grimripper
New Around Here
Hi
I recently bought an Asus RT-AC68U to take over router duties from a crappy cable modem provided by my ISP. Since some reorganizations in the summer, I've had my main computer connected with my old Asus RT-AC66U as a media bridge. I also got the cable modem at about the same time, and previously had an older cable modem in bridge mode, with the 66U as a roter, and a long inconveniently placed cable instead of a media bridge.
So there's been a lot of problems. For one thing, when I tried to set the 68U up as a router, I discovered that the 66U in media bridge mode didn't find the 68U's 5GHz WLAN at all, even though my mobile phone shows it with good scores right next to the 66U, and while the 66U has been in media bridge mode it's been using the cable modem's 5GHz WLAN. The 66U also wouldn't connect to the 5GHz WLAN when I gave it the SSID manually. It did connect to the 68U's 2.4GHz WLAN, but then my NFS drive shares didn't work at all.
I then switched the 68U to media bridge mode and the 66U to router mode. Again, the 68U didn't find the 66U's 5GHz WLAN, but at least connected to it when given the SSID manually. My drive shares also worked. The 68U had a 2.4Ghz/5GHz option in the manual WLAN connection setup, while I think the 66U didn't.
I did a bunch of factory resets, changed SSIDs, tried some different security settings etc. I also tried the 66U in repeater mode since I've seen it recommended over the media bridge mode, but it had the same problem. (I've got pretty good WLAN measurements everywhere in my apartment and would rather not have extra WLANs anyway).
So I'm curious, why do these devices fail to find each other's 5GHz WLANs? I specifically bought another Asus thinking they'd work better together than devices from different manufacturers.
Also, I'm wondering if some of the problems I've been having since switching from the old cable modem as bridge + 66U as wireless router + long cable setup to the new cable modem as wireless router + 66U as media bridge one might be related to the 66U. I read that it's pretty bad as a media bridge.
The problems I think might've been caused by the 66U media bridge:
My current setup with the cable modem in bridge mode, the 66U as wireless router and the 68U in media bridge mode has worked well since I set it up a few days ago now. This seems to be a bit backwards though, so finally, I'm wondering if there's any point to even try and use the 66U as a media bridge instead of the 68U? Intuitively I'd like to have the better device as the router and I'd think that'd be the 68U.
I recently bought an Asus RT-AC68U to take over router duties from a crappy cable modem provided by my ISP. Since some reorganizations in the summer, I've had my main computer connected with my old Asus RT-AC66U as a media bridge. I also got the cable modem at about the same time, and previously had an older cable modem in bridge mode, with the 66U as a roter, and a long inconveniently placed cable instead of a media bridge.
So there's been a lot of problems. For one thing, when I tried to set the 68U up as a router, I discovered that the 66U in media bridge mode didn't find the 68U's 5GHz WLAN at all, even though my mobile phone shows it with good scores right next to the 66U, and while the 66U has been in media bridge mode it's been using the cable modem's 5GHz WLAN. The 66U also wouldn't connect to the 5GHz WLAN when I gave it the SSID manually. It did connect to the 68U's 2.4GHz WLAN, but then my NFS drive shares didn't work at all.
I then switched the 68U to media bridge mode and the 66U to router mode. Again, the 68U didn't find the 66U's 5GHz WLAN, but at least connected to it when given the SSID manually. My drive shares also worked. The 68U had a 2.4Ghz/5GHz option in the manual WLAN connection setup, while I think the 66U didn't.
I did a bunch of factory resets, changed SSIDs, tried some different security settings etc. I also tried the 66U in repeater mode since I've seen it recommended over the media bridge mode, but it had the same problem. (I've got pretty good WLAN measurements everywhere in my apartment and would rather not have extra WLANs anyway).
So I'm curious, why do these devices fail to find each other's 5GHz WLANs? I specifically bought another Asus thinking they'd work better together than devices from different manufacturers.
Also, I'm wondering if some of the problems I've been having since switching from the old cable modem as bridge + 66U as wireless router + long cable setup to the new cable modem as wireless router + 66U as media bridge one might be related to the 66U. I read that it's pretty bad as a media bridge.
The problems I think might've been caused by the 66U media bridge:
- occasionally no Internet connection on my main computer, resetting the 66U helped
- NFS drive shares would often be extremely slow, but after some tries and possibly restarting autofs, sharing would work well enough to play video files
- occasionally the whole computer connecting to the shared drives would occasionally slow to a crawl, and needed to be rebooted (after starting it up and trying to open the shared drives)
- sometimes requests to one particular website hanging, even if a new tab, window or a different browser was opened, while connections otherwise worked fine (websites that I've used a lot and had barely any such problems with ever)
- websites suddenly being reloaded for no apparent reason (notably the 66U's web UI)
- Internet connections freezing for some tens of seconds every few minutes on three different computers using 2,4GHz WLAN, 5GHz WLAN and the media bridge connected to the 5GHz WLAN (this seems to have been fixed by disabling automatic channel selection)
- WLANs suddenly disappearing altogether
- mobile phone not being able to connect to a WLAN (it's a piece of crap but this hasn't happened with other WLANs)
- computers not receiving any DNS after connecting to the cable modem
- assigned static IPs not being set correctly after connecting to the cable modem
- supposedly connected, but no access to the Internet or other devices in the LAN
- cable modem web UI freezing, not opening or showing only an error message
My current setup with the cable modem in bridge mode, the 66U as wireless router and the 68U in media bridge mode has worked well since I set it up a few days ago now. This seems to be a bit backwards though, so finally, I'm wondering if there's any point to even try and use the 66U as a media bridge instead of the 68U? Intuitively I'd like to have the better device as the router and I'd think that'd be the 68U.