Last Updated on February 21, 2023
The background
Routers are a pain in the poo pipe, they always have been and they always will be. But that might just be my jaded view after spending so many years troubleshooting and fixing them. As a rule of thumb expensive routers work a lot better than very cheap routers, so for a couple of years I’ve been using a very nice D-Link DIR-655 but when an iPad arrived in the home I had to buy a new router because for some reason the iPad and the D-Link DIR-55 router just didn’t get along. So in a bit of a flurry I bought a Asus RT-N12. I didn’t even know Asus made routers, and in a twisted logic typical of us IT professionals I fancied trying something new so I bought it. The iPad loved it.
The problem
The Asus RT-N12 worked a treat for a few weeks then all of a sudden the Internet connection on all the devices on my network ground to crawl. Using https://speedtest.bbgmax.co.uk as a speed measuring tool I was only getting 300kpbs down and 19kbps up from my 20mbps Virgin Media broadband! Naturally I blamed Virgin Media (and bizarrely they responded to me defensively on Twitter), but a few fancy tests later (meaning I connected direct to the modem and ran another speed test) it became clear that the problem lay with the Asus router.
Getting to the solutionJust as I was preparing to pop out to Pc World to buy a new router I decided to have one last plunge around in the advanced settings of the Asus RT-N12, and I’m glad I did. Ever since I first set up the RT-N12 I’ve been logging into it and tinkering with the EzQos settings. The EzQos settings allow the network admin (or in this case the bloke what does computers in this house -me) to give certain types of traffic priority (surfing, streaming, ftp or gaming). I tinkered with them and ran another speed test and it improved a little bit, so…
The solution (finally)
If your Virgin Media Internet broadband connection is running slow try this:
- Log into your Asus RT-N12 router and click on the ‘advanced setting’ button on the left hand menu.
- When the advanced setting page loads click on ‘Qos’ (it’s in the WAN sub-section).
- In the ‘manual uplink speed’ box type in ‘50000’ (without the quotes) and hit ‘apply’.
- Run a speed test at https://speedtest.bbmax.co.uk and with any luck your Internet connection should now be running a LOT faster.
ConclusionWhen I went through the above steps I found out that the router was kinda guessing the uplink speed when it connected to the Cable Modem and had set it at just 600kbps! I have no idea what difference the speed you enter in the manual uplink box makes, but I do know that when I upped it from 20000 to 50000 and ran another speed test the results were even more impressive.
It seems like a bit of a bizarre fix to me, but if your Asus router is running slow it might just save a lot of yelling at your screen and phone calls to Virgin Media!
UDPATE – 09/04/11
Shortly after this post was written I upgraded to Virgin Media’s 50mbps service and they gave me a nice new router. I tried setting this RT-N12 as a repeater router but (despite the fact I’ve been an IT professional for twelve years) I couldn’t get it to work and ended up getting so frustrated with this shitty router I stamped on it and threw it out.
Hey,
Just wanted to thank you for this post. I had the exact same problem. The internet connection was far slower then what we were paying for.
u made my day!
gr,
a happier internet user from the Netherlands
Never thought of DD-WRT on the router then to get full control, more stability and generally a much improved product? I thought you were an IT professional?!
I am, but I never said I was a good IT professional…
I do however have a name, which you appear not to…
thanks …. ur post helped me a lot
Just had some issues with my RT-N12. I have 100/100Mbits cable yet suddenly performance was non-existent. I seems to have worked it out by simply rebooting the router. I also disabled plus re-enabled the WLAN interface on my computer, just in case it'd do any difference. So, problem solved now. However, hope this won't become a repeated/frequent behavior. Oh, I knew this router was DD-WRT supported ever since I bought it. In fact, that's one of the main reasons I choose this particular budget router. Haven't gotten to it (yet) though. I mean, flashing the device with DD-WRT. In fact, I haven't even checked for a more recent (official) firmware; still running v1.0.1.2 which was stock installed on arrival. I want to checkout the official firmware a bit closer before I move to ~WRT solutions. Big thanks for this post, anyways.
You helped a lot, thanks man!
AWESOME. Thank you!
Sorry to here about your experience with that one. I have been down a not so different path with that router's brethen.. RT-N16.
Yes.. I reviewed DDWRT.. there a list of issues that path presents that I also do not wish to experience.. so..
I am returning it while I still can!
Here is tweet linked to the full post.
@ASUS Router RT-N16 fancy time waster https://j.mp/wjKJ6J via @bryangrant(@dlna? not.)
Thank you for solving my problem!
This was a life-saver! I, too, called to complain to my provider and they said the problem was with my router-I insisted no way….but sure enough, it was the QoS settings that were damping the connection down to a fraction of its potential…. much appreciated
Thank you SO much for posting this, been going nuts these past few days. Is there a similar setting for downlink? Because It's also being a bit slow and I can't find anything like it.
-Will
Thankyou. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.
Yes! This has made my life so much happier.
