Do you feel Asus has abandoned support for the AC66U?

[RMerlin]

Will beamforming work with all wireless clients or do you need a wireless AC capable device?

AFAIK beamforming requires support from both the router and the client. However I think there is a form of more passive beamforming that only requires support from the router's end. I might be wrong tho, it's been a while since I read up on it.

 

[jonstatt]

My understanding is beamforming is needed at both ends. What makes things worse is that Netgear have decided to go it alone with Beamforming+ which only works between their own kit.

The real issue is that the standard for AC has taken far too long to finalise and when this happens, manufacturers start doing their own thing.

 

[Grievous Angel]

Look at the RT-N16 for a very good example - find any Netgear or Linksys router released the same year as the RT-N16, and check out many FW updates were released for these in the last year. Then count how many RT-N16 FW releases were made in the past year.

Out of curiosity, I looked.

2010.09.14 update: Version 1.0.1.9
2013.03.22 update: 3.0.0.4.354

Date first available at Amazon.com: October 12, 2009

That's 2 1/2 years of updates and over 3 years after it was released. Pretty impressive, I must admit.

I was in Best Buy contemplating swapping this thing in for the Netgear 6300 but for now am deciding to stick it out.

Merlin: you seem to be plugged in with Asus. Can you answer a few questions?

Do they (ASUS) at least acknowledge the problem with the 5 GHz band dropping off a bit? Do you acknowledge it's a fairly widespread problem? What do you think that is? Do you think Asus has a handle on it? To you believe this is a Broadcom driver issue, or, more simply, is this a software issue that can be fixed?

I'd like to get a handle on these things--if there's little confidence this issue will be fixed (my only real issue so far, as my 5 G channel starts dropping off about 12 hours after a restart), then I may trade mine in. But the Netgear 6300 doesn't seem to be a bed of roses. I may dial back a bit from "cutting edge" because these warts may just be part of the territory.

I'd be completely content if this (5G signal drop) was fixed.

 

[RMerlin]

Out of curiosity, I looked.

2010.09.14 update: Version 1.0.1.9
2013.03.22 update: 3.0.0.4.354

Date first available at Amazon.com: October 12, 2009

That's 2 1/2 years of updates and over 3 years after it was released. Pretty impressive, I must admit.

And more than bugfixes - over that period they also added IPv6 support, AiCloud, PPTP VPN, etc... Benefits of using a common firmware between all their modern products.

Asus's FW is still far from perfect. I agree that there are still bugs. However where I disagree is when people say they have abandonned development for the RT-AC66U - I know for a fact that this is not true.

Do they (ASUS) at least acknowledge the problem with the 5 GHz band dropping off a bit? Do you acknowledge it's a fairly widespread problem? What do you think that is? Do you think Asus has a handle on it? To you believe this is a Broadcom driver issue, or, more simply, is this a software issue that can be fixed?

No idea. Personally the 5 GHz band on my own RT-AC66U is rock stable, using an Intel Centrino 6230 to connect to the 5 GHz band. I use that laptop almost every night. So if there really is an issue (I'm not convinced yet it's not something that can be resolved through adjusting the router settings), it must be specific to only some network cards model, and not be present on the Centrino 6230.

Best bet would be to send a PM to CL-Jeremy here on SmallNetBuilders to see if Asus knows anything about a known issue - he works for them. I do know that the reason there's no 372 release for the RT-AC66U yet is they are working on some stability issues with wireless - no idea if it's the same issue reported here or a different one.

 

[Grievous Angel]

it must be specific to only some network cards model, and not be present on the Centrino 6230.

First, thank you for your response. I appreciate it.

Admittedly, I know little about this stuff. However, when I do nothing to my PC, and do the re-apply (on the router), the problem fixes itself. If I reboot/disconnect using my PC, then it does nothing to fix the problem.

Which leads me to believe the problem is with the router--but again, I'm a neophyte. Unless this is a case of the client behaving badly, causing some sort of corruption/disruption on the router--in which case i would argue that the router should be more robust than that.

And out of curiosity I looked on my device manager to see what i have: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6250 AGN. I wonder if there are settings on this driver I can monkey with--may try that.


