AC68U extremely poor signal strength

[gdee]

Hi,

I recently purchased a ASUS AC68U (rebranded TMO cellspot) router flashed to Merlin 380.63_2. The router performed fine on both the 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ band, the signal was strong (full bars on my S6) for over a week. However, I noticed that the signal strength have degraded significantly tonight without any settings being changed -- it's barely getting half a bar on the 2.4GHz band and less than two bars on the 5GHz band when I'm sitting right next to it. It has gotten to a point where the SSID doesn't even get detected. Anyone have any ideas as to what the heck is causing this behavior or if there's a setting that I should look for? There isn't any new hardware in the house, so I don't think interference is an issue. I've tried toggling each of the band on and off with little effect.

Thanks for any insight.

 

[eddiez]

External sources that interfere with the signal perhaps?

 

[gdee]

I am not too sure to be honest. The router is located in the master bedroom of the house. As far as I can tell, there is one other person broadcasting in dual band. I brought the router over to my brothers place (condo with minimal occupants), and I am observing the same exact behavior. I'll give the official firmware a try to see if there are any differences. It's really bizarre to me that the signal degraded that significantly even when I'm right next to it. For what it's worth, the "noise" level is being listed as -89dBm and -91dBm respectively for the two bands

 

[octopus]

Try to change SSID and different Pre-Shared Key to new one and test again.

 

[gdee]

Try to change SSID and different Pre-Shared Key to new one and test again.

Yep. I have tried this as well, and it had no effect. I went through a factory reset before changing the SSID and the PSK, but same behavior. This is so friggen bizarre, it worked fine for over a week and then it just gave up. I haven't had a chance to test the official firmware yet, but that will be the next step. Is there a particular version of the original that works best with this router? Anyone aware of any setting in the router settings running Merlin that may affect signal strength?