HUGELY erratic dBm readings in 2.4 GHz?

[dmillerzx]

No, mine took about 2 weeks to get here. There is a significantly cheaper options available which is identical just de-branded. Will be even hard to find though. There is a thread in these forums talking about it.

Also FYI adding this didn't make much of a difference in my signal.

 

[BigIronPops]

Make your own Antenna

Anyone know where to purchase this from? Amazon is back ordered 1-3 weeks and I can't find it anywhere else on the net.

How about making your own? Try this website, http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/

I used these, http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html, on my WRT54G and I was surprised how much it helped.

 

[Poseidon]

Not much of a "Do-It-yourselfer" so I went ahead and ordered it from Amazon ($25 shipped). What's surprising is how scarce apparently these things are. Other than Amazon (and $80 on eBay)....I couldn't find it anywhere.

 

[jphughan]

This issue appears to be resolved using the latest official firmware (ending in .354), which includes an updated wireless radio driver from Broadcom which claims to resolve issues with Xboxes and increase wireless throughput on both bands. InSSIDer now displays an almost completely flat (and VERY high) dBm reading on both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands.

I enabled Enhanced Interference Management on 2.4 GHz since I live in an apartment complex, not sure if that matters.

 

[dmillerzx]

This issue appears to be resolved using the latest official firmware (ending in .354), which includes an updated wireless radio driver from Broadcom which claims to resolve issues with Xboxes and increase wireless throughput on both bands. InSSIDer now displays an almost completely flat (and VERY high) dBm reading on both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands.

I enabled Enhanced Interference Management on 2.4 GHz since I live in an apartment complex, not sure if that matters.

This is great news! I've yet to try the latest Beta... Will likely just wait for Merlin's update. I hope I can confirm the same results. So it does appear that there was issue cause brief signal drops every minute on the 2.4ghz band... Interesting!

Also I'm in a very similar apartment situation (30 plus APs in range...) I noticed that when enabling Interference Management my 2.4ghz clients would have issues with connection reliably after long periods of use. Possibly related to clients sleeping. Since turning it off, those problems have completely disappeared! My network will be completely solid if what ur saying about the lasted beta holds true for me!

Thanks for your update.

 

[jphughan]

This is great news! I've yet to try the latest Beta... Will likely just wait for Merlin's update. I hope I can confirm the same results. So it does appear that there was issue cause brief signal drops every minute on the 2.4ghz band... Interesting!

Also I'm in a very similar apartment situation (30 plus APs in range...) I noticed that when enabling Interference Management my 2.4ghz clients would have issues with connection reliably after long periods of use. Possibly related to clients sleeping. Since turning it off, those problems have completely disappeared! My network will be completely solid if what ur saying about the lasted beta holds true for me!

Thanks for your update.

Fyi, the latest firmware is no longer beta; there's a new official firmware out (EDIT: Hmm, a "Beta Version" tag was just added to it, interesting....). Note that I had a hell of a time getting it flashed. It appeared that I had no WAN connectivity from my machine post-update (even though the router showed connected), and that continued even after running a factory default reset from the UI, erasing NVRAM with the WPS button, flashing via the Rescue app, etc -- but I got WAN again when reverting to the old firmware. VERY long story short, for some reason after the firmware update the default gateway behavior on my Windows machine got messed up. I was dumb not to test WAN connectivity from another device (it was already 1AM....) and I have no idea how Windows default gateway behavior could be firmware-dependent, but I set a static IP on my machine and all of a sudden had WAN connectivity -- then I switched back to DHCP and actually restarted my machine and had WAN connectivity that way too.

Ironic considering that I work in IT, and one of the first things I ask people when they come to me for help is, "Have you rebooted your machine?" since that solves so many weird issues. Classic case of not following the advice I'd give to someone else -- like the time I spent 25 minutes trying to figure out why my Wifi adapter wasn't working, only to discover that the hardware switch was set to Off, something that I would have checked FIRST on anyone else's machine. Le sigh.

