RT-AX88U extremely slow 2.4Ghz speeds

[ebuyum]

Hey all!

I just upgraded from netgear R7000 to Asus RT-AX88U .

After doing the initial setup (with separate 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands) I started noticing extremely slow performance issues.

When connecting to the 2.4 band, I get download speeds of 2mbit, with upload speeds of ~ 6mbit (for some reason usually upload speeds are higher than download).

I also tried upgrading the firmware to latest beta merlin (386.1_beta2).

In the settings, without any QoS enabled I couldn't figure out any optimal configurations which helped improve the performance.

I'm also using the same channel configurations as my old R7000, and that router had no such issues on the 2.4 band.

As for speed testing, I've tried both the speed test android app as well as iperf 3 between my phone and my PC (using a LAN cable).

It is also important to note that 5Ghz and LAN performance are excellent, its just the 2.4Ghz band for some reason.

Please see attached snippets for my current configuration at the time of writing this:

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[brummygit]

Generally the newer firmware versions offer better WiFi performance on the RT-AX88U - the RMerlin beta you tried is pretty good.

Because you've been swapping between firmware versions it is strongly advised to perform a full factory defaults reset - this can be done from the GUI. The reason for this is because each version has different configuration parameters (some are not seen through the GUI and are used internally) and we need to ensure that they have been initialised properly. If you started on a version without some internal parameters and subsequently upgraded, you may have unpredictable values which cause problems. Therefore you must do the reset after you upgraded to the version of firmware you will run. If you restore saved settings from a file you negate the effect of a factory reset as it will overwrite the defaults.

I've found that a reset to factory defaults then manually configure the minimum wireless parameters necessary to make things work is the best approach on my router. If you don't need 802.11ax WiFi-6 this can be turned off when going through the initial configuration.

Some observations on things you might wish to try:

• You are using channel 9 which sits in the middle of channels 6 and 11. Good practice is to only use the 3 channels 1, 6 or 11 as these are the only ones that don't overlap. If you have neighbours with WiFi you could be on a congested channel and could try alternatives or leave the router to select its own with Auto. Heavily congested areas can cause significant slowdown as your router competes with others on the same channels.
• You have set your Wireless Mode to N only - I'm not sure why you chose this, but I use Auto which works well. You can turn off 802.11ax WiFi-6 separately.
• You could turn off Target Wake Time which is a newer feature and doesn't play well with some legacy clients. I don't think it should be active in your configuration anyway. I have noticed that in earlier firmware this setting doesn't always survive a reboot.
• Multicast rate can be left at auto
• Your modulation scheme is also in line with using 802.11n and could be faster if you change Wireless Mode
• Some people recommend to turn off Universal Beamforming but this is usually if suffering disconnects

 

[ebuyum]

Hey brummygit, thanks for replying!

I'll try those recommended settings, even though from your explanation it seems like some of them relate to client connection rather than pure throughput.

I also forgot to mention that I already did a full reset (using the WPS button in this router's case) after switching over RMerlin.

Thanks!

 

[L&LD]

The settings you're using are ruining your wireless performance. I would recommend you follow the steps below to get to a good/known base. Then, only change one setting at a time, rebooting the router and any client devices used in testing, before verifying that the change was beneficial. Then, change other settings if and as needed/required.

Beta - Asuswrt-Merlin 386.1 Beta is now available

I recently factory reset my AX88U and currently on Beta 2. After manually setting up everything up again (painfully) my router ALWAYS "crashes" if I make changes now. well I just loses internet and I have to end up rebooting it even though some of the changes made by default doesn't require a...

www.snbforums.com

New M&M 2020


If the above doesn't work, you may also want to try the following link to exhaust the possibility of hardware failure too.

Fully Reset Router and Network

 

[brummygit]

Hey brummygit, thanks for replying!

I'll try those recommended settings, even though from your explanation it seems like some of them relate to client connection rather than pure throughput.

I also forgot to mention that I already did a full reset (using the WPS button in this router's case) after switching over RMerlin.

Thanks!

You said that throughput on 5Ghz WiFi and LAN are fine so was working on the assumption that the issue is with your 2.Ghz client connections. Are you thinking that overall throughput of the 2.4Ghz side of the router is poor, or that each 2.4Ghz client is experiencing poor speed.

Have a look and see how the client connections are looking in the Wireless Log on the System Log page - it should give you useful details of signal strength, speed negotiated, streams, bandwidth and wireless standard used, plus a selection of flags. It could help with diagnosis.