[K4sum1]

I was running r53445 on my WRT1900ACv2 for the longest time, but I found a really good deal on a WRT3200ACM and had to get it. I figured I'd see what the last good version was and after browsing the forums, I landed on r62036 (This was early September) as r62104 had a concerning post on the thread and r62036 was the previous build and more well tested. (and when it came out, r62157 after it had broken webui)

At first r62036 was pretty good on the WRT3200ACM, so I remotely updated my WRT1900ACv2 to it as well. Things were going well, until I noticed the 5GHz WiFi is a bit weird. At close distances to the router, it appears to work fine, but at longer distances, I found devices were unable to connect to it and gave an IP configuration failure error, if not cryptically failing to connect with no cause given. There was nothing relevant in syslog. It was only until I set 5GHz to 40MHz and band 48(?) that I was able to get a reliable connection. I had wanted to use a higher band as the lower 5GHz bands are congested because the shitcast xfinity modems have a super limited band selection, so everyone there is crammed on bands 32-64, and a few other bands higher up.

After finishing that up, I went to see how my WRT1900ACv2 fared. It's a similar config to the WRT3200ACM, although the WRT1900ACv2 acts as a DHCP forwarder, while the WRT3200ACM has its DHCP server enabled. Initially I had no issues with WiFi, although it's placed in the same room as me while the WRT3200ACM was multiple rooms over. This was until I had accidentally unplugged the WRT1900ACv2 when organizing cables on my power strip, and after plugging it back in, I found nothing was able to connect to the 5GHz network. I don't even get the IP configuration failure error, my devices just attempt to connect multiple times, fail, and then stop trying to connect.

Now, r62036 is a bit outdated, so I'll try updating to r62240 and see what happens. I assume the 5GHz WiFi will work again for now, this issue is so weird that I have no idea when it will break again or how to consistently test the issue. (I won't have physical access to the WRT3200ACM for a long while.) I bet setting to a lower band would fix the issue, and maybe width had something to play here too, but I want to keep 80MHz on the WRT1900ACv2 since here I have symmetrical gigabit fiber and the WRT3200ACM only handles a 100/10 connection. I also feel like I'd rather see if anyone knows what the last good build for WiFi is and downgrade to it, or put my nerd skills to the test and try to find the exact commit that caused the issue and try to get it fixed in the latest builds.

[K4sum1]

So far r62240 has been fine? Maybe some weird issues, but I had to change DHCP settings on modem, so might have been that. Will have to see what happens. Will try connecting to router from the other side of the house at some point, but don't feel like it rn.

I decided to fool around with getting DD-WRT on my RT-AC88U, and I found it's missing a lot of WiFi channels compared to my WRT1900ACv2, will be making a post about that in the Broadcom category. However out of the two choices for 5GHz at 80MHz, 36 and 149, automatic picked 149. Something I had noticed when I was experimenting with the WRT3200ACM was when I picked 149 or 157 at 80MHz, old devices would not see the WiFi network. I had assumed this was just old device issue, but same old devices are able to see the RT-AC88U on band 149 just fine. Could be related here. Will have to test 149/157 on the WRT1900ACv2 here at some point.

I had tested 149/157 on the WRT3200ACM because those are 30 dBm compared to the 24 dBm of all the other channels and I thought that might help with the issue.

[K4sum1]