R7000, RSSI drops during activity

RampantAndroid

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2004
6,591
3
81
Hi all,

I've got an AC68 and R7000 at home right now (the AC68 is downright awful, and it's pending return. The R7000 was meant to be the replacement...but as crappy as the AC68 is, the R7000 is WAY worse so far.)

Right now, in OS X using the wireless tools, I can see that my wireless is not doing so good. I'm sitting maybe 20 feet from the router, three walls between myself and the router. Without any downloads going, my RSSI is around -51, noise is -90 and OSX's quality metric is around "35".

Now, when I begin a download however, over 5GHz N, my RSSI drops to -60 right away, and the R7000 gives off a whining noise (likely the power supply built into it - it only makes noise during wireless activity) and OSX's quality metric drops to 30. What gives? Is the R7000 just a complete pile of dung? If so, what should I be getting for a router that has USB3 on it and allows me to expand into AC when I end up with devices (which I will soon, with my GF getting a new macbook.)

Additionally, during a download, my rate goes from 300 down to 250 at times, which should be well below what I'm capable of 20 feet out. For additional info, there are not many wireless networks in range - I'm one of 2 in the 5GHz band. My channel is 161 and doesn't conflict with any other channel.

Thanks,
RA
 
Last edited:

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,570
10,205
126
Hmm, 5Ghz, and three walls? That's going to be an issue, no matter which router your purchase. 5Ghz doesn't punch through walls very well. I had minor issues with my Netgear R6100, and I only have one wall between the router and my living room with several PCs.

I'm currently using an Engenius ESR1200.
 

RampantAndroid

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2004
6,591
3
81
Seriously? 3 walls is enough to kill 5GHz? What about 5GHz AC - will it suffer the same issue? The den is in the middle of my place; I'm in the bedroom right now and with the R7000 hooked up, I'm getting only a 200Mbs transfer rate.

2.4 doesn't seem to fare much better. Is this just a function of the frequency and the FCC limitations on the transmit power?

The router is on top of a shelf and all that. There isn't much more I can do, without buying a second R7000 and running it in repeater mode which...is expensive.
 

azazel1024

Senior member
Jan 6, 2014
901
2
76
Seriously? 3 walls is enough to kill 5GHz? What about 5GHz AC - will it suffer the same issue? The den is in the middle of my place; I'm in the bedroom right now and with the R7000 hooked up, I'm getting only a 200Mbs transfer rate.

2.4 doesn't seem to fare much better. Is this just a function of the frequency and the FCC limitations on the transmit power?

The router is on top of a shelf and all that. There isn't much more I can do, without buying a second R7000 and running it in repeater mode which...is expensive.

Yeahhhhh...

20ft and 3 walls is a fair amount of blocking for 5GHz. I am surpised you are getting a signal as high as -51dBm. Must be thin walls. Signal drops with the square of the distance (inverse square law). Since this is a log scale, that means for every doubling of distances you get 6dB knocked off the signal strength. So if at 5ft you have a signal of -30dBm (very strong), at 20ft you'd have a signal of -42dBm, with NO walls in the way. A typical 2x4 wall reduces 2.4GHz signal by around 3-5dB per wall and 5GHz about 4-6dB per typical wall.

Odds are, the -60dBm is more likely to be the real signal strength you are getting and for whatever reason, the -51dBm is based on the beacon and for some reason being read incorrectly for RSSI (might be because it is evaluating only the center of the channel. 11a/n/ac use OFDM, which means towards the edge of the channel the signal strength is significantly lower than near the center of the channel). Without knowning how OSX evaluates RSSI, my guess is the -60dBm is accurate. -60dBm is roughly medium signal strength.

11ac WILL improve things a lot, mostly because 11ac is generally a lot faster, even with older 11n clients. That said, it is still subject to the laws of physics and the signal strength isn't going to be particularly different, just that it is capable of doing a lot more with the signal it does have.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,230
701
126
Can't comment on the Netgear but as for Asus, the new FCC crackdown on power levels (as well as Netgear suing them) has caused Asus to lower the power output and lock it on their routers. There are ways around it (flashing an older firmware such as the Merlin fork, etc. as well as flashing the CFE bootloader to an older version) and they seem to do pretty good.

I'm connecting AC at 877Mbps (can pull 35M(bytes)/sec from PC to PC) from upstairs to the router downstairs (which is behind a chair). This is on the RT-AC68U. I'm running an older version of Merlin's firmware called the Merlin fork. I have changed my CFE but not to an older version. That was to change it from a TMobile router to the OEM Asus CFE for the RT-AC68U (this was purchased through TMobile and then flashed back to the Asus since it was the exact same hardware).
 

RampantAndroid

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2004
6,591
3
81
To post back: I gave the AC68 another go with the forked merlin build (heh...thanks for the tips.) I'm getting 40-50MB/s wired write to my drive, and from PC to Mac on 802.11N, I'm getting about 23MB/s downloading an ISO. It might not be the best, but the speed does not change based on my distance from the router...so I'll assume that the limiting factor is my PC (the download is by way of an Apache server on the PC. Dunno if that'll limit or not.)

I'll dump the netgear; I remain unimpressed and tired of the noise it makes when wifi is in use. Kudos to Asus for using OpenWRT.