[TDG12]

Hi guys,

I've been running a WNDR3700 for some years now, very sucessfully, with OpenWRT, and it still continues to work well...

A constant annoyance was that at the far reaches of the house, the signal tapered off a little bit to devices, which is understandable given the limitations of internal antennas

I finally decided to drop some money on an R7000 to boost signal a bit (who doesn't love massive antennas), but it has been much much much much worse in the exact same spot. Even in the next room to the router the signal can be terrible, and moving around the house, VOIP calls drop frequently (iPhones drop the wifi completely and fall back to 4G)

I have no idea what's going on or where to start, even after lots of digging on the forums and going through ideas on the R7000 best practices thread. I have specifically chosen 2.4ghz and 5ghz channels that are very quiet here (Wide 40Mhz and VHT 80Mhz width channels on 2.4/5) after doing a site survey, and I've tried a few ideas including:

Every combination of implicit and explicit beamforming (now reset back to default)

Trying to play with the Tx power (both up and down and all around) (now reset back to default/auto)

Airtime fairness on/off (left to on now - seems to be a generally OK thing to enable)

Changing ACK sensitivity from 2000 to 300

None of these seem to have made any difference, exact same issues.

No overclock or no particularly unique or custom settings (yet) because I've been trying to figure out poor wireless first, running DD-WRT v3.0-r31205M kongac

And finally... I have the three antenna spread and in different orientations to try and cover the various orientations. The router is in the exact same spot the 3700 was...

Am I missing something obvious to get the radios working properly? Or should I just send the R7000 back and call it a day? Just can't make sense of this

[Xeon2k8]

Have you done an erase nvram and reboot?

If yes, then I would try an older Kong build mostly proved to be stable like 30700 (I think).

Tx power is useless, unless you have several routers in your house, repeating the same SSID and you want to fine tune their radios range for not collide between them.

Airtime fairness was set to disabled a year ago by default since it was proved that enabled caused a lot of dropouts.

About ACK, I haven't seen much people talking about it so don't think it will help.

I have tried several antennas dispositions and figured that the most range was given by all 3 antennas right upward, with no inclination.

Before trying all these I would try if on stock firmware you have the same poor signal. If yes then I wouldn't expect to be better on ddwrt.

[Doppel-D]

@TDG12

Have you checked transmisssion power? What country preference you choose? Perhaps check Canada or Haiti and keep in mind transmission power also depends on the choosen channel.

To see a list enter under ADMINISTRATION/COMMANDS (or similar)

iw list

and execute.

[TDG12]

Thanks guys

Yeah I've tried a few nvram/reboot cycles but it's still poor from absolute stock...

I've tried a few country preferences as well, should've mentioned that. I'm UK based so started there, then tried US etc. (I'm aware that UK is a bit limited in spectrum). Haven't tried Canada or Haiti though... I'll try those...

Some digging (including Kong posts) kind of told me that playing with Tx power was pretty pointless anyway, so I figured as much - just thought I'd try that anyway, but it did indeed make no difference

I've redisabled Airtime fairness and I'll try an older build (I'll try 30700) with an nvram reset, Canada/Haiti regulation mode and default tx power etc. I'll re-orient antennas to all upright as well... try it out for a few days and see how I get on!

The fun and joy of the black art of wifi If anything, it's given me a newfound appreciation of how impressive my WNDR3700 seems to be out of the box! Really wasn't expecting that...

[Xeon2k8]

[Doppel-D]

At least measure I would buy three antennas. Here comes the unbeatable advantage of the R7000 for the price ;- )

[<Kong>]