Finally after some trial & error and dozens of firmware updates later (dd-wrt & cm13) I got a workaround: Before this I got disconnections under no load and on both bands despite I selected "always on" in wifi menue of the phone. In my case it's probably a specific phone related problem because a stock Samsung Note3 with LP has no problems.
I disabled "WMM Support" on the router.
The downside:
- wmm is mandatory for faster n based connection so it's obvious you won't get these....
- probably increased battery usage on the phone side
- no wmm qos
PS:router wdr4900v1 _________________ IT Crowd - Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again?
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 11:28 Post subject: Re: [DEVEL] Possible help w/5G drop-outs
A recent interesting post concerning 5G band drop-outs on WDR-4300:
marshell wrote:
What worked best though is to reduce the frequency range. I used to have "wide" or "dynamic". Going back to just "full" gives me a stable 5GHz network for days now. Maybe that helps others as well.
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 14:41 Post subject: Re: [DEVEL] Possible help w/5G drop-outs
Doppel-D wrote:
If I remember right "dynamic 20/40Mhz" was always a nogo recommendation.
I've tried to eliminate wireless settings and tuning of settings as a variable in my testing. I stick with the installation defaults for all things -- except for SSID, security/WPA2 Personal, just things like that which are configured for normal operation.
So, I always leave Channel Width at Full (20MHz) for both 2.4G and 5G
I always enable ht40. Otherwise you're cutting your speeds by 50%. Which defeats the purpose of having hardware that can do such speeds. I understand maybe leaving it at 20mhz for testing but that's ultimately a non-starter for me.
Joined: 03 Jan 2010 Posts: 7568 Location: YWG, Canada
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 0:24 Post subject:
ht20 especially in 5ghz is a huge waste unless its absolutely certain it fixes anything (but its been tried before & it helped no one). dynamic 20/40 in ddwrt is asking for massive drops & problems, we cant switch between ht20 <-> ht40 cleanly, it drops the entire radio for over 30 seconds. thats why its bad & should only use a fixed channel width. _________________ LATEST FIRMWARE(S)
BrainSlayer wrote:
we just do it since we do not like any restrictions enforced by stupid cocaine snorting managers
Hi guys, I was about to create a topic and I thankfully noticed this thread on the first page that I hadn't previously come across in my searching. I'm trying to figure out an issue and at this point I think I'm left with two possibilities, bad radio or DD-WRT issue. I'd very much like to eliminate one but I'm unsure of how to proceed. I guess I should start by describing my hardware and configuration.
I have three routers, TP-Link TL-WDR 3500, TL-WDR 3600 and TL-WDR 4300 (4300 being the one with the issue). These have all been flashed to r29147. I have them linked as WDS over 5GHz, the 4300 is the WAN connection and WDS AP, the 3600 and 3500 are WDS Stations. I do not have any clients connecting to them at 5GHz, I'm only using them wirelessly in conjunction with one another. They are configured with WPA2 AES. The connection works and at first glance is stable and very fast.
The 4300 will, during fast and extended transfer, drop the 5GHz connection. At least, it seems to only happen during heavy transfers. If they're not using much bandwidth the Uptime doesn't appear to reset. It only does this when the number 3 radio is active. When my TX Antenna Chains is set to 1 or 1+2, the problem no longer appears. Only when set to 1+3 or 1+2+3 does the connection drop. To clarify what I mean when I say drop, if I'm monitoring the wireless on the 4300's Status page I can actually watch the Uptime reset simultaneously for the 3500 and 3600 when the transfer halts.
I've had the 3500 and 3600 for some time, and far as I'm aware they have no issues (at least none that have previously presented themselves). The 4300 is a new addition to my collection. I'm reluctant to return the 4300 as it was a great deal (routers of this caliber are usually prohibitively expensive) but if it has a bad radio I'm not sure I'd want to keep it, may as well have another 3600 at that point.
Anyone have any ideas? Is there something I could be doing (maybe a specific log I could be monitoring) to better determine if it's a hardware or software issue? I can reliably reproduce the disconnect, I just don't know where or at what I should look next.
Posted: Mon Feb 29, 2016 18:39 Post subject: Re: TL-WDR 4300
Hi,
Red Frog wrote:
The 4300 will, during fast and extended transfer, drop the 5GHz connection. At least, it seems to only happen during heavy transfers.
I've had the 3500 and 3600 for some time, and far as I'm aware they have no issues (at least none that have previously presented themselves).
