[SOLVED] ASUS AX11000 Signal issues - AX5700 working better..lost!

[datkern]

The last week has been a serious journey to find a wireless router upgrade from my old 6 year dual band Netgear. Recently purchased both AX5700 & AX11000 wireless routers to test connectivity strength and bandwidth around the house. My house is about 1700 square feet, 2 floors. We use wireless equally throughout the house and upstairs in the office for PC gaming. I noticed the AX5700 passed the test no issues and never lost connection. However I expected the AX11000 to hold up better but has been disconnecting in some rooms where the AX5700 holds up no problem.

Our ultimate goal is to future proof the house with more smart devices so we need something that can manage bandwidth and devices well. On my AX11000, I upgraded my firmware to the beta version and started having some issues with the connectivity. I ended up returning that AX11000 because of a potential defect as a friend suggested.

Today I went up to my local Micro Center, bought a new AX11000 and a new modem (Motorola DOCSIS 3.1).. I'm on the latest firmware and everything has been great. My router+modem is on the 1st floor. The real test was making sure the strength held up with the range in my upstairs office. The office is located on my 2nd floor where my gaming PC is and noticed right away my latency in games was well over 100-200ms in World of Warcraft and loading pages was really bad.. took a noticeable amount of time to load. Eventually I put Smart Connect on and this resolved the issue but shouldn't have to do that with this AX11000 strength.

I noticed my strength on the 2nd floor is stronger when on 5G Gaming which doesn't make sense.. my router+model is on 1st floor so I would think being on 2G would be perfectly fine. At this point I'm really lost and have no idea what to do and want to just get the other router (AX5700) back so I have a consistent reliable network but don't feel like it will hold up in the long run with my future proof smart home devices plus other electronics.

Any guidance and help is appreciated! I can share any logs if needed.. just let me know

 

[bill001g]

First wifi6 is not the future you are way out of date on your information if you think that. Wifi6e equipment is already starting to get to the market. This is a perfect example of why the concept of future proof computer equipment is flawed. The FCC approved the wifi6e radio bands just about the time wifi6 equipment was first starting to hit the market about 1.5 years ago. It was outdated before it even got on the shelf.

There really should not be much difference between those 2 routers. The only real difference is the 11000 has 2 5g radios. You can't actually use both radios to talk to a single device and there is not enough radio bandwidth on the 5g radio band to fit 2 160mhz signals without overlapping.

The actual cpu chip and the radio chips used on the 5g radios are identical.

What I would do is see what happens if you force the radios in the router to 80mhz.

What I suspect is happening is the 11000 maybe trying to fit both signals by using the the area in the 5g band that is restricted. It has things like weather radar and other stuff that require the router to reduce the transmit power or change the channels if it detects transmissions. Many routers and end devices do not want to deal with the complexity so do not even support this.

Your problem likely is some issue with the negotiated encoding between your end devices and the router. These fancy router can talk about 4x4 mimo and 160mhz bands but most end devices only have 2 antenna and a great many of the phones only support 80mhz radio channels. Now this assumes you have wifi6 end devices to begin with. The router will just drop back to the older 802.11ac to support those devices so it really won't be any better than a 802.11ac router.

It is going to take some digging but I strongly suspect the 11000 has selected different radio channels. If the 5700 works better I would just use that. The extra radio in the 11000 has very little value since there is no extra radio bandwidth for it to really use. That is what wifi6e fixes, there is a brand new 6g radio band with almost 10 times the radio bandwidth of the 5g band.

 

[datkern]

First wifi6 is not the future you are way out of date on your information if you think that. Wifi6e equipment is already starting to get to the market. This is a perfect example of why the concept of future proof computer equipment is flawed. The FCC approved the wifi6e radio bands just about the time wifi6 equipment was first starting to hit the market about 1.5 years ago. It was outdated before it even got on the shelf.

There really should not be much difference between those 2 routers. The only real difference is the 11000 has 2 5g radios. You can't actually use both radios to talk to a single device and there is not enough radio bandwidth on the 5g radio band to fit 2 160mhz signals without overlapping.

The actual cpu chip and the radio chips used on the 5g radios are identical.

What I would do is see what happens if you force the radios in the router to 80mhz.

What I suspect is happening is the 11000 maybe trying to fit both signals by using the the area in the 5g band that is restricted. It has things like weather radar and other stuff that require the router to reduce the transmit power or change the channels if it detects transmissions. Many routers and end devices do not want to deal with the complexity so do not even support this.

Your problem likely is some issue with the negotiated encoding between your end devices and the router. These fancy router can talk about 4x4 mimo and 160mhz bands but most end devices only have 2 antenna and a great many of the phones only support 80mhz radio channels. Now this assumes you have wifi6 end devices to begin with. The router will just drop back to the older 802.11ac to support those devices so it really won't be any better than a 802.11ac router.

It is going to take some digging but I strongly suspect the 11000 has selected different radio channels. If the 5700 works better I would just use that. The extra radio in the 11000 has very little value since there is no extra radio bandwidth for it to really use. That is what wifi6e fixes, there is a brand new 6g radio band with almost 10 times the radio bandwidth of the 5g band.

