How to FORCE ZenWiFi AX (XT8) to use dedicated 5ghz-2 band vs normal 5ghz one?

[Delumine]

Hello all, I have the ASUS ZenWifi AX - XT8 as a replacement for an Orbi RBK50 system.

I have a 2900 SQFT 2-story home, and usually have both routers upstairs, and a receiver downstairs in my home theater area. I would have the Master router in my upstairs office, and the slave device 15 Meters/50 Feet away in the master bedroom so they would both blanket all parts of the house descending down and up.

My issue is that although this new router is supposed to be superior, I would have connection issues between the two. I would have an RSSI of -66 between the two units when it was using the 2.4ghz lane as an uplink between the two.

Yesterday I changed the settings, and for a little while it was using the 5Ghz-2 dedicated backhaul, but it regressed back to using the 2.4ghz as a backhaul.

So this time I used the apps advice, and place the slave router 5 meters away in the adjacent room, and although it has a great connection, it's now using the main 5Ghz band instead of the DEDICATED 5Ghz-2 backhaul!

This is annoying me greatly as the point of this damn router was to have a dedicated backhaul for Mesh purposes, but now I have two routers that are pretty much close to each other and a 3rd band that's not being utilized. I feel like I'm missing something?

 

[neilybealy]

I had the same issue until I searched on here and downgraded the firmware to the 42095 release. You’ll need to also then factory reset once you’ve downgraded but mine haven’t dropped once since

 

[KingBravery]

Hello all, I have the ASUS ZenWifi AX - XT8 as a replacement for an Orbi RBK50 system.

I have a 2900 SQFT 2-story home, and usually have both routers upstairs, and a receiver downstairs in my home theater area. I would have the Master router in my upstairs office, and the slave device 15 Meters/50 Feet away in the master bedroom so they would both blanket all parts of the house descending down and up.

My issue is that although this new router is supposed to be superior, I would have connection issues between the two. I would have an RSSI of -66 between the two units when it was using the 2.4ghz lane as an uplink between the two.

Yesterday I changed the settings, and for a little while it was using the 5Ghz-2 dedicated backhaul, but it regressed back to using the 2.4ghz as a backhaul.

So this time I used the apps advice, and place the slave router 5 meters away in the adjacent room, and although it has a great connection, it's now using the main 5Ghz band instead of the DEDICATED 5Ghz-2 backhaul!

This is annoying me greatly as the point of this damn router was to have a dedicated backhaul for Mesh purposes, but now I have two routers that are pretty much close to each other and a 3rd band that's not being utilized. I feel like I'm missing something?

wow.. how can you use 5GHz-1 as backhaul? Mine never become like that.

It will only use 2.4Ghz if my main AX86U use lower channel (36-64) which is not supported to XT8 5GHz-2 upper channel (100-165)

Can you show the setting ( wireless part and professional part)?

 

[RogerSC]

Hello all, I have the ASUS ZenWifi AX - XT8 as a replacement for an Orbi RBK50 system.

I have a 2900 SQFT 2-story home, and usually have both routers upstairs, and a receiver downstairs in my home theater area. I would have the Master router in my upstairs office, and the slave device 15 Meters/50 Feet away in the master bedroom so they would both blanket all parts of the house descending down and up.

My issue is that although this new router is supposed to be superior, I would have connection issues between the two. I would have an RSSI of -66 between the two units when it was using the 2.4ghz lane as an uplink between the two.

Yesterday I changed the settings, and for a little while it was using the 5Ghz-2 dedicated backhaul, but it regressed back to using the 2.4ghz as a backhaul.

So this time I used the apps advice, and place the slave router 5 meters away in the adjacent room, and although it has a great connection, it's now using the main 5Ghz band instead of the DEDICATED 5Ghz-2 backhaul!

This is annoying me greatly as the point of this damn router was to have a dedicated backhaul for Mesh purposes, but now I have two routers that are pretty much close to each other and a 3rd band that's not being utilized. I feel like I'm missing something?

50' does sound like some distance between the router and node. My two ZenWiFI AX nodes are about 40' apart, and that's okay, the app says that they have a "Great" connection using the 5GHz-2 radio for backhaul. How far the nodes can be apart also depends on how many walls and doors and how much furniture are between the router and node.

I'll make a suggestion that would accommodate the distance apart that you need the nodes, use a hard-wired connection. That can be an ethernet cable that you run outside (and paint to match your siding), or inside your walls, or even a flat cable inside concealed by your baseboards and moldings. The other way to get a hard-wired connection is to use MoCA 2.0 or MoCA 2.5, which uses the cable TV coax in your walls via a MoCA adapter at each coax cable end. I've got that set up here, with goCoax MoCA 2.5 adapters, and it works really well with my ZenWiFi AX. Of course, the wireless backhaul works okay, too, the hard-wired connection is just a bit faster.

By using a hard-wired connection, I can have the 5GHz-2 radio be client-facing, and that works really well also.

 

[Delumine]

50' does sound like some distance between the router and node. My two ZenWiFI AX nodes are about 40' apart, and that's okay, the app says that they have a "Great" connection using the 5GHz-2 radio for backhaul. How far the nodes can be apart also depends on how many walls and doors and how much furniture are between the router and node.

I'll make a suggestion that would accommodate the distance apart that you need the nodes, use a hard-wired connection. That can be an ethernet cable that you run outside (and paint to match your siding), or inside your walls, or even a flat cable inside concealed by your baseboards and moldings. The other way to get a hard-wired connection is to use MoCA 2.0 or MoCA 2.5, which uses the cable TV coax in your walls via a MoCA adapter at each coax cable end. I've got that set up here, with goCoax MoCA 2.5 adapters, and it works really well with my ZenWiFi AX. Of course, the wireless backhaul works okay, too, the hard-wired connection is just a bit faster.

By using a hard-wired connection, I can have the 5GHz-2 radio be client-facing, and that works really well also.

I've tried using a ComTrend G.hn PowerLine Kit before but it did absolutely nothing. I know the previous owners had comcast, and we wired the house with AT&T fiber. But I don't know how to wire the house for fiber (I see the ethernet ports in key locations around the house).

As for the uplink, it does seem indeed that my second router 5 meters away is using the 5Ghz as an uplink. I also liberated the 5GHz-2 so devices can use it too, since my second router decided not to use the dedicated backhaul

 

[RogerSC]

Yeah, powerline whatever is not anywhere near ethernet cable or MoCA speed. I never got powerline networking to go over 150Mbps for any distance at my house, ethernet cable or MoCA runs at ~1Gbps. Actually it's more like 940Mbps, since you never get a gigabit on gigabit fiber *smile*. Now if you can get those ethernet ports that you mentioned going, fiber is still turned into ethernet either directly from the ONT (if possible) or out of your fiber gateway. So any wiring inside your house for fiber is going to be ethernet cabling, you should be able to use any pre-existing ethernet cabling and ports. We have AT&T fiber and are using regular MoCA, as I mentioned, nothing special needs to be done inside our house because the access to our house is via fiber. Still have ethernet coming out of the AT&T fiber gateway.