Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 15:01 Post subject: ddwrt on wrt1200ac appears to be junk
So after getting my new wrt1200ac I was excited to put ddwrt on it immediately, it would be the first router I would own that could run third party stuff rather safely. Previous routers were kinda junk processors and my last one was good but 3rd party on it was more of a hack.
Unfortunately it didn't last more then a month, with 1 critical and 2 very annoying issues. The critical issue was wifi stability. Seemed like once a day the 5ghz band goes dead. the 5ghz spectrum is super empty around me so there is no excuse for that. The 2 other really annoying issues were the lack of WPS button support (I spent a bit of time digging around for a printer cable for our wireless printer) and then there was a funky incompatibility level on the 2.4ghz band with n and g devices. Namely we have an old nook (android) in the house and despite actually having 802.11n support, it fails to connect to the wifi if its in b/g/n mixed mode. It ONLY connect when in dedicated n mode. Unfortunately we also have a nintendo 3ds in the house which is 802.11g only, despite being 2016 tech. To fix this I simply ran my old router in a compatible 2.4ghz mode for the 3ds alone (and made sure it wasn't on the same channel range. the 2.4ghz in my area is pretty ugly).
Anyways after about 3 weeks of an almost daily "why can't I get anything on wifi?" I set it to boot back to the factory firmware at which point all the above issues cleared up. No 2.4ghz incompatibilities, no wifi drop outs. My galaxy s8 does drop 5ghz frequently on this router but it seems to be a widespread issue with the s8, The fix is to use 2.4ghz.
I will miss the administration pages dearly as the wrt1200ac factory is probably one of the more featureless ones around on modern routers. It has everything needed for my environment though.
Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 1608 Location: SE Michigan USA
Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 17:28 Post subject:
Am guessing you are running an old build that was on the website for checking if router is supported since you did not include the firmware version you are using. these are very old and shouldn't, in my opinion, be used.
I have alot of devices and for the most part the mixed modes did not have any problems, it was just the nook which I believe may even be based on 802.11n draft considering its age. There isn't much info on the hardware. Infact because it fails to properly support 802.11b/g leads to believe it is some fledgling chipset. I originally considered it an incompatibility with the router hardware but since it works on the factory firmware it must mean the flaw is in the ddwrt software.
Oh yea I also had some unstableness when transferring files from the usb drive. I hadn't had a chance to download much to it via transmission but the few times I had, it was like a large movie and often the first time I started a file copy the router would reboot. This usually only happened once during a period of time.
imo alot would need to change for me to consider trying it again. Unfortunately swapping back and forth between the firmware means entering passwords and reconnecting networks for everything again so it isn't something I can casually do to test new updates.
I have alot of devices and for the most part the mixed modes did not have any problems, it was just the nook which I believe may even be based on 802.11n draft considering its age. There isn't much info on the hardware. Infact because it fails to properly support 802.11b/g leads to believe it is some fledgling chipset. I originally considered it an incompatibility with the router hardware but since it works on the factory firmware it must mean the flaw is in the ddwrt software.
Oh yea I also had some unstableness when transferring files from the usb drive. I hadn't had a chance to download much to it via transmission but the few times I had, it was like a large movie and often the first time I started a file copy the router would reboot. This usually only happened once during a period of time.
imo alot would need to change for me to consider trying it again. Unfortunately swapping back and forth between the firmware means entering passwords and reconnecting networks for everything again so it isn't something I can casually do to test new updates.
I'm hoping you or someone else can help me. I came across this post when searching for wrt1200ac wifi issues. I have recently found that I could get better wireless speeds on my router by changing the channel width to wide HT40 as opposed to VHT80.
For some reason, this router only gets a link speed of 144 when set to VHT80. Previously i had thought it was related to me having the router configured with a live openVPN tunnel and/or unstable dd-wrt firmware on this router.
Anyway, this past weekend I was just playing around with the settings and found that when I switched the channel width to HT40, my link speed shot up to 300, and my transfer speeds between devices locally connected to this router also dramatically improved.
This is great, however, now that I got that improved, I would like to know how to get the darn thing to a link speed of 450, which it should be able to do since it's an AC router.
You mentioned you are not having any issues, so when you connect to this WIFI from a device capable, are you getting 450 as your link speed? If you are, can you share what your Wireless config settings are, I'd love to get this thing working at 100% performance.
Unfortunately I can't test to much because I don't actually own anything that is 2x2 or 3x3 AC. My phone and my newest laptop are all 1x1 802.11ac devices.
Robocide, I was aware of another firmware project but didn't read up on it. Maybe when I have time to go tearing down my network again I will try it.
Hi Jeffmd, what does it mean 1x1 2x2 AC devices? Maybe that's my issue. Actually I went and flashed the router with the Kong building from 1/2017. It seems much better.
I still notice that the link speed is 300 Mbps on my MacBook Pro. It's a MacBook Pro from around mid 2012. Could that be why? Ie something to do with the 1x1 2x2 thing you referenced? It's strange though, because the rMBP only connects at max 300Mbps, but as I mentioned, I can successfully connect to my ISP providers wifi router at 450Mbps from the mac. So I assume it's capable.
What I found very interesting is that I have a new yoga X1 laptop and I checked that the other day while connected to the 5ghz network after installing the kong build. I was getting a 866Mbps link speed. Is that correct?!?!?
802.11a/b/g/n (450 Mbit*) * means if the AP supports it as well
*This model unofficially supports 450 Mbit/sec 802.11n Wi-Fi using MIMO. _________________ Tutorial for flashing WRT series WRT Installation,Upgrade & Basic Setup–Cliff Notes
r52242: WRT3200ACM, WRT1200ACv1 & 1 Velop in bridge mode(IoT subnet), r52242 WRT1900ACv1 AP
Velop:2 WHW0101, RE6500, RE9000(AP)
Spectrum - 1000/50
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