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 (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.

 

[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!