ASUS RT-AC56U - wireless (YouTube, Plex, Twitch) lag fix

[Mr. Analog]

So, I bought an ASUS RT-AC56U not too recently, great price and it really worked out some networking issues I had on my LAN, I quickly started to notice some real problems watching things like YouTube on my tablet from my bedroom (where with my OLD wireless router I had no problems reaching previously). The odd bit was it was showing 5 bar signal, so what was happening?

Apparently if you are broadcasting at 2.4 GHz the antenna starts sending signal at full power and then throttles back, this has an impact on streaming media if you are outside a short distance (stuttering, loading, buffering, etc)

The solution was to change the "Wireless Mode" (found under Advanced Settings / Wireless) to "Legacy"

Bam! Problem fixed.

[Tom]

Nice

On Tues when I plugged my intertubes back in I couldn't reach the internet but I figured it out. Apparently the firewall came back up fully before the modem finished booting. Had to restart the firewall service. boh. I think I'll add a ifup hook to restart the service if/when the link comes up and see if that fixes it. It may not if its caused by the modem switching from an internal temporary IP to an external after it comes online. I think I can find a hook for that too though. It normally wouldn't be a problem but I have some funky firewall rules

[Thorin]

 Why would the router antenna throttle back the strength of its signal?

[Tom]

Why would the router antenna throttle back the strength of its signal?

if the strength is too high its like yelling in someone's ear. Swamps out the signal on the receiver.

[Mr. Analog]

It's also supposed to be a power savings measure

Balls to that, irradiate the air!

[Tom]

I think if all routers did that, it would also reduce interference, making all networks work better

[Lazybones]

Wireless is full of all sorts of features half implemented on devices.

The issues don't even go away on the enterprise routers they just have more dials to tweak.