[SOLVED] New WiFi Huawei AX3 Router settings

very_452001

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Hi,

My aim is to optimise router settings for gaming without sacrificing privacy.

Shall I enable Static DNS?

In IPTV settings shall I select Bridge Mode or Router Mode? Does this IPTV setting works for Wi-Fi or Ethernet only?

What is 11ax Guard Interval?

If I enable the TWT Target Wake Time setting for my wifi 6 devices, then will my older wifi 5 or wifi 4 devices take longer to connect to wifi or have problems connecting to wifi?
 
Solution
First you should never play games on wifi in the first place if you care about good performance.

Do not mess around with setting you do not full understand. Many of them without careful setting both on the router and end device will cause you all kinds of issues. Just leave it all on auto unless you have a very good reason to change one.

In most cases wifi6 will buy you nothing. Many devices do not fully support the 160mhz channels and even more do not support the MU-mimo which is support to make sharing bandwidth better.

Actually the best option is likely to use the 2.4g radio band and force the channels to 20mhz wide. You could also I guess use 5g and set it to 20mhz also. 2.4g tends to have better coverage.

In both...
First you should never play games on wifi in the first place if you care about good performance.

Do not mess around with setting you do not full understand. Many of them without careful setting both on the router and end device will cause you all kinds of issues. Just leave it all on auto unless you have a very good reason to change one.

In most cases wifi6 will buy you nothing. Many devices do not fully support the 160mhz channels and even more do not support the MU-mimo which is support to make sharing bandwidth better.

Actually the best option is likely to use the 2.4g radio band and force the channels to 20mhz wide. You could also I guess use 5g and set it to 20mhz also. 2.4g tends to have better coverage.

In both cases use of 20mhz radio bands reduces your chance of interference. It also will greatly reduce the maximum download speed but one line games don't care about speed when you are playing them. They use well under 1mbps up and down. What they do care about is consistent latency and that is very hard to achieve using wifi because of interference.

I have no idea what the staticdns or IPTV stuff do. Neither will make any difference to game performance.

Your very best option for gaming is to find a way to use a ethernet cable. You could also consider MoCa or powerline networks they are vastly superior to wifi for gaming.
 
Solution
I have no idea what wifi6 plus is.

The latest version of wifi is wifi6e. This has support for the new 6g radio band. This should greatly reduce the problem of people stomping on each other because there is a massive amount of new bandwidth and it does not have all the strange weather radar avoidance rules.

The router is not your problem it is the actual end device. Does not good for your router to have fancy features if the end device also does not support it.

The vast majority of portable device and especially cell phones only support 80mhz wide radio channels and therefore can not fully use wifi6. This is all because of the complex rules of avoiding weather radar they did not want to build into the chips.

Pretty much wifi6 has been a con from the start. The vendors pretty much knew that wifi6e had been approved about the time wifi6 first came onto the market. Rather than just delay the vendors want to make as much money as possible so they want you to buy a wifi6 device and then purchase another wifi6e device.

It was because the FCC approved the 6g radio band much faster than anyone guessed they would.

MoCA is a technology that lets you run ethernet over coax cables. Many houses have coax cable in rooms that used to be used for television. The newest moca boxes can run gigabit ethernet over these connections.
 

very_452001

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Okay when buying a wifi 6e device what to check to see whether its really wifi 6e? If it says 6GHz on the box then it means it fully supports and takes advantage of wifi 6e?

The latest flagship iphones and samsung phones support wifi 6e or just wifi 6? If wifi 6 then will there be a difference when connecting to a wifi 6 router and a wifi 6e router?

Wifi 6 devices connected to a wifi 6 router, will I see improvements over wifi 5?
 

kanewolf

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Wifi 6 devices connected to a wifi 6 router, will I see improvements over wifi 5?
Maybe. WIFI performance is specific to your environment. If you live in an apartment with 25 competing WIFI signals, then 160Mhz channel width won't work because of the interference.
What WAN speed do you have? Unless it is greater than 500Mbit, you will see no difference between WIFI5 (AC) and WIFI6.
 

very_452001

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Maybe. WIFI performance is specific to your environment. If you live in an apartment with 25 competing WIFI signals, then 160Mhz channel width won't work because of the interference.
What WAN speed do you have? Unless it is greater than 500Mbit, you will see no difference between WIFI5 (AC) and WIFI6.

How do I check my WAN speed? Is it the ISP internet speed? On the router box it says it can do up to 3000Mbps.
 
