Wi-Fi Signal Strength RT-AC86U v RT-AX88U

[L&LD]

But, @Hawk, surely with -55 dBm you still have excellent signal and full throughput though?

 

[Hawk]

But, @Hawk, surely with -55 dBm you still have excellent signal and full throughput though?

Throughput is indeed ideal. However signal is less than idle, with 384.15 I have bad signal in other parts of house, mostly in basement and outdoor in backyard. I can use more access point but that would be different topic altogether.

 

[L&LD]

@Hawk, possibly you can give an example location of less signal with less throughput?

Sorry, just trying to see what actual issues this causes. My home is not bigger than the range of the RT-AX88U so do not see this at all.

 

[Kingp1n]

@Hawk, possibly you can give an example location of less signal with less throughput?

Sorry, just trying to see what actual issues this causes. My home is not bigger than the range of the RT-AX88U so do not see this at all.

L&LD, do you use AIMesh or is the AX88U enough to cover your whole house? I just sold my AC86U and upgraded to the AX88U. I have an older AC68R that I havent used in awhile but I wasnt sure if I should run it as a node. I tried in the past and my gaming would lag alot with the node (wirelessly connected via 5ghz). My xbox would via hardwired to the node, and the node was connected wirelessly to the AC86U back then. However, you could not game at all due lag spikes. I contacted asus and they told me that since the node was connected wirelessly to the main router, the xbox had to go thru too much interference than connecting the xbox directly to the main router (wireless of course).

Asus response:

"The key thing with performance of AiMesh or any MESH system is to minimize the number of wireless hoops to reach your destination, provided there is sufficient bandwidth to deliver the throughput needed. Based on the info provided, I can only imagine that you have moved from single hoop (router <-- wireless -->Device) to two hoops (router<--wireless-->node1<--wireless-->node 2), which do have chances of introducing delay. You can check if your node happens to be more than one hoop from the router by checking in the router WiFi log, and see if the MAC address from both routers are in there for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz band. If yes, then they are both from the main router. If no, then one is behind the second router, and that will likely to cause delay. Based on your description, are your XBOX Ones connected to the first floor node instead of ground floor node? If that is the case, I think we have an answer already.

If you follow the above settings to spread out the nodes, to make the AiMesh nodes more like a star network, then the performance can be assured. Just a word of advice with setting up AiMesh or any Mesh system. As long as coverage is sufficient, less is always better than more, as this reduces the complexity of the network while minimizing chances of creating interference in your own home.

Hope this helps."

 

[Makaveli]

Update your sig still shows you are using the AC86U.

And agree with what Asus told you.

Any devices where you care about latency and performance(gaming) should be wired to the network.

 

[eastavin]

All well and good, ...

..Asus have indicated to me they changed something with MU-MIMO in this release because 'it wasn't working correctly', so I'd put money on them having screwed it up in their attempts to fix MU-MIMO.

I have not followed much about mu-mimo since the router industrys' disastrous introduction of this feature. As recently as 2018 the feature was still not working as intended on 5Ghz band of consumer routers meaning it was bug ridden on most of the products out there a consumer would buy. I realize ax is supposed to offer it on 2.4 GHz but by removing an antenna and installing a mismatched cable in a tuned array you have now pretty well disabled things like diversity and mu-mimo and whatever as these all involve complicated mathematical calculations in conjunction with known equipment parameters/timing... You may have also disabled them in the 5 Ghz band if the stick you chose to remove is serving both wi-fi bands for reception and analyzing feature functionality.

Then there is the issue that mu-mimo router feature has no benefit unless your wireless devices support 2.4 Ghz ax mu-mimo. Unless you just bought your wireless devices from a manufacturer that clearly states they have a fully functioning 2.4 Ghz mu-mimo firmware and has been tested along with an asus ax this was just an interesting discussion.

A nice $5-$10 router of yester year used as a switch/ap from a clearance or secondhand store can do what your shed needs, and the antennas on it will even work properly

 

[Hawk]

@Hawk, possibly you can give an example location of less signal with less throughput?

Sorry, just trying to see what actual issues this causes. My home is not bigger than the range of the RT-AX88U so do not see this at all.

