RT-N66U firmware 3.0.0.4.374.720 released

[SN_]

I wonder if this has anything to do with the law suit by Netgear and now Asus has lowered the radio power to comply with Fcc law. This is somthing i feared might happen. Ofcourse nobody can be sure.

I don't think so.
1) Here in Germany the device had already a strict limit for radio power in prior versions.
2) Compared with 33-beta1 the tx power of version 374.720 is equal to 5-10 mW. Or with other words the signal strength of my neighbours router is at the same or even higher level than from my own router just 3 meters away.

 

[wouterv]

It is difficult in wireless land. In crowded areas it is good that wireless devices (routers and accesspoints) are "factory" limit in transmitter power (by what ever applicable law). Otherwise "everyone" would tune up their power setting to the maximum, making one big wireless mess in the neighborhood.
In more deserted places it would be nice to have the freedom to increase the power setting to get coverage on the (usual) larger properties.
We must keep in mind that Wifi was invented to give wireless network access in a limited range, usually one room. It makes no sense to try to cover a few acres of property or larger houses with one single wireless accesspoint or router. There are other ways to give wireless coverage in larger areas.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

While i do agree that if everybody cranked the power to full it would cause issues in populated areas but at the same time people have become use to the extended range these routers offer and is alot of the reasons i purchased it like many others. Now until this lawsuit is over none of us even know if it has any merit but it would make sence that if Asus knows the power is out of spec they would release a firmware to right it. The out come of the suit will be interesting. I for one have never owned a router that has such a great signal all over my home like the Asus brands but that could also be do to the external antennas they use. Just my 2 cents...

 

[SN_]

As said, here in Germany the device already had a strict power limit and was never kind of an 'extended range' router. But with firmware 374.720 it has become a useless wireless router to me.
Maybe i should through it away and ask my neighbour for his passwd

 

[bluepoint]

After upgrading to 3.0.0.4.374.720 i noticed that signal strenght for 2.4GHz is about 10-12dB weaker than before. I am not sure about 5GHz but it seems to be unchanged.

I made some tests and what i can tell you is that tx power setting for 2.4GHz (haven't checked 5Ghz) is totally broken. There is no difference in signal strength between 1mW power setting or 100mW at all. After moving back to Merlin 33-beta1 i checked power setting again and both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz work just fine.

This makes 3.0.0.4.374.720 totally useless for me

How did you measure the transmission power to determine the strength?

 

[PrivateJoker]

I don't think so.
1) Here in Germany the device had already a strict limit for radio power in prior versions.
2) Compared with 33-beta1 the tx power of version 374.720 is equal to 5-10 mW. Or with other words the signal strength of my neighbours router is at the same or even higher level than from my own router just 3 meters away.

Can you see channels 149-165 on 5ghz? If so, you should try setting your channel manually to one of those.

I tried looking it up and got conflicting info on if those channels are restricted or not in Germany. . .

 

[SN_]

How did you measure the transmission power to determine the strength?

I used my notebock to make a compare not a absolute measurement. The percent value given by another stationary client showed the same difference in signal strength.

 

[SN_]

Can you see channels 149-165 on 5ghz? If so, you should try setting your channel manually to one of those.

I tried looking it up and got conflicting info on if those channels are restricted or not in Germany. . .

Those channels are not visible.

 

[bluepoint]

I used my notebock to make a compare not a absolute measurement. The percent value given by another stationary client showed the same difference in signal strength.

I'm looking at the mW power, how did you determine the strength? I agree the signal is a little bit weaker in this firmware however, after using it a while the link score(quality) is pretty good(92) using inSSIDer. I can live with that as long as it's stable.

 

[SN_]

I'm looking at the mW power, how did you determine the strength? I agree the signal is a little bit weaker in this firmware however, after using it a while the link score(quality) is pretty good(92) using inSSIDer. I can live with that as long as it's stable.

Well i did not measure any power in mW or whatever. Just used the Wireless - Professionell tab of the web interface where i entered several values betwen 1 and 100 for Tx-power (stated as mW by ASUS). With 374.720 there was no difference in signal strength visible at client side.
The given value of 5-10mW is a result of a compare with 33-beta1 where entering that value gave a similar signal strength on client side as for any value with 374.720. Hope that answers your question.

 

[nnike]

Slower speed

I registered to SNB because I see that it's more active than the official ASUS forum.

For me the latest firmware is a disaster. The 2.4 Ghz speed is only 10% of the speed that I usually get. File transfer from my PC to my Synology NAS is so slow, we hare talking about around 800kb/sec.