I might just do that and hold onto the 5700. In any case would you recommend me turning off smart connect and first try updating the router setting to 80mhz? That being said in the General Wireless settings for 2.4 GHz for Channel Bandwidth.. these are my options 20/40 MHz, 20 MHz, 40 MHz and the 5G go up to 160 MHz.

Could this be the issue with 2.4 GHz not going up to 80 MHz? I'm surprised it only goes up to 40 MHz.. not sure what would restrict this? Sorry learning all of this as I go

 

[kanewolf]

I might just do that and hold onto the 5700. In any case would you recommend me turning off smart connect and first try updating the router setting to 80mhz? That being said in the General Wireless settings for 2.4 GHz for Channel Bandwidth.. these are my options 20/40 MHz, 20 MHz, 40 MHz and the 5G go up to 160 MHz.

Could this be the issue with 2.4 GHz not going up to 80 MHz? I'm surprised it only goes up to 40 MHz.. not sure what would restrict this? Sorry learning all of this as I go

2.4 should be set to 20Mhz. The reason it "only" goes to 40Mhz is that is all the bandwidth allocated in the 2.4Ghz spectrum. 80Mhz for 5Ghz is good nearby, but is less reliable further away. The best way to get stable WIFI is to have multiple WIFI sources distributed throughout the house. If you game via WIFI upstairs, you really need to get some kind of wired connection and a second WIFI source in the upstairs.

 

[datkern]

2.4 should be set to 20Mhz. The reason it "only" goes to 40Mhz is that is all the bandwidth allocated in the 2.4Ghz spectrum. 80Mhz for 5Ghz is good nearby, but is less reliable further away. The best way to get stable WIFI is to have multiple WIFI sources distributed throughout the house. If you game via WIFI upstairs, you really need to get some kind of wired connection and a second WIFI source in the upstairs.

Yeah ultimately a wired connection would be ideal upstairs but will be rather difficult with the way everything is structured in my house. However at this point I’m considering just doing it and getting 2 5700 routers... 1 for upstairs and the other downstairs.

Not sure if you reviewed this thread or have any suggestions on how to force the 80 MHz as the last person mentioned? I feel like the AX11000 should be giving me an amazing experience and it just isn’t 🙁

 

[kanewolf]

Yeah ultimately a wired connection would be ideal upstairs but will be rather difficult with the way everything is structured in my house. However at this point I’m considering just doing it and getting 2 5700 routers... 1 for upstairs and the other downstairs.

Not sure if you reviewed this thread or have any suggestions on how to force the 80 MHz as the last person mentioned? I feel like the AX11000 should be giving me an amazing experience and it just isn’t 🙁

Do you have COAX infrastructure in the house? If so look at MoCA adapters to get a network upstairs. Last in the wired options is powerline network adatapers. The AV2 MIMO adapters can provide 100Mbit in most houses. Since powerline does rely on household wiring -- your mileage may vary.

The manual in chapter 12 says there should be a "Channel Width" option for each channel in the Wireless Settings page.

 

[datkern]

Do you have COAX infrastructure in the house? If so look at MoCA adapters to get a network upstairs. Last in the wired options is powerline network adatapers. The AV2 MIMO adapters can provide 100Mbit in most houses. Since powerline does rely on household wiring -- your mileage may vary.

The manual in chapter 12 says there should be a "Channel Width" option for each channel in the Wireless Settings page.

Yeah we have COAX in the house so thanks for the suggestion on the MoCA and AV2 MIMO adapters. For time being should I keep the router and try to adjust the Channel Width to 80 Mhz?

 

[kanewolf]

Yeah we have COAX in the house so thanks for the suggestion on the MoCA and AV2 MIMO adapters. For time being should I keep the router and try to adjust the Channel Width to 80 Mhz?

That is a difficult question for somebody not at your location to answer. Personally, I am not a fan of the mega $$$$ routers with 22 antennas sticking out of them.

 

[datkern]

That is a difficult question for somebody not at your location to answer. Personally, I am not a fan of the mega $$$$ routers with 22 antennas sticking out of them.

Yeah I can understand that. I'm going to let it be for a few days and try all my options. But in the end I may just go back and get the 5700 with a combination of what you recommended with either the MoCA or AV2 MIMO adapters looked nice.

Ideally if I am future proofing my house to be a smart house with lots of devices like cameras, ring devices, Gaming PC, Gaming Consoles, Work computers and iPhones.. the 5700 should cover it right or maybe do 1 upstairs and 1 downstairs?

Lastly if you don't mind sharing, what wireless router do you use?

Thanks for the super helpful and quick responses

 

[kanewolf]

Ideally if I am future proofing my house to be a smart house with lots of devices like cameras, ring devices, Gaming PC, Gaming Consoles, Work computers and iPhones.. the 5700 should cover it right or maybe do 1 upstairs and 1 downstairs?

If that is the case, then you should install ethernet cableing to a central location or pay someone to professionally install ethernet cable. Wired connectivity is what is most "future proof". Especially for cameras. You have to power them anyway, get POE and have power and data.

 

[datkern]

If that is the case, then you should install ethernet cableing to a central location or pay someone to professionally install ethernet cable. Wired connectivity is what is most "future proof". Especially for cameras. You have to power them anyway, get POE and have power and data.

Thanks so much for everything! I’ll look into that option on seeing what it would cost a professional to install Ethernet throughout a central point in the house.