Optimizing WiFi performance

[zany130]

My network has been working mostly really good with gigabit speeds on wired devices and about 300-700 mb on wifi. But, some devices are having frequent disconnection issues (mostly on 5ghz)

So I have been optimizing my wifi based on @L&LD suggestions here https://www.snbforums.com/members/l-ld.24423/#about

I have found that for 2.4 ghz channel 1 & 11 have an immediate and noticeable performance degradation. So I am using channel 6 there.

as for the 5ghz band, I haven't really found much difference from the different channels. (most likely because there are very few 5ghz networks in my area)
now I Have a pretty good signal even before doing any changes except in two parts of my house (1st-floor living room and furthest corner of the second floor both on opposite sides ) here is a super bad (Warning extremely bad) drawing of how it all looks with the wifi weak spots highlighted

I don't know if I would benefit really from a ai mesh device (it would have to be ax compatible right?)

here are my wireless logs

so I tweaked some settings even further and noticed something.

channel 100 gives me the best range it seems with really good responsiveness but has slightly worse speed and 160 width does not work. channels 36 - 48 all have about the same range (slightly better than the above image) with way better speeds but slightly lower responsiveness and 160 width works which really helps with the speed on my wifi 6 laptop

 

[Tucu]

A few points to start with:
-Check that Explicit Beamforming (or AC/AX beamforming) is enabled in Professional settings
-Check if Roaming Assistant is enabled and at what threshold. It might be disconnecting your 5Ghz clients earlier than needed. (considering they can only roam to the other band of your router)
-I would move that DirectTV box to the 2.4Ghz band. It is on the edge of the 5Ghz coverage connecting at low speeds and slowing everyone else down.
-When using 160Mhz channels, 36-64 form one big channel so don't bother testing them all separately. This also applies to 100-128.
-Only one of your devices (one labelled as a desktop) seems to be using 160Mhz channels. You should check if some of your other devices support this and if you want to make the effort and trade-offs of trying to get 160Mhz working.

After making those changes check coverage and speeds. Then take note of the location of devices that are getting close and below -70dBm RSSI . These would be the areas that could benefit from having another AP closer to them; wired, range extender or mesh should work.

 

[zany130]

A few points to start with:
-Check that Explicit Beamforming (or AC/AX beamforming) is enabled in Professional settings
-Check if Roaming Assistant is enabled and at what threshold. It might be disconnecting your 5Ghz clients earlier than needed. (considering they can only roam to the other band of your router)
-I would move that DirectTV box to the 2.4Ghz band. It is on the edge of the 5Ghz coverage connecting at low speeds and slowing everyone else down.
-When using 160Mhz channels, 36-64 form one big channel so don't bother testing them all separately. This also applies to 100-128.
-Only one of your devices (one labelled as a desktop) seems to be using 160Mhz channels. You should check if some of your other devices support this and if you want to make the effort and trade-offs of trying to get 160Mhz working.

After making those changes check coverage and speeds. Then take note of the location of devices that are getting close and below -70dBm RSSI . These would be the areas that could benefit from having another AP closer to them; wired, range extender or mesh should work.

ok so I'm not using roaming assist as I usually want all my devices that support 5ghz to stay on that band as usually they get good signal all over the house (direct box is pretty old and its in a cabinet and thus I agree I should prob put it on the 2.4 band it doesn't even really need the speed of 5ghz it just needs to look up the channel guide and stuff like that and dvr so it doesn't need a fast connection
second I do have beamforming in fact here are the professional setting for the 5ghz band

and the 2.4 band

also yeah only my laptop supports 160mhz but it is important that it does so as the laptop is not going to be wired and I need good speeds from it.

After making those changes check coverage and speeds. Then take note of the location of devices that are getting close and below -70dBm RSSI . These would be the areas that could benefit from having another AP closer to them; wired, range extender or mesh should work.

