Upgraded to RT-AX88U from RT-AC68U: One Device Can't See SSID

[Sharpbarb]

The me and the wife and kids are all working/schooling from home so I thought it would be a great time to mess with the network.

I had an RT-AC68U that was working fine except for some range issues on one side of the house. I replaced that with an RT-AX88U and everything seemed to be fine until we realized this morning that my daughter's laptop can't see the router SSID. It can see many other SSIDs in the area, but not the one broadcast by the new router. Many other devices have no issue.

Her laptop is a hand-me-down and is pretty old. I tried the minimal configuration, changing the SSID, and placing the router in legacy mode. Nothing worked. I looked for new drivers (Realtek RTL8188CE) but the circa 2013 drivers are the newest available.

I swapped back to the old router and the laptop saw and connected immediately.

Any thoughts on what might be going on?

 

[indark]

try turn off wifi6 or 160Mhz

might be the wifi card too old to communicate with the router.

can also try manually pick a channel

it might be worth to buy a new wifi module though

 

[tekrich]

In the 'Wireless' settings turn off 'Enable Smart Connect' and set separate SSIDs for your 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands.

Then see if it will connect to one of them, probably the 2.4Ghz band.

 

[Sharpbarb]

try turn off wifi6 or 160Mhz

can also try manually pick a channel

Tried the above. No effect.

In the 'Wireless' settings turn off 'Enable Smart Connect' and set separate SSIDs for your 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands.

Smart connect was already disabled and each had a different SSID.

I powered both routers at the same time and all of my household devices could see both routers except the her laptop. I installed inSSIDer on her laptop and I can see a variety of SSIDs nearby, but not the AX88U. I logged into both routers on my PC and had both side-by-side, they look to have the same settings for 2.4.

 

[Val D.]

Airtime Fairness may not be compatible with some older 2.4GHz devices.

 

[JohnB_123]

Same channel(s)? Perhaps run a third party tool like Wifi inspector on the laptop to see what the adaptor "sees"....

 

[mindfrost82]

I had the same issue with an older laptop and had to turn off AX mode and now it sees the networks. Once connected, it shows 802.11n on 2.4GHz, so that's probably all it supports. Not sure why enabling AX would make 2.4GHz N not work though.

 

[Sharpbarb]

Airtime Fairness may not be compatible with some older 2.4GHz devices.

It was enabled on the older router, I still tried disabling it but there was no effect.

I had the same issue with an older laptop and had to turn off AX mode and now it sees the networks. Once connected, it shows 802.11n on 2.4GHz, so that's probably all it supports. Not sure why enabling AX would make 2.4GHz N not work though.

AX mode was already disabled.

I tried the follwing, one by one:

Disable the 5GHz radio.
Disable Universal Beamforming
Disable Explicit Beamforming
Disable Airtime Fairness
Modulation Scheme MCS 11 to MCS 7
Preamble Short
Disable Roaming Assistant
Channel Bandwidth from 20 to 20/40
Authentication Method Open

Nothing worked.

 

[Val D.]

Have you tried to delete the saved network on this laptop and re-connect again?
Realtek is not exceptionally good with drivers, I've seen newer ones making things worse. Do some research.

 

[Sharpbarb]

Have you tried to delete the saved network on this laptop and re-connect again?
Realtek is not exceptionally good with drivers, I've seen newer ones making things worse. Do some research.

I tried deleting the network and even reinstalling the drivers for the wifi adapter. No luck.

I setup the old RT-AC68U as a node in an aiMesh and now I can see the SSID for the network. So there is definitely something going on between the radio in the laptop and the RT-AX88U. This will work for now because I can place the old router between the new router and my daughter bedroom, but eventually, after this pandemic passes, the laptop will be heading back to the opposite side of the house. I suppose I can buy a cheap external wifi adapter for the laptop and see if that works.

 

[intr0]

I tried deleting the network and even reinstalling the drivers for the wifi adapter. No luck.

I setup the old RT-AC68U as a node in an aiMesh and now I can see the SSID for the network. So there is definitely something going on between the radio in the laptop and the RT-AX88U. This will work for now because I can place the old router between the new router and my daughter bedroom, but eventually, after this pandemic passes, the laptop will be heading back to the opposite side of the house. I suppose I can buy a cheap external wifi adapter for the laptop and see if that works.

For future reference in regards to that specific driver, if your daughter's laptop happens to be running Linux - and for anyone who may come across this thread who's running Linux and is in need of a working wireless drivers for Realtek NICs :

git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new.git -b extended
cd rtlwifi_new
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe -r <<YOUR WIRELESS DRIVER CODE>>
sudo modprobe <<YOUR WIRELESS DRIVER CODE>>

The link for the repo above is : https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new .

He has a more detailed README for anyone wanting further info.

 

[GHog]

I ran into this before on my Rt-AC68U when i first purchased it back when they came out. This might help here. If you have a SSID longer than 8 characters or has special characters in the SSID, some older WiFi adapters will not see the SSID. For example FRED*24ghz would not be seen because of what i mentioned above. FRED_2.4 is ok because it`s 8 characters or less and the underscore and period are not special.

 

[GHog]

I just too upgraded from the RT-AC68U to the RT-AX88U and so far I have a 3x increase in the performance on the 5ghz band, but i cannot say the 2.4ghz band is improved. Overall the 5ghz band covers the full house and garage now and 2.4ghz is the same as before . I am using the ASUS firmware for now until the Merlin version is released. Router is stable and so far happy with performance. I do have mine sitting on a ACInfinity Airplate S7 which is providing very quit cooling airflow to the bottom of the router. Made a frame from wood I had sitting around and placed the S7 into the frame. Will see how that helps temps when I upgrate to Merlin firmware. So far router is cool to the touch and net even warm. Will start tweaking with the setting over the next week and see if I can improve the 2.4ghz radio performance. I do miss not having Merlin tools to help with tuning.