Worse signal on my ASUS RT-N66U than my ASUS E1000?

[Ataraxey]

Hi everyone,

I recently moved into a larger 2 story house, and for the first few months I was using a Linksys E1000 I've had for about 2 years now. It's a fine single band router, but the people upstairs and the xbox/PS3 in the living room didnt have the strongest connection.

I shopped around and finally got a ASUS RT-N66U for a really good, strong dual band router that would supposedly give better range and performance than my old E1000.

Unfortunately, since I got it everyone is having issues they never had before, namely:

• Signal dropping all around the house and having to search for the network
• much slower performance than before
• the xbox/PS3 cant hold a stable connection even for a few minutes now, when before you could watch Netflix HD programs easily

I've upgraded the Firmware to 3.0.0.3.178 since I heard earlier firmwares had issues, but other than that and opening my ports for qTorrent it is relatively stock settings.

Can anyone help me out with this and figure out with these issues? I may end up needing to RMA it I guess.

 

[andymac1966]

There's a newer FW out now on the Asus site (x.220). However I use Merlin's modified FW, and find that it's pretty good and stable. He also responds to feedback. You can find it here.

In terms of wireless coverage, my RT-N66U has been ok. Have you tried checking with inSSIDer to see if the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz channels are overlapping with anything ? It also sometimes helps to change the settings away from auto.

You could also check out the AsusTek forums, as they can be pretty helpful.

Andy

 

[Ataraxey]

There's a newer FW out now on the Asus site (x.220). However I use Merlin's modified FW, and find that it's pretty good and stable. He also responds to feedback. You can find it here.

In terms of wireless coverage, my RT-N66U has been ok. Have you tried checking with inSSIDer to see if the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz channels are overlapping with anything ? It also sometimes helps to change the settings away from auto.

You could also check out the AsusTek forums, as they can be pretty helpful.

Andy

Hey Andy,

I'll upgrade the FW and see if that helps out at all, and maybe transition to the merlin FW if that gives better performance. I'd still like to see if there might be a hardware fault with my router though since this is such a weird issue. I'll check out that test and see what it reports.

I also posted on ASUStek's forums to see if they have any other advice to offer.