TL-WDR3600 signal strength issues

[ca_steve]

Time for the lurking to end.

I've got a TL-WDR3600 in my home office on the 2nd floor. It's main wireless use is backhaul for my T-Mobile phone (SGS4). Unfortunately, it disconnects all the time unless I am in the office or line of sight to the office. I loaded Wifi Analyzer onto the phone and am seeing -37 to -42dBm on 2.4GHz and -49 to -57dBm on 5GHz with the phone sitting on the desk a few feet from the router. Two interior walls away and this drops to an average of -69dBm and -82dBm, respectively.

I moved the router to an open space 8ft up in the room, updated the firmware, and disassembled/assembled the external antenna. Now seeing -55dBm (2.4GHz) and -58 dBm (5GHz) in the same room, -65 and -80 two wall away, and -65 and -75 downstairs.

Granted, this is just a phone app with uncertain accuracy, but aren't these signal strength numbers abnormally low?

Other bits of info:
- My 2.4GHz and 5Ghz channels are uncluttered
- A neighbor 100' away has similar signal strength as my 2.4GHz channel when I am downstairs (maybe 20' from the router).

 

[KGB7]

Could be faulty router, could be your house is old and has walls made out of brick instead of dry wall.

Set your router outdoors where there is no walls and see if you still get good signal at same distance. If you do, then your house is at fault, other wise the router is faulty.

Place the router on top floor or middle floor of the house. Do no place the router in the basement.

 

[azazel1024]

At least in part, being below the router means you are outside of the optimal gain on the antennas, so no suprise you are picking up similar signal strength from your neighbor pretty far away. Are you sure it is 100ft though? 100ft and two exterior walls is a lot to still be getting in the -60db range. My nearest neighbor is around 150-200ft away, depending on where their router is in their house and the strongest network I can pick up within my house is around -85db (4 total networks, 3 on one side of the house, 1 on the other side of the house, strongest hits -85dB, most are between -88 and -95dB).

I realize I am further away, but open air doesn't do a whole lot to attenuate signal strength. Inverse square rule and dB being a log function means being twice as far away (200 versus 100ft) should mean signal strength dropping to a quarter of what it was at the closer distance. dB log function means a signal strength reduction of 6dB at 200ft versus 100ft.

As for same floor and signal that low, what kind of walls?

Lastly, I've heard of a lot of issues with the WND3600.

Oh, actually lastly, what 5GHz channel are you on? Use the higher channels on 5GHz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-NII

Only channels 149 and above allow 1W operation. I am unclear on channel 140, as it overlaps both the 250mw and 1w operation ranges. Probably is 250mw.

This sucks in a big way because it means that there is effectively 100MHz of 5GHz where you can do "full power" Tx and the rest is all power limited. There might be 120MHz depending on how the channel selection is done (because under Channel 149, you have 20MHz of frequency before you hop down to 250mw limitations).

So an 802.11ac 80MHz router basically takes the entire chunk. A 160MHz router has to run at reduced power, because there is NO 160MHz chunk anywhere that is 1W.

The difference between running on the lower channels that are 250mw limited and the 1w channel is around 6dB of signal strength.

Though, it might not be that much of a realizable increase as I am unclear if that is radio power, or relating to radition emission strength (which may be a seperate number and has a hard cap, no matter how powerful your radio is).

 

[ca_steve]

Thanks for your comments. I messed around with the router's wireless settings and found:
- 5GHz: although I can set the Tx output to "low", "medium", or "high", there is zero difference in the received power, both for a lower channel, like 40 or a higher channel like 161. It's a fake button
- Even though there is no other 5GHz traffic seen, the recvd power when set to channel 40 is 5-6dB higher than for channel 161. I also shifted the 2.4GHz down a few channels to offset the oddly strong yet far away neighbor and picked up a few dB rcvd power there as well.

My router is centrally located on the 2nd of two floors. Going to mess around with antenna orientation next as well as play with some other android apps that have SNR and link speed.

BTW, the neighbor with the oddly high signal is closer to 150-200ft away. Both homes are of modern construction with wood frame and stucco...and stucco uses chicken wire over the wood frame for it's matrix. Considering chicken wire has ~1 inch mesh and 2.4GHz is ~5.4 inch wavelength, it's kind of baffling that her signal is so strong.