2.4Ghz Dropping on RT-N56U

[jhall1990]

Hi everyone, I have been having an issue with my wireless router for the past week or two and I cannot figure out what the cause is.

Basically every hour or so the wireless (2.4 only) will stop working, all my devices show that they are connected to the router but I cannot get out to the internet. I cannot access the local network either. My phone is able to connect to the 5Ghz network and works fine.

I've tried to upgrade and downgrade the firmware as well as using the custom firmware that's available. None of these have stopped this issue. I've also tried to resetting to factory defaults and re-configuring the router and the issue still persists. I really out of ideas and I'm not sure what to do. Can anyone think of any settings or anything that might cause this issue?

I contacted ASUS support and they told me to disable B/G protection but that hasn't helped either.

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[wouterv]

You may suffer disturbance by wireless neighbor devices.
The best is to use a program called InSSIDer, check what radio channels are in use in the neighborhood and manually select a channel out of the numbers 1, 6 or 11 which is least occupied. Also set the bandwidth of your 2.4 GHz radio to 20 MHz.
Instead of using InSSIDer, you may simply try which of the channels 1, 6 or 11 works the best, but be sure to set the bandwidth to 20 MHz.

 

[jhall1990]

So I looked at inssider and found that channel 1 was free, I'm using that now as well as setting it to 20mhz, still see the wireless drop.

 

[wouterv]

What are your settings, different from default, for the 2.4 GHz part?

Looks at: Advanced Settings>Wireless>General>2.4 GHz
Here I suggest to change these only:

• Your SSID
• De-select b/g Protection
• Set a free channel (1, 6 or 11)
• Bandwidth 20 MHz
• Authentication Method WPA2-Personal
• WPA Encryption AES
• Your WPA Pres-Shared Key

And look at: Advanced Settings>Wireless>Professional>2.4 GHz
This part I suggest to leave all default to start with.

Eventually do a hard reset of the router or return to Factory Defaults and only configure the bare minimum as suggested above.

 

[jhall1990]

Everything is default, I believe. The only thing that I changed is IGMP snooping, which I need to use my chromecast.

Here are my settings.

 

[wouterv]

You believe things are default...please make that sure!
Otherwise I suggest to see what the 2.4 GHz connection does with IGMP Snooping Disabled again, to determine if that setting is the cause.
You say all 2.4 GHz clients show connected, but have no LAN nor WAN access, can you than still access the router GUI?
Are there messages in the router log file at the time of the problem?

 

[jhall1990]

So I verified that those are in fact the defaults and I tried to disable IGMP snooping and I still saw the wireless drop.

 

[sinshiva]

why do you have wireless scheduler on?

i've noticed that most devices with scheduling have a habit of dropping at midnight, try disabling it

[edit/] is the time correctly set on the router? i dont necessarily think the scheduler is your problem, but something worth getting rid of just in case

everytime the router reboots, it does have to pull time again from ntp

 

[wouterv]

...and please answer the remaining questions:
You say all 2.4 GHz clients show connected, but have no LAN nor WAN access, can you than still access the router GUI?
Are there messages in the router log file at the time of the problem?

 

[jhall1990]

Okay I disabled the scheduler, I'll see if that makes any difference.

Sorry about missing those other questions, I am able to access to router GUI from anything that is not on the 2.4Ghz wireless. Also so far I have not seen anything in the log at the times when the wireless drops.

Lastly the time on the router is correct and it does sync with NTP on boot.

 

[RMerlin]

why do you have wireless scheduler on?

For some reason it's enabled by default in the firmware. Probably to better expose the functionality to users.

 

[sinshiva]

ahhh. shortly after initially configuring my router, i went crusing for stuff to disable. scheduling seems like a silly feature to enable by default

 

[jhall1990]

So after disabling the scheduler I am still seeing the wireless drop on the 2.4Ghz network.

 

[wouterv]

I believe to understand you have multiple 2.4 GHz devices connected to the router.
Are all these devices 802.11n capable, or at least 802.11g?
Are there perhaps any older 802.11b devices?...802.11b devices should be banned and replaced.
Are the 2.4 GHz devices of recent date with recent drivers...or recently upgraded drivers?
Windows, IOS, Android, or what Operating System?
It can be that one of those 2.4 GHz devices takes the connection down for everyone.

Merlin firmware is capable to show the wireless rate of each connected device at the Wireless Log page. Install the latest Merlin version and look at the rate of each 2.4 GHz device (through a 5 GHz connection) and see if there is any at a very low rate, e.g. 1 Mbps.
Otherwise (e.g. in Windows) look at the wireless rate of each 2.4 GHz device and see if one of them indicates a real low number.
Find the culprit...if you are lucky, replace it or update the driver.

 

[jhall1990]

It looks like the merlin firmware isn't supported for the N56U, can I still install it?

Thanks again for the help.

 

[L&LD]

No, you'll most likely brick it if you do.

 

[wouterv]

Ah right, no Merlin WRT for the RT-N56U
Then look at the invidual devices and look for their wireless rate indication.

 

[jhall1990]

So I am just about at the point of buying a new router, I was looking at the ASUS RT-N66U and the Netgear WNDR4300. What do you guys think? Either of those or is there something better? for ~$100.

 

[L&LD]

If you have any AC class clients (or think you will in the course of owning this new router) I would suggest the RT-AC56U at this time (for $110) with the latest RMerlin firmware.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX46643


If maximum range is more important then the RT-N66U with the -36Beta1 SDK5 RMerlin firmware is better; and it has a third antenna (only important if you have 3 antenna clients too).

I used to love Netgear routers (had the 3700v1 as the 'best' version) but the Asus products are in a different class.

 

[jhall1990]

I don't really see AC devices coming into the house any time soon. This is for my parents house so I don't think they will notice. The range would be more important.