Sherman, set the Wayback machine to ........ (u may need to Google that)
This is typical builder mentality back in the 50's and 60's before cable or internet. Phones were the domain of the "Home Owners" (parents) and pretty much those were the primary user locations. I will almost guarantee the kitchen is on a metal wall plate near the door.
If it's more central it would improve your wireless from the 7800.
You should also consider setting up the ASUS in the study as an AP. If nothing else it may improve your WI-FI calling on the phone
Nah, the house is close to a T-Mobile tower and get a great 5G signal. In fact, I have turned OFF wifi calling. No problems there!
I got the MR8300 and flashed OpenWrt snapshot build on it y'day and it is rock solid with no buffering issues since y'day. It's connected to the PLA and the other end of the PLA is hard wired to my PC and FireTV. It looks like MR8300 is performing a little bit better than R7800 and the $44 is well spent on a quad core 512 MB RAM device with tri-bands! Also, MR8300 doesn't get as warm as R7800. Very nice indeed!
Btw, I have never used a tri-band before and see that there are two 5GHz bands and a 2.4 GHz band. I am curious whether to set the same SSID to the two 5 GHz bands or have separate SSIDs for each? Chime in if you have setup tri-bands before.
The point of the 2nd 5G band is for a dedicated wireless back haul (as opposed to wired backhaul\AP). This would give you a 2.4 and 5G radio dedicated for clients at the wireless node and a separate radio for the connection at the main router.
To use it correctly you need a second device.
I suppose you could set it up as a guest LAN, I see no benefit of setting up the second radio on the same SSID
You probably need to read some more about mesh (general)
Well, most of the OEM firmwares make you set the same SSID for all bands and the devices can presumably pick the one that has a better strength.
I get it that if I setup a second AP, I can create a wireless bridge with the second 5 GHz band so that it's dedicated for that connection. In my case, I just have to pick some wireless devices to use that band I guess.
Wrong! They do this to simplify setup and reduce support calls.
Indeed if you read more about using a single SSID for both bands you will find that many have functional\performance issues. In some cases if a 2.4G devices is connected, it forces all devices to this band. All these devices offer a way to setup separate SSIDs for each band. Most user forums will tell you to disable this "feature" (and WDS).
I donât see above that you couldnât run a network wire between the bedroom and the study. The cost of buying and installing a dedicated wire backhaul is less than the vast majority of ax devices. Itâll definitively solve your coverage issue, while a new router will not.
The way I would set it up is get some cat6 cable and run it from your bedroom to your study.
So: R7800(main router in bedroom) =>(Cat6 cable) => AC68U (Study)
Have the 5ghz be the same SSID on both devices and turn up or turn down the transmit power to get an ideal roaming situation. Youâll get your full ISP speed in both those rooms and near that in the rest of your house. I have basically this setup with one r7800 as my main router and two r7800s hardwired with cat6A as âwired access pointsâ.
@ACwifidude, Thank you for your recommendation but you make it so simple to drill holes and fish the wires across 4 rooms (between study and bed room) than buy a $100 router (refurbed ax). Contractors charge at least $80/hour + material and to install 3 ethernet drops, would probably cost $500+, imo.
OTOH, I agree that if I can get it wired, that's the best setup for the long run. I will have to think about it.
In any case, I got Linksys MR8300 and it's marginally better than R7800 (I am running your NSS build and thank you as it's been rock solid). I flashed the snapshot build on MR8300 and it's working well but for some reason, the internet speeds are NOT going above 90 Mbps. OTOH, if I hook up R7800, it shoots up to 480+. Settings are similar between R7800 and MR8300 although MR8300 is a tri-band router. What could be the reason? Any ideas?
EDIT: Even if I hard wire my PC to MR8300 and run a speed test, it isn't going above 90 Mbps. So, it's not the wifi issue but some configuration issue I guess!
It is surprisingly cheap if you ever are interested (below are links to the bulk supplier I bought from). My family loves the internet coverage in our house. When we have guests they always complement that the internet is âreally good hereâ (they donât know why, they just know âthe wifi is good!â)
I pre cut and placed all the wires in my attic so that we just had to drop the network wires down the wall (I placed each end roughly above where the drop ways plenty of extra length for fishing).
Fishing is pretty much impossible by yourself so I hired an electrician to help with fishing. In two hours all wires were fished. I sent the electrician home and wired all the wall plates / mounted them myself (8 wires go in to 8 spots, not too bad). So it reasonably can be done for ~$300 total (est $100 parts, $200 labor) and about 3-4 hours of total work on your part depending on the complexity.
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation and am always scared to do these types of activities and your post helps alleviate some of the anxiety. I will talk to an electrician and will go for cat6 as it maybe future proof as well.
Btw, I called Frontier to see why my new router (MR8300) isn't getting above 90 Mbps and they did some tweaks and voila, I get the full speed now. Using PLA, I get about 210 Mbps in my study now. Amazing what a phone call can do... lol
So, there is nothing wrong with MR8300 and the snapshot build is awesome as well. Can't believe the refurb'ed tri-band quad core router is ONLY $44, it looked brand new to me and thank you Amazon The coverage is a little bit better than R7800 for sure although I paid two times more than what it cost MR8300. Go figure!
