Asus USB-AC56 wifi dongle tweaks

Type_R · 5 Nov 2016 at 17:52

I have been using this dongle for the last few months in Win 10 and find that it loves to disconnect/reconnect, randomly drop out, switch from 5 Ghz to 2.4 Ghz etc. So I started looking for some tweaks and found some excellent ones that have made it very stable indeed, I thought they might be useful to someone on here.

My Setup:

Router: Asus RT-AC66U 1750

Dongle: Asus USB-AC56 1300

Physical Setup:

The router is connected to the master socket via an ADSL faceplate filter in the lounge.
The computer is upstairs a fair distance away from the router with a direct line of sight passing through at least 2 interior walls and one brick wall. The dongle is connected directly to a USB 3.0 port (with latest mboard USB 3 drivers installed)

Software Setup:

Router: I am using the latest Merlin software - As found here
I have setup the 2.4 Ghz and 5.0 Ghz wireless channels with different SSIDs.
2.4 Ghz channel: 11 (extension below)
5.0 Ghz channel: 44 (auto 20/40/80) (auto up or down extension)

*channels are always dependent on what is going on at a local level, e.g. interference from neighbours and home devices. These are just what worked well for me.

Windows 10: Connected the dongle. Installed latest Asus drivers found here
I also installed the asus utility found in the same place but this is not essential. It gives real time connection speed with the router and search facility to see which networks in your area are using which channels.

Tweaks: In order to get stability in the system - despite the utility giving me full signal at both 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz I had to make the following changes:

Start > Device Manager > Network Adapters > Asus USB-AC56 802.11ac wireless USB adapter - right click on this > Properties > Advanced

You will see the following menu:

Then I changed the following settings from default:

BeamCap - VHT BEAM TX/RX
EnableAdaptivity - Auto
High Adhoc Mode - Disable
HLDiffForAdaptivity - 7
L2HHForAdaptivity - F5
LdpcCap - VHT LDPC TX/RX & HT STBC TX/RX
Preferred Band - 3. 5G first
QoS Support - Auto
StbcCap - VHT STBC TX/RX & HT STBC TX/RX
USB SF Mode - Disable
USB Switch Mode - Auto
VHT 2.4G - Disable (**This will disable connection at 802.11n - 2.4 Ghz - only use this if you are confident of a decent 5G signal)
WiFi Config - Performance
Wireless Mode - IEEE 802.11ac

Finally I switched off power saving on the USB device:

Start > Device Manager > Network Adapters > Asus USB-AC56 802.11ac wireless USB adapter - right click on this > Properties > Power Management

Uncheck: 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power'

Since making these changes the wifi connection has been rock stable. No dropouts, connection issues or otherwise.

Please feel free to use these settings and report back on how they have worked for you. If anyone knows what the *cap settings are all about it would be interesting to know.

Type_R · 17 Nov 2016 at 18:29

I have now enabled this and seem to be getting a faster 5Ghz connection

VHT 2.4G - Disable (**This will disable connection at 802.11n - 2.4 Ghz - only use this if you are confident of a decent 5G signal)

Nexus18 · 26 Nov 2016 at 11:54

Tried this out as my 5GHz is extremely broke on windows 10 64 bit (works flawlessy on w7), connects and just disconnects randomly, could be fine for a few hours or just a few minutes.

Unfortunately didn't work for me, seemed a bit better though.

My adaptor is the TP link archer AC1200 dual band adapter

moogle · 26 Nov 2016 at 18:17

I found this issue is not only with the ASUS wifi dongle and Win10, but others. Before W10 I used the BT 900 AC Dongle on Win7 and it was rock solid. Only after upgrading the OS (installing the W10 drivers too) was when the issues started.

Nexus18 · 26 Nov 2016 at 18:49

moogle said:
I found this issue is not only with the ASUS wifi dongle and Win10, but others. Before W10 I used the BT 900 AC Dongle on Win7 and it was rock solid. Only after upgrading the OS (installing the W10 drivers too) was when the issues started.

