2.4GHz coverage with Asus XD5 mesh

[gormac]

Hi community, I am looking for some help with a wifi issue I have been struggling with for a long time. I live in quite a large house that has a lot of brick walls between rooms. To cover the house in wifi I use a 3 node Asus XD5 mesh setup connected with ethernet (there is also a switch on the LAN port of the main node which connects some devices over ethernet) with a total of about 50 connected devices. My main wifi network is 2.4&5GHz using SmartConnect – close to nodes I get close to 500Mb/s and far away 100Mb/s so no problems there. My problem is with a guest network I have set up that is 2.4GHz only to support a bunch of old devices that only support 2.4GHz and don’t like SmartConnect. It gets about 20Mb/s right beside the main node down to no coverage for most of the house and the exterior where a lot of the 2.4GHz devices (cameras, heat pump, solar, battery) live. In these areas of no 2.4GHz coverage, the 5GHz network is still good. I have tried a bunch of things to fiz the 2.4GHz issue:

• Turning off SmartConnect and having standalone 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. The 2.4GHz network has no better coverage than the guest one.
• Changing wifi channels from 1 to 5 to 7 to 11 and no difference in performance between them.
• Looked at channel health with Wifiman and it says channel 1 is excellent. I can see 3 other wifi networks and none are on the same channel.
• Turned off all electronics near the nodes.
• Turned off the Zigbee network I have on the house in case there is interference.
• Currently have wifi channel at 1 and zigbee at 25 to be sure.
• Turned on network isolation in the professional settings.
• Made sure the guest wifi was extended across all mesh nodes.
• Bought and added 2 extra mesh nodes (Asus Zenwifi XD4s’s) and place in poor bandwidth areas. This caused a lot of issues with devices dropping off all the time so I abandoned after about a week.

I completely understand I will never get the same throughput on 2.4GHz but I want to get a consistent 10Mb/s in all areas. I thought with a clear wifi channel I would get better coverage than 5GHz but it is a fraction. My only current thought is to replace the Asus solution with another brand, but I have no confidence it will be any better. Any ideas?

 

[bbunge]

Hi community, I am looking for some help with a wifi issue I have been struggling with for a long time. I live in quite a large house that has a lot of brick walls between rooms. To cover the house in wifi I use a 3 node Asus XD5 mesh setup connected with ethernet (there is also a switch on the LAN port of the main node which connects some devices over ethernet) with a total of about 50 connected devices. My main wifi network is 2.4&5GHz using SmartConnect – close to nodes I get close to 500Mb/s and far away 100Mb/s so no problems there. My problem is with a guest network I have set up that is 2.4GHz only to support a bunch of old devices that only support 2.4GHz and don’t like SmartConnect. It gets about 20Mb/s right beside the main node down to no coverage for most of the house and the exterior where a lot of the 2.4GHz devices (cameras, heat pump, solar, battery) live. In these areas of no 2.4GHz coverage, the 5GHz network is still good. I have tried a bunch of things to fiz the 2.4GHz issue:

• Turning off SmartConnect and having standalone 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. The 2.4GHz network has no better coverage than the guest one.
• Changing wifi channels from 1 to 5 to 7 to 11 and no difference in performance between them.
• Looked at channel health with Wifiman and it says channel 1 is excellent. I can see 3 other wifi networks and none are on the same channel.
• Turned off all electronics near the nodes.
• Turned off the Zigbee network I have on the house in case there is interference.
• Currently have wifi channel at 1 and zigbee at 25 to be sure.
• Turned on network isolation in the professional settings.
• Made sure the guest wifi was extended across all mesh nodes.
• Bought and added 2 extra mesh nodes (Asus Zenwifi XD4s’s) and place in poor bandwidth areas. This caused a lot of issues with devices dropping off all the time so I abandoned after about a week.

I completely understand I will never get the same throughput on 2.4GHz but I want to get a consistent 10Mb/s in all areas. I thought with a clear wifi channel I would get better coverage than 5GHz but it is a fraction. My only current thought is to replace the Asus solution with another brand, but I have no confidence it will be any better. Any ideas?

What firmware are you running on the router and nodes? Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388_24095 is current. Are you using WPA2/WPA3? If so drop back to WPA2.