RAX200 - Performance difference between the channel ranges for the 5GHz radios?

[pdegan2814]

I'm curious about something with regard to my RAX200, though the issue probably applies to other tri-band routers. The two 5GHz radios on my RAX200 have mutually exclusive channel numbers to select from. One lets me choose between 36/40/44/48/52/56/60/64, and the other between 100/104/108/112/116/120/124/128. Is there any noticeable difference in performance and/or stability between those two channel ranges? Is one of them better than the other for 802.11ax connections? Is one of them better for maintaining stable connections through a wall? I've got three PCs with AX, some devices with AC, and my home theater devices are mostly N. I'd like to keep the AX devices on one 5GHz band and the AC devices on the other, just not sure if it matters which band handles which device set, or if I should even divide them that way. Has anyone tested for differences between the two channel ranges?

If it matters, my router's firmware is V1.0.2.8_1.0.45, and I currently have ODFMA enabled but MU-MIMO disabled as I've heard it's still not supported robustly and it's not great with devices that are close together. I'm still researching it a bit before I think about turning it back on. 

[avtella]

The 36-64 Area is a combination regular+DFS channels. The 100-124 section is fully DFS and if I recall a lower power limit region as well. If you disable HT160 on the secod radio it should open up the 149-165 section that is another set of non DFS channels that are higher power.

I would enable HT160 on the lower channel radio it will use all the channels 36-64 to create a 160Mhz Width. For the higher channel radio I would disable HT160 and use the non DFS range 149-165 (HT80).

It ma not affect you but in the event of a radar or any other DFS priority utility detection the router will kick you off the affected DFS channels, in the 36-64 section it would drop you to HT80 if it is forced to leave the 56-64 channels which are DFS. In the 100-124 section since theyre all DFS I would assume since the router can't fall back to HT80 it may simply kickk all devices. The 149-165 section is non DFS so no such issues only downide is theres no additional 80Mhz of contiguous area there so you are limited to HT80 but it should be more stable.

[pdegan2814]

Since I don't see a setting that explicitly defines the max channel width for the 5GHz radios, I assume you mean set the mode from "up to 4800 Mbps" to "up to 2400 Mbps"? I recall trying that yesterday, and the first thing I noticed was the PC I was working on connected at a MUCH lower speed(it's using an adapter with Intel's AX200 2x2 chip). Low enough to make 802.11ax not worth the trouble. But I'm guessing it should be fine for my devices that use 802.11ac, none of them have serious bandwidth needs. I'll try switching my AX band to the lower channels and my AC up to the higher ones and see if that helps. Thanks for the feedback!

[avtella]

Yes, sorry the 4800 Mbps setting is HT160 and the 2400 Mbps setting is HT80.

The AX200 in my testing in my Dell Inspiron 7577 on HT160 will connect at a link rate of 2.4 Gbps (theoretical), actual realworld sustained transfer speeds will be around 130-150 MB/s (1040 Mbps -1200 MBps) on HT80 it will be around 70-85 MB/s (560-680 Mbps). Testing was done with transfers to/from a Samsung T5 USB SSD connected to the router.

AX regardless of HT80 or HT160 will net you around 10-15% higher speeds over AC on 5Ghz, don't expect more than 20% gain at best.

Remeber even some of the better AC routers like the R7800 have support for HT160 so its not somethng special to AX routers. So don't confound AX with HT160. If you really need a stable gigabit transfer rate use the lower channel radio at HT160. In my experience on various routers the 100-120 area was generally worse range wise. For the upper channel radio the 149-165 section has better range and a more stable connection even if its only at HT80. You could relegate the upper radio for older or slower devices. Overall though unless you have a gigabit internet connection or a NAS on your network that you do large transfers to I highly doubt it makes much of difference between HT80/HT160.

[pdegan2814]

In fact I do have Gigabit Ethernet, or near enough, but I'm not so worried about that. I also have a NAS that's connected to the router via 2.5Gig Ethernet(I got sick of bonding two 1GigE ports and bought the multi-Gig ethernet adapter for my NAS). My computers are regularly moving files to and from the NAS for various jobs, so while stable is key, fast is also quite important. 🙂

[avtella]

Nice, then yeah just use the lower channel for the HT160 AC and AX cabale devcies. The multigig port is nice unfortunately most NASs don't support N-BaseT and only do 1/10 Gbps. You may want to get a Multigig (Nbase-T) capable switch to bridge the connection to your NAS. I had to do that to connect the 5Gbps port on my RAX120 to my ReadyNAS524X, using a Netgear SX10 multigig capable switch.

[pdegan2814]

Thankfully Synology has a card that works in my NAS that supports 100Meg/1G/2.5G/5G/10G so I could just plut it right into the router. On good days I can transfer files from the NAS over 802.11ax through a wall at 130MB/s, I can live with that 🙂

[avtella]

Oh you have a Synology, yep I recall they sold 10 gig adapters, I think only the single port adapter had nbase-T support. If only NG was as modular on the 524X.