Help! My RT-AC66U is sick!

I’m having a pretty bad issue with my router. I had an RT-AC66U hooked up for about 7 months in my basement. It gave a great signal all over and around my house. I can’t remember having a single problem with it for all 7 months. Then about 2 weeks ago it started having some serious issues. Most of the time when I try to do something it just sits there. Pages won’t load, etc. I can reset the router and it may fix it for a few seconds and the problem comes right back. I can sometimes bounce between 2.4G & 5G bandwidths and get a burst of good internet, but it only lasts a few seconds and goes off again. I upgraded the firmware and am still having the same issue. I know it’s not just my computer because when it’s acting up it does so on all my devices simultaneously. And it’s not my cable connection because the internet works flawlessly when a device is plugged directly into the modem. The weird thing is, if I can get a good enough burst of connection to get logged into TESO, my connection stays strong for hours at a time…


So I finally got fed up and decided my router was just dying and bought a brand new replacement RT-AC66U. I hooked it up and it ran great for about an hour. I updated to the latest firmware and it started doing the exact same thing! Just out of the box, this thing is acting just like the old one. It’s virtually unusable.


Any ideas what could be going on?

And for the record, I've consulted inSSIDer and chosen the least used channels in my area.

Neverender said:

And for the record, I've consulted inSSIDer and chosen the least used channels in my area.

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Regardless of your previous experiences a basement is not the ideal location for a wifi router. Try moving it to a more centralized location in your house.

Sounds like your environment has changed, not your hardware suddenly failing. Most likely a neighbor with a new router to play with.

I suggest you forget what inssider shows. Try every control channel for an extended period and stick with the one that offers the highest speeds and lowest latencies. Inssider cannot show usage of a particular channel and it sounds like that is the issue you're facing (in addition to the poor location in the basement).

I took cmillar6's advise and I think it might have solved the issue. I have a theory as to what the problem was. Maybe you guys with a better grasp of this technology can say yea or nay.

I moved the router to the ground level and it's been working fine ever since. Even though it was in the basement and working fine for 7 months or so, I think maybe the exceptionally wet weather we've been having has made the wooden floor slats that make up the ceiling of our basement / the floor of the ground level damp, and that was hampering the signal. Does that sound plausible to those of you with a better grasp on this kind of technology?