RT-AC56u first impressions

[Lost Dog]

Considering I use a ssh tunnel or openvpn quite often I elected to go with the AC56u in order to gain the more powerful chipset. I had a N66R for about a week but the AC56u was ~$10 cheaper than the N66R so that went back and the AC56u was on the doorstep yesterday.

Either router was a huge upgrade from the WRT54GL I was using.

Wired the thing is great. A quick test from work with no ssh tunnel gave me 10Mb/s up and 10Mb/s down. Opening a ssh tunnel and using foxy proxy in Firefox resulted in 10Mb/s down and 3Mb/s up (remember this is forwarding all internet traffic from my work computer to my router at home). With the WRT54GL I'd get about 1.5Mb/s down and ~0.90Mb/s up.

As soon as I get a chance I'll set up openvpn and do some testing on that as well.

Wireless leaves much to be desired. I only have N devices and no AC devices to test with. The N66R had the huge advantage here with the three external antennas. I'm running Merlin's firmware 3.0.0.4_374.37 on the AC56u. If I'm line of site and within about 10' of the router I max out my 35Mb/s (up and down) FIOS connection while running a speed test. As soon as you put a wall or a floor between you and the router it drops to about 15Mb/s down and 20Mb/s up (either 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz). Put two or more walls and that drops to single digits (1.5Mb/s or lower) and most of the time the speed test fails part way through. With the N66R I got ~10Mb/s even at the worst locations. In fact, I still had a usable signal sitting out in my car.

According to inssider my neighborhood is not too crowded on the 2.4Ghz band and I selected a channel that overlaps with three detectable (about 1/8 power of my signal) other routers (everyone in my neighborhood crowds the upper end as opposed to the channel 3 I selected). I'm the only 5Ghz access point in my area. Wide open band for me!

I can try and play with where I have the router located but I'm not sure how much that will help. Overall I'm very happy with the wired performance but wireless is really miserable...

 

[sinshiva]

i'm getting one of these myself next week for the same reasons you had, though with my 10/768 connection, i'm not actually expecting a significant performance increase from the n66, with openvpn. i already planned on keeping the n66 as a dedicated AP so i could wallmount into position, while i tucked the ac56 away somewhere. gonna have to add a new piece of furniture somewhere since the ac56 isn't wallmountable, but it's hard to pass up the hardware it offers for the price.

i wish centurylink would give me more upload. i think the highest i can go is something like 25/2 at my location, bleh. the one thing i miss about my cable connection, 50/10 which actually gave me more like 65/12

 

[L&LD]

Try these settings to see if things improve on your RT-AC56U.

Wireless mode Auto (both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands).

Do Not select the B/G protection box (2.4GHz).

2.4GHz Band: Use only Channel 1, 6, or 11 (try them all - no matter what inssider says). Using other channels guarantees you're getting interference from multiple sources and from multiple channels.

2.4GHz Band: 20GHz bandwidth 'only'.

2.4GHz and 5GHz Band: Short Preamble.

2.4GHz and 5GHz Band: Set TX power to 100mW.


Lastly - see if changing the location (even slightly, by inches) or the orientation of the router helps to cover your home better.

 

[ikoul]

Since your 5ghz band is clear, that'll probably end up giving you better throughput in most situations. As far as your channel choice, when you say 3 overlapping networks do you mean they're on the same channel as you or overlap halfway (like they're on channels 1 and 6)? Because overlap from other channels is usually terrible for throughput, even if your signal overpowers your neighbors by a lot (that's what forced me to pretty much forget about using 2.4ghz aside from testing; too many neighbors with bad channel settings and using 40mhz mode).

 

[Lost Dog]

Since your 5ghz band is clear, that'll probably end up giving you better throughput in most situations. As far as your channel choice, when you say 3 overlapping networks do you mean they're on the same channel as you or overlap halfway (like they're on channels 1 and 6)? Because overlap from other channels is usually terrible for throughput, even if your signal overpowers your neighbors by a lot (that's what forced me to pretty much forget about using 2.4ghz aside from testing; too many neighbors with bad channel settings and using 40mhz mode).

Attached is my situation... I think you can guess which is mine... Yesterday when I was playing around there was more people showing on channel 6. Maybe I need to make a switch...

The suggestions made previously helped out a huge amount. Increased the speed by about 15Mb/s measured from the same location!

 

[L&LD]

Hey, glad you saw such a good improvement!

Just curious, did you try channels 6 and 11?

Just seems like inssider indicates that channel 11 will be the best channel.

The higher numbered channels are almost always the ones that work the best for me.

 

[Lost Dog]

Hey, glad you saw such a good improvement!

Just curious, did you try channels 6 and 11?

Just seems like inssider indicates that channel 11 will be the best channel.

The higher numbered channels are almost always the ones that work the best for me.

As of right now I'm looking at inssider and I have about 7 different AP's sitting on top of 11. Only 1 AP at 1. I'll play around with different channels and speed tests but from a congestion standpoint i think I'm at the best spot right now.

Still huge improvement!

 

[L&LD]

The improvement is huge - but if it can be better simply by trying it, why not?

Curious what you find works best.