This appears to be in the same ballpark with yours--this is running on Windows 7 on a two year old Samsung laptop. Just as information.

**EDIT***

I did a "check for driver update" on that in Windows . . and BOOM . .there was a new one. Have no idea what I was running before and didn't think to look. Now it's dated 12/06/2012 version 15.4.0.11. Will monitor carefully.Don't know why that driver was out of date or how out-of-date it might have been. I thought Windows Update checked for these things. After spot checking other drivers it seems like most of them are up to date.

I can't imagine problem solving something like this out in the field, with so many variables--hardware, drivers and versions, environment, etc.

Fingers crossed that this give some sort of illumination

********

Best bet would be to send a PM to CL-Jeremy here on SmallNetBuilders to see if Asus knows anything about a known issue - he works for them. I do know that the reason there's no 372 release for the RT-AC66U yet is they are working on some stability issues with wireless - no idea if it's the same issue reported here or a different one.

Hopefully this is the one. It seems to be the most common complaint on here and the negative reviews on Amazon.

But I may hit him up.

Thanks again, Merlin. Only been around a week or so, but your contributions are obvious. I like this site, and the reviews here are the primary reason I picked the ASUS.

 

[mikeg]

Jeremy at Asus knows about the issue with the drop of signal on the 5 GHz band. Asus and Broadcom are working with a solution for this problem.




Hopefully this is the one. It seems to be the most common complaint on here and the negative reviews on Amazon.

But I may hit him up.

Thanks again, Merlin. Only been around a week or so, but your contributions are obvious. I like this site, and the reviews here are the primary reason I picked the ASUS.[/QUOTE]

 

[Grievous Angel]

Well I haven't had an signal drop since updating the driver on my laptop for the network adapter. That's 22 hours uptime--and it had been dropping at around 12 hours.

During that time I've hooked up a USB drive to the router and copied 29 gigs over to it so the router has had plenty of activity.

So I'm hopeful that an old driver was an aggravating factor. I realize 22 hours isn't a long time but it was starting to drop around 12 hours before. So I'm going to let it ride to see how long it goes.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

 

[cmillar6]

Well I haven't had an signal drop since updating the driver on my laptop for the network adapter. That's 22 hours uptime--and it had been dropping at around 12 hours.

During that time I've hooked up a USB drive to the router and copied 29 gigs over to it so the router has had plenty of activity.

So I'm hopeful that an old driver was an aggravating factor. I realize 22 hours isn't a long time but it was starting to drop around 12 hours before. So I'm going to let it ride to see how long it goes.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

I've got the Intel 6250 wireless card in my Asus laptop and the 5Ghz signal is rock stable with my ac66u, I've never had an issue. I run the driver update utility Intel provide frequently and always keep the driver up to date. It's the wired connection I'm having a problem with, I've quit using it. Patiently waiting for the .372 build which corrects the issue.

 

[Grievous Angel]

I've got the Intel 6250 wireless card in my Asus laptop and the 5Ghz signal is rock stable with my ac66u, I've never had an issue. I run the driver update utility Intel provide frequently and always keep the driver up to date. It's the wired connection I'm having a problem with, I've quit using it. Patiently waiting for the .372 build which corrects the issue.

Here I thought windows update was supposed to keep things tidy.

I did the update from the device manager, which found one, but then based on this I ran the intel update utility (via browser) and found a much later driver.

So I've installed it. And now I'm going around all my other computers to make sure they are up to speed. Funny, windows has kept the rest nicely updated. Just this computer hasn't--the only one with the dual band wifi card.

My router shows 26 hours of up time and my performance hasn't fallen off. That is very, very encouraging. After another day or two I'm about to get evangelical.

I still don't get it, though. If your wireless driver is really the problem--then what the heck does doing the "reapply" on the ASUS console do to "fix" it? One would think you would have to restart your computer or disable/enable your wifi to fix it if it were truly a network driver issue. But that's not the case. I could hibernate, disconnect, restart the computer, whatever, but it would return to the lower speeds immediately. It wouldn't be until I did the reapply that I would get the grace period.