Dude… Thx a lot 🙂
All of a sudden this makes sense, and works. Thanks.
I have a similar but different situation. My connection is close to full strength with LAN line through the router but my wifi only resembles 0.1% of the speed of LAN.
Have you tried changing the wi-if channel kobergkamp?
Hi I was having a similar problem. The router took forever to respond and connect to a website and I read this page and it encouraged me to look at the router settings some more. I have a rtn-13u and there are dropdown boxes on the advanced settings tab. Click Advanced Settings, then Wireless, then the Professionals tab. There are a bunch of dropdown boxes at the bottom that were enabled and I disabled them. It responds much faster now. Maybe give it a try….. and let's see how long it works like this!!
Enable TX Bursting?
Enable Packet Aggregation?
Enable Greenfield?
Enable WMM?
Enable WMM No-Acknowledgement?
Enable WMM APSD?
Enable WMM DLS?
I have an rtn-13u and it was having a similar problem. It took forever to connect to a website, but once it was connected it was fast. So I found this page in a search and decided to try changing the advanced settings and it seems to be much faster now. I went into Advanced Settings, Wireless Settings, Professional tab. There are a bunch of dropdown boxes at the bottom that were enabled and I disabled them all. Give it a shot and hopefully this fix will keep working! X ur fingers.
Enable TX Bursting?
Enable Packet Aggregation?
Enable Greenfield?
Enable WMM?
Enable WMM No-Acknowledgement?
Enable WMM APSD?
Enable WMM DLS?
3:46 AM
I had the same thing happen to me. The Wan is connected to an integrated antenna that connects to a wireless hub 12 miles away (very rural setup). Apperently this upload speed can match the link capability of the up stream going to whatever WAN device you are connecting this router to. In my case I'm connected to a very high gain patch antenna with it's own internal router. The output is a GigE LAN connection. So if you set the upload speed manually to the advertized speed of this link in my case 1000000 Kb/s then everything screames allong as fast as it can. This setting is used to limit the WAN speed when multiple N12s are connected to one switch, and you are having problems with saturating the bandwidth of the switch. So set the speed as fast as the WAN link is.
this is what worked for me:
1. Update the firmware to version 2.1.1.1.78
2. Turn off "Wireless Multimedia Support Settings" (WMM) in the advanced "professional" settings of web interface.
tnx for your help so which router would you recomend on this price range?
I have Asus RT-N12 D1 router for six days and I figured out that it limits my download and upload speed even without QoS enabled by 25-30%!!! If I enable QoS my internet download speed is half in comparison with another router! After firmware update nothing changed. I think I will return this router to the vendor! I have a very good and stable internet conection with another routers. I wanted to use this model for multi SSID feature. I am very dissapointed and I do not know if my router is faulty or Asus did not make very good job with this version(D1)!
Best thing to do for the best speeds: DONT USE QoS!
There's no reason to use it unless you are using P2P file sharing programs.
OR
people in your house are doing 2 things: downloading LARGE files AND streaming video AND/OR online gaming
THEN QoS can help. Most routers can only affect UPLOAD QoS. This is important. If you overload your upstream, your downstream dies because acknowledgement packets of downloaded data can't be sent. So in this case if Video streaming is the most important then set it to HIGHEST.. then maybe online gaming to HIGH… or online gaming to HIGHEST, streaming to HIGH, then downloads (usually they are HTTP or FTP) set to normal, and set P2P to LOW
But for most residential services, it's best to disable QoS, then you won't have your router (or router/AP or modem/router/AP) mucking up your speeds. Most of the time, I find QoS more of a hassle than its worth.
Thanks a lot sharing this blog, I've been looking for this a long time! really very nice and useful for us.
Good work!!
netspeedtest
Bought this crappy router just to enable internet in our new apartment, since previous guest had three month left on his contract for internet.
The RT-N12 D1 was working fine for a couple of days (hours) then the wifi dropped into a slow and unreliable connection.
Well, after many hours on the net, searching for solution I agree the best thing would be to kick the shit out of the house. BUT I actually got it to work again, giving me back the sweet and stable WiFi speed I had from the beginning.
Odd enough, it looks like it came back after turning off my ReadyNAS Duo..and tv.. and other stuff in it´s direct line of site.
Conclusion: You get what you pay for. Spend lots and lots of time to make shit work or just crush it under your foot for satisfaction.
So, back to Netflix in bed.Full speed style.
BR
Toby
Had similar problem with a TP-Link router. Somehow, it capped itself at 2MBit/s even though the QoS was reported as disabled. Just setting a larger value seems to have fixed things. Thanks!
Solved my problem. Thanks.
can you upload photo how you do this i dont know how
Try a different browser or computer. Sometimes slow upload speeds are the fault of your Internet Service Provider. … Often with Cable and DSL, the upload speed is significantly slower than the download speed. This will result in fast loading times for most websites and file downloads, but slow uploads.
for more information click here: Why Is My Upload Speed So Slow?