Netgear Arlo Pro Base Station Chases My Asus AC68U's Channel

[mysteryman092]

I bought some Arlo Pro wireless cameras recently and overall they are pretty good.

The system uses a base station which connects wired to your router, mainly to get FW updates and transmit recordings to their cloud. The base station creates it's own 2.4 ghz N SSID and connects to the cameras over its wifi.

The Netgear base station has no option to set the wifi channel. What it does is set its channel to the router closes to it. If I change my Asus running Merlin to another channel within 24 hours the Netgear base station moves to the same channel. I am running 380.65_2 .

I am a little surprised by this. I would think a more optimal situation would be to have the Asus on channel 1, 6, or 11 and have the Netgear base station on one of the 2 unused remaining channels.

The Netgear base station surprisingly has slightly stronger signal strength (it sits about three feet from my Asus).

Since I set up the Netgear I have noticed some buffering on a Roku that didn't occur before which is how discovered that you can't change the Netgear channel.

Does Netgear's implementation here make any sense? I am thinking about using a long ethernet cord and moving my Asus 10-15 away and setting an old router right next to the Netgear base so I can get the Netgear to follow the old router.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[NETGEAR Guy]

The Arlo base station transmits on the same channel as the router by design. Primarily, due to the base station and router (access point) being installed in relatively close proximity. So essentially, if the base station is in close proximity to the router (which is most often the case) the base station and the router need to be on the same channel to get the best performance from both.

The BS uses ACS and the ACS algorithm auto selects the best channel to minimise wifi interference. If the base station is near the router, the best channel will be the one the router is on, since it's the strongest signal. Having the base station on the same wifi channel as the strongest signal nearest to the base station, results in the lowest amount of wifi interference. The ACS Daemon routine on the base station runs once a day, so any manual channel change carried out on the router will be reflected in the base station within 24 hours.

Essentially, the Arlo base station by default uses adjacent channel selectivity to auto select the best channel…

 

[mysteryman092]

Yes I understand that is how Netgear designed it, but there are series of threads on the Netgear forums complaining about this design. I am questioning the wisdom of Netgear's design.

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Ar...n-renders-my-2-4Ghz-wifi-useless/td-p/1170933

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo/Wi-Fi-Channel-Conflict-Arlo-Pro-Base-Station/td-p/1200134

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo/Is-it-possible-to-change-the-wifi-channel/td-p/1537

I ran a series of tests with the client about 40 ft away from the Asus router and the Netgear base station. I ran the test on speedtest.net 3 times for each scenario and averaged the results.

Asus router and Netgear base station on the same 2.4 channel (11): Average Down speed=46.17, Up Speed= 4.52 ( this is not a typo....4.52)

Asus router (channel 6) and Netgear base station (channel 11) on different channels (Netgear will switch to the Asus channel within 24 hours) : Average Down speed=63.02, Up Speed= 40.21

My question is does Netgear's design make any sense? It certainly does not work for me and others. While I don't do a lot of uploading, the huge difference in the upload speed is very disturbing.

 

[NETGEAR Guy]

Understood and discussing your feedback with development...