My situation is bit unique, since construction material used to build my house is not really what I will call wifi friendly. Example between basement I have brick construction and materials which is used to dampen sound, same principle applies to outer wall of my home which really attenuate wifi signal.

 

[Ninko]

Has there been any developments regarding this problem?

 

[Phil Outram]

Has there been any developments regarding this problem?

Unfortunately not, Asus have been about as useful as a chocolate teapot making me jump through hoops flashing firmware back and forth, providing logs etc when they already reproduced the fault themselves. They even admitted to doing something with mimo that seems to have broken things but now they seem to be just skirting around the problem and putting up barriers.

I know I said I wouldn't give in but to be perfectly honest with both myself and the wife having to work from home now due to the whole coronavirus lock down I just can't afford to have the constant disruption it causes to keep reseting things.

I've since purchased an RT-AX56U to act as an aimesh node so it's ultimately no longer an issue for me even if it is somewhat irritating.

 

[Ninko]

Unfortunately not, Asus have been about as useful as a chocolate teapot making me jump through hoops flashing firmware back and forth, providing logs etc when they already reproduced the fault themselves. They even admitted to doing something with mimo that seems to have broken things but now they seem to be just skirting around the problem and putting up barriers.

I know I said I wouldn't give in but to be perfectly honest with both myself and the wife having to work from home now due to the whole coronavirus lock down I just can't afford to have the constant disruption it causes to keep reseting things.

I've since purchased an RT-AX56U to act as an aimesh node so it's ultimately no longer an issue for me even if it is somewhat irritating.

I can't say as I blame you, ASUS has picked a terrible time for such a problem, given that most are now working from home.

 

[zackattack784]

Same issue with poor 2.4ghz range on the latest firmware. I noticed today when I went to do some work in my shed where I can usually only pick up 2.4ghz. Terrible signal. Went back to 384.14 and all was good again. inSSIDer also confirmed the signal was stronger once reverting back to older firmware. Hoping ASUS fixes it soon.

 

[admiral2145]

I went from a rt-ac68u to a rt-ax88u and the signal is far far superior on the 2.4 and 5ghz.... Not just the signal the throughput is phenomenal on beta 3 now of version 16.

Sent from my PH-1 using Tapatalk

 

[Maghook]

No difference here. I try to live with this issue and hope for the best: changes in the SDR portion of the wireless driver regarding the 2,4GHz radio operation with the (seems to be affected?) Broadcom BCM43684. I have also seen complaints about this issue here from RT-AX11000 owners (which by the way: surprise surprise also uses 4x4:4 BCM43684 for 2,4G and 5G radio).

So in my view and in terms of the disappointing experience @Phil Outram (thank you very much) has had with ASUS support, they won't do anything about it anymore. Perhaps a solution will be found by coincidence in the future that we do not know. Those affected will simply look individually for other solutions/workarounds (e.g. buying additional mesh nodes, returning it or accepting it (for now)).

Sure, not all AX88U/AX11000 owners are complaining about (are affected by?) this issue as most probably don't even know about it/could identify it or simply don't care. Someones also compare apples to pears (e.g. misleading radio range vs. throughput discussion). This special thingy is primarily about given radio range on 2,4G band proven to be different on different firmware (wireless driver) releases on the excact same model. If you are personally not in a situation where you are really operating at the 2,4 GHz range edge with a former good performing router (e.g. AC86U) under this circumstances, where you only swap one for the other at the exact same location and environment you probably won't notice the difference. In this sense, I can accept others saying that this is a very special situation that does not necessarily apply to everyone else.

 

[mobileineurope]

I changed from RT-AC87U (384.13_x) to RT-AX88U (384.15, 384.16_Bx) and I also noticed weaker 2.4 GHz signal. I used to operate two devices on the edge of signal coverage - my Tesla in the driveway and my IPhone 11 Pro in the bedroom. Both of these devices were definitely weaker in connection after the router upgrade. The Tesla now runs purely on 3G network (which OK) and the IPhone 11 Pro runs 5 GHz AX, which is actually better than 2.4 GHz AC on the RT-AC87U. So no real problems at the moment - only it would be nice to get the car back on the 2.4 GHz, so I hope it can be fixed.