From my experience and those of others in the Atheros forum, this is an ongoing problem. At this point I don't believe there's significant developer interest in improving support for these models. Some related tickets:
No developer love. In fairness, they're overloaded and this isn't a commercial support project for them. We appreciate their builds, even if we do roll back a bit See this thread for suggested builds, etc.:
I appreciate the reply, it was comforting to see this thread and know I may not be alone. Since I'd been testing extensively it was also nice to have a list of versions to avoid bricking, thank you all for that.
Since I'd reached a wall in my DDWRT testing, I decided to plunge into the TP-Link firmware. I was trying to avoid it because I don't really like the layout and it's missing some things like a proper QoS. I also find it seems to add a little latency to some things, naturally slower latencies aren't affected much but some things that would get 10-20ms with DDWRT get a minimum of about 40-50 with TP-Link.
Unfortunately, it also appears to not be dropping the 5GHz. Unfortunate as I'd very much prefer to run DDWRT. As I type this, I'm seeding torrents to roughly 380KB/s upstream, and I've downloaded about 70GB from GOG at 8MB/s. In comparison, DDWRT would kick the WDS connection usually around 800MB into the download.
Only downside though, I don't know how the TP-Link firmware handles the hardware because it doesn't say, well, much of anything really. Either the hardware is good and DDWRT has the problem, or for all I know TP-Link FW could be skipping the #3 in favor of 1+2 and masking the problem. In any case, all I really know for certain now is that DDWRT functions while specifically using TX Antenna Chains 1+2 and TP-Link functions but mysteriously.
TPL does allow me to enable the "hardware" NAT, not that I really needed it as DDWRT maxed my WAN connection just on the CPU. I guess I have the option to try OpenWrt, but that's a bit too much Linux CLI for my taste. I know there's Gargoyle but they have no FW for the 3500, only the other two.
I suppose I'll keep the 4300 at this point since I don't think I can prove #3 is faulty, and just rough it out with the TPL firmware for the time being.
Edit:
Well, so much for me sticking with TPL firmware, it's too buggy. The connection has been fine but for some reason it keeps wanting to re-enable WPS. DDWRT has trouble with my #3 antenna but at least it respects my settings. I'll live with 1+2 if it means WPS stays disabled.
Edit:
LOL, crap. It's kicking the bucket on 1+2 now, I give up. Apparently there's nothing wrong with the radio, God just doesn't want me to have 5GHz. All my testing just turned into a great big pile of bupkis.
Last edited by Red Frog on Sat Mar 05, 2016 8:38; edited 2 times in total
Latest DDWRT beat build. Suffered from the 5GHZ disappearing for a long time now.
However, after playing around with wifi settings, apparently, what causes the 5GHZ channel to disappear until I reset the radio is running in with 40 mhz width.
Using 20mhz width with 5ghz channel, I did not encounter any disappearing (since friday morning).
This is crazy because using 20MHZ with 5ghz is crazy- you lose more than 60% of the speed the 5ghz channel is usually able to provide.
Honestly, I am not surprised the 40MHZ causes this issue. On this router, on 2.4GHZ, if I use 40MHZ channel width, I get crazy interference and long periods of drops (not disappearing, but I simply just can't ping the router).
Latest DDWRT beat build. Suffered from the 5GHZ disappearing for a long time now.
However, after playing around with wifi settings, apparently, what causes the 5GHZ channel to disappear until I reset the radio is running in with 40 mhz width.
Using 20mhz width with 5ghz channel, I did not encounter any disappearing (since friday morning).
This is crazy because using 20MHZ with 5ghz is crazy- you lose more than 60% of the speed the 5ghz channel is usually able to provide.
Honestly, I am not surprised the 40MHZ causes this issue. On this router, on 2.4GHZ, if I use 40MHZ channel width, I get crazy interference and long periods of drops (not disappearing, but I simply just can't ping the router).
I hope this is helpful.
Was torrenting massively...and as I was login in in this forum, very excited to confirm that in HT20 the wifi 5Ghz doesn't drop... it droped.
but this time was diferent, as I didn't have to reboot the rooter/click apply settings in wireless tab to turn it on again. its like the router just kicked me. all i had to do was reconnect.
(WDR3500 v1)
Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2016 19:15 Post subject: Re: [DEVEL] Possible help w/5G drop-outs TL-WDR3x00, 4x00
UPDATE (March 19, 2016): Here is a recent report for the WDR3600 recommending r27858 (09-28-2015) as stable for the 5G band. User nktitan has good success with r27858 but reports that later beta releases have 5G wireless problems as others have reported. As of this date, this is the most recent build reported to have stable 5G performance that I know of. YMMV.
See this thread for suggested builds, etc.: