wifi drops on 87u

[scottegos2]

rt-ac87u 5gH wifi drops

I wonder if anyone has suggestions. I am trying out a new rt-ac87u, using the new .50beta (the router is brand new; so far, this is the only firmware I've really tried). Anyway, after a little while - a few minutes perhaps - my win8.1 laptop (using an intel 6300 mini pci wifi card) basically loses connection -- I get the "yellow exclamation" mark indicating "limited connectivity."

I never experienced this problem with my rt-ac66u (which is currently still using the 49_6 firmware).

I don't know whether this is a router hw defect (seems unlikely), a firmware problem of some sort, or just some 5gHz setting that needs tweaking on the router. Any suggestions would be apprecated.

 

[jpalo]

Did you do factory reset after firmware install? Press reset button at the back of the router for like 10 secs, you see lights blink, then reconfigure everything. Seems (not 100% sure yet) to have fixed similar issues I had - not only with Merlin build, but also with stock Asus firmwares.

 

[Puremin0rez]

I have the same issue with my 5ghz band on my 87u. The WiFi randomly disappears for a few seconds at a time throughout the day and sometimes its long enough to drop the client entirely.

Unfortunately I didn't find a fix short of switching to the 2.4ghz network, which has been stable for the 3 days I've been on it.

 

[scottegos2]

Did you do factory reset after firmware install?

Yeah good idea. It occurred to me after posting that I had not done that and so I went ahead and did a factory reset (easier to do from the router web page, actually). I generally only use wifi in the evening, so I'll see what happens tonight. It would be a shame to have to send the router back to newegg, since I otherwise like it a lot....

 

[scottegos2]

So, resetting to factory defaults didn't help. Same problem with clients getting disconnected on 5gHz band. I also see that, less dramatic but still annoying, I get about half the download throughput in my usual location as I get from my AC66 in the exact same spot for client/router (~75 MBps vs ~150 based on LAN Speedtest, which measures SMB upload & download speeds).

This isn't a Merlin problem, per se, since I see the same behavior with stock firmware. I guess the 87u goes on the shelf for some future date.

 

[scottegos2]

Well, it's definitely a pervasive 87u problem -- Asus exchanged my unit for a brand new one and the same thing happens. This time, about the first thing I did out of the box was to apply the Merlin .50_0 release, then restore factory defaults before I did anything. Still, after some time that I can't predict, my 6300agn client mostly disconnects -- goes to "limited" status in Win8. I really hate to have to just give up and use the 66u, which never does this. Anyone have any suggestions on what could be causing this or how to debug it?