New to Merlin, 2 questions please

[sirwifi]

Hello. Just installed Merlin 376.48_3 on a RT-AC66U and I've got 2 questions please:

1. What does the option "Auto select channel including band1 channels" do? What is "band1"? When should it be used?

2. I've set the 5GHz radio to "AC" mode only. Is WPS supposed to work with it because it doesn't work for me, it works only on the 2.4GHz radio.

Thank you.

 

[RussellInCincinnati]

The "Auto select channel..." is a stock Asus firmware option, it is not unique to the Merlin software and thus is not really a Merlin question.

You probably should try this setting both checked and un-checked to see if it changes anything.

It would be interesting for you to turn off the 2.4 ghz radio in your router and see if then 5ghz works with WPS setup.

Also of course your 2.4ghz and 5ghz networks should have different SSID (WiFi network names), which they probably do.

Why did you set the 5ghz radio to "AC" mode only? Just interested, since you can get "pretty high" link rates (example 300mbps) just with 802.11n on 5ghz.

 

[sirwifi]

Turns out WPS can only be active on one band at a time. You have to turn WPS off in the WiFi settings, then change the band to 5GHz and then turn it on again. Kinda annoying but it is what it is and not a Merlin issue in any way. It's a one time deal anyway, after I got all my devices to connect I turned WPS off and will turn it on briefly when I add new devices only.

I set 5GHz to AC only because I'm reserving that band for media streaming only around the house and the couple clients I use are AC.

I've noticed some bugs (perhaps inherited from the stock firmware) though:

- If for the 5Ghz radio I select "N + AC" mode rather than Auto, the channel width is only 20Mhz even though I set it to 80Mhz in the UI.

- If I force a channel, the extension channel option only has Auto, there's no Upper/Lower selection like in the 2.4Ghz band.

What do people do for the 5Ghz band? Just leave it all on Auto? I usually like to run a channel scan and pick "free" channels manually and lock it at that. For example in the 2.4GHz band, the auto selection does a very poor job, it picks a crowded ch 1 instead of 6 which is almost empty in my case.