It would need to be an ax ap right?


also why does it seem to be using channel 153

when I set the control channel to 52?

also does the noise in wireless log mean the overall network's signal strength? Isn't above 80 dBm bad?
sorry If I'm asking a lot of noob questions I'm still learning about all this





I forced it back on channel 52 and I thought everything was working pretty well speeds and range are good but, I noticed that setting the channel to 52 prevents some devices from seeing and connecting to the 5ghz network. Even more strangely it prevents access to certain websites (Facebook for example) too. If I put it back on 153 without changing anything else, immediately those devices that couldn't connect, connect and the previously non-working websites now work ( facebook for example) changing the wireless channel shouldn't have this effect though right?


I am going to set the control channel to auto for now as it's the only way I have been able to get 160mhz and everything else working even if it doesn't have the best range. But this shouldn't be the only way right?

ok so I think I figured out the issues I was having. the thing is channels 52 -64 and 100-140 are dfs channels and I guess some devices don't like that. So I have to use channels that are NOT in that range

 

[Hawk]

ok so I'm not using roaming assist as I usually want all my devices that support 5ghz to stay on that band as usually they get good signal all over the house (direct box is pretty old and its in a cabinet and thus I agree I should prob put it on the 2.4 band it doesn't even really need the speed of 5ghz it just needs to look up the channel guide and stuff like that and dvr so it doesn't need a fast connection
second I do have beamforming in fact here are the professional setting for the 5ghz band
View attachment 32997
and the 2.4 band

View attachment 32998

also yeah only my laptop supports 160mhz but it is important that it does so as the laptop is not going to be wired and I need good speeds from it.



It would need to be an ax ap right?


also why does it seem to be using channel 153

View attachment 32999
when I set the control channel to 52?

View attachment 33000

also does the noise in wireless log mean the overall network's signal strength? Isn't above 80 dBm bad?
sorry If I'm asking a lot of noob questions I'm still learning about all this

Generally when it come to noise, lower is better. In this case what noise is basically anything minus signal, since we can't eliminate noise, we try to reduce it. Example signal from device received is (-60) and noise is (-80) in this case signal to noise ratio would be 20 dbm which is good, however if signal from device is say (-75) and noise is same, that is bad since you only have 5 dbm difference which would make it difficult to decode the data depending on device thus lower rate of transmission.

You can consider analogy of radio, you tune into channel and sometimes you may notice there is overlap of other radio, and depending on how loud other station, you may have difficulty understanding what is being broadcasted. It may be possible that it is so bad that you don't understand anything on that radio channel. Same concept applies to signal and noise on wifi as well. Just remember aim for lowest noise level.

Regarding your second point, channel 52 fall in dfs, which means router must stop using this if it detect radar on this channel. Most likely your router detected radar and move to non dfs channel. Any channel between 48 to 149 is dfs based, also each country set rules which channel can be used, along with power level.

 

[zany130]

Generally when it come to noise, lower is better. In this case what noise is basically anything minus signal, since we can't eliminate noise, we try to reduce it. Example signal from device received is (-60) and noise is (-80) in this case signal to noise ratio would be 20 dbm which is good, however if signal from device is say (-75) and noise is same, that is bad since you only have 5 dbm difference which would make it difficult to decode the data depending on device thus lower rate of transmission.

You can consider analogy of radio, you tune into channel and sometimes you may notice there is overlap of other radio, and depending on how loud other station, you may have difficulty understanding what is being broadcasted. It may be possible that it is so bad that you don't understand anything on that radio channel. Same concept applies to signal and noise on wifi as well. Just remember aim for lowest noise level.

Regarding your second point, channel 52 fall in dfs, which means router must stop using this if it detect radar on this channel. Most likely your router detected radar and move to non dfs channel. Any channel between 48 to 149 is dfs based, also each country set rules which channel can be used, along with power level.

thx a really good explanation. I actually found out about the dfs thing from googling there is a airport nearby so maybe that's why its causing issues for me. The next question I have then is do all channels support the 160 mhz width? from my testing it seems that no as on some channels I get 160mhz on my laptop and on others I don't. So to further refine what channels I should use I need to look for one that is non dfs and supports 160hz?


from a quick google, this would be anything between 36 and 48? and according to @Tucu and this image I found

on the 160hz its all treated as one channel? But that only for the 160hz width right so my other devices will see a diffrence on the diffrent't channels?

