Asus ZenWiFi CT8 questions

[aedge3]

So I have a new set of Asus ZenWifi AC CT8 tri band mesh routers. I need to find out if what I'm getting is just what I'm going to get (which is disappointing) or whether there are settings I can change to improve things. Not sure where to go here to get help. Thanks for any replies.

 

[aedge3]

No one will answer? Let me be more specific then. I have Fios 1gb service. But standing in front of the main router I get only 250 mbps wifi oR less. I got almost identical WiFi speed with a pair of Nest WiFi router in a mesh setup. Can anyone suggest settings that might help? Or am I just getting the best speeds I can? I must admit that downstairs and on deck signal strength are much better with both of them...any reason to use one or the other?

 

[OzarkEdge]

No one will answer? Let me be more specific then. I have Fios 1gb service. But standing in front of the main router I get only 250 mbps wifi oR less. I got almost identical WiFi speed with a pair of Nest WiFi router in a mesh setup. Can anyone suggest settings that might help? Or am I just getting the best speeds I can? I must admit that downstairs and on deck signal strength are much better with both of them...any reason to use one or the other?

Wire a PC to the modem/ONT and perform some speed tests. That's your first bottle neck.

Wire a PC to the router and perform some speed tests. That's your second bottleneck.

Wireless a PC to the router 5.o WLAN and note your PC WLAN adapter physical link rate while performing some speed tests. That's another bottleneck.

Do same for the remote node. Those will be your backhaul bottleneck, and node LAN/WLAN bottlenecks.

Know that Gigabit Ethernet is 1 Gbps full-duplex.

And WiFi is whatever link rate it connects at a given distance, half-duplex, and subject to overhead and interference.

Speed testing with mobile devices can introduce their own bottlenecks.

A cleanly installed, healthy network with suitable WiFi settings and no interference will yield your best results.

I suggest you perform some speed tests and decide where the bottle necks are and if they can be improved.

Did you reset your routers before configuring them? Usually a good first step.

Suggested WLAN settings:
- set 2.4 WLAN to SSID, n, 20 MHz, ch 1,6,11 (or 1,5,9,13), WPA2-AES;

- set 51 WLAN to SSID, n/ac, 20/40/80 MHz, ch 36-48 WPA2-AES;
- set 52 WLAN to SSID, ac/ax?, 80 MHz, 149-161, WPA2-AES, to be your wireless backhaul (I have not seen a tri-band router yet, so that's the best I can suggest from here).

It helps to pick channels not being used by your immediate neighbors. A WiFi Analyzer app can help to see this.

OE

 

[aedge3]

To answer a few of your questions, when I connect my pc directly to the modem router I get the same speeds I get when connected to the Asus router, in the 700 to 900mbps for my 1GB Fios connection. So it is consistent. I can't find an internal speed test on the Asus app or the Asus router settings web app but when I had the Nest WiFi hooked up it had an internal speed test that ran close to my desktop PC at 750 to 850mbps. So all three of those seem consistent.

The rest of your information is above my head and no idea where to set any of those things. I just know that in my office where the mesh router is the wifi speeds run from 150 up to almost 300 at times. Downstairs where the other router is, speeds run in the 75 to 200 range. Signal strength is pretty good and so far I haven't seen any real issues in terms of pixelating graphics or big holdups in loading channels on my fire sticks like I had seen before. Plus I now have signal on my deck where it was almost always non-existent before.

Maybe I was expecting too much in the way of speed and maybe I don't really need it. But most of the tests I saw for the Asus and Nest said that the main router could do 600mbps and 300 on the subs if you have a 1GB service. You tell me, maybe what I'm seeing is plenty good enough. I just feel a little cheated I guess. Silly me.