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.

 

[jksmurf]

My problem is with a guest network I have set up that is 2.4GHz only

Can you please confirm the Guest Network (GN) system is the one that has 3 GNs?

Asking as on that system only GN1 propagates to the nodes; i.e. you I’ll have all 3 GNs available at the XD5 set up as the primary and GN1 GN only, everywhere. So of your GN is on GN2 or GN3, any devices on that GN will have very weak to no connectivity away from the primary node (your note on this was why I commented). A forum search will show many threads on this issue.

This is a limitation of that ASUS system, but specific newer ASUS routers on 3006 codebase FW propagate multiple GNs to your nodes.

If it’s not that (i.e. how did you make sure of this?)

Made sure the guest wifi was extended across all mesh nodes.

then all I can think of is that it’s actually using the 2.4GHz as backhaul (you can check what is selects under the AiMesh tab) and the 5GHz is absent for the GN so it has no bandwidth available.

If it’s connectivity I found for my IoT devices, as bungee said, WPA2 and do NOT hide the GN. Many older 2.4GHz devices do not seem to like that. At least not mine.

 

[bbunge]

I just noticed that you have a switch connected to the router. DO the Ethernet connections go through the switch? If so is it a managed switch and if it is it will cause issues with the guest network being propagated to the nodes.
If you have Ethernet Mode enabled on the router AiMesh disable it and any other AiMesh custom settings. AiMesh works best with the default settings!

 

[gormac]

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

Thank you for the pointers. I am running 3.0.0.4.388_24011-g883603e currently. I tried dropping back to an older version for a while in case the newest had gremlins but did not help. I am running WPA-2.

 

[gormac]

Can you please confirm the Guest Network (GN) system is the one that has 3 GNs?

Asking as on that system only GN1 propagates to the nodes; i.e. you I’ll have all 3 GNs available at the XD5 set up as the primary and GN1 GN only, everywhere. So of your GN is on GN2 or GN3, any devices on that GN will have very weak to no connectivity away from the primary node (your note on this was why I commented). A forum search will show many threads on this issue.

This is a limitation of that ASUS system, but specific newer ASUS routers on 3006 codebase FW propagate multiple GNs to your nodes.

If it’s not that (i.e. how did you make sure of this?)

then all I can think of is that it’s actually using the 2.4GHz as backhaul (yiu can check what is selects under the AiMesh tab) and the 5GHz is absent for the GN so it has no bandwidth available.

If it’s connectivity I found for my IoT devices, as bungee said, WPA2 and do NOT hide the GN. Many older 2.4GHz devices do not seem to like that. At least not mine.

I read about guest network working on only the first slot out of the three I can configure. This was why I tried turing off Smart Connent and setting up a primary 2.4GHz network. Here is a screen shot of the guest network setup with the selection to use all mesh nodes.

 

[jksmurf]

I read about guest network working on only the first slot out of the three I can configure. This was why I tried turing off Smart Connent and setting up a primary 2.4GHz network. Here is a screen shot of the guest network setup with the selection to use all mesh nodes. View attachment 68493

Hmm, OK, seems like you're on to that wrt using GN1.
Did you have a chance to see what band it uses for backhaul?

 

[gormac]

I just noticed that you have a switch connected to the router. DO the Ethernet connections go through the switch? If so is it a managed switch and if it is it will cause issues with the guest network being propagated to the nodes.
If you have Ethernet Mode enabled on the router AiMesh disable it and any other AiMesh custom settings. AiMesh works best with the default settings!

I think it is a dumb switch - TP-Link TL-SG1008P. It connects to the LAN port of the primary mesh node and then connects to the other mesh nodes along with a few TV's / other devices. It took me a while to find but Ethernet Backhaul Mode is disabled

 

[gormac]

Hmm, OK, seems like you're on to that wrt using GN1.
Did you have a chance to see what band it uses for backhaul?

Sorry but I am not sure how to see the mesh setting for the guest network. When I click on the AIMesh tab and Network section it shows both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz against the main SSID. If I click on the guest network section it does not show the AIMesh Network settings. Apologies if I am missing something.

 

[jksmurf]

Sorry but I am not sure how to see the mesh setting for the guest network. When I click on the AIMesh tab and Network section it shows both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz against the main SSID. If I click on the guest network section it does not show the AIMesh Network settings. Apologies if I am missing something.

My apologies, I got so used to the (new) GNP screens I forgot how AiMesh Backhaul information should look in the 3004.386 FW.

Can you see a screen with something like this, under AiMesh Toplogy, Network (I found an example in the Dongknows website when I searched for images but I am loathe to plagiarise his work). You can visit this to see his 3004.386 FW Image same https://dongknows.com/wp-content/uploads/ZenWiFi-XT8-AiMesh-Node-768x904.jpg.

Meanwhile, here is mine, from 3006.102.5 FW Main and 3004.388 FW (node). Do you see anything like this?

 

[gormac]

To try to narrow down the problem I removed the switch out of the network and restarted everything (the mesh and other devices work fine via wireless anyway). No improvement ...

My apologies, I got so used to the (new) GNP screens I forgot how AiMesh Backhaul information should look in the 3004.386 FW.

Can you see a screen with something like this, under AiMesh Toplogy, Network (I found an example in the Dongknows website when I searched for images but I am loathe to plagiarise his work. You can visit this to see his 3004.386 FW Image same https://dongknows.com/wp-content/uploads/ZenWiFi-XT8-AiMesh-Node-768x904.jpg.

Meanwhile, here is mine, from 3006.102.5 FW Main and 3004.388 FW (node). Do you see anything like this?

View attachment 68495

Thank you, I wasn't clicking on the actual nodes ... both are 5GHz Uplink and Great:

I am suspecting it is probably more of a 2.4GHz issue either in my environment or the device as I can see the issue in an ajacent room next to the main node - the room is in the opposite direction to the other nodes (so connecting to the main node) and I have almost no 2.4GHz coverage / very low speeds only about 5 metres away from the main node but >300Mb/s on 5GHz. Interesting you refer to DongKnows website. On his site he had a very similar problem to mine with modern Asus routers being really poor on 2.4GHz networks - the resolution to his problem was USB-3 ports and downgrading to usb-2 but I don't have USB ports on these devices

 

[jksmurf]

I am suspecting it is probably more of a 2.4GHz issue either in my environment or the device as I can see the issue in an ajacent room next to the main node

Thanks for that, good news I suppose . Well, I am a wee bit stumped, sorry!

Unlike you, I actually do use Smart Connect, but have the luxury of Ethernet on my XD6 Nodes. The only other thing I can think of is at some stage you fiddled with Channels and the Channel Bandwidth maybe? I'm hoping someone else can come along and shed some light on this for you!