leventozler
Occasional Visitor
I've been using two XT12s and one XT8 with old firmware as AP, until I decided to move from Edgerouter to Opnsense, and add multiple VLANs via latest firmware.
I spent days messing around settings, noticed I had horrible 2.4Ghz performance, clients were jumping around nodes, nodes were disconnecting etc.
Just wanted to share my settings and what I've learned, while stuff is fresh in my head.
2.4 GHz
Wireless Mode: Leave Auto. Changing it to N-only doesn't do anything, but when you leave Auto and Disable 11b, it sets wl0_rateset=ofdm and you end up with g/n/ax. ofdm becames default, minimum rate increases to 6Mbps. There is no other way to change/increase rates or turn off legacy modes.
WiFi Agile Multiband: Used to enable it, can't see any difference it makes.
Target Wake Time: Not used in Apple products, now keeping it disabled.
Channel bandwidth: 20 MHz
Control channel: Get "Wifi Explorer" app, it has trial version. Check channel utilization and select an empty one.
Authentication Method: Used to enable WPA3, now keeping WPA2 to keep Protected Management Frames off.
Roaming assistant: Disabled, never saw any benefits.
Bluetooth Coexistence: Disable
Enable IGMP Snooping: Enable
Multicast Rate(Mbps): Auto, some sources say changing it affects Basic Rate, but it does not.
Preamble Type: Short
DTIM Interval: 1, some recommend 3 for Apple, but I opted to increase Beacon Interval instead.
Beacon Interval: 300
Using guest network pro creates huge number of ssids multiplied by nodes. So if you have 3 guest networks (iot, guest, bonjour) + 1x 2.4 standard + 1x 5GHz-1 standard + 1x 5GHz-2 backhaul + 1x hidden asus ssid X 3-nodes = 21 SSID. So I opted to increase the beacon interval.
Enable TX Bursting: Disable
Airtime Fairness: Disable
Multi-User MIMO: Disable, I don't have that many concurrently active devices.
OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO: Disable
Explicit/Universal Beamforming: Disable, I think this was the major reason for high-latency, disabling improved latency a lot on 2.4 GHz
5 GHz-1
Mostly same except OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO set to DL/UL OFDMA.
Other Notes
These settings helped a lot with latency, connection problems etc. If you're using more than one nodes, some settings don't sync with them.
For example, beacon interval, WPS button setting, or gtk rekey interval don't sync. You need to exec following on nodes to set them.
And some last modifications for main node. Remember, I'm using them AP mode.
The one last little quirk is, nodes (not the main unit) do some scan every 5mins
It seems to have something to do with "amas_wlc_action" but couldn't figure it out.
I spent days messing around settings, noticed I had horrible 2.4Ghz performance, clients were jumping around nodes, nodes were disconnecting etc.
Just wanted to share my settings and what I've learned, while stuff is fresh in my head.
2.4 GHz
Wireless Mode: Leave Auto. Changing it to N-only doesn't do anything, but when you leave Auto and Disable 11b, it sets wl0_rateset=ofdm and you end up with g/n/ax. ofdm becames default, minimum rate increases to 6Mbps. There is no other way to change/increase rates or turn off legacy modes.
WiFi Agile Multiband: Used to enable it, can't see any difference it makes.
Target Wake Time: Not used in Apple products, now keeping it disabled.
Channel bandwidth: 20 MHz
Control channel: Get "Wifi Explorer" app, it has trial version. Check channel utilization and select an empty one.
Authentication Method: Used to enable WPA3, now keeping WPA2 to keep Protected Management Frames off.
Roaming assistant: Disabled, never saw any benefits.
Bluetooth Coexistence: Disable
Enable IGMP Snooping: Enable
Multicast Rate(Mbps): Auto, some sources say changing it affects Basic Rate, but it does not.
Preamble Type: Short
DTIM Interval: 1, some recommend 3 for Apple, but I opted to increase Beacon Interval instead.
Beacon Interval: 300
Using guest network pro creates huge number of ssids multiplied by nodes. So if you have 3 guest networks (iot, guest, bonjour) + 1x 2.4 standard + 1x 5GHz-1 standard + 1x 5GHz-2 backhaul + 1x hidden asus ssid X 3-nodes = 21 SSID. So I opted to increase the beacon interval.
Enable TX Bursting: Disable
Airtime Fairness: Disable
Multi-User MIMO: Disable, I don't have that many concurrently active devices.
OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO: Disable
Explicit/Universal Beamforming: Disable, I think this was the major reason for high-latency, disabling improved latency a lot on 2.4 GHz
5 GHz-1
Mostly same except OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO set to DL/UL OFDMA.
Other Notes
These settings helped a lot with latency, connection problems etc. If you're using more than one nodes, some settings don't sync with them.
For example, beacon interval, WPS button setting, or gtk rekey interval don't sync. You need to exec following on nodes to set them.
Bash:
# WPS button to light
nvram set btn_ez_mode=1
# Beacon Interval
nvram set wl0_bcn=300
nvram set wl1_bcn=300
nvram set wl2_bcn=300
# Frame Bursting
nvram set wl0_frameburst=off
# Disable Mu-MIMO
nvram set wl0_mu_features=0
nvram set wl0_mumimo=0
nvram set wl1_mu_features=0
nvram set wl1_mumimo=0
nvram set wl2_mu_features=0
nvram set wl2_mumimo=0
# Short Preamble
nvram set wl0_plcphdr=short
# Save
nvram commitAnd some last modifications for main node. Remember, I'm using them AP mode.
Bash:
# Disable Firewall
nvram set fw_enable_x=0
# LAN spanning tree protocol
nvram set lan_stp=0
# Disable Band Steer Daemon - Default 3
# 0:Disable, 1:Primary, 2:Helper, 3:Standalone
nvram set bsd_role=0
# Unlock Region
nvram set location_code=#a
# Disable Samba
nvram set enable_samba=0
# Disable Asus Tunnel
nvram set aae_disable_force=1
# Disable Agile Multiband
nvram set mbo_enable=0
# Disable Samba Deamon
nvram set smbd_enable=0
# Disable UPNP
nvram set upnp_enable=0
# Disable USB
nvram set usb_enable=0The one last little quirk is, nodes (not the main unit) do some scan every 5mins
Bash:
Apr 29 14:35:45 AMAS_SSD: [do_site_survey] [pid:30594] unit(2) Scan failed, total scan results counts = 0
Apr 29 14:40:43 AMAS_SSD: [do_site_survey] [pid:31726] unit(2) Scan failed, total scan results counts = 0
Apr 29 14:45:42 AMAS_SSD: [do_site_survey] [pid:328] unit(2) Scan failed, total scan results counts = 0It seems to have something to do with "amas_wlc_action" but couldn't figure it out.
