RT-N66U trouble with newer firmware

[Bobcat00]

I've been running 3.0.0.4_374.35_4-sdk5 for the past 2 years; it works reasonably well. Every time I try to upgrade to newer firmware, I have problems. Today I upgraded to 380.57_0 and clients are dropping off the 5 GHz, and the 2.4 GHz clients have slow/erratic transfers.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could get the new firmware to work reliably at least on 2.4 GHz? Or should I just go back to the 2 year-old sdk5 firmware.

For the 2.4 GHz, I'm running on channel 1, 20 MHz bandwidth, n only, and b/g protection off.

 

[L&LD]

I've been running 3.0.0.4_374.35_4-sdk5 for the past 2 years; it works reasonably well. Every time I try to upgrade to newer firmware, I have problems. Today I upgraded to 380.57_0 and clients are dropping off the 5 GHz, and the 2.4 GHz clients have slow/erratic transfers.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could get the new firmware to work reliably at least on 2.4 GHz? Or should I just go back to the 2 year-old sdk5 firmware.

For the 2.4 GHz, I'm running on channel 1, 20 MHz bandwidth, n only, and b/g protection off.

Have you performed a full reset to factory defaults and then manually and minimally configured the router to secure it and connect to your ISP?

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/no...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573

 

[bbunge]

The logical thing to do is a factory reset and reconfigure the router manually. Try leaving the 2.4 GHZ alone except for setting to 20 MHZ and turning off WPS. Leave the 5 GHZ at the settings the router chooses.If you still have issues put the router in recovery mode and upload the firmware with the Asus Recovery tool. This could take some time but may be worth it.

 

[Bobcat00]

The logical thing to do is a factory reset and reconfigure the router manually. Try leaving the 2.4 GHZ alone except for setting to 20 MHZ and turning off WPS. Leave the 5 GHZ at the settings the router chooses.

That's what I did (although WPS is on). I have all my settings written down, and I did a factory reset and manually reentered everything. I even told the Win8.1 laptop and the iPhones to "forget" the network and then reconnected.

The 2.4 GHz-only laptop sometimes transfers at 3 Mbps, other times at 40 Mbps. With the sdk5 firmware, I pretty much always got at least 40 Mbps, sometimes 70 Mbps.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Try using John's fork. It's particularly good for the N66U because it uses an older wireless driver.

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/fork-update-for-374-43-available-v16e1.18914/

 

[Bobcat00]

So I tried 380.57 at 3 AM today. I got very fast speeds; faster than with the old sdk5 firmware. But one speed test just crapped-out entirely. I'd rather have 80% of the speed with 100% reliability.

What are the differences in the wireless drivers between:

• 3.0.0.4_374.35_4-sdk5 (I think this is from late 2013)
• 380.57_0
• "John's fork" 374.43_2-16E1j9527

 

[johtaja]

I suggest clearing nvram from cli, not just press the button in gui. I once got problem with wireless which didn't fixed with factory reset button nor physical reset button, but "mtd-erase -d nvram" and powercycling from physical powerbutton got it fixed.

For 5GHz problems, I had them also when those regulatory modes (d and h) came to asus routers, my comps with Intel wifi cards dropped all the time. When I turned regulatory mode off, all worked flawless. Then they became forced in EU, so I had to modify my CFE to get it off. But after that, no problems.

 

[Bobcat00]

Due to complaints of other family members about slow speeds and dropped connections, I went back to the old sdk5 firmware. Ugh. More pain. Restoring the old config file didn't work (no errors, it just didn't change anything), so I had to reconfigure everything by hand again. So between that and setting up 8 wireless devices, it took an hour.

Now my Win8.1, 2.4 GHz laptop will only download at less than half the speed than before I started this whole exercise yesterday. It uploads much faster, so I don't know what could cause that. I told Windows to forget the network and reconnected, but it's still slow.

 

[johtaja]

Did you try "mtd-erase -d nvram", powercycling and then restoring old config? Because there are something in nvram that don't get wiped in any other way of resetting. I think you didn't, and there was some leftovers from newer fw that prevented old config to work.

 

[joegreat]

Did you try "mtd-erase -d nvram", powercycling and then restoring old config?

Arghh! Never restore old settings after factory reset! Otherwise you write back all the wrong NVRAM settings and you are back on the point where you started before the NVRAM reset!

You need to reconfigure manually after a reset - or use John's NVRAM save/restore tool to only save the USER settings but no SYSTEM settings!

 

[ColinTaylor]

Arghh! Never restore old settings after factory reset! Otherwise you write back all the wrong NVRAM settings and you are back on the point where you started before the NVRAM reset!

Normally, Yes. But in this case he's restoring from the backup he took from his old firmware (the version he's just re-installed). So as he cleared the NVRAM immediately prior to the restore he should be back to exactly where he was when the backup was taken. In theory.

 

[johtaja]

Arghh! Never restore old settings after factory reset! Otherwise you write back all the wrong NVRAM settings and you are back on the point where you started before the NVRAM reset!

You need to reconfigure manually after a reset - or use John's NVRAM save/restore tool to only save the USER settings but no SYSTEM settings!

Read related posts with thought, like ColinTaylor did! No offend.

 

[JohnOCFII]

I upgraded my RT-N66R from 378.55 to 380.57 12 days ago. I support between 18-22 devices, with a mix of wired TiVo's, a Canon MF printer, Macintosh and Windows computers, along with wireless cameras, Macintosh laptops,web cameras, iPhones, iPad and Nexus 7 Android tablets (some at 2.4 GHz, some at 5.0GHz). While I have not done any particular performance tests, all appears normal for me.

 

[KevTech]

The RT-N66U has the best wireless performance with the sdk5 drivers.

Yes, the sdk6 drivers solved issued but it was at the expense of performance.

If the router would have been initially released with the sdk6 drivers it would have failed big time in sales.

 

[DaBiGoReO]

The RT-N66U has the best wireless performance with the sdk5 drivers.

Yes, the sdk6 drivers solved issued but it was at the expense of performance.

If the router would have been initially released with the sdk6 drivers it would have failed big time in sales.

THIS^...

I re-structered my home network after setting up a pfsense firewall/router and put my N66R in AP mode. The old SDK5 firmware made a huge difference for me in wireless performance. Never changing it from that. ***DISCLAIMER*** As RMerlin has stated many times, using old firmware with known security holes is always a risk. This does not include John's fork as he patches in all the security updates.