 

[RMerlin]

Windows Update only carries whichever driver the manufacturers feels like submitting to Microsoft. These are almost never up-to-date.

When it comes to hardware drivers, always go to the manufacturer's website, and manually download and install it. It's not unheard for Windows Update to be 1-2 years behind what the manufacturers has available for download.

I always ran my Intel card using the latest drivers available from Intel's website (and I re-updated again a week or two ago). That might be why I never had any stability issues either.

 

[RogerSC]

Windows Update only carries whichever driver the manufacturers feels like submitting to Microsoft. These are almost never up-to-date.

When it comes to hardware drivers, always go to the manufacturer's website, and manually download and install it. It's not unheard for Windows Update to be 1-2 years behind what the manufacturers has available for download.

I always ran my Intel card using the latest drivers available from Intel's website (and I re-updated again a week or two ago). That might be why I never had any stability issues either.

The other thing about drivers from Windows Update is that they tend to be generic drivers, which can malfunction on a specific OEM's hardware. For example, for my Dell systems (a laptop and a couple of desktops), I always get new drivers from the Dell web site for that specific system, not from Windows Update or even the manufacturer. The manufacturer is my last resort for Dell system drivers, won't take them from Windows Update even in a pinch *smile*, but if there are bugs that I can't live with, or a new feature that I can't live without, I'll carefully try a driver off the manufacturer's web site, being sure to be able to reverse the installation.

But I tend to be conservative about new drivers from past experience.

 

[cmillar6]

Thought I would update wireless driver on my wifes laptop tonight with the intel driver update utility and her Intel 2230 card. Lost internet connection completely with the driver update, I tried everything to restore it. Rolled back to previous version and all is well.

 

[Grievous Angel]

I'm at 2 days now without the signal issue I experienced before I updated to the latest intel driver.

It's such a head fake that it would never have occurred to me that my wireless driver would be the problem. Rebooting the computer didn't help. Disconnecting and reconnecting didn't help. Only hitting "reapply" or rebooting the router helped.

Weird.

I'm posting updates because it seems significant. Based on Merlin's suggestion that the wifi client could be part of the problem, I upgraded, and after 49 hours, I tend to agree.

I have no more problems so far after two days of router uptime. I'm going to let the router run until I do.

 

[RMerlin]

Thought I would update wireless driver on my wifes laptop tonight with the intel driver update utility and her Intel 2230 card. Lost internet connection completely with the driver update, I tried everything to restore it. Rolled back to previous version and all is well.

When I last updated, I think I had to delete the saved SSIDs from my laptop and reconfigure them as it would refuse to reconnect using the saved ones.

 

[octopus]

I have problem to connect from some wifi device if I have INSSIDR running. Have to turn it off to get Connection

Octopus

 

[virtueme]

When I last updated, I think I had to delete the saved SSIDs from my laptop and reconfigure them as it would refuse to reconnect using the saved ones.

My Intel® Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300 has this issue. Often after I wake it ut after sleep I have to delete the SSID from my computer to get it to work again.

 

[RMerlin]

My Intel® Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300 has this issue. Often after I wake it ut after sleep I have to delete the SSID from my computer to get it to work again.

Must be a different issue, in my case it only happened after the latest driver update. I never experienced that issue when taking my Win7 laptop out of sleep mode, I would consider looking for a driver update from Intel if you haven't done so already.

 

[cmillar6]

When I last updated, I think I had to delete the saved SSIDs from my laptop and reconfigure them as it would refuse to reconnect using the saved ones.

Thx, I'll try this tonight.

 

[KumquatOfPain]

Well I'm only using another ASUS RT-AC66U as a bridge and have the problem with that.

In bridge mode, the transfer speed dropped by ~30% going from .270 to .354.

But .270 has the bug where it's fast for about a day, then drops in speed. I can reset it with a quick refresh of the router's wireless properties, but it's still a PITA.

 

[Grievous Angel]

My 5G signal dropped again--this time after almost 3 days instead of the typical 12 hours.

I don't know what part my updating the wifi nic card driver helped, but the problem is not solved for my part.

It's better, but I would like this thing to go a little further without needing to be babied.