New RT-AX86U - Strange Behavior - Questions

[seadragon]

Did you say that you checked to make sure QoS was disabled, "Adaptive QoS"->QoS? I'm not sure if QoS affects speed tests, but I've always turned QoS off.

I checked and QoS is turned off. Appreciate all of your help!

 

[SAL9K]

Thanks. I just ran fast.com with these results. I ran it a few times actually and the highest download was 220 and the lowest was 180.

And all of my testing is done from a table at this location. This is the distance to the router.

What was your ISP plan? If you're consistently getting 200/20, then does that sound good to you? Those are decent latency values, BTW, for WiFi at least; you might get down to the 10ms range via GbE. "Loaded" is the ping latency, or bi-directional latency, during a download, and from my experience 69ms is pretty good. Also, in general, midday speedtests may be all over the place especially if you have an cable-ISP, as really you're sharing bandwidth with your favorite neighbors.

 

[seadragon]

What was your ISP plan? If you're consistently getting 200/20, then does that sound good to you? Those are good latency values, BTW, for WiFi at least; you might get down to the 10ms range via GbE.

My plan is 300/20. I used to get almost that every time doing the same speed tests with my AirPort Extreme which the new router replaced. Unfortunately the Extreme started losing power in recent months. I had it for several years. I just figured the new router would give me the same performance.

 

[SAL9K]

I'm at a loss then, because iperf3 is saying that you have plenty of WiFi b/w to cover your 300/20 plan. Sorry, I'm afraid that's all of the assistance I can provide.

 

[seadragon]

I'm at a loss then, because iperf3 is saying that you have plenty of WiFi b/w to cover your 300/20 plan. Sorry, I'm afraid that's all of the assistance I can provide.

@SAL9K I want to thank you very much for taking time out of your day to help me. I truly appreciate it. I may actually buy another router model and see how it goes. I still have 2 weeks to return this one to Best Buy.

Have a great evening!

 

[SAL9K]

My AX86U has been so reliable and fast, that I tend to think any problems others have with it are due to configuration issues. But, perhaps not in your case, I suppose duds are definitely possible. Yeah, report back your results with a different model, if that's the path you choose.

 

[Volt]

@seadragon, you can try the following:

1. Go to Administration -> Privacy, and then click Withdraw.
2. Go to Network Map -> Status, and then, in the "Ethernet Ports" section, make sure that your modem is connected at 1 Gbps (or more).
3. Go to Wireless -> General, and for 5 GHz band, select the Auto select channel including DFS channels check box, and then select 160 MHz in the Channel bandwidth list (unfortunately, my router does not support 160 MHz, so I don't know whether this option is available for selection on your router; if not, select 20/40/80/160). Alternatively, you can try selecting 80 MHz.
4. Make sure that Smart Connect is disabled.
5. Restart the router and connect, for example, your fastest device (to 5 GHz).
6. After the device connects, what are the reported speeds for it when clicking View List on the Network Map page?
7. Run the Speedtest again, but from a certain distance, not too close to the router.

 

[seadragon]

@seadragon, you can try the following:

1. Go to Administration -> Privacy, and then click Withdraw.
2. Go to Network Map -> Status, and then, in the "Ethernet Ports" section, make sure that your modem is connected at 1 Gbps (or more).
3. Go to Wireless -> General, and for 5 GHz band, select the Auto select channel including DFS channels check box, and then select 160 MHz in the Channel bandwidth list (unfortunately, my router does not support 160 MHz, so I don't know whether this option is available for selection on your router; if not, select 20/40/80/160). Alternatively, you can try selecting 80 MHz.
4. Make sure that Smart Connect is disabled.
5. Restart the router and connect, for example, your fastest device (to 5 GHz).
6. After the device connects, what are the reported speeds for it when clicking View List on the Network Map page?
7. Run the Speedtest again, but from a certain distance, not too close to the router.

Thanks Volt. I tried this and when I view the device list in the network map page, the numbers keep changing. Tx rate will show 816/512/124/650 changing every second or so. The Rx rates do the same thing but the numbers are a bit lower.

 

[SAL9K]

Just out of curiosity, what cable modem do you have? And, have you reboot that recently?

 

[seadragon]

Just out of curiosity, what cable modem do you have?

It’s a Technicolor TC4400. It’s about a month old.

 

[seadragon]

So I just ran another 5 speed tests back to back and right now the speeds are good. I'm confused over why it's seems erratic.

And right after posting the above screenshot, I ran another 5 and it's back to crappy speeds again...

