To use autochannel or to not, that is the question.

[W4RH34D]

Every once in a while I have very poor wireless performance that is not indicated by the connection speed.

What is going on is usually channel overlap from the different access points going in the setup I have.

I have noticed that if I set all the channels to a static setting and make sure the devices in range of each other do not overlap things work out pretty well. However, my understanding was AUTO took care of this and also will change if a new wireless device starts broadcasting on that same channel nearby.

I'm using an 87u, 56u, and 52u that cover different areas of the house. I'm not sure if the overlap is from these devices or neighbors devices several houses down. I wouldn't think they'd be close enough but their SSID will randomly appear and disappear throughout the day. It is very strange to say the least because one of our rooms is brick and inside the house the other AP can't get signal in there. We had to do a powerline adapter to get wifi in there. But for some reason someone else's SSID can show up. LOL

Anyway, what are yall's thoughts? Leave it on auto channel or set them static?

 

[thiggins]

If you have multiple access points, I would recommend you use manual channel assignment. I don't know about ASUS products specifically, but most consumer routers do auto channel assignment upon power up only.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

Do not use auto channel as the router can only see the radio signals which are being received by the router.
Make your own channel plan for the channels.

Auto channeling will never be better than a healthy brain ......

 

[sfx2000]

Some consumer AP's, if allowed to range freely in Auto, will land in the DFS channels, which generally is a good thing (enough so that Ignition Labs has built a product around that very concept).

Manual selection pretty much cuts out the DFS channels for most folks

 

[RMerlin]

If you have multiple access points, I would recommend you use manual channel assignment. I don't know about ASUS products specifically, but most consumer routers do auto channel assignment upon power up only.

Their Broadcom routers run the acsd daemon in background, so it should in theory regularly readjust. No idea how frequently it rescans or what are the criteria it uses to decide on a channel switch however.

My personal experience with automatic channel has never been positive however. Sometimes it's flat out broken and will sit on channel 6 no matter what, other times it would put you on oddballs such as channel 2 or 10.

 

[sfx2000]

Their Broadcom routers run the acsd daemon in background, so it should in theory regularly readjust. No idea how frequently it rescans or what are the criteria it uses to decide on a channel switch however.

My personal experience with automatic channel has never been positive however. Sometimes it's flat out broken and will sit on channel 6 no matter what, other times it would put you on oddballs such as channel 2 or 10.

Marvel, QC-Atheros - they're pretty good with private drivers, so is Broadcom with their NDA stuff...

Realtek/Ralink(MediaTek) - not so much

GPL drivers - they're all pretty much on the suck, some more than others... this is Marvell's problem at the moment with the *WRT community actually, e.g. the latency issue...

 

[RMerlin]

Marvel, QC-Atheros - they're pretty good with private drivers, so is Broadcom with their NDA stuff...

That RT-AC68U that decided to sit on channel 10 last night failed to impress me...

 

[sfx2000]

That RT-AC68U that decided to sit on channel 10 last night failed to impress me..

Broadcom...