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AC88U 5Ghz issue

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ConMan2292

New Around Here
Hi all,

For the last few months, I've been having a strange issue with my AC88U which up to then had been performing with no issues at all for about 3 years.

Some devices, not all, cannot seem to connect to the router on the 5Ghz band anymore. I normally have it on smart connect and these devices could not connect the WiFi at all, it would fail in actual link-up. To test it, I set up guest networks at both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz and found I could mostly connect to the 2.4Ghz bands okay (although performance was pretty terrible). I was not able to connect to the 5Ghz band. When I split the main SSID, I saw the same thing.

I have gone through the nuclear reset of the router but it did not fix the issue. I have also tried several different firmware versions, both main ASUS and Merlin but the same behaviour persists.

On the client side, I've tried completely wiping the network settings and starting from scratch, but it hasn't made a difference either. I should stress that the majority of the clients can connect and use the 5Ghz band without issue and performance is fine, it's maybe 10%-15% of clients that are having the issue. Mostly laptops, a couple of older MacBook Pro's and a new Surface laptop. This makes me think it's not a router hardware issue but maybe it's more nuanced than that.

Does anyone have any other troubleshooting ideas? I can't find this specific issue mentioned online and I feel like I've exhausted the options I can think of. I'm thinking of replacing the AC88U with an AX model anyway, but I'd like to figure out the root cause of the issue so that it doesn't persist even with a new router.

Current set-up:
AC88U, firmware 386.1 Beta 2
All settings at default following recent nuclear reset, smart connect on.

Thanks,

Conor
 
Hi all,

For the last few months, I've been having a strange issue with my AC88U which up to then had been performing with no issues at all for about 3 years.

Some devices, not all, cannot seem to connect to the router on the 5Ghz band anymore. I normally have it on smart connect and these devices could not connect the WiFi at all, it would fail in actual link-up. To test it, I set up guest networks at both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz and found I could mostly connect to the 2.4Ghz bands okay (although performance was pretty terrible). I was not able to connect to the 5Ghz band. When I split the main SSID, I saw the same thing.

I have gone through the nuclear reset of the router but it did not fix the issue. I have also tried several different firmware versions, both main ASUS and Merlin but the same behaviour persists.

On the client side, I've tried completely wiping the network settings and starting from scratch, but it hasn't made a difference either. I should stress that the majority of the clients can connect and use the 5Ghz band without issue and performance is fine, it's maybe 10%-15% of clients that are having the issue. Mostly laptops, a couple of older MacBook Pro's and a new Surface laptop. This makes me think it's not a router hardware issue but maybe it's more nuanced than that.

Does anyone have any other troubleshooting ideas? I can't find this specific issue mentioned online and I feel like I've exhausted the options I can think of. I'm thinking of replacing the AC88U with an AX model anyway, but I'd like to figure out the root cause of the issue so that it doesn't persist even with a new router.

Current set-up:
AC88U, firmware 386.1 Beta 2
All settings at default following recent nuclear reset, smart connect on.

Thanks,

Conor

Have you tried different fixed 5.0 channels? Maybe there is new noise around you from a neighbor's new ill-configured mesh set of too many pucks that is affecting your laptop clients that have better antennas/stronger reception.

OE
 
Have you tried different fixed 5.0 channels? Maybe there is new noise around you from a neighbor's new ill-configured mesh set of too many pucks that is affecting your laptop clients that have better antennas/stronger reception.

OE
Admittedly no I haven't tried that, I've left it on Auto. Is there a logic to selecting manual channels or just a case of testing each of them out?
 
Admittedly no I haven't tried that, I've left it on Auto. Is there a logic to selecting manual channels or just a case of testing each of them out?

Fixed (not Auto), least-congested, non-DFS. 1 and 3 avoid auto channel changing disruption to client connections. 2 and 3 hope to minimize radio interference.

Then try and evaluate client connection performance on the remaining candidate channels. With a wireless AiMesh, I favor the channel that yields the strongest RSSI, Tx, Rx values in the Wireless Log for the wireless backhaul MACs.

My install notes suggest WiFi settings (US dual-band AC).

OE
 

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