Best tips for wifi stability? (Asus RT-AC68U)

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Roger W
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Joined: 23 Apr 2014
Posts: 22

PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 18:01    Post subject: Best tips for wifi stability? (Asus RT-AC68U) Reply with quote
Hi all,

I've tried keeping current on the various threads about stability over several months, but it seems like a lot of theories have come and gone. I'm hoping that someone can summarize either a path to stability or that there is no known fix, so I can stop tinkering.

I have an Asus ( was t-mobile badged) RT-AC68U running a current BS build (last week's) as my router/AP, with a VAP guest network on 2.4. My WAN is 50/50 FIOS, going to 500/500 next week.

Currently, everything has basic functionality when I run the suggest startup command to down and re-up the wlan. But, after about 1.5 days, all wifi-to-LAN performance drops to kbps unless I re-run that command. Then 2.4 comes back to full speed but 5 just doesn't want to connect. Also, at frequent intervals between these restarts, my devices drop from wifi for a few seconds and reconnect, making certain app connections unstable. Some times, wifi-to-wifi pings don't go through at all until a reboot (such as laptop to printer) when either can talk to the wired LAN.

As this affects local traffic, could SFE make a difference? I have it on right now, am I correct in thinking that it will help when I have 500Mbit service next week?

Any suggestions on configs that are more stable, or is this a known current state? Specific to this router or widespread?

thanks!
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Malachi
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Joined: 17 Jul 2012
Posts: 7209
Location: Columbus, Ohio

PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 20:07    Post subject: Reply with quote
Don’t know if it will help but have you tried Kong’s builds instead?
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I am far from a guru, I'm barely a novice.
Roger W
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 23 Apr 2014
Posts: 22

PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2019 4:22    Post subject: Reply with quote
Malachi wrote:
Don’t know if it will help but have you tried Kong’s builds instead?


Not yet. Happy to try if that's the next suggested step.

Can anyone summarize the scope of effect of disabling SFE? My understanding is that enabling it improves WAN CPU utilization and bypasses iptables, but can cause "problems"; are those problems confined to WAN (it seems fine to me) or can they affect WLAN-to-local as well? What's the max WAN throughput without SFE?

At a few days to get a problem to repro, blind guesswork is pretty slow.
Clambier
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 05 Aug 2019
Posts: 1

PostPosted: Mon Aug 05, 2019 22:59    Post subject: Stable Kong build Reply with quote
And what would be the most recent stable Kong build. I have 39960 and after a couple days router goes offline and needs reboot
Malachi
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 17 Jul 2012
Posts: 7209
Location: Columbus, Ohio

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2019 0:33    Post subject: Re: Stable Kong build Reply with quote
Clambier wrote:
And what would be the most recent stable Kong build. I have 39960 and after a couple days router goes offline and needs reboot


http://www.desipro.de/ddwrt/K3-AC-Arm/

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I am far from a guru, I'm barely a novice.
MysticGold04
DD-WRT User


Joined: 20 Apr 2018
Posts: 174
Location: Somewhere remote

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2019 1:50    Post subject: Reply with quote
I have several of the T-Mobile converted routers..
Best thing you can do for wireless stability is manually set your wireless channels for each band.. Also turn off beamforming in the settings. Try Kong 37985M from December 18. Also make sure you telnet or ssh in issue the command
Code:

Nvram erase && reboot

And then configure your router from scratch. All of my routers have been super stable on Kong firmware.

_________________
ASUS RT-AC3100 AP Merlin 386.12_4
ASUS RT-AC68U Media Bridge/Merlin 386.12_4 (x2)
ASUS RT-AC68U AP r54604
ASUS RT-AC68U Gateway/AP r54604
Edgerouter-4, v2.0.9-hotfix7
hushcoden
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 30 Jan 2018
Posts: 17

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2019 15:36    Post subject: Re: Stable Kong build Reply with quote
Clambier wrote:
And what would be the most recent stable Kong build. I have 39960 and after a couple days router goes offline and needs reboot

Not the recent ones... I have the same problem with both the 39960 (June 8th 2019) and the one currently in the test folder (40270 of July 11th 2019)... Evil or Very Mad

My router is a Netgear R7000.
Roger W
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 23 Apr 2014
Posts: 22

PostPosted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 5:58    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thanks for the tips, I might try those soon. I have a few updates from my own testing in the meantime -

I'm still on BS build 40400.

I suspect that SFE might be contributing to my LAN-internal wifi problems; when I have had it disabled for a few days, I didn't have wifi trouble. It will take longer tests to know for sure.

But on the flip side, I just got provisioned for 500/500 FIOS tonight, and SFE definitely is needed to get full speed. Without it I was maxing at around 250, through a few different methods of testing.

So the tough choices are:
1. SFE off and hopefully wifi stays healthy, but give up the highest speeds that I probably don't need anytime soon anyway.
2. SFE on and look from a cron script that will toggle wifi every night
3. take the plunge into Kong builds, but it seems like there are pitfalls there too and I can't just always get the very latest and assume it will work fine.

I might start with 1 for a while. I got the 500 service because it was the same price as I was paying for 50, not because I expect to use the full speed.
kernel-panic69
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 08 May 2018
Posts: 14102
Location: Texas, USA

PostPosted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 6:27    Post subject: Reply with quote
Lucky you. You may wish to update to a more recent build, as SFE has been an ongoing fix in progress.
Roger W
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 23 Apr 2014
Posts: 22

PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2019 5:05    Post subject: Reply with quote
To circle back on this, I am still on the same build as above, and *am* again having the 5Ghz stability problems even with SFE off. So that was a red herring.

I will soon try a newer build or the other suggestions
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