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2.4 GHZ slower performance

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• March 4, 2020 at 4:40 pm #3518
  Sherlock

  Participant

  I just purchased a pcWRT 802.11AC Gigabit Dual Band Secure WiFi Router from Amazon. It is now connected and running, but the 2.4 GHz Wifi is unstable and slow.

  The router is attached to a Bell Fibe modem (max 50 MB download), which also has WiFi. Channel selection is set to auto, no access restrictions (basically out of box config). on 5 GHz WiFi SSID added suffix “5GH” to differentiate from 2.4 GHz connection. I turned on Bandwidth monitoring to see if it would indicate any issues, but nothing stands out

  Observations:
  Using a speed test tool on an android tablet
  -> connected to pcWRT 802.11AC 2.4 GHZ WIFI, <27 Mbps speed

  -> connected to pcWRT 802.11AC 5 GHz WIFI, >47 Mbps speed
  -> connected to Bell 2.4 GHz Wifi, > 49 Mbps speed
  -> connected to old NetGear Nighthawk 2.4 GHZ WIFI, >46 Mbps speed

  I ran the same tests from my Android phone with similar results (only 2.4 GHz slow)

  Other weird observations:
  -> Using Wifi Analyzer on Windows when connected to problematic 2.4 GHz, looking at the connection network it randomly switches channel between 2 and 36 (no idea why, does not happen on 5 GHz or Nighthawk 2.4 GHz). Looking at the channel graph sometimes it displays the 2.4 GHZ network on the 2.4 graph (channel 2), sometimes on the 5 GHz graph (Channel 36), sometimes bot at all. (similar behavior on Galaxy Tablet
  -> Android phone can connect to 2.4 GHz Wifi but the 2.4 SSID disappears from the list of available even while connected. When connected to 2.4 GHz WiFi Analyzer on phone indicates no signal.
  -> On Android phone, Norton security gives message that wifi compromised. This does unlikely since it the modem is fresh out of the b ox. It does not give the message when connected to 5 GHz nor does it on android tablet connected to 2.4 GHz. It is probably reacting the the random switching of channels

  Does anyone know what is happening? Is there a config somewhere that needs adjusting?

  Thanks
  Steve

  March 4, 2020 at 4:58 pm #3519
  Sherlock

  Participant

  I should also have mentioned that I loaded the latest firmware. I cannot find where it is displayed. but when i check for updates it indicates that the previous version was V2.0.3

  March 6, 2020 at 4:39 am #3520
  support

  Keymaster

  Can you try to pick a specific channel instead of auto? Try different channels to see if that makes a difference. Also, you may try to change the channel width from 40MHz to 20MHz to see if that helps.

  March 11, 2020 at 7:01 pm #3527
  Sherlock

  Participant

  I tried your suggestions but no change to performance.

  After contacting Amazon support I was sent a replacement router. Performance is better.

  There are still some confusing behavior with this router but this thread regarding performance can be closed as hardware related.

  I’ll open a different thread to ask about the other observations

  March 15, 2020 at 4:40 pm #3538
  Sherlock

  Participant

  Update on performance issue. I had originally tested with an internet speed test tool and thought the performance was now ok (my last post). However, when I transfer files from my NAS, the 2.4GHz connection is much slower, so there is still an performance issue.

  usiong copy / paste to transfer file from NAS to laptop, when connected to the 2.4 GHZ connection the transfer speed (as displayed in windows popup) varies between 356 kb and 1.6 MB/s. When I pause the transfer and switch to the 5 GHz SSID the speed increases to between 14 and 16 MB/s. When I pause it again and switch back to 2.4 GHz SSID speed dropss back to between 356 kb and 1.6 MB/s.

  March 15, 2020 at 5:06 pm #3539
  Sherlock

  Participant

  For a comparison, I disconnected the pcwrt router and put back the nighthawk . I reran the same transfer. At 2.4 GHz, the transfer speed for the same file varied between 4-7 MB/s. at 5GHz, speed increased to between 14 – 17 MB/s (comparable to the pcwrt). This is a replacement pcwrt router due to similar performance issue, so it is unlikely to be hardware related.

  • This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Sherlock.
  • This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Sherlock.
  March 17, 2020 at 3:32 pm #3542
  Sherlock

  Participant

  I tried rolling back to previous firmware release – large file transfer still very slow on 2.4 GHz but normal at 5GHz

  March 19, 2020 at 4:13 am #3544
  support

  Keymaster

  @Sherlock Thanks for your feedback. We’ll look into this.

  April 2, 2020 at 6:22 pm #3547
  support

  Keymaster

  The performance issue has been resolved. Update will be released soon!

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