Author Topic: Optimal wireless settings for Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh?  (Read 17288 times)


greenbird

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Re: Optimal wireless settings for Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh?
« Reply #16 on: February 12, 2011, 06:06:05 AM »

No,that didnt explain it - but it turns out to be pretty easy to flash to openwrt.

 

if anyones interested, I'll point you towards to instructions.

 

Openwrt is a fair bit sparser than the glorious interface of dd-wrt - but the power meter does seem to work and I can adjust up and down.

 

using wifi inspector, it doesn't look as though received power has increased much both at my pc next to the router or the HTPC downstairs, but, and here's the good bit... sending a large video file wirelessly from the PC (next to the router, running a 802.11G network ) to the HTPC (downstairs - running on 802.11n) took around 80 minutes or so under dd-wrt, but using openwrt its

 

> around 20 minutes if I wirelessly connected to the router from the PC

 

> under 13 minutes if I connect via cat5 from the PC

 

This is a good result, since now for the first time I can stream from upstairs to down and vice versa, and might even get the xbox360 extender working at a decent pace.

 

No idea why its so much faster under openwrt when the signal seems to be no stronger.

 

Transfer speed was around 10 Mbps, but given I can get 20 to the internet wirelessly through the PC's g  network, something is still not quite right...

 

but its a good step forward. Maybe I'm pushing the boundaries of the little Cisco usb dongle which has no external antenna thats in my HTPC downstairs until the better dongle and antenna arrives.


jjarrettc

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Re: Optimal wireless settings for Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh?
« Reply #17 on: February 12, 2011, 06:30:34 AM »

There is one issue with OpenWRT and the WZR that I have read others have too.  After some period of time, usually a day or two in my experience, it will stop working.  You will still see the wifi signal but you cannot get anywhere, in other words, the bridge is down.  The current fix for this is to turn off "n" and use "g".  However, the whole reason we all bought this router is to use the "n" feature.  My work around for this is just add a cronjob to kick off in the middle of the night to reboot the router.  My cronjob is:

 

 

root@OpenWrt:~# crontab -l
15 4 * * * /sbin/reboot > /dev/null 2>&1

 

 

I really dislike "reboots" to fix software bugs but this is the only work around at the moment that I am aware of.  

 

Regards,

John


buddee

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Re: Optimal wireless settings for Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh?
« Reply #18 on: February 12, 2011, 10:06:49 AM »

Its faster because openWRT uses ath9k driver, dd-wrt doesn't, dd-wrt use madwifi and it shows,  the results are in black and white. I am hoping dd-wrt improves this, but as it stands this has been an ongoing issue in the dd-wrt dev tree for a LONG time.

 

 

edit - there is no mad wifi driver for 11n, it stopped at 11g.yes, previous ddwrt builds with 11g, used mad wifi.


greenbird

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Re: Optimal wireless settings for Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh?
« Reply #19 on: February 12, 2011, 07:34:46 PM »

Hopefully a miracle will happen an my bufallo won't go down, but just in case...

 

cron, eh - thats a terms that I havent used in a long, long time... have to brush up on my unix/linux that I havent touched for a decade now.

 

Had to quickly look up how to use VI after all these years after doing crontab -e 

 

doesnt that 1 5 4 on the cronjob mean 1 minute past 5 am, but only on the 4th of the month?

 


jjarrettc

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Re: Optimal wireless settings for Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh?
« Reply #20 on: February 13, 2011, 05:30:09 AM »

The cronjob spacing is not clear via the post.  It translates to reboot at 4:15 AM everyday.  Recall the fields are white space separated:

 

 

field          allowed values
 -----          --------------
minute         0-59
hour           0-23
day of month   1-31
month          1-12 (or names, see below)
day of week    0-7 (0 or 7 is Sun, or use names)
A field may be an asterisk (*), which always stands for ``first-last''.

 


ccassells

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Re: Optimal wireless settings for Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh?
« Reply #21 on: February 13, 2011, 10:32:18 AM »

 


greenbird wrote:

Hopefully a miracle will happen an my bufallo won't go down, but just in case...

 

cron, eh - thats a terms that I havent used in a long, long time... have to brush up on my unix/linux that I havent touched for a decade now.

 

Had to quickly look up how to use VI after all these years after doing crontab -e 

 

doesnt that 1 5 4 on the cronjob mean 1 minute past 5 am, but only on the 4th of the month?

 



I think I've had good luck with my OpenWRT installation, using Backfire (r22689).  My router is running 802.11N single chanel mode with great performance.  I've not had issues with the router going down even with a week or more of uptime.  I did have the router process die once and a reboot cured that.  OpenWRT isn't perfect either, but it works considerably better for edge clients than DD-WRT does. 

 


greenbird

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Re: Optimal wireless settings for Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh?
« Reply #22 on: February 16, 2011, 03:40:08 AM »

Hmmm... I can tell everyone what is not optimal.

 

Channel 11 with 40 MHz with the extra 20 MHz above channel 11... = Brick.

 

I wondered what would happen, now I know.

 


greenbird

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Re: Optimal wireless settings for Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh?
« Reply #23 on: February 17, 2011, 04:12:52 PM »

As a matter of fact, I think I've blown up the transmitter...

 

After trying to follow all of the dodgy advice on how to reflash it, I eventually succeeded and put a new version of OpenWRT onto it. This was after getting strange errors from the Pumpkin TFTP program that stated that the Region was not permitted (or words to that effect) when attempting stock firmware or DD-wrt flashes.

 

My joy was shortlived when I noted that RADIO0 no longer appeared under WIFI.

 

I restored from a backup of a configuration that I had from a few days ago before I broke it, and was happy to see the RADIO0 reappeared and the wifi light blinked on.

 

This also was a letdown, since my SSID remained obstinately undetected and my wifi detection program that should tell me whether anything is coming from the router was also flatlining.

 

I can however, route fine via cat5 to the Bufallo and thence to the cable modem and out to the web.


Over the weekend, I'll attempt to flash to the stock firmware or to DD-WRT (hopefully that error about regions wont appear anymore)... but I have to say, I'm not hopeful.

 

If anyone has any hints on whats going on here, that would be fantastic! I've been working on this for hours and hours and just about out of ideas here.


greenbird

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Re: Optimal wireless settings for Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh?
« Reply #24 on: February 18, 2011, 04:50:40 AM »

Pleasantly suprised to find out that reflashing with the original Buffalo firmware seems to have corrected my problem...

 

I've found that the original Cisco router that I had all along is doing exceptionally well with the better antenna that I have downstairs... being around 2x as fast for some reason.

 

So all of this router madness may have been for naught, with a $15 better antenna outperforming a stronger signal by a mile. A used Buffalo router (without OpenWRT) may be for sale soon.

 

I'm going to bed.