[RT-N66U] Best firmware for 2.4GHz?

[groundnuty]

I've been a proud owner of RT-N66U for past ~1.5year. As long as I did not expect much of it (exept form good range/speed) it worked fine.

Some DNS problems started few months ago after I upgraded my 3.0.0.4.270 asus firmware to something newer. After that I started reading about Asuswrt-Merlin installed the newest possible and it seems to work fine - as far as range/speed even better then asus’s.

Now the problem at hand is:
I've decided to make my wired raspberry pi audio receiver wireless. I have thick walls in my flat so range was never too good. It took much trial/error: buy a good (linux compatibile) wifi adapter (http://wikidevi.com/wiki/ALFA_Network_AWUS036NHA) add a good antenna (LOGILINK WL0091), find a good spot for the antenna etc. All in 2.4 wireless.

After achieving quite a good signal quality I decided to experiment with firmware on the router.
I tried all I could find on:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/bkfq2a6aebq68//Asuswrt-Merlin#myfiles
beginning with .270 based till .374

To my surprise the best connection quality i achieved with old .270. All later models behaved much worse - in terms of signal strength/connection stability/dropped packages etc.

Can anyone help me explain this phenomenon? Help make newest firmware work at least as good sat .270? Recommend router setting for best connection quality.

Thank you very much for any assistance,

 

[mich]

Can anyone help me explain this phenomenon?

First and foremost, if your main concern is 2.4GHz quality, you need a firmware based on the Broadcom SDK 5. That means ASUS Stock .2xx, Merlin <= .32, or the (experimental) sdk5 builds of the newer Merlin firmwares. In theory, all of the above should be more or less on par with the old .270, so it seems a bit odd that they performed worse in your environment. However, when switching between firmwares that use diffferent SDK versions (as you have done in your tests by upgrading from ASUS .270 to the latest stock firmware, and probably again sometime during your test of the Merlin builds), it is extremely important to clear the router's NVRAM and manually re-entering all settings (do not use the settings backup function). If you did not do this, that is probably your explanation, why the quality was worse than expected even with the SDK5-based builds.

I would suggest to install the SDK5-version of the latest Merlin build, clear NVRAM and configure your settings manually. The 2.4GHz WiFi should be comparable to .270, and you will have a recent firmware with security fixes, additional features and improved stability.

 

[wouterv]

In short: stay with 3.0.0.4.270 as long as that is suitable and the best for you.
Versions .271 and .276 are very similar to .270, where .276 is also compatible with the latest router hardware version.
Versions after .270 / .276 are known for either 5 GHz connection issues or 2.4 GHz range issues.
Asus is working on a newer firmware that hopefully solves at least the wireless issues, a new version is expected soon.

 

[episyron]

I am streaming audio from my desktop PC to Raspberry Pi with Pulseaudio. Both ends, RasPi and PC, are connected to RT-N66U (with fw 3.0.0.4.374_720) through wireless. The desktop uses 5GHz band with a Asus USB-N66 adapter and RasPi 2.4GHz band with a D-Link DWA-127 adapter. This setup works now quite well despite one wall to cross, after I switched a power management off from both the adapters, before that high latencies caused all sorts of problems.

 

[groundnuty]

@mich
Thank you for detailed description - I def. now know what to test next.

@wouterv
I share internet with my neighbour, who lives 2 floors under me (the router is placed in my window, so he gets range not through walls but through 'his window' mostly). He reported to me that his speeds vastly improved after I switched to newest Merlin version (anything after .270 / .276 really). Thus fact that my pi works better with 270 was quite surprise.

@episyron
In my case there are ~2 walls (opposite corner of the flat then router). I did experiments with 1 wall (the room next to router). And indeed the newest Merlins firmware with setup I described worked very well.
The challenge began after moving this setup to designated location

My usecase is: live music streaming with MacbookPro(Airfoil) to RasPi(shairport). Shairport nicely reports any retransmissions it has to make or what frames it did not managed to get in time. With all firmwares after .270/.276 the amount of missing frames made any audio experience virtually impossible. With .270 there is an ocasional missing frame (a silent 'crack' in the music), but at least it more a less works.

Having been able to make this setup work almost perfectly. I'm determined to polish it further