You need to be aware of the RF environment surrounding you. I live in a rural area, so there are no adjacent access points. If you live in town/city, you'll have neighbors whose access points may interfere.
My favorite tool for an RF survey is WiFi Analyzer from farproc. Free install from Android store. (Regrettably, iOS doesn't appear to allow the low-level access to the RF hardware to produce a similar tool without jailbreaking...)
Still working like a charm in the 40 Mhz. channels.
I will stay in the 40 Mhz. channels, no problems after more than a week on it.
Guys, I'm new to flashing routers and I just got LEDE on my Archer c7 so I can use openVPN. What other optimizations should I look into to increase speed/range of my router?
There is no need to touch anything else. If you stay in the 20 Mhz. without changing to 40 Mhz. will work fine indeed.
I changed to 40 Mhz. just for testing.
Wow, started to answer this long ago and got distracted.
Without buying better antennas and such, playing around with placement and adjusting the existing antennas on both ends is about all you can do. Use a good monitor as mentioned, go to your lowest interference channel option, and move around on both ends for best strength and speed.
If you try different antennas it's worth knowing that in the US at least, TP-LINK changed from the original internal 2.4Ghz and external 5Ghz antennas, to dual external ones. I have both. Opening the case will tell you. You'd want to buy 5Ghz only, or dual band ones, depending. Also, if you have the internal/external model, only moving the case will adjust the 2.4G, moving the externals will mostly affect the 5Ghz. Though at these short frequencies, many things nearby can effect the pattern.
I used openwrt trunk builds before and 5GHz was unstable compared to stock. Then I shifted to ubiquiti gear for a while. A week ago I installed LEDE 17.01.2 and it seems rock solid. I am using 20MHz on 2.4GHz and 40MHz on 5GHz. My speeds are as below, note that I am using my laptop which is only a 2x2 (Archer C7 v2 itself is 3x3 I think, I need a better wifi card in my laptop to extract more speed here, I guess):
5Ghz:
[ 4] 0.00-30.00 sec 885 MBytes 248 Mbits/sec 0 sender
[ 4] 0.00-30.00 sec 883 MBytes 247 Mbits/sec receiver
2.4Ghz (highly congested in a 18 floor apartment!)
[ 4] 0.00-30.00 sec 317 MBytes 88.6 Mbits/sec 38 sender
[ 4] 0.00-30.00 sec 314 MBytes 87.7 Mbits/sec receiver
Hi @malahal,
Now I'm using the @r00t firmware and is working great!!
Take a look here:
Besides Qualcomm FastPath is included in the firmware (with many other improvements). You'll get better performance on Wifi/LAN speed.
Can I set the WiFi transmit power above 100mW with this firmware(s)?
The hardware can handle it?
As far as I know the wifi power is limited by the country settings.
I don't know if there is any way to bypass the limitation.