Coming over to "AC" from RT-N66. Looking for suggestions

[TexasFlood]

no wireless computer devices in there. The only thing are 2 receivers in the 500-900mhz range for weather station and ADS-B receiver. All keyboards and mice and wired in the room. no bluetooth headsets.

The house does have a z-wave alarm system throughout, but none of the z-wave stuff is in the room (which is 800-900mhz anyways)

That's all the low hanging fruit that came to mind. Drawing a blank for now.

 

[razorseal]

Is it a possibility the 2.4ghz radio inside the router actually took a crap?

 

[TexasFlood]

Is it a possibility the 2.4ghz radio inside the router actually took a crap?

Not sure how to tell.

 

[razorseal]

What are the benefits of AC5300 over AC3100?

Been looking at the Netgear R7800 (X4s) as well which is a AC2600 iirc. That one seems to be MU MIMO ready out of the box

 

[Klueless]

Aw ... I missed all the fun last night.

There's all sorts of reasons why just swapping out / upgrading a router would fix the problem. On the flip side there's all sorts of reasons why it wouldn't.

Regarding trouble shooting. Sometimes it's a home run type of problem. You fix one thing and voila! Everything works. Other times it's minor problem A plus little problem B plus misunderstanding C all equals Big Problem. (I hate those kinds of problems : -)

Focusing on 2.4Ghz we did a fresh connect by the router and got usable but disappointing results. We then went downstairs where we all but failed. In that location the signals from the N66U and the Extender were pretty much a tie so I don't think we can say with any certainty whether we were connected to the router or the extender at the point?

Where we at with firmware? Is it current? Or, flip side, did we update as we closed the doors at the old house and now we're running something different at the new house? BTW, I do assume everything was running wonderfully at the old house?

Read a little about your baby monitor, tad bit confused. You view baby though your smart phone / through your wireless home network?

Brute force test?

• While baby is out with mommy do shutdown / unplug the baby monitor.
• Shutdown / unplug the extender.
• Fix 2.4Ghz channel width at 20.
• What else? Maybe the phone by the router just for grins.
• What else?

Test 2.4 in router room and downstairs again.

Oh, before all that, we should try plugging a laptop directly into the Ethernet port of the extender downstairs and running your tests! It should give us full service speeds should it not?

(Hey, this is kinda fun, barking out orders like this : -)

I would also like to talk about using different SSIDs for 2.4 on the router and the Extender. Then we can start testing the extender more independent of the router and ... we would actually know which one we were connected to for our tests. (Especially since you already went through the effort of putting them on different channels.) We could then begin to address your question, "Is there a problem with the router's 2.4?" Yeah, I like that! Let's do all this right after our direct connect test through your extender.

Anyway, going back to your original question, a couple dozen messages ago, upgrading your router to fix all your problems. For 5Ghz (I think) there's a decent chance it might. For 2.4Ghz it's still a Hail Mary so let's go for a few more yards first.

BTW: Hi Texas, I've been learning a lot from your input!

 

[TexasFlood]

Hi Klueless. I guess troubleshooting is where it's at. I was hoping for a easy answer hah. Good suggestions...

 

[razorseal]

All good trouble shooting. Let me finish eating my before work snack and I'll do another live video and see what happens!

What would "ac" bring to the table for me? (ac1900, ac2600, ac3100, ac5300!?)

and if i'm getting 90mpbs near the router, what should I be theoretically getting on the 2.4ghz near the router and downstairs we think?

I suppose if I had a good ethernet over powerline setup, I could plug in a router into that as a extender of it's own?

 

[razorseal]

Is there an in-network speedtest I can do?

Perhaps I can loginto a specific computer in the house via ip and go to a url and do a connection speed test?

 

[ColinTaylor]

At the risk of stating the obvious, you haven't accidentally turned down the power output on 2.4GHz from 100% have you?

With a 20 MHz channel width and a device with 2 antennas you should be getting about 100Mbps at close range.

 

[razorseal]

Nope at 100. Was 1st thing I checked.

Some good news in a way. Look at the vid. Driving now but I'll type up updated results in a little.

 

[TexasFlood]

Some of that was hard to understand but could tell it was improved. Good deal.

Since the extender didn't really seem to be helping. I'd be tempted to unplug it to see if the helped downstairs reception from the primary router.

And I'd try the 2.4GHz in 20MHz mode as well, that gives me the best range. If it doesn't help, you can always switch it back.

The xfinity hotspot was definitely interfering with my router. I probably had them positioned to closely together but still... You'd think if you put the device in bridge mode which the instructions state disable the wireless that, well, it would disable the wireless. I was pretty torqued when I found that wifi hotspot signal still stomping all over my wireless router. At the time I didn't know what was going on and called up Comcast to complain. It's all good now though.

As far as testing your network, see:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/basi...ur-network-five-ways-to-measure-network-speed
I've used iperf in the past, for work actually, but not the rest of the tools recommended there.

