RT N66U wireless almost unuseable

[Souli]

Hi,
I bought a RT N66U to extend my current wifi at home which consist of an Apple Airport Extreme. I upgraded it to the newest firmware and set it up as an Access Point. The 5g is not useable at all so unstable is it. Even with the 2.4g I get pings of around 500-2000 right next to the router. Also the wifi just drops from time to time or I loose the connection for a second before it resumes (while streaming and stuff like that). After I checked the forums it seems that this is quite normal with the newest firmware. So I downloaded the .276 today and downgraded. There after I did a hard reset (press the reset until the blue light blinks slowly) and configured the router again. Same situation again.
Atm I use different SSIDs as my Apple so I can test the different wifis. Is there a way to fix the problem? I dunno what to do rly.

edit: the Asus uses channel 6, my apple channel 11 and my neighbour channel 1 so that is no problem. On 5g the Asus uses 36+40 and the Apple 100+104

 

[RMerlin]

Hi,
I bought a RT N66U to extend my current wifi at home which consist of an Apple Airport Extreme. I upgraded it to the newest firmware and set it up as an Access Point. The 5g is not useable at all so unstable is it. Even with the 2.4g I get pings of around 500-2000 right next to the router. Also the wifi just drops from time to time or I loose the connection for a second before it resumes (while streaming and stuff like that). After I checked the forums it seems that this is quite normal with the newest firmware. So I downloaded the .276 today and downgraded. There after I did a hard reset (press the reset until the blue light blinks slowly) and configured the router again. Same situation again.
Atm I use different SSIDs as my Apple so I can test the different wifis. Is there a way to fix the problem? I dunno what to do rly.

edit: the Asus uses channel 6, my apple channel 11 and my neighbour channel 1 so that is no problem. On 5g the Asus uses 36+40 and the Apple 100+104

200-500ms ping times right next to the router are definitely not normal. The reported issues are about range, nothing to do with close proximity and pings - your problem is different.

Try experimenting with different channels, as well as updating the driver of the client device.

 

[Souli]

the clients have updated drivers. I use an older Macbook Air and my normal pc with a Netgear N600 adapter.
Switching to different channels: do I just manually try every one of them because on inSSIDer it is pretty clear that nothing disturbs my wifi networks atm.

 

[PrivateJoker]

the clients have updated drivers. I use an older Macbook Air and my normal pc with a Netgear N600 adapter.
Switching to different channels: do I just manually try every one of them because on inSSIDer it is pretty clear that nothing disturbs my wifi networks atm.

Is your Asus wired to the APE? You said it was extended but just want to verify you're doing this with an Ethernet cable.

My setup is RT-N66U as main router and a hardwired APexpress as an auxiliary AP.

I agree on the use of differing SSIDs to setup & diagnose, but you'll also have to tell your clients to forget the info (like remove it) about X AP when you are doing tests on Y AP. If they are close enough that a device might see a good signal from both you can definitely have goofy probs trying to set it up.

I use the N66 as my main AP because it just has more features that are easy to use, with better and more consistent wifi than the APE that I replaced it with, also the extra switches port is nice. I could see if you wanted to use an external disk for TimeMachine use or back to my Mac features as being a couple of the small # of reasons I'd want to use an Apple Airport of any variety as my main AP in a multi AP scenario. Also I guess Apple's proprietary wireless extension method for putting on additional Apple stuff as repeaters might be a good reason, because they have some special sauce that makes it really easy to use that function.

I'd be glad to troubleshoot more if you want to go through some specifics. Your channels look fine, and you could even leave them in auto all the way around. Also, just to double check, your APE's 5ghz network has a unique SSID from all others? I know they default to same SSID as the 2.4ghz network.

Also, a couple tricks for Airport stuff, if you side load the 6.x Airport utility alongside the current 7.x, it actually gives you some added options that you might need (I needed it to get into some more detailed IPV6 stuff) and also holding down the option key on many pull down menus in the AP Utility reveals hidden options/settings.

 

[Souli]

Hi,
setup is like that:
the Asus is connected via ethernet to a switch and that to my APE. the Asus is setup as Access Point.

Wireless setup:
on Asus: 2.4g auto channel (6 atm), 20 Mhz, Unique SSID; 5g auto channel, 20/40 Mhz, Unique SSID
on APE: 2.4g (channel 11) and 5g (channel 100+104) share the same SSID (which is different from both the SSIDs from the Asus)

I have only 1 other 2.4g network near me which is using channel 1 and no other network on the 5g.

I can use my wireless from the APE without a problem. As soon as I switch to my 2.4g from the Asus I can't watch twitch.tv since it is stuttering all the time. I use the constant ping on macbook which shows me a ping range from 50ms up to 2500 and sometimes a request timeout.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Hi,
setup is like that:
the Asus is connected via ethernet to a switch and that to my APE. the Asus is setup as Access Point.

Wireless setup:
on Asus: 2.4g auto channel (6 atm), 20 Mhz, Unique SSID; 5g auto channel, 20/40 Mhz, Unique SSID
on APE: 2.4g (channel 11) and 5g (channel 100+104) share the same SSID (which is different from both the SSIDs from the Asus)

I have only 1 other 2.4g network near me which is using channel 1 and no other network on the 5g.

I can use my wireless from the APE without a problem. As soon as I switch to my 2.4g from the Asus I can't watch twitch.tv since it is stuttering all the time. I use the constant ping on macbook which shows me a ping range from 50ms up to 2500 and sometimes a request timeout.

First question - what are you using to watch TV? Through your laptop?

2nd question, can you go to "about my mac" > "system profiler" > wi-fi, and take a screenshot (command-shift-3) of that whole area of the page (might have to extend the window if there are lots of APs listed), and post it? It will look like this, here's mine.

 

[jlake]

Start over and try basic troubleshooting steps in link below.

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=12453

 

[sm00thpapa]

Start over and try basic troubleshooting steps in link below.

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=12453

What problem can occur if both cascaded routers have NAT turned on? Mine is turned on and I don't have any problems that I'm aware of. Thanks.

 

[RMerlin]

What problem can occur if both cascaded routers have NAT turned on? Mine is turned on and I don't have any problems that I'm aware of. Thanks.

Biggest issue is port forwarding won't work (inbound connections will be blocked by the first router, never reaching the forward rule on your second router). Same with UPnP.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Biggest issue is port forwarding won't work (inbound connections will be blocked by the first router, never reaching the forward rule on your second router). Same with UPnP.

Both on the PS3 and Xbox 360 have Open NAT. So the problem doesn't exist for me. Thanks Merlin.

 

[Souli]

k here is the screenshot from my laptop.

Laborweg and Laborweg 5g are the 2.4g and 5g of the Asus router. Laborweg 2 is the 2.4g + 5g network from the APE which works fine.

edit: I just switched the Asus with an old Apple Airport Express that I have sitting here. I configured it like my APE so the 2.4g + 5g are using the same SSID with a Signal / Noise -83 / -92 and my ping is a lot better and the wifi works compared to the Asus. Maybe I should just sell the Asus and buy a new APE to add to my network instead.