RT-AC88U slow speeds with 384.14

[ss911der]

After flashing to the latest build and doing a factory reset, I noticed the speeds on wired and wireless were significantly slower. Wireless, when on the 5 GHz band and about 15 feet away, I am only getting speeds around 30 Mbps and wired, in the 350 Mbps range. (testing from two different devices).
I would normally get in the 500's wireless and close to 900's wired.
I rebooted the router and the speeds came back, but eventually they get significantly bottlenecked.
The 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz ssid's are different, there's 3 reserved dhcp addresses, 4 port forwards, and QOS bandwidth limiter on one device (not the ones I am testing from). AI protection is also on.
Those are the only settings I customized, which are the same from the previous firmware that was on the router.
Speeds were fine and consistent with the previous firmware, which was 384.10.
The only thing I noticed, and not sure if it's a sign, is CPU 1 reaches 100% when doing a speed test while CPU 2 is around 3%,

 

[sbsnb]

I do not see any issues like you describe on my RT-AC88U. You might need to do a factory reset and manually enter settings. If you do reset, do not import settings.

 

[L&LD]

Did you use different SSIDs after the reset to factory defaults?

 

[ss911der]

All changes were put in manually.
Yes, SSID's for example are Home 2.4 and Home 5 for 2.4ghz and 5ghz

 

[L&LD]

Not that this should make a difference in this case, but I would not use spaces, punctuation (or smiley faces) in SSIDs and/or passwords. I would also have the SSID at least 8 characters (max 16).

 

[ss911der]

Is there some kind of log file I should provide or something else I should be looking for? I might as well not have my phone on Wi-Fi at this point as cellular is faster.

 

[AntonK]

I've been using RMerlin's firmware for years now, through my AC3200 and for the past 2 years my AC88U. I've never, ever had a stability problem. I've never seen drops in wireless or wired throughput performance. Every alpha, every beta, and every final release has been as or more stable than the last. I can't BUY instability from this firmware.

 

[richardeid]

Did you use different SSIDs after the reset to factory defaults?

I've recently been considering switching my 2.4 and 5 GHz bands to the same SSID. Is there some reason I shouldn't?

 

[L&LD]

Is there some reason you should?

 

[ss911der]

Damn it, looks like I am sticking with 384.10. I put in the same settings manually and everything works perfect.

 

[royarcher]

After flashing to the latest build and doing a factory reset, I noticed the speeds on wired and wireless were significantly slower. Wireless, when on the 5 GHz band and about 15 feet away, I am only getting speeds around 30 Mbps and wired, in the 350 Mbps range. (testing from two different devices).
I would normally get in the 500's wireless and close to 900's wired.
I rebooted the router and the speeds came back, but eventually they get significantly bottlenecked.
The 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz ssid's are different, there's 3 reserved dhcp addresses, 4 port forwards, and QOS bandwidth limiter on one device (not the ones I am testing from). AI protection is also on.
Those are the only settings I customized, which are the same from the previous firmware that was on the router.
Speeds were fine and consistent with the previous firmware, which was 384.10.
The only thing I noticed, and not sure if it's a sign, is CPU 1 reaches 100% when doing a speed test while CPU 2 is around 3%,

. I use the same router and one thing I notice with every Merlin update is that for a while, like a couple of days even, I have problems with the router dropping out .I always use new ssids and always do a factory reset after the update.It always settles down after a day or two so it doesn't bother me but I am curious why

 

[RMerlin]

The majority of user-reported wireless complains are tied to either their clients or their environment. Folks, troubleshoot your network rather than systematically blaming it on the firmware. The wireless driver rarely ever get any changes, like 90% of changes are only tweaks to the power tables.

There are a number of posts giving guidelines on this, including a sticky post.

Just because flashing a different firmware has your clients suddenly work correctly does NOT mean the cause was the firmware. Realize that flashing back that old firmware means you also caused your router to reboot along the process, and your clients to disconnect and reconnect. People using Auto channel might very well have ended up on a different channel during that reboot. Bottom line is, often the fix there is not that older firmware you just flashed, but the reboot that was involved with it.

If your 20$ wireless camera bought on Aliexpress has problems connecting, then maybe the problem is the cheap wireless interface in that camera, not the top-of-the-line Broadcom SoC used by your 300$ router.

The last time I ever experienced any router-caused issue with my wifi was back in the RT-AC87U days, when a Quantenna update broke power management with Android devices. Zero problem with the RT-AC88U and RT-AX88U that I've used since then, running through every single new firmware release over the years, including beta code.

Right now using code based on 384_7756 on my RT-AX88U, and zero problem with four wifi clients.

 

[ss911der]

Well something doesn't make sense, as I have tried newer firmware versions aside from the 384.10 that everything works fine with, and the speeds on wired and wireless devices are substantially slower with anything after 384.10 for me. Perhaps it's a default setting on the router that has changed since the 384.10 version... Either way, I just left the configuration the way I wanted it on 384.14, then flashed it back to 384.10 without doing a factory reset as a test and the speeds are back to normal.

 

[RoiDesRois]

Well something doesn't make sense, as I have tried newer firmware versions aside from the 384.10 that everything works fine with, and the speeds on wired and wireless devices are substantially slower with anything after 384.10 for me. Perhaps it's a default setting on the router that has changed since the 384.10 version... Either way, I just left the configuration the way I wanted it on 384.14, then flashed it back to 384.10 without doing a factory reset as a test and the speeds are back to normal.

What version CFE are you running? You may need to upgrade that past 384.10 (I had to).

 

[ss911der]

How do I check this?

 

[Makaveli]

CFE version is on tools - system info tab

 

[ss911der]

Thanks. Using 384.10, the CFE is 3.0.0.0

 

[ss911der]

What CFE should I be running?

 

[krgck]

What CFE should I be running?

My CFE is 3.0.0.2. I'm running 384.14_2 no issues what so ever with ac88u.

 

[ss911der]

Where do I obtain a newer bootloader? I thought it would be integrated into the firmware?