 

[razorseal]

Hey there,

I did put 2.4 on 20mhz for the last test. I will leave it on that if I get better reception as well.

I'm sure having the two routers close enough and with it broadcasting it's signal, it hindered performance (especially 2.4 ghz)

In a synopsis, disabling the xfinity helped my signal tremendously and freed up 2.4ghz. the speeds are good nearby and downstairs living room area, but downstairs in the family room I'm still under 20 with 2.4ghz.

I have to figure a way a out to speed up the the d/u downstairs. using a power Ethernet adapter, I can put another router there as a bridge to help downstairs, but I don't know how that'll work. I don't want to have 2 interfering signals. That's the problem I had with the extender.

I'm not really sure how those work

now what can I do to improve my performance? time to upgrade to ac or what?

 

[TexasFlood]

First thing I'd try is unplugging the repeater & testing to see if that might help. If not then another router as you suggested should help. Don't think an ac router will help the 2.4GHz and your 5GHz is pretty good already.

 

[bbsc]

using a power Ethernet adapter, I can put another router there as a bridge to help downstairs

The best choice, IMHO.

I don't know how that'll work

It will work excellent. 802.11 is a good standard, smart people put a lot of effort to make it.

All you need is an access point downstairs connected to your router by wire.
A second RT-N66U as an AP is a good variant because of it's price, I don't think you'll find a good AP for $100-120.

And one thing more:
- Don't place your router near the wall (with antennas parallel to the wall). It will degrade the performance.
- The best position of RT-N66U is on the wall with ethernet connectors located right or left. It will provide the best cooling with natural air flow.

 

[L&LD]

The best choice, IMHO.


It will work excellent. 802.11 is a good standard, smart people put a lot of effort to make it.

All you need is an access point downstairs connected to your router by wire.
A second RT-N66U as an AP is a good variant because of it's price, I don't think you'll find a good AP for $100-120.

And one thing more:
- Don't place your router near the wall (with antennas parallel to the wall). It will degrade the performance.
- The best position of RT-N66U is on the wall with ethernet connectors located right or left. It will provide the best cooling with natural air flow.

With 2 antennae or less clients (or for 3 antennae clients that don't need maximum connection rates) an RT-AC56U is a much better buy today than an RT-N66U or an RT-AC66U (both based on same old generation core components).

With a good deal, an RT-AC56U can be had for $55 or so and offers a dual core (faster) processor and an AC class 5GHz radio too. The RT-N66U/RT-AC66U is worse at twice that amount.

 

[bbsc]

With a good deal, an RT-AC56U can be had for $55 or so and offers a dual core (faster) processor and an AC class 5GHz radio too. The RT-N66U/RT-AC66U is worse at twice that amount.

Agreed, but only if it's really $55.
For equal price I'd prefer 3x3 802.11n device rather than 2x2 802.11ac device in this situation.

 

[razorseal]

so the AC-56U is better than a AC-66U?

So what is the point of a newer generation ac radio if it wouldn't benefit me (or others?) in anyway?

I guess this topic has really veered off, but how would one setup the 2 routers (one AP, one bridge off powerline Ethernet)? Would they both be named the name SSIDs? Won't I run into the similar problem where the client doesn't know which one to connect to?

 

[razorseal]

I guess I can get a used one...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Asus-RT-AC5...852257?hash=item3d13c79621:g:MzEAAOSwr7ZW3mha

Or a used ac66u

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-RT-AC6...539529?hash=item25b7bf0689:g:6AcAAOSwr7ZW2SWZ

I do have a Netgear N600 (WNDR3700) router sitting around I could also use I guess....

I don't understand why the powerline Ethernet ranger extender's performance is so poor... It's disappointing.

 

[Klueless]

Hard of hearing here, having a little trouble keeping up.

Couldn't quite hear what you changed but I'm guessing you are now happy with 5Ghz (and, with your new AC router, whatever you choose, the consensus seems to be, that far corner should get slightly better?)

While 2.4Ghz improved it still seems a bit uh disappointing downstairs? I think the focus should be on why 2.4 performance is so poor through the extender (which is direct connect to the router). Being direct connected that extender is almost like having a router downstairs. You really should have gotten near service (90/12) speeds through that.

Whatever you turned off upstairs seems to have helped both bands? (Better performance through closed doors seems counter intuitive : -) What else, what else is downstairs that could be affecting 2.4? Xfinity? Oh, you've the spare extender in the garage. Guess you could swap extenders on the off-chance there's something wrong with extender?

Edit: Replayed your video. You did shutdown Xfinity? (Sorry, having trouble hearing.)

 

[Klueless]

- Don't place your router near the wall (with antennas parallel to the wall). It will degrade the performance.
- The best position of RT-N66U is on the wall with ethernet connectors located right or left. It will provide the best cooling with natural air flow.

Hmm ... good point. Your router came with a stand so you could stand it up, move it away from wall some and play with different antennae positioning. Perhaps one vertical, one parallel pointing towards staircase and the other somewhere in between!

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