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[Austinbike]

I have a DIR-868L in my home office and a DAP-1525 upstairs.  Both are set to "auto select" the wifi channel, which I assumed was designed to look at the other traffic out there and find the clearest channel.  However, I was having some weird dropouts and was having connectivity issues (one indicator that something was wrong was that I kept seeing messages about someone logging into skype popping up, sometimes every few minutes....)

When I took a look with a wifi analyzer, both were transmitting on the same channel, along with half my neighborhood.  Channels 1, 6 and 11 were all being used, sometimes by more than one station.

I set them manually to 3 and 8. 

Shouldn't this function be checking the channels?

Also, there is new beta firmware for the DIR-868L, what is different about this one?

[FurryNutz]

it should when the unit is rebooted or turned on. However you maybe experiencing Signal Congestion on the 2.4Ghz radio...

[Austinbike]

Both units were rebooted and both units defaulted to ch 6, which is used by others.

[FurryNutz]

Try manually setting 1 and 11, even though others are using those and test.

• Try setting Medium or Low power output settings and test again Under Advanced/Advanced Wireless.

[Austinbike]

I tried that and really didn't see any changes.

I have both SSIDs set to the same name.

When I check a WiFi scanner program, I see the 868's MAC address associated with the SSID (which is further away) and I don't see the 1525's MAC.

I am going to try changing the name of the 1525 and see if I can isolate it.  The upstairs clients rarely travel downstairs (and vice versa) so maybe I just need to have separate SSIDs...

[Austinbike]

OK, some more detail on what is happening.

DIR-868L is downstairs in the home office.
DAP-1525 is upstairs in the family room. 

All of the numbers below come from me sitting next to the DAP-1525 (literally 6 feet from my chair).

When I first installed it, I could connect at ~150Mb/s.  Lately it has been running at only 72Mb/s.

Both of the devices are running 2.4 and 5GHz and both have the same SSID.

When both of the devices are on the same SSID I can connect and move throughout the house and never have to change accesspoints, though I rarely move devices. Initially, under "auto" they were both defaulting to the same channel and it seemed like I was having "flaky" problems with things going on or off line all the time.

When I set the SSIDs to the same name, I get 58Mb/s, here is what it looks like:


The C0 MAC address is the one from the office downstairs. 

When I change the SSID to different names, now I can see both and I get 72Mb/s from Upstairs and if I connect to WLANfruehe it is 42Mb/s:



In this one you can see the two different MAC addresses (associated to WLANfruehe and upstairs). I am running both 2.4GHz and 5GHz which is why each has 2 entries...

Not knowing exactly what is going on, I would surmise the following:

1. The DIR-868L is far more powerful, so it "over rides" the 1525 which is actually closer to me when they both have the same address, thus you see the C0 MAC address and lower connection speeds.

2. The DAP-1525 takes over, only when it is on its own SSID.

3. When they are on the same SSID, they could be "battling each other", which is why I was seeing dropouts as they were switching back and forth between access points.

I am smart enough to understand multiple access points, but my wife is not.  Is there an easy way to set all this up so that there is the best performance, but minimal headaches?

[FurryNutz]

Try lowering the power output of the DAP from high to low? Range will be effected hoever you only seem to need some in the area where the DAP is...this is what i do when i run additional APs when overlapping of signals is encountered.

[Austinbike]

Since I mainly use the DAP, should I drop the power on the DIR instead?

[FurryNutz]

Can do that as well...

[Austinbike]

I changed the SSIDs so that they were separate and saw the DAP dropping out all night.

Putting an old DIR-655 back in and taking the DAP-1525 out has solved the problem. 

What a piece of crap that 1525 is.  I hope that I am still within the 30-day return window.

Now that the DIR-655 is back my TiVo can't see the server, but that is an issue for another day.

[FurryNutz]

What Rev is the 655?

What modes were you running on the 868L?
The 1525 only does N mode max so setting single mode N, WPA2/AES only and turning off HT20-40Mhz Co-exhistence  on the 868L should be good for the 1525.

[Austinbike]

The 655 is a B1 (I also have some A revs hanging around as well.)

When the 1525 was on its own and as separated as possible from the 868, it was still dropping the connection after about 20-30 minutes.  Weirdly, it would drop one client, than the other, we never saw both clients dropping at the same time.

I down-rev'd to the 1.01 firmware and that didn't help either (it came with 1.01, I had updated to 1.02.)

Bought on 11/18 and Fry's is not gonna do me any favors, so this will have to come back to you guys for replacement instead.  I liked the product but after messing with it for almost 6 weeks now, I'm really disappointed.

[FurryNutz]

ok, try this, turn OFF all WiFi radios on the 868L or what ever your host router is. Wire connect the 1525 and put it in AP mode. Set single mode G, WPA2/TPIK only, Auto 20/40Mhz. Set channel 11.

Are there other WiFi routers near by? How many?

[FurryNutz]

I'm wondering if possibly since both the 868L and the 1525 have Smartbeam, wonder if there could be some bad behavior between them...

[Austinbike]

ok, try this, turn OFF all WiFi radios on the 868L or what ever your host router is. Wire connect the 1525 and put it in AP mode. Set single mode G, WPA2/TPIK only, Auto 20/40Mhz. Set channel 11.

Are there other WiFi routers near by? How many?

If I turn off the wifi in the 868 my scanner sees the 1525.  If I turn on the wifi in the 868 the scanner only sees the 868 and not the 1525, despite being 4-5 feet away from the 1525 and ~30-40' (through several walls) from the 868.  Clearly the 1525 has little or no output. 

When I had the 1525 running, the most recent connection was 72Mb at best case, sometimes in the 40's or 50's.  With the DIR-655 in place the lowest performance was 72Mb and the highest was ~150Mb.  And that was with the same SSID as the 868.