Discussion Inexpensive wireless router with DFS channels?

[overclockoverheat]

Just moved into an apartment and found that even the 5Ghz band is congested. Even with a 100Mbps wired internet, sometimes wifi slows to a crawl and I have to switch to the 2.4Ghz band temporarily, until this band slows to a crawl...

Using a wifi analyzer I see the DFS channels in the 5Ghz band are empty. I would like to try to use these channels but my router doesn't support (asus rt-ac66u b1).

What are some inexpensive and currently available router with DFS channels? Can dd-wrt or tomato enable DFS on some routers that by default don't support them?

 

[bill001g]

The largest issue with the DFS stuff is the fcc has required the manufactures to prevent you from actually setting the channels. Used to be the dirty trick of setting the device to be russia and then you could set them. The fcc a number of years ago applied a lot of pressure to get vendors to prevent this. The devices seem to be locked at manufacture time.

So the only way to you can even use these is if you set the device to AUTO. Like most auto things the routers are very stupid. Even routers that support the DFS bands many times will still use the common blocks.

I suspect the best way to do this is to try to find the chipsets that support DFS and then lookup lists of routers that use that wifi radio chip. All the work is in the radio chip the router firmware is not really involved...again the FCC in action. This is also why you can't just load dd-wrt and get the support it is the wifi chip not the router firmware doing this.

I think your nic card must also have the support, not sure.

From what i can tell most manufactures decided to not support this because of the hassles. Weather radar can be turned on and off so they must constantly be checking for it.

Now a couple months ago I would have just said buy the new wifi6 802.11ax stuff. Because they are attempting to use 160mhz blocks most these devices also support DFS. They also have a new way to avoid interference with things like radar that make it much more stable if it is detected after the session is up.

BUT things have vastly changed and your problem is about to go away if you can wait say another 6 months.

The fcc has authorized the use huge blocks of bandwidth in the 6ghz range. This will for a while allow multiple people to even use 160mhz blocks and not overlap. This is called wifi6e and rumor has it we will start to see devices by the end of the year.

 

[kanewolf]

Just moved into an apartment and found that even the 5Ghz band is congested. Even with a 100Mbps wired internet, sometimes wifi slows to a crawl and I have to switch to the 2.4Ghz band temporarily, until this band slows to a crawl...

Using a wifi analyzer I see the DFS channels in the 5Ghz band are empty. I would like to try to use these channels but my router doesn't support (asus rt-ac66u b1).

What are some inexpensive and currently available router with DFS channels? Can dd-wrt or tomato enable DFS on some routers that by default don't support them?

First thing , is what country are you in? Many countries don't allow use of the DFS channels. So any router you buy won't support them. Take a look at this chart -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5_GHz_or_5.8_GHz_(802.11a/h/j/n/ac/ax) to see if those channels are allowed in your country.