RT-AC87R - 5G bandwidth for Apple devices

[M_M]

Jong, I absolutely agree with you, I do not need to know what band I'm on, assuming, like you said, everything is working properly. For me, at this point with this router things are not working perfectly. That is why I also agree with what L&LD said above- once SSIDs are the same you cannot pick and choose and it is more difficult to troubleshoot.

In addition to the fact that this router, unlike my AC-68U, does not like my AirportExpress on 5 GHz, for some reason it is insanely slow on 2.4 GHz. The 68U was slower on 2.4 than on 5 G, maybe due increased traffic - I have 5 IP (g only) cameras and a couple other only g devices, but the difference was not as huge as it is with the 87R. With the 68U I was getting consistent results of about 35 to 43 Mbps down and about 12 Mbps up on 2.4 GHz and 58 to 60 Mbps down, 12 Mbps up on 5GHz. The 87R has the same stats on 5GHz as the 68U, but is ridiculously slow on 2.4GHz. The worst it got was 9.6 Mbps down and 11 Mbps up, yes upstream was faster than downstream, but at times it reaches 16 Mbps down, very rarely 30Mbps range. What could possibly be causing this?

I do not know how smart Apple devices are and if they can consistently pick the fastest route, but unless I can figure out what the problem is with 2.4 GHz, I would rather have the ability to pick the band for my MBP when I'm downloading 100+Mb files.

 

[Jong]

Yep, that's all fair enough. It's certainly easier to control stuff with seperate SSIDs, I have to say I was starting to think I'd need to do the same when an Intel 7260 Windows laptop kept picking 2.4Ghz over 5Ghz. But then I found "prefer 5Ghz" in it's advanced settings and it's very happy now. It can be frustrating how Apple provide almost zero advanced configuration ability, so you get what they give you. Luckily for me, the 3 generations of iPhone and iPad's spanning 5 generations all now (post 4950 and IOS 8.3) seem very well behaved.

You do need to remember, though, using different SSIDs can add its own problems - for example if a device decides it wants to switch between SSIDs (hard to control unless you make it forget the network each time) it will drop the connection hard, when it could more elegantly roam between BSSIDs on what it knows is the same network. I don't think there is any guarantee that a device is less likely to switch SSIDs than to roam between BSSIDs using the same SSID

 

[M_M]

How does the 5 GHz light on your router behave - does it consistently flicker like the 2.4GHz or does it pulsate? Mine pulsates and I do not know if this is normal for this router or if there something wrong with the band. My iPad stays on 5GHz, but it stops working or it goes into some sort of idle state and it cannot wake up.

 

[Jong]

I'll have a look tomorrow. on my router and AP. I've never really paid any attention to the lights. As the 5Ghz radio uses a totally different chipset to the 2.4Ghz radio it is quite possible the LED behaviour is different.

I have heard just one other report of problems like that on 5Ghz with 4950. For most people that kind of problem went away somewhere around 4608 or 4825. I haven't seen it since and I did get it a lot back then. I've so far put it down to a corrupted upgrade, but I could be wrong about that. I had very strange problems where my router would effectively hang with looping problems as soon as I enabled the 5Ghz guest network (only the guest network). This problem survived 3 versions of firmware on 2 routers and then magically vanished after I re-installed the same 4950 firmware with several resets! There are several others who seem to have weird unreproducible problems. I really do believe there is something seriously suspect about this router's ability to reliably reset. It seems it can take several goes and it may be more luck than anything if it works (although I'm sure it works most of the time!).

 

[M_M]

Thanks!

 

[M_M]

$250 router should not have "luck" as one of the features. I guess, I will take advantage of those resets, since they were included free of charge. Thanks again!

 

[fax]

Mine pulsates and I do not know if this is normal.

Yes, its normal and by design.

 

[Jong]

By the way, it's a small thing but, some network tools (I use Net Analyzer Lite) can display your current BSSID. While it doesn't give you any more control you can roam around and see instantly when your iPhone/iPad switches radios. It's even more useful if, like me, you have APs as well as the router.

 

[M_M]

I've reset the router several times, re-installed 4950 with resets two more times and the result is still the same. My Airport Express seems to hold onto 5GHz - the iPad stays on it, but after a short period of time music stops playing. It can still see AE, I can still select it and when I do iPad's speaker gets muted, but no sound is coming from my stereo. Strangely, often I can still browse with Safari on 5GHz although at first I do get a message telling me that I'm not connected to the internet. The only way to re-establish connection with AE with sound is to manually switch the iPad to 2.4GHz. I believe I've tried everything I can think of and I've lost patience - I'm going back to the 68U that had never had a problem with this task. The 87 is going back to the store.
I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread and especially to Jong for sticking with me from the beginning!