Just got my XT8- questions

[HDGuy]

I just picked up my XT8, updated both to the latest release firmware. So, I set them up in a mesh wireless config- a few questions:

I'm getting ~400Mbps on the wireless node- I have a FIOS gigabit connection so I'm not all that impressed with the speeds. I fooled around with changing the AX channels and didn't really see any improvement. I assume I should be able to do better, but I'm not really sure what I'm doing wrong. I have a relatively small apartment with some pretty thick brick walls, but even with the nodes right next to each other I'm not seeing speeds much higher than that so something else is happening.

I had my previous config in a media bridge setup, and my apartment is small enough to do that on the dedicated 160Mhz channel if I wanted, but right now I wanted to try Zenwifi and see how that worked for me.

Any ideas/tips/etc? Will the beta firmware help?

 

[hang10z]

I'm in the same boat as you, trying to figure out how to optimally configure this thing. I have clients 1 foot away connected at an indicated 267mbs, this intels ax adapter. Doesn't look like there is a in-depth manual available

 

[HDGuy]

I'm in the same boat as you, trying to figure out how to optimally configure this thing. I have clients 1 foot away connected at an indicated 267mbs, this intels ax adapter. Doesn't look like there is a in-depth manual available

400/400 seems way too slow for a symmetrical Gigabit connection, especially when the two nodes are right next to each other.

I could really use some extra help.

 

[goldbondx]

I have more questions than answers for you.

What speedtest are you using? Google is not the most reliable
I assume you are using wireless backhaul all of you?
Are you testing near satellite or near base? (and have compared?)
Fooling around with AX means you have a wifi6 nic?

I am more curious than helpful as I just switched the 2 XT8's into AP mode and running PFSense on an I5 4 port NUC as my router. I have a wired backhaul.

I have found a respectable increase in doing so. I get close to 400 mb down on an OnePlus 8 mobile near base unit on Google ST. Speedtest.net gives me close to 600mb down. I have Xfinity gig and my wired PC gives me 800 MB down..so not far off.

Prior to switching to PFSense, I was getting about 20% less on the wifi DL's..

 

[HDGuy]

I have more questions than answers for you.

What speedtest are you using? Google is not the most reliable
I assume you are using wireless backhaul all of you?
Are you testing near satellite or near base? (and have compared?)
Fooling around with AX means you have a wifi6 nic?

I am more curious than helpful as I just switched the 2 XT8's into AP mode and running PFSense on an I5 4 port NUC as my router. I have a wired backhaul.

I have found a respectable increase in doing so. I get close to 400 mb down on an OnePlus 8 mobile near base unit on Google ST. Speedtest.net gives me close to 600mb down. I have Xfinity gig and my wired PC gives me 800 MB down..so not far off.

Prior to switching to PFSense, I was getting about 20% less on the wifi DL's..

I'm using Speedtest.net, a server I get good response on (I can score >950/950 routinely over ethernet). Yes I'm using the wireless backhaul and I'm trying it with both devices next to each other. It is a little slower in the other room (although not much). I don't have a wifi6 nic. I'm just testing wired devices connected to the wireless node.

400/400 is way too slow, especially when both units are right next to each other.

It's actually slower than my previous media bridge setup which consisted of the AC86U as the router and the Linksys wrt3200acm as the bridge.

 

[digits n bits]

I'm using Speedtest.net, a server I get good response on (I can score >950/950 routinely over ethernet). Yes I'm using the wireless backhaul and I'm trying it with both devices next to each other. It is a little slower in the other room (although not much). I don't have a wifi6 nic. I'm just testing wired devices connected to the wireless node.

400/400 is way too slow, especially when both units are right next to each other.

It's actually slower than my previous media bridge setup which consisted of the AC86U as the router and the Linksys wrt3200acm as the bridge.

When you say devices what are you referring to? The router and node close to each other or the router or node close to a client? How big an area are you trying to cover?

 

[HDGuy]

I'm talking about even when the router and node are right next to each other and I run a speedtest from my PC wired to the node I only score ~400/400 on my Gigabit connection.

 

[Oricus]

When you look in the wifi log what is it showing for the backhaul connection? (channel, width, tx/rx rates, db) ? I had to force my backhaul to use 80mhz (160mhz not available in canada even though it is allowed).

 

[HDGuy]

When you look in the wifi log what is it showing for the backhaul connection? (channel, width, tx/rx rates, db) ? I had to force my backhaul to use 80mhz (160mhz not available in canada even though it is allowed).

What am I looking for exactly in the log? The node isn't listed in the network map. I changed my backhaul (5GHz-2) to 160Mhz only (live in the US) so that shouldn't be an issue.

Stations List
----------------------------------------
idx MAC Associated Authorized RSSI PHY PSM SGI STBC MUBF NSS BW Tx rate Rx rate Connect Time
Yes Yes -44dBm ax No Yes Yes Yes 4 160M 3458.8M 3629.6M 00:01:24

It looks good to me, I'm just wondering why I'm so slow on my internet access? Is there a way I can test the speed on the wifi backhaul alone?

 

[Dtangas]

I just picked up my XT8, updated both to the latest release firmware. So, I set them up in a mesh wireless config- a few questions:

I'm getting ~400Mbps on the wireless node- I have a FIOS gigabit connection so I'm not all that impressed with the speeds. I fooled around with changing the AX channels and didn't really see any improvement. I assume I should be able to do better, but I'm not really sure what I'm doing wrong. I have a relatively small apartment with some pretty thick brick walls, but even with the nodes right next to each other I'm not seeing speeds much higher than that so something else is happening.