 

[Tucu]

The problem with 160Mhz channels in the 5Ghz band it that you only get two full ones(the ones formed by 36-64 and by 100-128) and both are subject to DFS. IIRC to use an 80+80 setup you need to dedicate 2 5Ghz radios and I am not sure if any ASUS AX routers support this.
You can try the two usable 160Mhz channels and see if you are not bumped out by the DFS checks and if they work for you.
Using 160Mhz channels will get much easier once WiFi-6E routers and devices are widely available thanks to the extra 6Ghz channels.

Going back to the extending the network with APs. If you can get Ethernet cables to them, you can go with reasonable priced 2x2 AX (or AC) access points. They are a great value for money and performance combination. If you can't get cables to them, then you have to decide how much performance do you need at those points (and how much money do you want to spend); using Asus AX devices with AiMesh you can pick the numbers of streams (2x2,3x3,4x4) and if you want a dedicated backhaul radio by using tri-band.

 

[MarkyPancake]

The following wireless settings yield the best performance for me across multiple devices on an AC86U, so thought they might be useful to share:

• 2.4 GHz: N only | 20 MHz Bandwidth | Channel 1, 6, or 11
• 5 GHz: N/AC mixed | 80 MHz | Channel 36 or 40
• Professional settings enabled on both bands: AMPDU RTS | Enable WMM | Modulation Scheme set to MCS 7 (802.11n) on 2.4 GHz and MCS 9 (802.11ac) on 5 GHz

With these settings, devices consistently achieve the max speeds of our 200 Mbps down / 20 up service on the 5 GHz Wi-Fi.

 

[zany130]

ok so today I woke up to a strange issue. some sites and apps are working (this site for example) but other's are not so its like I have partial internet. worst of all one of the sites that is not working is the routers config page. this is both over wired and wireless connections

 

[zany130]

ok so today I woke up to a strange issue. some sites and apps are working (this site for example) but other's are not so its like I have partial internet. worst of all one of the sites that is not working is the routers config page. this is both over wired and wireless connections

Seems the problem is unbound I guess it dosn't work on ax86u Also had a simillar issue that was caused by unbound here and another user reported unbound also breaking his router https://www.snbforums.com/threads/webui-broken-on-ax86u.71734/#post-680543

 

[John Fitzgerald]

Seems the problem is unbound I guess it dosn't work on ax86u Also had a simillar issue that was caused by unbound here and another user reported unbound also breaking his router https://www.snbforums.com/threads/webui-broken-on-ax86u.71734/#post-680543

After the recent Entware update(s): Option 3, Stop : then Option 2 Uninstall (you get prompted to keep logs, requires reboot)

Then reinstall.

 

[zany130]

After the recent Entware update(s): Option 3, Stop : then Option 2 Uninstall (you get prompted to keep logs, requires reboot)

Then reinstall.

yeah I did that and still would get the issue, after some more testing it seems its not caused by unbound, it just seems to be caused more likely by unbound idk. However, the culprit seems to be my web browser (Vivaldi)? As I don't seem to get the issue on edge ( to test I went through all the setting pages and checked to see which pages loaded incomplete or broken) didn't seem to happen on edge. I tried resetting the cache, cookies, and history for Vivaldi to see if that helps and made no difference, so idk at least I know I can use edge when I have issues with the webui.


Anyway, I think I figured out how to get the 5ghz band stable (it involved disabling 160mhz I could not get that working reliably probably because I am too close to an airport. I would get cleared for that channel and then randomly throughout the day I would be kicked off that channel, So I just settled with 80mhz.