WDR3600 - Terrible WiFi Range

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WDR3600 - Terrible WiFi Range

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WDR3600 - Terrible WiFi Range
WDR3600 - Terrible WiFi Range
2015-06-15 04:56:37
Region : CanadaModel : TL-WDR3600Hardware Version : V1Firmware Version : 3.14.3 Build 150518 Rel.72050nISP : Bell CanadaHello All,I purchased a WDR3600 after my D-Link died on me... I read review after review saying that this was a great router with good range and I could not be more disappointed. I've used this for a month now and will the wired connection is fine, the wireless is terrible.I live in a 2 story house and have the router located on the top floor (probably not the best but I've been just fine with other routers)... I'll be on the same floor approximately 15 feet away from the router on the 2.4Ghz network and struggle to get 3/5 bars on my laptop. Often my phone will be only reading 1/4 bars.I'm currently in the same room as the router and my laptop is only getting 4/5 bars, phone is 2/4... I know it's not a device issue as I've taken my laptop and phone to friend's houses and have full connectivity. I also will lose the the WiFi signal if I sometimes go to the first floor and will only get WiFi about 10% of the time if I go to the basement. I have not had this issue with any other routers (D-LINK DIR-628 and Linksys WRT54G)I have tried:- Updating to the latest firmware (150518)- Added the antenna's to the router- Tried changing the channel width to 20 mhz- Tried changing the channel to 1 through 10At this point I'm ready to return it... did I get a defective router? It was brand new purchased from Best Buy on May 6th, 2015.Thanks in advance.
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#1
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Re:WDR3600 - Terrible WiFi Range
2015-06-15 10:28:40
Okay well I apologize for the poor formatting but that's what the edit function is doing...
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#2
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Re:WDR3600 - Terrible WiFi Range
2015-06-15 18:05:24
In my humble opinion, the WDR-3600 is junk. I myself have spent a couple of months trying to get my v1.5 version to work to no avail. First of all, you're right about the range. The 5GHz range is terrible. More than one wall, and the 5GHz link is either useless or worse than the 2.4GHz band from the same router. So I pretty much gave up on using the 5GHz band unless there is a line of sight. This was my experience with the factory firmware and dd-wrt. Next, I have observed weird stability issues, where the unit eventually becomes unresponsive and needs to be rebooted, specially if operating under high load (like continuous torrent, and multiple other downloads). I have been observing this with many versions of dd-wrt and occasionally with the factory firmware. Dd-wrt people have hunted down a major atheros bug, but this router was not stable even with the latest dd-wrt beta builds. I suspect, perhaps there is a hardware issue, perhaps with overheating as there are no heatsinks inside. Finally, I installed another third party firmware known as Gargoyle. Under gargoyle, the unit was stable, and the range improved, only slightly. After a week of testing Gargoyle, I ended up buying a TP-Link Archer C8, because I found it relatively cheap on a sale.

What a great upgrade! Massive improvement. I am getting strong 5GHz signal with low latency and fine data transfer rate from a second floor bedroom. Personally, I'd recommend to get an Archer C8 or C9, and return the WDR-3600. However, if you want to give WDR-3600 one lance chance, I'd recommend to install the latest stable version of Gargoyle on it, which was the only firmware that worked stably for me.
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Re:WDR3600 - Terrible WiFi Range
2015-06-16 05:40:47
Thanks for the reply - I researched routers for quite some time to find something reliable with good range and I thought the WDR3600 was the right choice based on all the positive reviews... Rated 4/5 stars on Amazon, Newegg, and Best Buy which is hard to do for a lot of routers these days.

I saw hit and miss reviews for the Archer which made me a little leary, but I might consider doing just that.

In the mean time it can't hurt to try and install this Gargoyle firmware you speak of. Thanks again!
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Re:WDR3600 - Terrible WiFi Range
2015-06-16 16:13:25
Every router from a big vendor seems to have 4/5 reviews on Amazon. But the issue with all wireless-n routers is that they're much slower, with lower range, relative to the newer AC routers, even when you use a wireless-n client on either band. This has been confirmed in various tests. The issue is that 802.11ac routers incorporate various improvements in the technology which help even older spec clients to perform better.
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