I had my previous config in a media bridge setup, and my apartment is small enough to do that on the dedicated 160Mhz channel if I wanted, but right now I wanted to try Zenwifi and see how that worked for me.

Any ideas/tips/etc? Will the beta firmware help?

I'm in the same boat. The XT8 has been finicky since I got it. I'm hoping firmware updates will fix things so I'm just trying to be patient.

 

[Daylight_Invader]

Up until a few weeks back, I did have gigabit up/down, and I was able to regularly get ~700+ both up and down on wireless with the XT8 (single node) and the full gigabit (i.e. ~940mbps) on wired. Adding in the second node did not help on that front. Connecting to the other node always resulted in slower speeds.

My new place only has 350/35 speeds, and as long as I setup the XT8 to do nightly reboots, I can retain those speeds. Until I forced the nightly reboots, more than 24 hours uptime seemed to cause the nodes to slow. In my case, I use ethernet for backhaul.

As an FYI, there are two other threads discussing these issues, so surprised we have yet a new one here.

 

[HDGuy]

Up until a few weeks back, I did have gigabit up/down, and I was able to regularly get ~700+ both up and down on wireless with the XT8 (single node) and the full gigabit (i.e. ~940mbps) on wired. Adding in the second node did not help on that front. Connecting to the other node always resulted in slower speeds.

My new place only has 350/35 speeds, and as long as I setup the XT8 to do nightly reboots, I can retain those speeds. Until I forced the nightly reboots, more than 24 hours uptime seemed to cause the nodes to slow. In my case, I use ethernet for backhaul.

As an FYI, there are two other threads discussing these issues, so surprised we have yet a new one here.

It's really odd because you can see that my 160Mhz backhaul is connected @ 3458.8M/3629.6M so there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to get the full 1G (and more) on the node.

We need someone from Asus to chime in on this. This is their flagship AiMesh setup- I'd be more than happy to recommend it as soon as I get my setup worked out.

 

[Daylight_Invader]

It's not just a matter of the backhaul between your node and the router, but also the connection between the node and the device.

 

[HDGuy]

It's not just a matter of the backhaul between your node and the router, but also the connection between the node and the device.

Node and what device? I'm using gigabit ethernet- even with the node right next to the router I can't get over 400/400.

 

[HDGuy]

I did a factory reset and now the backhaul is connected at 2594/2594 (was higher before) but my internet speed over the wireless backhaul to wired devices on the node remains the same ~400/400- and that's with the node placed directly next to the router. Odd.

Crowded 5G band here but surely I can do better? Even on other 5G channels I haven't had much luck. Am I doing something wrong? I'm going to change to Bridge Mode and see what happens.

Edit- I changed the backhaul (Zenwifi 160Mhz ) channel to 112 and that time I scored 500/500 which is better, but not any better than an AC router could do under ideal situations. This thing has a pretty steep set-up curve. Definitely needs a lot of tweaking.

 

[Bandito]

I don’t know if this will help or not, but from what I’ve read, keeping the node right next to the router may not be such a good idea. You may be overwhelming the radios with too much signal. On the Netgear forums, they always recommend a minimum distance of 30 feet for each node. So, you might want to move them farther apart to see what, if any, effect that may have on your throughput.

For comparison, at my normal working locations, approximately 12-16 feet from the nearest node and through one wood-framed wall, I usually get about 350 Mbps down and 125 Mbps or so up from my AC devices. The AX devices aren’t really any better unless I’m within a couple of feet of the node and then they’ll get about 700 Mbps down and 550 Mbps up. This is on a symmetric 1 Gbps fiber connection.

At your listed connection speeds for the backhaul, I, too, would expect significantly better performance when wired to a node, but the real world tends to introduce a lot of variability into the equation. Finally, keep in mind that AX really isn’t significantly faster than AC, it’s mostly just better suited to crowded environments.

 

[HDGuy]

I don’t know if this will help or not, but from what I’ve read, keeping the node right next to the router may not be such a good idea. You may be overwhelming the radios with too much signal. On the Netgear forums, they always recommend a minimum distance of 30 feet for each node. So, you might want to move them farther apart to see what, if any, effect that may have on your throughput.

For comparison, at my normal working locations, approximately 12-16 feet from the nearest node and through one wood-framed wall, I usually get about 350 Mbps down and 125 Mbps or so up from my AC devices. The AX devices aren’t really any better unless I’m within a couple of feet of the node and then they’ll get about 700 Mbps down and 550 Mbps up. This is on a symmetric 1 Gbps fiber connection.

At your listed connection speeds for the backhaul, I, too, would expect significantly better performance when wired to a node, but the real world tends to introduce a lot of variability into the equation. Finally, keep in mind that AX really isn’t significantly faster than AC, it’s mostly just better suited to crowded environments.

Get similar results with the node in the other room. I'm sure with a little tweaking and firmware improvements things will get better over time.

That said all I really wanted was a more reliable dedicated AX backhaul, especially for Gamestreaming from my PC to my Nvidia Shield, which is a bandwidth hog, especially @ 4k/60Hz.

 

[oldguy]

I returned my Zenwifi AX units, as I had lots of issues with the primary router going off line.
I was able to get the rated backhaul from the mesh node to the Router.
I found that the majority of wireless devices were connected to the Router, even when the device was nearer to the mesh node.
The conclusion I came to was that with the number of wireless devices attached that the router could not cope, based on the 512MB of DRAM which is half of routers such as ROG GT-AC5300.
In fact I have been running my system on the GT-AC5300, a tri band device that has two strong 5GHz and a decent 2.4GHz band, looking at speedtest.net speeds I found that it is faster than the ZenWifi AX