I was hoping with the AG300H that some of the issues might have been corrected from the prior 300 series routers. As far as i can tell any field that can flucuate on the status page is far from accurate. What is more rediculous is the TX power isnt even accurate for what is occuring. The router appears to be selectively choosing how much bandwidth to provide based on amount of traffic requested/sent for more that 1 minute. See below.
this is what i got from buffalo support:
Log into the router and go to " Wireless " and than underneath it " Basic Settings " under there you can go to Channel Width and change that to Turbo 40 MHZ. Also you can try changing the wireless channel to something the will get you less interference from other wireless devices in the area. If you have any other problems please contact our tech support for furhter assistance.
and my reply...
I moved the settings to turbo under NG-mixed. I have also used both auto and manual channel selection. My neighbors are far enough away that I can occasionally see them at -90 to -80 db. I have actually gone so far as to turn all wireless equipment (excluding laptop/wifi analyzer) and the power breakers in the house off except the office. I have tried every possible combination of antenna chains, antenna gain, Ack timer, and TX power. I have exhausted a number of wifi and dd-wrt forums. The best the router can display for 2.4 ghz is 13dBm power with a rate of 130Mb/s an a -2db signal fluctuation. This is constant regardless of idle or active traffic.
I have included some basic examples of what I am seeing below. It almost appears as if some adaptive radio management or power save feature is in place. Only after trying to pass a decent amount of data (streaming, large file xfer, multiple web pages) for at least 1 minute does the router seem to boost the radio signal to provide more that 5 Mb/s.
I really do like the router features and dd-wrt, but I need a router that performs better than the 9 year old router it is replacing. Any other advice is definitely welcome. I have about another week before the time I can return the router runs up.
Here is what I notice reported by the router and the wifi analyzer laptop:
signal strength:
AG300H never above 66%. Farthest point is as low as 8%
Laptop: 100% for most locations. Farthest point is 25% or more
Idle Bandwidth (by distance):
3 meters: router: 1 - 19 Mb/s. Laptop: 5 - 19Mb/s
10-15 meters (through walls): router: 1 - 5 Mb/s. Laptop 1 - 5 Mb/s
Active Bandwidth (active trying to pass significant amounts of data for more that 1 minute):
after more than a minute....
3 meters: router: 54 - 65 Mb/s. Laptop: 54 - 65Mb/s
10-15 meters (through walls): router: 18 - 52 Mb/s. Laptop 18 - 58 Mb/s