Hi! Why dont you stay your r700 as a main router and use tenda nowa a 3000 as wifi mesh access point? You will get an execllent wifi coverage with several tenda cubes
You seem to think a tri-band router is somehow better in your situation. This is just not true. It may have more range than the R7800, but that's unrelated to tri-band. You still have a location issue.
You are not clear if the speed problem is a wireless or Ethernet issue. If you are using the PLA, then one would assume the issue was Ethernet.
If you have resolved the MR8300 configuration issue, in the spirit of the community, please detail the configuration changes you made for others to benefit from.
Did I say that the tri-band router is better? Read again!
Oh my goodness, you just jump in without reading my post. It has nothing to do with PLA or wireless as even when I hard wire my PC to the router (without the PLA), the speeds weren't going above 90 Mbps. The wifi/router settings were similar between R7800 and MR8300 and that's what I posted.
It was an issue with Frontier (ISP). The tech was making some changes on his end and reset my connection couple of times and after his changes, I got the speeds back. He didn't login to my router as all the changes he did were at his side. I didn't do anything other than call him and complain about the speeds.
FWIW, I setup a dedicated wireless back-haul (repeater) with R7800 as primary router and MR8300 as the wireless bridge and kept it at a central location. After some tests, PLA had less latency and better throughput than the repeater setup (obviously the repeater has performance issues which I know but thought of giving it a shot). With PLA, I am getting consistent 180+ Mbps and a stable connection without any buffering issues for the past 4 days or so.
So, that ends my quest for better speeds in the study until I can get an electrician to do Ethernet drops. It may or may not happen depending on how well the PLA serves me.
I have read this post and thread numerous times. It's a typical question, which in this forum tends to get a hardware response. Unfortunately I have learned from years of experience that while replacing a router may improve things just enough for the wireless to work, it's a band-aid, not a solution. You appeared to be someone who would like to learn so I have shared.
Unfortunately you came in (first post) with the hardware solution mentality and seemed to reject all other methods and solutions as not feasible. You failed to clearly articulate the situation (my questions - environment, devices, etc). You never performed a site survey, so do not really know coverage. You quickly purchased a new-to-you Open-WRT capable (tri-band) router and never even tested hardware you owned. You seem to be concerned about wireless performance, but have not indicated that you actually have a single device that REQUIRES it. You have been fixated on building a bridge and not optimizing your routers location to the end of one of the other existing wires (kitchen phone line or either coax).
Your writing has been less than clear throughout this post. This para can be read a couple of ways but the bold content above is clear as mud to me.
is the 90 Mbps Ethernet or wireless?
Were the tweaks modem or router or back end?
As another example, it's not clear from below if you really understand TriBand. The point is to use 2 (or more) Tri-band devices and to dedicate the 2nd 5G band exclusively to back haul (connection?) between devices, eliminating a single radio performing "double duty". This is typically used in mesh, but is effectively a wireless bridge. Your second sentence is unclear and may be read to indicate less than a full understanding. No wireless CLIENTS should use this band.
Please accept that we are not mind readers, and details and clarity are important, especially in a technical forum.
Finally, some comparative testing, albeit thin on performance and config details (ie speeds, latency, band setup, channel selection and width, etc).
While you have never defined the relative location of your kitchen phone line (cat-5) to the study or bedroom, if it's a more central location, you should be able to improve wireless without the need for a bridge. It's less than $10 to buy a keystone jack and wall plate. See @ACwifidude parts list.
Did I reject all the methods and solutions as not feasible? lol
Anyways, I don't have the energy to keep repeating the same thing all over.
Did I put a gun to your head and ask you to respond? You volunteered and if you are NOT a mind reader, don't respond. As simple as that. lmao
lol
That's the first thing I do before I pick a channel. I cannot post all the things that I do as that's NOT intent of this thread. If you read the title of the thread, you know what I wanted - a new OpenWrt capable device. Some how, the discussions took us in a different path and that's fine as long is it's constructive.
You pick parts of my post but ignore the ones that explains my situation. Here it is as I posted this 2 days ago to further clarify the issue.
I thought I clearly said that the tweaks were done on the Frontier side as I don't have modem, it's FIOS (ONT). Not sure what the tech did as he took about 20 minutes and got the provisioned speeds and the call got disconnected before I could even ask what happened. Didn't have the energy to call back as I got what I wanted.
Since I bought two MR8300, I thought of trying the Linksys OEM firmware in mesh mode (as this is a mesh router after all) and was shocked with the performance. I was getting almost the full speed in my study, around 450/400 out of a 500/500 connection. I hard wired my devices to the node (as there are 5 Gbps ports in MR8300) in the study and it looks like the second 5 GHz band in the node is used for wireless backhaul to the main router. FWIW, I was getting around 190/150 using powerline adapter.
I am going to run MR8300 in mesh mode using OEM firmware itself and looks like Linksys has fine tuned the mesh router setup very well!
So, there is no need to drill holes and fish wires to have an ethernet backhaul and for $80, I got my buffering/speed issues resolved.
The coverage is a little bit better than R7800 for sure although I paid two times more than what it cost MR8300. Go figure!