Strange Behavior

[Enternal]

Hello. I just recently bought the Asus RT-n66u to upgrade from my Linksys WRT54G that I had for a very very long time. I thought it was about time to upgrade. Although I'm quite experienced in flashing that router and have played with DD-WRT and many different custom firmware for it before finely settling on Tomato, I guess I could still be considered a newbie with routers in general. Anyways, I'm having odd issues with the new router and I don't know if it's typical or not. Here are some key points first of all:

Stock Firmware: 3.0.0.4.260
Laptops Does not Support 5Ghz
Went through the initial setup and have setup my Wireless information.

I have left the settings under Wireless > General as Default, which means that:
Channel Bandwidth: 20/40 Mhz
Wireless Mode: Auto
The only thing I changed was Control Channel which I set to 11 due to my area.

Now the situation. Whenever I attempt to transfer file from my Desktop (wired) to my laptop, almost every time the wireless would go bad and the transfer would halt. If I tried to use other copying software to get a clearer error like FastCopy, it would say that it could not longer find the network that had my file which shows that the connection had dropped. I then have to wait a couple minutes for it to come back. Nothing funny shows up in the router log.

After hours of testing and then flashing with Merlin's RT-N66U_3.0.0.4_266.23b as well as the most up-to-date version of Merlin's firmware, I still have the same issue. However the issue is resolved once I switched my Channel Bandwidth from the channel bonding to only 20 Mhz. I no longer have any issues and can get consistent transfer of around 5-7 Megabytes/s. It seems that Channel bonding is causing all of these wireless drops. I know channel bonding is not really recommend but I just want to know if it's somewhat normal for that to happen. Sometimes it makes me think that this particular one I got is defective somehow, since it should not just drop my connection like that.

 

[linkmaster]

I can't give you the technical reasons why , but leaving it in 20/40 on 2.4 does cause some 'issues' , I switched to 20mhz early on and never had any problems since , so it's not just your unit.

 

[RogerSC]

Channel bonding is fine on 5GHz. where there's unlikely to be any competing networks in range. On 2.4GHz., where you have lots of competing wireless networks (and other interference as well), what you're likely seeing is your router trying 40MHz. and then dropping back to 20MHz. over and over, causing unstable behavior. So I would agree that leaving your channel width at 20MHz. only on 2.4GHz. is a good idea.

I would only use 20/40MHz. if you're in a relatively interference-free area (rare these days, probably rural *smile*). You can verify what your neighborhood conditions are by using a program like inSSIDer to look at the strength of neighboring networks. I'm in a single-family residence, and my router can see about 20 different wireless networks on 2.4GHz., no clear channels at all. I just pick one of channels 1, 6, or 11 that is the clearest.

 

[Enternal]

Thank you very much! So it's somewhat something to be expected. Anyway, running it directly 20Mhz so works perfectly and very stable so far. Thank you.

 

[SoCalReviews]

Thank you very much! So it's somewhat something to be expected. Anyway, running it directly 20Mhz so works perfectly and very stable so far. Thank you.

I can also confirm that all my wireless routers are set to an uncrowded fixed channel and 20Mhz bandwidth for the 2.4Ghz band and I never seem to have the wireless problems that many others claim to have. If you need much more wireless bandwidth in an area where 2.4Ghz is overcrowded then using 5Ghz band with 40Mhz bandwidth on these 802.11 n routers or using a newer 802.11 ac router and wireless ac devices (80Mhz bandwidth) is the way to go.