Lemon or Working as intended?

[bnl]

Just got the AC66U. First noticed when lifting it up and turning it around that there is a rattling sound inside the router, something is falling around in there. Also found my 2.4GHz 802.11n down speeds at best case 20Mbps, even directly in front of it with excellent signal. Is this a lemon or are the two unrelated, and this is a firmware issue? Thanks!

 

[thiggins]

I don't know if the rattle and your speed (are you quoting actual measured speed or link rate that your client shows?) are related.

But there should not be anything rattling around in the router.
Return it and get another one.

 

[bnl]

Actual link rate. The client shows 144Mbps, and a test showed it at 20. Regardless I'll return it for a different one since the rattling shouldn't happen, and then we'll see if it was related or not.

 

[chkwong]

Just got the AC66U. First noticed when lifting it up and turning it around that there is a rattling sound inside the router, something is falling around in there. Also found my 2.4GHz 802.11n down speeds at best case 20Mbps, even directly in front of it with excellent signal. Is this a lemon or are the two unrelated, and this is a firmware issue? Thanks!

I also have problem of 2.4 ghz connection speed problem for ac66u. only 5-10 Mbps i resolved by select 20 mhz and channel 9 for 2.4 ghz manually. now 60 mbps. hope new firmware can improve the connection.

 

[Chuck_IV]

It seems that Asus's channel selecting in the "Auto" mode is less than stellar. I found that if I left it on Auto, I got bad rates, but when I played with the channels I found 6u to work best in my area and seeing MUCH better rates.

 

[thiggins]

The router does not properly back off to 20 MHz bandwidth when encountering an interfering network.

In 2.4 GHz, you should change the setting from Auto 20/40 to 20 MHz. There is little performance to be gained by the Auto setting and more chance for interfering with (and interference from) neighboring networks, which will reduce throughput and increase unreliability.

 

[RMerlin]

The router does not properly back off to 20 MHz bandwidth when encountering an interfering network.

In 2.4 GHz, you should change the setting from Auto 20/40 to 20 MHz. There is little performance to be gained by the Auto setting and more chance for interfering with (and interference from) neighboring networks, which will reduce throughput and increase unreliability.

In recent firmware releases, interference mode is disabled by default. Maybe that's related.

Can one of you with the issue try running this over telnet, and see if it helps with long-term stability?

wl -i eth1 interference 4
wl -i eth2 interference 4

This is what used to be the default value in the past according to another user. I know that last few releases had it set to 0. The available options:

admin@RT-AC66U:/tmp/home/root# wl -h interference
interference
Get/Set interference mitigation mode. Choices are:
0 = none
1 = non wlan
2 = wlan manual
3 = wlan automatic
4 = wlan automatic with noise reduction

Let me know if it helps. If it does, I'll integrate the option into Asuswrt-merlin.

EDIT: Note that this option does not survive reboots, so you have to re-run that command after rebooting the router.

 

[chkwong]

Seems nothing change after using interference mode 4.
Still need to manual select the Mhz and channel

In recent firmware releases, interference mode is disabled by default. Maybe that's related.

Can one of you with the issue try running this over telnet, and see if it helps with long-term stability?



This is what used to be the default value in the past according to another user. I know that last few releases had it set to 0. The available options:



Let me know if it helps. If it does, I'll integrate the option into Asuswrt-merlin.

EDIT: Note that this option does not survive reboots, so you have to re-run that command after rebooting the router.

 

[RMerlin]

The latest (non-public) beta from Asus has a newer version of the driver. Worth a shot once they make a public release based on this newer version.

 

[chkwong]

The latest (non-public) beta from Asus has a newer version of the driver. Worth a shot once they make a public release based on this newer version.

look forward to new firmware soon!