How do I check my WAN speed? Is it the ISP internet speed? On the router box it says it can do up to 3000Mbps.
As mentioned above what matters most is how large a package you purchase from your ISP. If you for example buy only 100mbps package it will not go faster no matter what fancy router you buy.

The 3000 number is pretty much the standard router marketing guys lies, the engineering guys write the fine print. First what they did was add the 2.4g radio of 573.5 and 5g radio of 2402 to get "3000".
Marketing guys I think all fail math classes. Even if you add correctly the number is invalid because a end device can only use 1 radio at a time.
Next when you take each number individually they are adding the transmit and receive speed together. They would call a gigabit ethernet cable 2gbit but ethernet can actually transmit and receive exactly at the same time where wifi is half duplex and only do one.

Next these are not speeds they represent data encoding To get 2402 you must run 160mhz channels, 2x2 mimo and QAM1024 data pattern. As mentioned in previous posts 160mhz channels is very hard to get on wifi6 both because of weather radar and because of other people in other houses attempting to use the same bandwidth.
Next QAM1024 really only works well close to the router, most time in the same room where you could just use a ethernet cable. So if you drop back to 80mhz data channels and QAM 256 you pretty much have a wifi5 (802.11ac) router that has a on the box lie number of 1200.

Knowing all these details is key to making good purchasing decisions and if you were to really mess with tuning settings like guard intervals you would actually have been able to explain what I did above yourself since changing the guard interval is a even more advanced topic.
 

very_452001

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As mentioned above what matters most is how large a package you purchase from your ISP. If you for example buy only 100mbps package it will not go faster no matter what fancy router you buy.

The 3000 number is pretty much the standard router marketing guys lies, the engineering guys write the fine print. First what they did was add the 2.4g radio of 573.5 and 5g radio of 2402 to get "3000".
Marketing guys I think all fail math classes. Even if you add correctly the number is invalid because a end device can only use 1 radio at a time.
Next when you take each number individually they are adding the transmit and receive speed together. They would call a gigabit ethernet cable 2gbit but ethernet can actually transmit and receive exactly at the same time where wifi is half duplex and only do one.

Next these are not speeds they represent data encoding To get 2402 you must run 160mhz channels, 2x2 mimo and QAM1024 data pattern. As mentioned in previous posts 160mhz channels is very hard to get on wifi6 both because of weather radar and because of other people in other houses attempting to use the same bandwidth.
Next QAM1024 really only works well close to the router, most time in the same room where you could just use a ethernet cable. So if you drop back to 80mhz data channels and QAM 256 you pretty much have a wifi5 (802.11ac) router that has a on the box lie number of 1200.

Knowing all these details is key to making good purchasing decisions and if you were to really mess with tuning settings like guard intervals you would actually have been able to explain what I did above yourself since changing the guard interval is a even more advanced topic.

Okay does my router support 160Mhz channels, 2x2 Mimo and QAM1024? If not what wifi 6 benefits my router brings to wifi 6 devices connected to it?

Or there's no difference or benefits at all over Wifi 5 when connecting wifi 6 devices to a wifi 6 router?
 
The router supports it the problem is the router is only 1/2 the connection. Most end device...cell phones in particular...only support 80mhz channels. Even if it does support 160mhz if it detect weather radar operating nearby it will drop to a very low power or switch to using 80mhz.

Wifi6 sounded good on paper but in real life people see very little difference. Only in very controlled situations is it better.

Besides if it worked good what would your incentive be to buy wifi6e now that it is just coming to the market.
 

very_452001

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The router supports it the problem is the router is only 1/2 the connection. Most end device...cell phones in particular...only support 80mhz channels. Even if it does support 160mhz if it detect weather radar operating nearby it will drop to a very low power or switch to using 80mhz.

Wifi6 sounded good on paper but in real life people see very little difference. Only in very controlled situations is it better.

Besides if it worked good what would your incentive be to buy wifi6e now that it is just coming to the market.

Okay to understand this, is it 1/2 the connection because wifi 6 router limited to 80Mhz?

The latest iphone 13's, amazon new fire stick max devices and such that claims to support wifi 6 cant take full advantage of wifi 6 routers because wifi 6 routers cant do 160Mhz only wifi 6e routers can?
 

kanewolf

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Okay to understand this, is it 1/2 the connection because wifi 6 router limited to 80Mhz?