This may be a long shot, but could the problems be related to the USB 3.0 ports in the RT-AX88U? The reason why I suggest this is that I did have a problem with USB 3.0 and the RT-AC87U. In that model the USB 3.0 is on the front and the USB2.0 in the back. At some point I had a hard drive connected to the 3.0 port and I saw degraded 2.4 GHz performance. When I configured the port to operate as a usb 2.0 port - signal went back up again. I believe that USB 3.0 operates in the same frequencies as 2.4 GHz - and that was the problem. I noticed that the USB 3.0 on the RT-AC87U is placed rather awkwardly on the front - maybe to keep it as far from the antennas as possible?

Now the RT-AX88U has two USB 3.0 ports of which one also is on the front and one in the back. What I suggest is that if ASUS has changed something in the configuration or programming of these USB ports, maybe it affects the 2.4 GHz in the same way as I saw on my old router? It may even be different on the four antennas since the USB modules in the router will have different distances to the antennas? I you have not tried it - maybe try to change both ports to operate as USB 2.0?

I do not have time to test this at the moment myself - too much work

 

[ollimoe]

There is no change in signal strength on my AX88U between 384.15 and 384.16_b3 as the wireless driver is the same - according to Merlin closed source. Unless Broadcom/Asus do not fix the driver I have no hope the situation will get any better. Thanks @Phil Outram for all his supportive work.

 

[Maghook]

[...]
This may be a long shot, but could the problems be related to the USB 3.0 ports in the RT-AX88U?
[..]

In the past there were indeed some issues with the first ASUS routers (could be around the time of the first release of the AC68U ?) which have had USB 3.0 ports. Formerly these ports did not have the necessary/correct physical shielding which prevents the interference on the 2,4G band. Therefore ASUS added a configuration setting for downgrading these ports to USB 2.0 operation by software which helped a lot but also severely degrades the throughput performance of connected hard drives.

Nowadays this should be no more of a problem (the correct shielding of these 3.x ports). Still you have also the option to downgrade these to 2.0 Operation. At the end this doesn't matter in my observations concerning the 2,4 coverage issue of the AX88U. (As I do not use USB-ports at all, I switched them by default to 2.0.) Also you could try 384.13 release of ASUSWRT-Merlin and see yourself that 2,4 has "magically" better radio coverage (at least at the RSSI value on the client or router side).

 

[Frankflash]

There is no change in signal strength on my AX88U between 384.15 and 384.16_b3 as the wireless driver is the same - according to Merlin closed source. Unless Broadcom/Asus do not fix the driver I have no hope the situation will get any better. Thanks @Phil Outram for all his supportive work.

email jack Cheng asus rep and ask him if he can find out any thing

 

[Maghook]

Edit: source added
---
Don't want to push this any further as this is about the AX88U's mediocre 2,4G radio coverage.
Just a quick note in these WiFi6(E) dominated days to those out there who still rely on good oldschool performing 2,4G long range operation: according to Dong (https://dongknows.com/asus-rt-ax88u-review/) the AC86U outperforms others especially at 2,4G long range operation. But close range operation of course is another story.

 

[Frankflash]

Don't want to push this any further as this is about the AX88U's mediocre 2,4G radio coverage.
Just a quick note in these WiFi6(E) dominated days to those out there who still rely on good oldschool performing 2,4G long range operation: according to Dong the AC86U outperforms others especially at 2,4G long range operation. But close range operation of course is another story.
View attachment 22828

and who is Dong Ngo

 

[Maghook]

https://dongknows.com/about-dong-ngo/
-----

Well, I was just messing around with the AX88U wireless professional settings (384.16) and it seems like I noticed an error on implicitly disabling MU-MIMO on 2.4G:

• As is known, in contrast to the 5G wireless settings there is no explicit option in the UI to disable Multi-User MIMO for 2,4G on the AX88U.
  
• If you disable explicit beamforming on 2.4G, a pop-up shows that now MU-MIMO will get also disabled - but this does not seem to be the case

However I checked it with nvram settings where MU-MIMO was disabled and afterwards reenabled on 5G (wl1_mumimo) and compared to 2G (wl0_mumimo). While wl1_mumimo is changed according to the UI change, it won't be changed on 2,4G to "0" if I have disabled explicit beamforming on the 2.4G. It remains enabled for what kind of purpose?