Wifi signal strength

Hi there,
I was wondering what’s people perception regarding wifi quality (in both bands)?
I was hoping to improve wifi coverage in my flat since my wndr3700 with builtin antennas (and custom openwrt) was performing poorly in some dark corners.
Now turris with external antennas showing twice lower signal comparing to my wndr (visually, on wifi scanner - the bar is half lower - 50dB vs 70dB) from behind the wall. They are sitting on different (non-occupied) channels. Similar difference could be seen in both bands.
–RR

If you had -50 and now have -70 the difference if far more greater than twice, every 3dB is double the output power, so -53dBm for example is twice as low as -50dBm. It seems like an universal fault for the omnias

Yeah I’m less than impressed with the wifi coverage of the Omnia. I was running some generic old wireless-n 300 mbit tp-link AP on my old setup and it was more reliable and had greater signal strength (no MIMO or multiple antennas or anything).

20 db would mean 1 mW vs 100 mW. This is kinda strange and far too extreme for antenna and output power differences.

I wonder if Your problem is related to mine - the question if the antennas is screwed good enough on the sockets, I have a picture I will upload later. - But it seems that most of the antennas dont sit deep enough on the sockets!

Well yes when I unpacked mine and started screwing antennas on - the two on sides immediately started rotating. So I’ve opened the case and holding the small pcbs screwed them tight. But of course I’ve checked all 4 RF cables are sitting tight on those u.fl’s

As for strength - here’s results from wpa_cli
> scan_results
bssid / frequency / signal level / flags / ssid
xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx 2447 -44 [WPA2-PSK-CCMP][ESS] home
xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx 2412 -48 [WPA2-PSK-CCMP][WPS][ESS] Home-repeater
xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx 2427 -70 [WPA2-PSK-CCMP][ESS] Turris

I have the same problem. My omnia is placed at an ideal location wifi-wise, to be honest, but even 3m away with direct line of sight, the signal drops significantly. It still covers all important areas, but the devices sometimes have to re-connect at the outer edges of my very small apartment. I expected more.

Has someone tried routing the two wifi cards to individual antennas and get rid of the little PCBs? There are enough wholes in the case.

Anyone know were to order this specific antennas they were using? Or better ones? I’d like to try replacing them maybe.

As soon as I receive my omnia I will replace the antennas, install 5 dedicated, instead of the three and also replace the 2.4GHz PCIe card.

For this purpose I already got (a) the WLE200N2-23 7A wifi card (b) U.FL Mini PCI zu RP-SMA Pigtail Antenne WiFi Kabel and antennas from Linksys.

When I am able to test the signal strenght and reach difference to the “out-of-the-box” version I shall post an info here.

congrats!

so let’s find out, how to make this card work

Wifi signal is really weak now, even near the router. I think of buying different antennas and pigtails and test some other setups. Hopefully we will find the reason for the weak signal problem.

Does anyone know what gain the stock antennas have? I can’t find them on the web.

These are the stock antennas, only black > http://eshop.sectron.cz/Items/ItemDetail.aspx?id=AW-A2458G-FSRPK so they should be 5dB
I am quite sure that changing antennas and pigtails will not help as all clues point to issue being within software.

It’s like in the case of many atheros-based routers, that worked perfectly on OpenWrt 12.09, attitude adjustment and then WiFi started to suck from 14.07 barrier breaker.

Thats strange. If the problem would be on HW or SW, NIC guys would notice that on tests, dont they?

Auch… just about to replace a Fritz box with the Omnia. The range of the Fritz box is “ok” but not excellent. If the Omna is worse I will have a problem.

I think I will follow this thread and wait for a conclusion before installing the Omnia. Hopefully we will know what needs to be done quickly. Even if additional hardware is needed.

Thanks everyone for doing all this testing.

Thomas

btw I figured if I set region to US - it allows to raise tx power up to 27dBm which gives a bit better coverage (cca 60d instead of 70d from behind the wall) so I’m looking at setting the omnia at the comm. closet as a router and move wndr3700 to some perfect spot as an extender (over 5g band).

And hope ČTÚ wouldn’t come after me :slight_smile:

My current asus extender is based on ralink with proprietary fw blob and for some reason not bridging my linux wifi (not forwarding packets) while working well for phones and windozs. So I need to do something with wifi coverage, and looks like Omnia is not right and simple solution. at least at the moment.

So it is possible to change the region? Do keep in mind that US uses only 11 channels (2.4 GHz).

Although makes sense because they have other rule of low about the amount of transmission power.

IIRC the country code is visible to everyone. Correct me if I am wrong. It is at least guessable, that I know for sure. Use with caution :wink:

Yes, of course it’s visible in the beacon. And high chans are overcrowded anyway in my location. But since signal is that weak and fades after second wall - one would need a sensitive scanner to spot this.

I have been using those closed-source routers for so long, i have been practically dead of the possibilities what routers can do. XD

Those companie$ restrict us so much with their software on their routers that we have forgotten how to be free and what the possibilities are. Which openWRT showed me clearly when came to know about Turris Omnia. In the past i did knew about the Linksys WRT Routers and something called "open source firmware – which was referring to openwrt, but not really paid much attention to it. After i bought a Draytek Vigor 2920n which was very painfull to my wallet…to be honest. And now, it is useless, because although it has a lot of functionality, i want even more, but it simply cannot offer more then what is already offering. I do not like people restricting me in functionality of my hardware.

So almost everything now a days in my house is leaning towards Linux XD. I was even planning to have someway mess with my tv-firmware, but sadly not possible hahahha.

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