The latest iphone 13's, amazon new fire stick max devices and such that claims to support wifi 6 cant take full advantage of wifi 6 routers because wifi 6 routers cant do 160Mhz only wifi 6e routers can?
A FireStick won't benefit from 160Mhz channel width. Streamed HD video is less than 10Mbit. Streamed 4K is less than 40Mbit. NO BENEFIT from 160Mhz channel width.
An iPhone system update might be faster, and app download might be faster.
@bill001g and I have both said that even if your hardware can do it you will only have more problems with 160Mhz channel width. Your WIFI will be more reliable with 80Mhz or better yet 40Mhz. Don't obsess with the highest speedtest values. Tune your WIFI for maximum reliability.
 

very_452001

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A FireStick won't benefit from 160Mhz channel width. Streamed HD video is less than 10Mbit. Streamed 4K is less than 40Mbit. NO BENEFIT from 160Mhz channel width.
An iPhone system update might be faster, and app download might be faster.
@bill001g and I have both said that even if your hardware can do it you will only have more problems with 160Mhz channel width. Your WIFI will be more reliable with 80Mhz or better yet 40Mhz. Don't obsess with the highest speedtest values. Tune your WIFI for maximum reliability.

Can these devices support 160Mhz or only future devices that say support for wifi 6e only works with 160Mhz?

Can you kindly point me in the right direction or a link that shows how to tune wifi for reliability over speed.

I understand you cant have speed & reliability at the same time right? Just to confirm wifi 6e cant do both speed & reliability at the same time?
 

kanewolf

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Can these devices support 160Mhz or only future devices that say support for wifi 6e only works with 160Mhz?

Can you kindly point me in the right direction or a link that shows how to tune wifi for reliability over speed.

I understand you cant have speed & reliability at the same time right? Just to confirm wifi 6e cant do both speed & reliability at the same time?
Can these devices support 160Mhz? I don't know and don't care to spend the time researching. If it is important to you, then YOU do the research. I don't mean asking a forum. I mean reading the specs and testing with your hardware.
Basic WIFI reliability, don't use "auto" for anything. You are smarter than the software. Manually set your transmit power for 2.4Ghz lower than 5Ghz.
Set your 2.4Ghz to channel 1, 6, or 11. Set your 5Ghz to a channel less than 50. Set your 2.4Ghz channel width to 20Mhz and your 5Ghz to 80Mhz.
There is no comprehensive manual for the AX3 on the internet, that I could find, so I can't be too specific.
 

very_452001

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Can these devices support 160Mhz? I don't know and don't care to spend the time researching. If it is important to you, then YOU do the research. I don't mean asking a forum. I mean reading the specs and testing with your hardware.
Basic WIFI reliability, don't use "auto" for anything. You are smarter than the software. Manually set your transmit power for 2.4Ghz lower than 5Ghz.
Set your 2.4Ghz to channel 1, 6, or 11. Set your 5Ghz to a channel less than 50. Set your 2.4Ghz channel width to 20Mhz and your 5Ghz to 80Mhz.
There is no comprehensive manual for the AX3 on the internet, that I could find, so I can't be too specific.

Okay out of channels 1, 6 and 11 which is the mostly used for 2.4Ghz? From there the idea is use the least used one?

For 5Ghz any random number channel below 50 is good enough? So I can optimise 5Ghz by selecting channel 49 for example?

Yeah I was saying earlier those latest devices like iphone 13's, firesticks etc. that displays wifi 6 on their boxes, shall I assume because they say wifi 6 then they should support 160Mhz as standard? Basically any device that is advertised as wifi 6 should support the 160Mhz as standard correct?
 
It is hard to stay current on the "latest" devices. The solution to this issue is going to be wifi6e which end devices are starting to support. Wifi6 was almost obsolete when the first devices hit the market because the 6ghz band wifi6e uses was approved by the FCC much faster than they anticipated.

The major benefit of wifi6e is not that you can get 160mhz radio bands it is because there is so much bandwidth that people will not overlap which is the issue on the current radio bands.

Not sure about apple but almost every portable wifi6 device does NOT support 160mhz. The companies like qualcomm that make the chips did not want to go through the complex process of getting FCC certification trying to avoid weather radar. Also the radio bands are a bit different in different countries so it is even more complex.

It all came down to they were making chips for portable devices like a cell phone or stuff like firesticks. None of these really benefit much from really high speed data transfers. Things like firesticks and other video streaming don't ever exceed even 50 mbps and are most time much less. Something like a cell phone has very little storage compared to a computer. It is not like you are going to download some massive game to the phone. The most popular chipset for desktops is made by intel and most of them do support 160mhz radio band. Only a desktop machine can really benefit from very high speed transfers.