 

[degrub]

Any test over the internet to a server will be variable.
On your iperf test, did you run with parallel streams option ?
It may take that to saturate the wireless link. That may be part of the reason for the disparity in up/down on iperf. The test result is determined by the slowest element in the software/hardware chain between the server device and the client device.

changes in your wifi environment will affect the test results.. have you looked for neighboring AP radio interference on your channel ?
You may want to fix the channel used and select a narrower band instead of 160 as you may get less interference and thus more throughput. Also, If near airport, you can loose the dfs channels.

here is another issue if you have not tried-

RT-AX86U erratic speed on ISP connection

Hi, I have just replaced my stock BT Hub 2 with this router. I have full fibre 900. With this modem I never get over an average of 600mb on the built in speed test. i get about 450 on and wifi connected device on 5ghz. Internet speed test on the modem gui goes from 350mb to 750mb, all over...

www.snbforums.com

 

[Volt]

We can't be 100% sure, looks like your router is OK, and what you see is indeed a rather severe radio interference. That is why your Tx and Rx rates jump, and that's why you get good speeds on your friend's WIFI. If your setup allows this, you can try placing your router to another location and run speed tests again. Or you can take your router to your friend's place and test it there.

BTW, when you start getting lower speeds, does immediately running the built-in speed test on the router show normal results?

 

[RimRider]

I'm gonna chip in here. This exact same problem has been driving me nuts for the last couple of months. I had a rock-solid AIMesh setup, with 3 x hard-wired AC-68U nodes and an AX-86U as my main router. This had been working flawlessly for about 2 years, with continuous dirty upgrades.

Then, suddenly, my wifi clients were struggling to connect. Symptoms were identical the the OP's first post - sometimes they would connect, sometimes they would connect (without internet) and sometimes they would ask for the password, even though the password hadn't changed. I troubleshot this for about a month, before giving up and, assuming I had a faulty AX86U, I got rid of it and upgraded to a lovely AX-GT6000.

This failed to solve my problem, and my next step was to upgrade the nodes to 2 x hard-wired AC86Us. Again, the exact same symptoms.

Unfortunately, I no longer have the AX86U, therefore I am unable to downgrade the firmware as someone mentioned was the 'fix' for this problem, therefore I am now at a loss...

Interestingly, I also have Harmony Hubs, as does the OP - I actually have 4 of them! I've now disconnected them all and have re-started my troubleshooting process.

 

[seadragon]

Good morning everyone. Thanks again for your interest and help on this. If it helps, here is the current wi-fi scan of my environment and also the settings on my router. Although I did try auto channel including DFS, that didn't seem to help. So I went back to fixed channels. I am wondering if I indeed to have an interference issue but I can't think of anything that would be causing it. I will try moving the router this weekend to a different location as suggested by @Volt.

I'm "EQUINOX" and "EQUINOX5G"...

 

[degrub]

turn off the "a" and "b" and "g" modes on the radios. There should not be any devices that need those these days and that can drag things down if something tries to connect.
You should have only AC or AX if possible. If you have to have N for specific devices, then ok. Otherwise keep it off if config lets you.

 

[ColinTaylor]

@seadragon Can you confirm that your tests were done only using 5GHz and the client hadn't actually switched to 2.4GHz.

For testing purposes I would temporarily disable 802.11ax / WiFi 6 mode on 5 GHz and see if your speed tests stabilise. Leave Wireless Mode on Auto.

 

[seadragon]

turn off the "a" and "b" and "g" modes on the radios. There should not be any devices that need those these days and that can drag things down if something tries to connect.
You should have only AC or AX if possible. If you have to have N for specific devices, then ok. Otherwise keep it off if config lets you.

Under the Wireless Mode setting dropdown for 2.4 GHz, the options are Auto, N Only, and Legacy. I'm assuming that N Only will turn off a, b and g? The only device I have that connects to 2.4 is the Harmony Hub connecting with "n". Everything else is on the 5 GHz band and I do have some devices that connect with "n" such as my HomePod minis.

 

[RimRider]

@seadragon - The Harmony Hub thing was a red herring. I saw that they had received a firmware upgrade at the end of April and got my hopes up, but not to be.

I'm trying to work out what we have in common regarding our network. Are you running any scripts? AMTM? Have you manually assigned any IPs in the DHCP Server tab?

 

[seadragon]

@seadragon Can you confirm that your tests were done only using 5GHz and the client hadn't actually switched to 2.4GHz.

For testing purposes I would temporarily disable 802.11ax / WiFi 6 mode on 5 GHz and see if your speed tests stabilise. Leave Wireless Mode on Auto.

Yes, I can confirm that only 5GHz was used. In fact, last night I did another experiment. I temporarily changed the 5GHz SSID to a different name, rebooted the router and my iPad Air and then connection only my iPad Air to the "new" network. No other devices were connected and I got the same results. I've also tried toggling the WiFi 6 mode off but I didn't notice a difference. However, I only toggled it off for a few minutes to run some speed tests then turned it back on.