Zenwifi XT8 poor performance

[DANgerous25]

Hi there, I see there are other threads related to AiMesh/backhaul but I don't think they cover my specific case:

Setup
=====

Lounge: I have a 1G internet connection, a firewall/other device, and an XT8 in AP mode connected to the WAN.
Office: Another XT8 as a node. About 5m away from the main router. I have two computers on a 10G ethernet network, one computer also has wifi5 and the other wifi6.
Bedroom: Another Xt8 as node. About 7m away from the main router.
Firmware: Just updated to the beta (9.0.0.4.386_39179) to see if the beta firmware solves, which it does not. Before that it was the latest stable release.
Wifi config: Set the 5GHz-2 wifi as the hidden backhaul, originally set to auto frequency/channel but had problems with the nodes regularly dropping connection and using 2.4Ghz uplink, then set fixed to 160MHz/channel 140 which appears to be otherwise clear, which solved my disconnect problem.

Situation
======

Intent: I live in a rented apartment so have limited options around wiring/router placement, so I can't create a wired ethernet network between rooms. So I bought the XT8s so that I could connect my lounge and office via the 5GHz-2 wifi 6 backhaul, then have my two computers connect to a node in order to get as close to my 1G internet bandwidth as possible.
The situation: From a wifi5 mobile device in the lounge I get around 750Mb/s using speedtest. In the office, if the office node is enabled I get around 100Mb/s regardless if I am connected to the node via wifi or ethernet into the node. If I turn off the node in office, I get around 300-350Mb/s in the office via wifi5/6 when those computers connect to the lounge router.

Using inSSIDer I can see that the hidden backhaul are the only networks using channel 140, and it shows the max data rate as 4083Mb/s which I would expect from a wifi6 network [perhaps naively?]. Obviously in the real world that speed is not possible, and even in the best case my 1G internet is my theoretical max for internet bandwidth. However, why do I only get 100Mb/s with the office node on, and only 300Mb/s when it's off? The 100 is clearly a problem somewhere, but even 300odd seems low. The office node is showing 5GHz uplink, so I'm not sure what could be wrong.

Have I wasted my money thinking I could effectively install a wifi 6 backbone in my apartment? Or am I doing something wrong? My wireless log is attached for reference, although honestly I'm not sure what it really shows/means.

Hope someone can help! Thank you.

 

[Oricus]

Hi there, I see there are other threads related to AiMesh/backhaul but I don't think they cover my specific case:

When I look at your log your backhaul is at 20mhz. Have you tried forcing it higher? go to the admin panel->Wireless. Select the appropriate band to modify (I tend to force mine all to the highest)

 

[DANgerous25]

When I look at your log your backhaul is at 20mhz. Have you tried forcing it higher? go to the admin panel->Wireless. Select the appropriate band to modify (I tend to force mine all to the highest)

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. I followed your suggestion and forced to 160MHz. It didn't make a material difference unfortunately.

However, I think I know something of the problem. Looking at the router/node tree sometimes my office node seems to uplink to the bedroom node, and when it does that's when the connection speed is very poor. I tested this by turning off the bedroom node, which then enables me to get the 300odd speed in the office again. My guess is that both my nodes are a similar distance from the main router, so they must be in constant battle to determine how to connect. I think the bedroom node has more walls to contend with, and so my theory is that occasionally my office node will connect to bedroom which is suffering from the worst possible connection.

I then found that the most recent beta firmware (https://www.snbforums.com/threads/a...a-with-full-functions-aimesh-2-0.65235/unread) has a feature to set a "preferred uplink". After installing that beta I've set both office and bedroom nodes to "prefer" to uplink to the main router.

So I'm now trying beta firmware (9.0.0.4.386_40018) and will see how it goes. I am still of the opinion that 300-400Mb/s is still a lot lower than I'd expect for a dedicated wifi 6 backhaul though :-(. I will update here after more testing.

 

[Oricus]

I have had good luck and stability with the latest firmware. I am running an AX11000 as the main router and 2 XT8's as nodes. For me I had to do a full factory reset on each device to make it stable (just doing an upgrade caused me issues) I rarely see above 400 real world off one of the nodes but to be fair they are a good distance from the main router on different floors.

 

[DANgerous25]

So about 24 hours in with the beta and everything has been stable. I'm still getting 300-400Mb/s reliably, no issues yet.

I am still of the opinion that I'd expect a lot more, it just doesn't feel like the wifi6 backhaul is a real upgrade.