Good to know about your observations with Enhanced Interference Management. I don't have any 2.4 GHz devices so I'm not sure I'll see that, but if I do I'll know where to look.

One thing I DID notice though was that AirPlay audio streaming from my iPhone stuttered a lot, no matter where it was relative to the router. I never tested it prior to the update so I don't know if that was a new problem (new firmware came out at the same time I hooked up my new AV receiver which has AirPlay support), but it was fixed immediately and apparently permanently by enabling the new "Optimize for Xbox" option. Perhaps that option should be renamed "Optimize for streaming media" given that the main goal of this firmware update was to resolve a streaming media issue most often seen on Xboxes, but the fix apparently applies to other devices? ASUS has not given any technical information as to what that checkbox does or what tradeoffs there may be from having it enabled (I assume that if it's a checkbox rather than an always-on default, there must be a downside to enabling it at least in certain cases), but hopefully Merlin will be able to shed some light on that once he tears the new firmware apart.

 

[dmillerzx]

Interesting, I will defiantly be looking into the Xbox Optimization toggle. I've not noticed any issues with streaming other than some slow buffering with my Android phone streaming Google Music. However, with the slew of Wifi issues surrounding 4.2 JB I'm hesitant to blame this on my router. Also DLNA streaming over the local LAN has work pretty well for me... Especially since I'm restricted to the shirtty PS3's wireless G as my main client (Until UMS works for the Wii U ) I would assume that the Xbox optimization settings is related to streaming over the internet though....

Hopefully we'll get some more clarification on what exactly the fix is doing from Asus.

All in all my main concern is getting rid of those erratic and very frequent (though short lived) signal dips on the 2.4ghz band.

Please keep us posted if you see the problem return. Also did you do a dirty flash or reset the router after upgrading firmware? Did you change any other settings aside from messing with Enhanced Interference Mitigation?

IT / Computer engineer here too, "Have you restarted your computer yet?" also my usual first question

 

[jphughan]

Interesting, I will defiantly be looking into the Xbox Optimization toggle. I've not noticed any issues with streaming other than some slow buffering with my Android phone streaming Google Music. However, with the slew of Wifi issues surrounding 4.2 JB I'm hesitant to blame this on my router. Also DLNA streaming over the local LAN has work pretty well for me... Especially since I'm restricted to the shirtty PS3's wireless G as my main client (Until UMS works for the Wii U ) I would assume that the Xbox optimization settings is related to streaming over the internet though....

Hopefully we'll get some more clarification on what exactly the fix is doing from Asus.

All in all my main concern is getting rid of those erratic and very frequent (though short lived) signal dips on the 2.4ghz band.

Please keep us posted if you see the problem return. Also did you do a dirty flash or reset the router after upgrading firmware? Did you change any other settings aside from messing with Enhanced Interference Mitigation?

IT / Computer engineer here too, "Have you restarted your computer yet?" also my usual first question

The Xbox optimization is definitely NOT related to the Internet; it pertains to the Wifi radio since it seems not to cooperate well when streaming media to/from clients with certain Wifi radio chips, which is probably why there's a separate checkbox for each band. Connecting Xboxes via Ethernet solves the issue, and I actually had DLNA streaming issues with my Blu-ray player (OPPO BDP-93) over its Wifi dongle, though I haven't experimented yet to see whether they're solved with the new firmware because at the new place I moved to I can just as easily run an Ethernet cable anyway.

I initially did a dirty flash and saw that all of the settings were retained, but out of habit I always do a reset to defaults and manually re-enter all of my settings. Even after all that (and after resetting but before re-establishing settings) I had no WAN. I have no idea how to explain what I saw, but at this point I'm just glad it works and more than a little irritated that I was up from midnight to 2:30 AM grappling with this issue now that I know it likely would have been solved with a reboot.