Linksys WRT1900AC First User Reports

[sm00thpapa]

Speed test in firmware is very inaccurate on location. Keeps finding a server in Atlanta, GA and I'm in Spring Hill, FL. Closest server is Tampa, FL.

 

[stevech]

For me, average fastest Speedtest server is not the closest, by far.

 

[KGB7]

3rd party WAN speed tests are subjective and should never be used for any testing. So use LAN and WLAN to test actual speed of your network.

 

[jlake]

Speed test in firmware is very inaccurate on location. Keeps finding a server in Atlanta, GA and I'm in Spring Hill, FL. Closest server is Tampa, FL.

Atlanta is almost 250 miles away from me,yet it is always faster than my close servers including Memphis and Nashville. Atlanta has one of the largest data centers in US and is a major hub. Atlanta is probably the best choice for SE U.S.
Atlanta always has the lowest latency and fastest speed (for me). Lower latency than servers 50 miles away.

 

[RogerSC]

Been having a rough time with the WRT1900AC the last few days. It's great when I first set it up, and then after several hours to a day my Android phone and iPad have lost 1/3 - 2/3 of their download speeds on 5GHz. At the point when I see that, I can put my R7000 with dd-wrt firmware back online, and my wireless speed goes right back up to my full ISP download speed. This happened twice, lots of factory resets and reconfiguration, since I just didn't believe it. No disconnects or drops, just slow downs. Wired systems are fine, IPv6 is fine, wireless strength is fine...only the wireless internet speed slow downs are a problem for me at this point. My laptop (also on 5GHz.) doesn't see this problem, since it's only 3 feet away from the router. I use my other wireless devices in the living room, farthest from the router in my house.

Okay, seems that I have my arms around this now. The last two routers that I've had, the Asus RT-N66U and Netgear R7000, have had very similar directional properties in my house. There are a couple of bookcases between my router and the living room, and both the Asus RT-N66U and Netgear R7000 didn't seem to be directly bothered by them. I could just aim the router in the general direction of my living room, and that was fine. So, in my efforts to keep the testing of routers the same here (as much as possible), I used the same orientation of the WRT1900AC. Turns out that wasn't quite right, the wireless on the WRT1900AC seems to be more affected by the bookcases (or differently affected), and the same orientations that work well for the other two routers is bad for the Linksys. There's a dip in wireless strength and speed at a particular range of orientations that I didn't expect. So I played around a bunch last night (again), and finally got a good orientation, and the wireless speed is still up this morning, a first. I think that this was the problem I was seeing. The distance to my living room from the router is fairly long for 5GHz., so router and antenna orientation is important.

So I do need to pay more attention to the final orientation of this router until I'm more used to the way that it works. The wireless does provide sustained comparable coverage and speed to my other 2 routers, at least short term *smile*. Of course, the wireless-ac is faster than the RT-N66U wireless-n, but that is what one hopes.

 

[thiggins]

Did you adjust antenna position from the recommended all-four-straight-up?

 

[hewligun]

To enable port triggering for multiple XBOXES:
1) Configure port triggering rules, using xbox rules this link will give you a basic idea, it is being setup on the WRT-54G.
2) Best to use static IP addressing of xboxes, example:
XBOX1 192.168.0.10
XBOX2 192.168.0.11
3) when configuring the Port triggering rules you will have to use the range of 10 thru 11, in the above example, along with the xbox ports.

4) If your DHCP the XBOXES, turn on the 1st xbox and reserve that IP in the DHCP and name it as XBOX1(write down the IP address the router is issueing) and then turn on the second XBOX2 and let the router issue an IP address and then save that to DHCP reservation.

5) follow step 2.

Here are the following ports for XBOX1
Xbox Live requires the following ports to be open:

Port 88 (UDP)
Port 3074 (UDP and TCP)
Port 53 (UDP and TCP)
Port 80 (TCP)
Port 500 (UDP)
UDP Port 3544 (UDP)
UDP Port 4500 (UDP)


Let us know how it works for you

Yes I did do that. I think its just linksys cannot get it down . I had 0 issues with this on the r7000. It just worked. Below is a screen shot of my port triggering. Both xbox's are dhcp reserved.

 

[hewligun]

What Belkin AC router is being used as an AP? Do you mean you have another Belkin/Linksys AC WRT1900 being used as an AP?

I'm pretty sure port triggering won't work for an xbox that is connected to an AP that has been cascaded LAN to LAN.

I suppose it'd be easy to isolate by connecting both xboxs directly to main router.

Its a belkin ac1000 and it is plugged into port 1 on my wrt1900ac and the belkin ac1000 is set to access point. It should be receiving all dhcp and config info from the wrt1900ac due to how access points work.

 

[RogerSC]

Did you adjust antenna position from the recommended all-four-straight-up?

I haven't played with the antennas yet. Having four of them staring me in the face has me on the run *smile*. I did find this, which suggests 2 places to start with antenna position, depending on 1-story or 2-story house:

http://kb.linksys.com/Linksys/ukp.aspx?pid=80&vw=1&articleid=29289

I am going to try moving the antennas around a bit to see if I can get an increase in signal in my living room, but haven't yet. Given that there's four of them, I'll need to set aside some time *smile*.

