5 GHz (1st one) Wireless Network keep dropping or disappears

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sc.mag
sc.mag's picture
5 GHz (1st one) Wireless Network keep dropping or disappears

All the bands work fine with the stock firmware. The first 5GHz wifi band signal strength is very low or disappears in all the following firmwares except in the DD-WRT firware July 2015 release. Even in that release I need to reboot the router once in a while (~5 days) to have a better SNR as the signal goes down significantly. Sometimes the second 5GHz band goes down and I got to reboot the router again. I use WPA2 mode with TKIP+AES algorithm in all bands and have different SSID names for 2.4GHz, 5GHz-1, 5GHz-2. I tried the following versions and observed the same issue. Hope this is addressed in the next revision.

having issues with the first 5GHz band:

    DD-WRT "Kong Mod" for NETGEAR R8000 04-19-2016
    DD-WRT Kong Mod for NETGEAR R8000 3-30-2016
    DD-WRT "Kong Mod" for NETGEAR R8000 3-6-2016
    DD-WRT "Kong Mod" for NETGEAR R8000 - K3 Jan 2015
    DD-WRT Kong Mod (10-26-15) for NETGEAR R8000
    DD-WRT Kong Mod (09-07-15) for NETGEAR R8000
    DD-WRT firmware for Netgear R8000 Based on revision 28514 - 2015-12-28

so far only working firmware without the 5GHz band issue (sometime got to reboot once in 5 days):

    DD-WRT firmware for Netgear R8000 Based on revision 27261 - 2015-07-04

I use the following steps

- Perform reset to factory defaults setting in existing Firmware.
- Perform Firmware Upgrade.
- Perform reset to factory defaults setting in newly upgraded DD-WRT Firmware.
- Use DD-WRT in your router.

Setup is shown below

wifi settings

Roy2001
Roy2001's picture
It is all about channel

It is all about channel settings. By default, both tomato and dd-wrt has a very WEAK 5G channel, you can only detect by placing your device a few feet away!

I used a wifi detecting utility to detect which channel netgear is using, and set those channels with dd-wrt/tomato and got both channel working.

5G1: channel width is 20Mhz, and wireless channel is 165/5.825Ghz

5G2: channel width is VHT80Mhz, and wireless channel is 48

Try to play with it to make it work.

LordDarlymple
LordDarlymple's picture
I had the same problem. I

I had the same problem. I finally did the 'erase nvram' and 'reboot' after flashing and then brought everything working again, with version 29627. I can see both the 5G radios and configure everything properly. The only issue pending is that after OpenVPN, the speed drops from 60 Mbps to 10-20 :-( (both wired and wireless) - the same vpn gets around 50 if directly installed on the laptop. I will try with kongac version to see if that makes a difference, but I dont know whether its worth trying.

kairetzlaff
kairetzlaff's picture
I see some similar behaviour.

I see some similar behaviour. Every once in a while WL2 configuration disapears from DDWRT GUI. Also in "Status" -> "Wireless" tab. The funny thing is my clients still seem to connect to it! SSID is still broadcasted and I can see performance and configuration in InsideSSID tool. However, overall performance when this happens is very low, when before performance on both 5G channels was really good.

gizbug
gizbug's picture
Why does Tomato have a weak

Why does Tomato have a weak 5G signal compared to stock FW?

Roy2001
Roy2001's picture
I have the same observation,

I have the same observation, Shibby Tomato has much weaker wifi than stock or dd-wrt. No idea why.

Goldrush
Goldrush's picture
I also faced a similar

I also faced a similar challenge. Had someone fix it for me though.

LeStepH94
LeStepH94's picture
Dear

Dear
Thanks for the info, I rollback to the firmware revision 27,261 – 2015-07-04, because I can’t see the WL2 in the interface.
I tried a hard reset with the version updated 2017-01-18, but the issue still persists (no view or access to the WL2).
The WL2 works well, because I see a wireless DD-WRT available on my network but completely open without security password (too dangerous)
With the rollback, all WLx are available. I hope that will be fixed in future version.
Thanks again
Stephane
 

sc.mag
sc.mag's picture
Solved: I still had similar

Solved: I still had similar issues (wl2 disappeared) with the latest build (DD-WRT Kong Mod for NETGEAR R8000 (2017-01-18). I followed one other user's comment (steps given below) and fixed this issue. Now all wifi bands work fine and also signal quality is 100%.

Important: This process would erase all your settings and put the router back in default settings. So backup your settings (Administration-->Backup) before doing this, so you can restore it latter. Also I have only tested this on R8000, so for other models, it might do different. Once you do the following, either you can load your old settings or recreate your settings fresh. Just to be thorough, I recommend recreating the settings so it does not have any conflict from
your old settings.

Steps:

First I had installed the firmware "DD-WRT Kong Mod 2017-01-18 version" following the usual process (factory default settings, update firmware with reset to default, then reboot again). Now did the following steps:

1. Go to "Administration-->Commands"; copy and paste the following commands in the command box then click "Run Commands". This would erase nvram and would reboot the router.

erase nvram; reboot

2. Go to "Administration-->Management"; Scroll down then click "Reboot Router" to do an another reboot.

3. Now you can customize your settings and enjoy!

Captain Gizmo
Captain Gizmo's picture
So, what you're saying is to

So, what you're saying is to install the firmware and before doing anything else, to erase the nvram and reboot?

 

Could it be as simple as this?! :)

 

*fingers crossed*