Apple iPhone and MacBook connection issues on wifi

[KG49]

RT-AX86U Pro with dual-band smart connect enabled.

A MacBook Air connected directly to the RT-AX86U Pro on 5ghz experiences slow connection and lags/drops frames during Zoom.

An iPhone 13 Pro connected to an RT-AX55 node (ethernet backhaul) on 5ghz experiences lags and dropped frames during Facetime video, audio also drops. This occurred during Facetime with another iPhone 13 Pro connected to the RT-AX86U Pro (both phones connected to same wifi network in the same house).

Does ASUS have any problems with Apple? Any settings to adjust?

Note that 'Prevent client auto DoH' in WAN settings is set to Auto.

[jzchen · Accepted solution]

(Crossing my fingers one or a combination of these three settings may resolve this, from a multi-Apple household to another):

Under Advanced Settings -> Wireless:

-> General (tab)

- 5 GHz 

check box Enable 160 MHz 

uncheck Auto select channel including DFS channels

-> Professional (tab)

For both bands:

Disable OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO

I haven’t had much trouble with Apple products but this was from troubleshooting WiFi 6 GHz connection issue, (hence crossing my fingers as I turned it off on all bands).

[KG49]

Thank you,

I selected 'Enable 160 MHz' under 5 GHz and disabled 'OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO' under 5 GHz (already disabled under 2.4 GHz).

The option for 'Auto select channel including DFS channels' was not present at first. In order to see that option the 'Control Channel' has to be changed to Auto (initially set to 40). Then the option for 'Auto select channel including DFS channels' appears and it was unchecked. Returned 'Control Channel' to 40.

Will have to wait and see how this goes. Have you noticed any problem on Apple with Dual-Band Smart Connect, WiFi6 or any others? What am I losing by disabling OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO?

There's detailed information about DFS Channels here: [Wireless Router] What is DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection) and how does it work on ASUS router? | O...

[jzchen]

Did you select channel 40 for a specific reason?  (Auto works well for me, and I’d recommend it).  OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO is actually a WiFi 6 (and up) specific development.  It supposedly improves connectivity for more simultaneous connections, by dividing frequency spectrum “orthogonally”.  It’s not within my ability to understand how it works in the background, hence I am not able to repair it.   But there is something wrong with the implementation (among manufacturers) somehow.  (This is what I suspect).

1.  The reason I found it was hindering my son’s new MacBook Pro M2 MAX (yes that was $3k) was that he got it basically on first day it was released.  He basically forced me to contact Apple support and the person had me hard reset my router first thing, causing me to have to rebuild my 5 node network, and it still did not work with WiFi 6E.  (It did improve my network overall so not a complete loss, but I was bitter as it wasn’t the solution)…

So I threw money at a problem I knew “nobody would know” the solution for, bought a TP-Link RE815XE (cheapest and on sale 6E transmitter).  If anything I was confident there would be less settings to manipulate to try to get it to work.  But to my surprise (for sure after immediately updating to the latest firmware) it basically worked out of the box with his MacBook.  All I needed to do was copy any different settings over.  Again a surprise TP-Link defaults OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO to OFF/Disabled.  Well I’m not a complainer just wanted his MacBook to work with my AXE16000 and AXE11000 (our first and still only 6E device).  I was done.

2. Someone was having trouble with his two Meta Quest VR headsets, the one connected on 6E/6 GHz.  He specifically noted that it would not see the 6 GHz network which was similar to what we experienced.  I asked him to try two settings:  Enable PSC and to disable OFDMA….  (Sorry tired to retype it completely on my cell phone).  He came back and reported the OFDMA… disable was the solution, well he said it seemed to work and would try it some more, and never came back so I’m hoping that was it)…

[KG49]

Thank you jzchen,

The Control Channel was set to 40 initially, not sure why. Changed it to Auto as you suggested.

Will these various setting changes be reflected at my RT-AX55 node? It doesn't appear that I can adjust those settings.

Hopefully I can benefit from your "journey" through the settings trying to make MAC work :).