Ideal setup for AC87U as wireless router & AC3200 as access point?

[dreadnought]

Hello All,

I have an AC87U towards the front of a house and an AC3200 connected to the AC87U via CAT6 cable in a shack behind the house. I am running Merlin firmware on both and setup the AC87U as a wireless router and the AC3200 as an access point.

I did some initial testing of my setup that did not go well, and I'm wondering if the testing I did was flawed. Well, my setup of the devices is probably flawed too. I gave the AC3200 the same password as the AC87U, and the same SSIDs, except in all capitals, so I could quickly determine which one my clients were connected to.

During my testing I found that occasionally my clients would connect to the AC3200, even though I was within 20 feet of the AC87U and over 100 feet from the AC3200. The signal strength to the AC3200 (well, based on the macOS icon) would seem decent, but those clients would have a poor connection to the net. Slow and staggered I would call it.

I'm hoping some of you can tell me if my testing is flawed and what the ideal configuration would be in this kind of situation.

Thanks!

 

[krgck]

Lower TX power and enable roaming assistant on both routers would be my recommendation

 

[zackattack784]

You’ll get better roaming performance using the same SSID and password for both. Try that and see how it goes. Newer routers have implemented 802.11k and v which makes roaming fairly seamless, not sure if your routers support those protocols though.

 

[dreadnought]

Lower TX power and enable roaming assistant on both routers would be my recommendation

Thank you! I will try setting tx power to "Balanced" on both routers and enabling the roaming assistant. I may also set the SSIDs on the AC3200 to the same case as on the AC87U. If the connections seem flaky, I will just look at the MAC address to figure out which ASUS I'm connected to.

 

[krgck]

Sounds good! Good write from fellow finn if you're interested to learn more.
https://metis.fi/en/2017/10/txpower/