AiMesh Delay on AC1900P x 2 (~10-20 seconds)

[HBTA]

Hi All!

I recently acquired a second AC1900P and found out that I have a delay when switching between nodes. I hope that this forum can help out.

Problem: Approximately ~10-20 second delay / loss of connectivity when switching iPhone 2020 SE between AiMesh nodes when on Zoom call / Google Voice call / Signal call. Inability to hear others and transmit data during this time. I like to walk around in the house when on the phone but unfortunately the iPhone takes ~10-20 seconds to connect to a second node. The calls remain active on all applications but I have to wait until I can hear others again.

Question: Can I reduce the delay to <1 second? Or is this going to require either a. much more expensive mesh setup from a different brand or b. i should just set up one AP for the home. I could position the AP in the office high up. Since I already have these 2 Asus routers then I hope to make them work. I have not tried Merlin firmware on the routers.

Network: 2 x AC1900P - both nodes running stock most up to date firmware. 1 gigabit fiber connection from the service provider

• First acts as a router + AP
  • Located in a living room
  • Sits on the floor next to a furnace room. Wife not willing to negotiate a change in location/higher up
  • Beamforming disabled on the primary
• Second acts as an AP only via direct wired connection into the first
  • Located in an office, about 3 ft up
  • Beamforming
• Total of 8 clients on the network
  • 4 Wired
  • 4 Wireless
    • Most wireless clients are on the primary AP connected to the living room
    • iPhone is the only office AP client
• Signal strength and area is excellent for all the devices but iPhone received poor signal with only 1 AP in the living room. Old Pixel 3 did well even with only 1 AP in the living room.

Home:
-Small, ~1200 sqft. Single level. Living room and office are only ~30 ft apart but due to the home being older it has plaster walls. There is a furnace unit between the office and living room AP which is why I added a second AP in the living room + due to iPhone not being able to connect well to living room AP.

Thank you for your review and help.

 

[OzarkEdge]

Hi All!

I recently acquired a second AC1900P and found out that I have a delay when switching between nodes. I hope that this forum can help out.

Problem: Approximately ~10-20 second delay / loss of connectivity when switching iPhone 2020 SE between AiMesh nodes when on Zoom call / Google Voice call / Signal call. Inability to hear others and transmit data during this time. I like to walk around in the house when on the phone but unfortunately the iPhone takes ~10-20 seconds to connect to a second node. The calls remain active on all applications but I have to wait until I can hear others again.

Question: Can I reduce the delay to <1 second? Or is this going to require either a. much more expensive mesh setup from a different brand or b. i should just set up one AP for the home. I could position the AP in the office high up. Since I already have these 2 Asus routers then I hope to make them work. I have not tried Merlin firmware on the routers.

Network: 2 x AC1900P - both nodes running stock most up to date firmware. 1 gigabit fiber connection from the service provider

• First acts as a router + AP
  • Located in a living room
  • Sits on the floor next to a furnace room. Wife not willing to negotiate a change in location/higher up
  • Beamforming disabled on the primary
• Second acts as an AP only via direct wired connection into the first
  • Located in an office, about 3 ft up
  • Beamforming
• Total of 8 clients on the network
  • 4 Wired
  • 4 Wireless
    • Most wireless clients are on the primary AP connected to the living room
    • iPhone is the only office AP client
• Signal strength and area is excellent for all the devices but iPhone received poor signal with only 1 AP in the living room. Old Pixel 3 did well even with only 1 AP in the living room.

Home:
-Small, ~1200 sqft. Single level. Living room and office are only ~30 ft apart but due to the home being older it has plaster walls. There is a furnace unit between the office and living room AP which is why I added a second AP in the living room + due to iPhone not being able to connect well to living room AP.

Thank you for your review and help.

Locate the routers router high and in the open. A furnace room can have metal masses that impede/distort radio signals and a blower motor that can generate EMI that can interfere with radio signals.

Buying a different system or using different firmware is not likely to change the issue, imo. It may be a difficult client.

If you are using AiMesh, how do you have beamforming disabled on only one node?

I suggest disabling Airtime Fairness and Universal Beamforming only. And use different SSIDs per band and fixed, least congested, non-DFS channels. Do not hide SSIDs. My install notes have some other suggestions for a basic configuration.

One AC1900 AP can cover 1200 sq ft. You could try locating it better... high, central, and in the clear.

If you add the second node, spread them as far apart as you can. And try raising (less negative) the band Roaming Assistant RSSI threshold to say -55 dBm. Sometimes clients can thrash around between two strong signal options.

Connect your troubled client to only one band/SSID. And look for other cordless devices that might be operating on the WiFi band. Use a WiFi Analyzer app to see all WiFi signals around you to select least congested channels... try different channels as noted in my notes.

OE

 

[binary_lifestyle]

Hello @HBTA, I experienced the same issue with 10-20 seconds delay after switching between AiMesh nodes (RT-AC68U + RP-AC55). The interesting part is that ping monitoring utilities (on both iOS, Android and just ping on Windows) worked perfectly during the node switch, at most one packet 100ms delay, and also Wi-Fi indicator transition from weak signal to strong signal instantly, but all the application traffic got stuck during this time, causing calls loss. Also what I noticed (maybe just my feelings and not the real case), that if browsing Web via browser during this time, jumping around the pages on the website you have opened already got stuck, however going to the new tab and opening website you did not have opened with the old AiMesh node works fine without any delays. This made me thinking that there is something happening with TCP-connections.

Solution that worked for me:
After trying many different things from this forum, I found this:

Thanks for working on this. I've complained to the ASUS support people about this issue and after several back and forths they are still working on it.

Here's something else that worked for me: In the LAN settings, I disabled "auto" NAT acceleration so that the router is forced to use the CPU for NAT acceleration rather than hardware. Apparently enabling any kind of port forwarding has the same effect of forcing NAT acceleration to the CPU.

This has improved ATT WIFI Calling greatly here and it may give a clue as to what the real problem: the WIFI Calling IPSEC packets may not be transiting the router correctly with hardware NAT acceleration enabled.

I'm using 2 AC1900p and 1 AC68U with latest firmware, and Airtime Fairness is off.

-- R Carlson MD

Disabling NAT acceleration mentioned there did the trick and now transition works perfectly without any hiccups during calls. This gave instant result unlike Wi-Fi options tuning like channels, Airtime Fairness and Universal Beamforming toggling.

Uneducated guess which can be wrong:
It seems to be that NAT acceleration for TCP and UDP is doing some optimizations that are failing during transitioning from one AiMesh node to another. And ping uses ICMP protocol, which does not have ports and is processed differently by NAT, maybe that is why ping works good during node switch unlike TCP.

 

[kot-6eremot]

@binary_lifestyle Thanks a lot!
You saved a bunch of my nerves.
Disabling NAT acceleration works perfectly.

 

[Tech9]

Disabling NAT acceleration works perfectly.

Probably, but only if your ISP connection is below 300Mbps.