I did a test first with my personal setting and after that with default setting and I'm clearing the nvRam before and after each update.

Now I'm back to the previous FW that has been removed from ASUS website:
FW_RT-N66U_3.0.0.4.374_2013-08-14 - build 257

I'm just wondering....why all this trouble with these firmware. I'm mean ASUS wasn't established yesterday.

 

[bluepoint]

Well i did not measure any power in mW or whatever. Just used the Wireless - Professionell tab of the web interface where i entered several values betwen 1 and 100 for Tx-power (stated as mW by ASUS). With 374.720 there was no difference in signal strength visible at client side.
The given value of 5-10mW is a result of a compare with 33-beta1 where entering that value gave a similar signal strength on client side as for any value with 374.720. Hope that answers your question.

Ok thanks that's good enough, I'm just curious.

 

[SN_]

The bad guy here is mainly Broadcom with their closed source drivers. To fix some problems with 5GHz Asus updated to a newer SDK from Broadcom. Looks to me as if by doing so 2.4GHz is now partly broken. Asus should have done better QA on this driver...

 

[bluepoint]

The bad guy here is mainly Broadcom with their closed source drivers. To fix some problems with 5GHz Asus updated to a newer SDK from Broadcom. Looks to me as if by doing so 2.4GHz is now partly broken. Asus should have done better QA on this driver...

I'm not sure if 2.4GHz is broken, RT-AC66U with SDK6 has been measured weaker signal than SDK5 in 66U, now that SDK6 is used with 66U we are seeing the same result. The weaker signals is probably a result of being compliant, I don't know.

 

[SN_]

I'm not sure if 2.4GHz is broken, RT-AC66U with SDK6 has been measured weaker signal than SDK5 in 66U, now that SDK6 is used with 66U we are seeing the same result. The weaker signals is probably a result of being compliant, I don't know.

Well, who knows. What i do see here (as far as i can trust the devices) is as follows. R66U with SDK6 has a significant weaker 2.4GHz radio power than any of my other WiFi devices (PC, laptop, TV, relay, ...). Even my eBook reader has now a higher signal level than the router... thats quite strange to me.

 

[bluepoint]

That's what I see, weaker signal but all my clients still are receiving it in full bars. The difference as far as I see is, before, I can use my iphone one block away now it's half block. Inside my house which is not big, although the signal is slightly weak, I get full bars on all clients.

 

[PrivateJoker]

The bad guy here is mainly Broadcom with their closed source drivers. To fix some problems with 5GHz Asus updated to a newer SDK from Broadcom. Looks to me as if by doing so 2.4GHz is now partly broken. Asus should have done better QA on this driver...

I don't think this is a closed source open source problem. Broadcom has been one of the top producing fabless semiconductor companies in the world for over a decade, I don't think they, nor any competitor, can flip a switch and start open sourcing the development of their SoC & radios and the drivers that runs them.

Maybe Nvidia will open source their GPU development and drivers as well, and Qualcom all the code that runs their chips in all our phones? That doesn't make any sense. Because they are huge global companies with vast lineups of product doesn't make the companies "bad guys with their closed source drivers."

Open source software is great, but fabless semiconductor driver development - I don't see the connection.

 

[RMerlin]

I don't think this is a closed source open source problem. Broadcom has been one of the top producing fabless semiconductor companies in the world for over a decade, I don't think they, nor any competitor, can flip a switch and start open sourcing the development of their SoC & radios and the drivers that runs them.

Maybe Nvidia will open source their GPU development and drivers as well, and Qualcom all the code that runs their chips in all our phones? That doesn't make any sense. Because they are huge global companies with vast lineups of product doesn't make the companies "bad guys with their closed source drivers."

Open source software is great, but fabless semiconductor driver development - I don't see the connection.

The problem with Broadcom is they don't really cooperate with open-source as much as other SoC developers might. Heck, they are so secretive, that even Asus doesn't have the source code to the CTF module. Only Broadcom themselves does.

 

[SN_]

The problem with Broadcom is they don't really cooperate with open-source as much as other SoC developers might. Heck, they are so secretive, that even Asus doesn't have the source code to the CTF module. Only Broadcom themselves does.

Thanks for clarification

 

[sm00thpapa]

I noticed in the professional wireless settings if you hover over the tx power it now states that 100 MW is the max you can set it. Default is 80 so you think if you set it to 100 it would help with range and throughput?