The problem is all the stupid people that think a bigger number is always better. This is like buying a car that can go 200mph, does you no good unless you pay to use it on some private race track. The vast majority of applications do not benefit from even 100mbps. Things like simple web surfing have other limitations that prevent them from utilizing more. Something like a online game uses only a tiny amount of bandwidth, not even 1mbps in most cases. It is purely the large downloads. People need to step back and say how often do I download huge files and will saving 5 minutes a couple times a month be worth paying more to have some bigger transfer number.

This is all the marketing guys that want to get money out your pocket. They feed on people who think emotionally rather than logically and think they have to have the newest and biggest all the time.
 

very_452001

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It is hard to stay current on the "latest" devices. The solution to this issue is going to be wifi6e which end devices are starting to support. Wifi6 was almost obsolete when the first devices hit the market because the 6ghz band wifi6e uses was approved by the FCC much faster than they anticipated.

The major benefit of wifi6e is not that you can get 160mhz radio bands it is because there is so much bandwidth that people will not overlap which is the issue on the current radio bands.

Not sure about apple but almost every portable wifi6 device does NOT support 160mhz. The companies like qualcomm that make the chips did not want to go through the complex process of getting FCC certification trying to avoid weather radar. Also the radio bands are a bit different in different countries so it is even more complex.

It all came down to they were making chips for portable devices like a cell phone or stuff like firesticks. None of these really benefit much from really high speed data transfers. Things like firesticks and other video streaming don't ever exceed even 50 mbps and are most time much less. Something like a cell phone has very little storage compared to a computer. It is not like you are going to download some massive game to the phone. The most popular chipset for desktops is made by intel and most of them do support 160mhz radio band. Only a desktop machine can really benefit from very high speed transfers.

The problem is all the stupid people that think a bigger number is always better. This is like buying a car that can go 200mph, does you no good unless you pay to use it on some private race track. The vast majority of applications do not benefit from even 100mbps. Things like simple web surfing have other limitations that prevent them from utilizing more. Something like a online game uses only a tiny amount of bandwidth, not even 1mbps in most cases. It is purely the large downloads. People need to step back and say how often do I download huge files and will saving 5 minutes a couple times a month be worth paying more to have some bigger transfer number.

This is all the marketing guys that want to get money out your pocket. They feed on people who think emotionally rather than logically and think they have to have the newest and biggest all the time.

Okay how do I know which end devices support wifi 6e? Is wifi 6e 802.11ay? If wifi 6e is same as 802.11ax like wifi 6 is then how do I know for sure whether the device has wifi 6 or wifi 6e?

I know what you saying that applications not utilising full bandwidth/speed, this maybe the case for a single user by him/herself in a house however if there's multiple users in that house with Netflix tv's, phones, laptops, heck even toddlers have tablets these days all connected to wifi at the same time then it will be utilised correct?
 
The problem with multiple users is not so much the total bandwidth it is that wifi is half duplex and only 1 device can talk at a time. There is no control of this though if the end devices can not hear each other transmission they run the risk of stomping on each other. The more devices you have the more risk you take.
More bandwidth to some extent helps but mobile apps use so little compared to how large bandwidth is now days.

802.11ay is something that runs on 60ghz and pretty much went nowhere it barely runs in the same room. It kinda just disappeared.

It hurts the poor dumb consumer to remember 802.11ac or 802.11ax so they changed the names to wifi5 and wifi6. Very technically wifi6e is a update to the 802.11ax standard. The official name is 802.11ax-2021. Really the only difference is they added the 6ghz radio band the actual data protrocols etc are exactly the same between wifi6 and wifi6e.

It would be most likely the vendor puts wifi6e on their documentation/advertising. Not many people other than tech guys like me would know it is called 802.11ax-2021
 

very_452001

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You can't. Half duplex is a basic design aspect of WIFI. Full duplex is a wired feature only.

Ethernet right?

I tried Powerline ethernet adapters however I had intermittent connection dropouts when using them. Maybe its the wiring in my home or when somebody in my home uses the microwave that triggers it who knows.

I like to know are there powerline ethernet adapters on the market now that is designed for homes like mine that can stop these intermittent electrical connection errors and provide a constant reliable connection through ethernet? If there is I happy to give up on wifi.
 

kanewolf

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Ethernet right?

I tried Powerline ethernet adapters however I had intermittent connection dropouts when using them. Maybe its the wiring in my home or when somebody in my home uses the microwave that triggers it who knows.

I like to know are there powerline ethernet adapters on the market now that is designed for homes like mine that can stop these intermittent electrical connection errors and provide a constant reliable connection through ethernet? If there is I happy to give up on wifi.
Which specific model did you try ?