Forum Discussion
Router Configuring Advice
Hi, this is a followup post to this one where I was looking for a router for my Arcadyan gateway, I picked up the Asus GT-AC2900 (aka RT-AC86U) and set it up yesterday, it is currently working and at similar speeds, so now I'm looking for ways to configure it, hopefully this can help others looking for a router/router advice too, here are some notes I had from my setup/configuring I already tried:
-I do have the wifi in the Arcadyan turned off thanks to Nater Tater's easy script and tutorial for how to do so. This keeps the gateway less busy/hot. In case you're wondering the TMHI app and web interface still work through your router's network, so does the script, so you can look at data metrics and reboot from there still.
-disabling DHCP on it's own like I had seen in some threads had made the wifi signal stop working (not unavailable it just had no internet), speeds didn't really change either so that was a no-go, if anyone knows more about that please let me know since I likely did it wrong or misunderstood I’m not home networking savvy.
-This forum specifically recommends AP mode for a router at the cost of losing features. I think I lost more than just features, when I turned on the AP mode I could no longer access the website to configure my router, I thankfully had set up the phone app before doing that and i could configure through there, the wifi signal also still worked, I tried to set it back to router mode through the app and then nothing could connect to it not even wired (this could've been because I had disabled DHCP before going into AP mode but I doubt it because I believe AP mode is already supposed to disable DHCP isn't it? +wired was still working when I had DHCP disabled originally), I ended up just having to factory reset it and set up the network again.
-I read that having the router use its own DNS instead of T-Mobile's could help you access more sites/help speed but I personally havent run into any sites I can't visit and a DNS benchmark I ran said TMobile's own would be the fastest so would it even be worth it for me?
-I heard warnings about double NAT causing issues but I haven't noticed any issues at least so far. Either way is that something easily disabled/recommended?
The reason I needed a router in the first place was to lower my ping as TMHI has a terrible Bufferbloat problem. There are routers specifically designed to eliminate bufferbloat but they were a little overpriced for their specs and I wanted to be safe so I read on this forum and others that Asus routers are known to be friendly with TMHI so I went with that, the Adaptive QoS feature built into the router to reduce ping while doing certain tasks does seem to work though not crazy well, got an average of 26ms playing Guilty Gear. I may have to test it more.
What I know I haven’t tried is the Asuswrt-Merlin custom firmware for the router, this comes with 2 features that could help being adjusting the MTU packet size and enabling Cake SQM. I wanted to check back here before trying Merlin in case I missed anything I could still try on the normal firmware.
-I read from lots of places that adjusting our MTU packet size in the router to what our gateway is actually delivering could help greatly with speed and ping, what size is different for everybody most places say 1420 or 1450 but through my test using Ping & Net I got 1480, it doesn't seem like I can adjust the packet size in the normal firmware but I could through Merlin.
-Cake (only available on the new HND Asus Routers like mine) is an SQM feature, SQM is a program made to specifically deal with bufferbloat and make ping better across every device, this would be more preferable than the Adaptive QoS for me since it isn't task-dependent. If you've never had bufferbloat before it's likely because many cable/fiber ISPs provide routers that already have some sort of SQM, but TMHI doesn't.
So that’s everything I can think of, sorry for the wall, if anyone has any advice/pointers for what I should try before trying Merlin let me know, thanks for reading.
Good to hear you have most of what you were looking for working. To answer some of your questions:
AP mode - this should be seamless to enable. I've switched back and forth between DHCP and AP mode and never lost wifi connection after the router took a few minutes to auto reboot. When switching to AP mode, it takes another min or 2 for the TMO router to assign all the new IPs. However, if you set any static IPs back in DHCP mode, those will not work since the static IPs were on a different subnet.
DHCP mode - this allows your Asus router to do everything it's suppose to do. If you don't have any connectivity issues with your apps, then I would recommend you keep it this way. I haven't had any problems either and as you said no change in bandwidth or ping.
Web UI access to Asus Router - in AP mode, you have to see what IP address the TMO router assigns to your Asus Router then use that IP address to access the web UI. In DHCP mode, you can use the standard "router.asus.com" URL since that will auto resolve in DHCP mode.
DNS - default for Asus in DHCP mode is "ISP Provided" which is the same as TMO DNS. You can try the various free DNS services to see if you get any better results. I know for sure if I don't change DNS from default, I am unable to reach my closest TMO server on Speedtest. There could be other websites that fail, but I don't use/visit.
MTU - you can try manually setting that on your PC/Laptop end. I did not notice any difference when I tried because whatever the difference was within the margin of variability of back to back Speedtest.
Merlin Firmware - I have not tried since it’s not available for my mesh system.
Thank you for the clarification on AP mode and DHCP, unfortunately I couldn’t configure QoS while it’s on AP mode and speeds didn't change either way so I don’t think I’m going to use it, hopefully T-Mobile gives us the settings we need to make the gateway primarily a modem when we have a router plugged in but it just hasn't happened yet.
Changing DNS didn't change much of anything, adjusting MTU packets on only my PC just made the speed slower unfortunately, the advice to change MTU were all from last year so maybe the Arcadyan fixed that issue. I'll still try to do it within the router with Merlin anyway to see if it changes. I'll prob try Merlin tonight or tomorrow.
Dont look man. If you have other options take them. T-Mobile has turned into a turd show on wheels. Honestly its not worth it. If its fast now it wont be in a few months I can promise you that. And when the problems arise you wont have anyone to help you because there is no one left to help you. They moved custome support to the Philppines for the U.S only(T-Mobile operates worldwide) and talking to them is liking talking to a broken tape recording of a parrot squaking random words at you until you have had enough and hang up. The headache is not worth it I promise you.
Anyway so I got Merlin working, the MTU stuff still went nowhere, Cake seems promising but not working great for me yet, it seems to only work for fixed bandwidths which TMHI definitely isn't where I live so if I wanna game the Adaptive QoS is still better though not desirable, that said I think I see where to go from here so I'm gonna go to those forums to try to get help now. Thanks everybody seeya.