 

[thiggins]

I haven't played with the antennas yet. <snip>

What position are they in now?

 

[RogerSC]

What position are they in now?

All vertical at the moment. I expect I'll try moving them symmetrically in pairs initially, then introduce asymmetry, just to see what happens. I have a few ways of looking at signal strength, which isn't the whole story, but generally I've found that a stronger signal will have more throughput. Not always, but most times.

 

[sm00thpapa]

All 4 straight up or the rear ones at a 45 degree angle I see no difference in signal. Signal strength is about equal to the RT-N66W. Testing it now on my patio and pool area.

 

[thiggins]

All vertical at the moment. I expect I'll try moving them symmetrically in pairs initially, then introduce asymmetry, just to see what happens. I have a few ways of looking at signal strength, which isn't the whole story, but generally I've found that a stronger signal will have more throughput. Not always, but most times.

Thanks. Don't go too crazy. Just try the "V" position for the rear antennas and see if it helps/hurts.

 

[RogerSC]

Thanks. Don't go too crazy. Just try the "V" position for the rear antennas and see if it helps/hurts.

I understand, but having all those antennas, makes you wonder how you can make them work for you *smile*.

To answer your question, I don't see any difference within the normal variations of WiFi, between those two antenna positions...upstairs or down. Tried it on both floors of my house in both positions, no difference that I can see.

 

[RogerSC]

Also, for whatever it's worth, the wireless signal strength on the R7000 with dd-wrt is about 5dB higher than the WRT1900AC on both bands. It's fine on the WRT1900AC here, but the R7000 is consistently stronger. So, for example, the 5GHz. wireless in my living room will average -65dB on the R7000, and -70dB on the WRT1900AC.

No throughput testing done yet. I have to liberate my laptop from all of it's cables before I can do that, just haven't gotten to it yet.

 

[stevech]

with any wireless/WiFi, at 2.4 GHz and more so in 5.8GHz, if you have a handheld device, and you move a few inches (less than the wavelength), change the device orientation in X, Y, Z space, and if you watch many readings, you'll see (or should see if the handheld is honest in its displays), many dB of of variation - perhaps 3-12. Esp. with/without some/all of your watery body in the path to the router.

Nit: received signal strength should be displayed in dBm (decibels relative to one milliwatt; 0dBm = 1mW = 0.001 watt). Nit-nit: dB is relative - has no meaning alone. Used like "a 10 dB improvement took my RSSI from -70 to -60dBm."

In cable TV, they standardized on dBmV - decibels relative to 1 millivolt (0.001).

I suppose it's because in wireless, the inverse square law of signal power vs. distance applies, and power is easier to talk about in dBm. In the cable TV case, the loss is due to simpler effects related to the coax cable and splitters/amps, etc.

 

[RogerSC]

with any wireless/WiFi, at 2.4 GHz and more so in 5.8GHz, if you have a handheld device, and you move a few inches (less than the wavelength), change the device orientation in X, Y, Z space, and if you watch many readings, you'll see (or should see if the handheld is honest in its displays), many dB of of variation - perhaps 3-12. Esp. with/without some/all of your watery body in the path to the router.

Nit: received signal strength should be displayed in dBm (decibels relative to one milliwatt; 0dBm = 1mW = 0.001 watt). Nit-nit: dB is relative - has no meaning alone. Used like "a 10 dB improvement took my RSSI from -70 to -60dBm."

Not sure if you're addressing me or not, but I was sitting in exactly the same place, same position, holding my phone in my hand the same way as much as possible when I saw these differences.

But yes, these are averages, not just one reading. I was using the "time chart" for about 10 minutes for each reading so I think that I got a good feeling for the average. I was mentally drawing a line through the middle of the bumpy curve that I saw. One was somewhat higher than the other, although I looked at them serially, not at the same time. It was a bit time-consuming, but convincing, and confirmed what I had seen earlier (but hadn't tried to quantify).

But yes, human and measurement errors are always possible. I like to think that the time that I spent limited that to some extent, but you're right, you never know. That's why I added a disclaimer to my original posting. In any case, it's throughput that really matters.

 

[stevech]

wireless signal strength (esp. to-router) is very statistic. Moreso are the bit error stats. It would be great if WiFi router/APs had a geeky option to show percent of errored frames - those with uncorrectable errors. That's the real test of WiFi performance.

Engineers use a spec of say, 1% frame error rate as modulation order increases or SNR degrades.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Ok weird one here. My Xbox 360 and PS4 which is hard wired to the router have Open NAT. My Xbox 360 with the Microsoft external wifi adapter on the 5 GHz band has Open NAT. But my 3rd Xbox 360 on the 2.4 GHz band has strict or moderate NAT. How is this possible?

 

[hewligun]

Ok weird one here. My Xbox 360 and PS4 which is hard wired to the router have Open NAT. My Xbox 360 with the Microsoft external wifi adapter on the 5 GHz band has Open NAT. But my 3rd Xbox 360 on the 2.4 GHz band has strict or moderate NAT. How is this possible?

You can see my earlier post. i have 2 xbox ones and only one shows open NAT. the other is moderate. Still no answer.