery too much.

Even in testing with a laptop, I have noticed some that perform substantially (wirelessly) better when plugged in than when run on battery power.

It is simply a matter of how much of the power budget to allow the wireless connection to demand of the battery.


To delete the profile is to 'forget' the network and then re-associate the device with the router again. This is because the microcode settings the updated driver on the router is using may be conflicting with what was saved for the previous firmware's driver in the client's profile.

By deleting or 'forgetting' the connection you all the device to optimally associate with the router and it's current driver settings.

You can achieve the same thing by using a new ssid too (when you associate your device for the first time, it will already have the proper/new settings it needs).