Yup, when googling windows 10 5GHz disconnecting, there are tons of reports on the issue, some have done various fixes and said they work but for myself, nothing has given me a 100% stable disconnect free connection compared to 2.4GHz

Problem seems to be on microsoft's end.

Type_R · 13 Dec 2016 at 17:46

So I guess the question is, is there a way of disabling win 10 from managing the wifi connection and allowing asus to do it?

Nexus18 · 14 Dec 2016 at 10:56

No idea, haven't seen anything mentioned about that in my search for a fix.

pc-guy · 14 Dec 2016 at 11:02

what sync speed and data transfer rate you are getting on that dongle OP?

lude1962 · 14 Dec 2016 at 22:10

Type_R said:
So I guess the question is, is there a way of disabling win 10 from managing the wifi connection and allowing asus to do it?

services ->wlan auto config
set to disabled
use connection manger supplied by manufacturer

Overlag · 15 Dec 2016 at 10:51

Nexus18 said:
Tried this out as my 5GHz is extremely broke on windows 10 64 bit (works flawlessy on w7), connects and just disconnects randomly, could be fine for a few hours or just a few minutes.

Unfortunately didn't work for me, seemed a bit better though.

My adaptor is the TP link archer AC1200 dual band adapter

I was fine with Windows 10, but after the anniversary update it totally killed 5ghz stability on BOTH my Wifi dongles (Asus and CSL) on 3 PC's!

pc-guy · 15 Dec 2016 at 11:02

not sure if it helps anyone but I have netgear A6210. I was using mediatek's firmware initially when W10 rolled out as Netgear didn't have driver for W10. subsequently I updated to netgear driver. but about 1 month ago, i noticed the speed of the dongle starting to wane and suffered random disconnects which i never had. thus I uninstalled the netgear driver and rolled back to the mediatek driver. now it is working really well. I just done some tweaks as suggested, I get sync rate around 500mbps and transfer rate upto 250mbps that's with the router downstairs and my pc upstairs next to a wall which is probably the worst.

however the data rate does fluctuate during the transfer between 90mbps and 250mbps but average is around 150-170mbps

Type_R · 20 Dec 2016 at 10:31

lude1962 said:
services ->wlan auto config
set to disabled
use connection manger supplied by manufacturer

Thanks. Unfortunately seems like Asus's utility cannot handle the connection without W10 services running

Type_R · 30 Dec 2016 at 11:25

pc-guy said:
what sync speed and data transfer rate you are getting on that dongle OP?

Asus reports a connect of 720 Mbps from my dongle to the router.

Type_R · 20 Jun 2017 at 13:51

So just a quick update...I decided to start messing about a bit with settings...always wanting more speed! After reading up on a few things I changed some settings that have definitely made the connection faster (and continues to be stable!).

The Asus RT-AC66U is still running Merlin software @ 380.66.4 (latest) and is in the same position it always was (downstairs - several walls away).

First thing I did was change the driver Win 10 was using for the Asus. There were reports the 2015 or even the 2013 driver was more stable/faster than the 2016 I was running.

Start > Device Manager > Network Adapters > ASUS USB-AC56 802.11ac Wireless USB Adapter > Driver (tab) > Update Driver > Browse my computer > Let me pick from a list:

All three drivers should be installed if you have installed the ASUS USB-AC56 Utility 2.1.1.5 For Windows (https://www.asus.com/uk/Networking/USBAC56/HelpDesk_Download/)

Once installed, this then gives you different network adapter settings to play with:

I haven't tried changing power levels for 5G (doesn't seem to make any difference to performance so left them alone)

These settings increased my connection to 867 mbps (channel remained at 40)

Antenna Diversity Type: Fixed
BeamCap: VHT BEAM TX/RX
EnableAdaptivity: Enable
High Ad-hoc Mode: Disable
HLDiffforAdaptivity: 7
L2HforAdaptivity: F1
LdpcCAp: VHT LDPC TX/ HT LDPC TX
Preferred Band: 3. 5G first
QoS Support: Support QoS
StbcCap: Disable
USB SF Mode: Disable
USB Switch Mode: USB Mode 3 (So these modes determine what sort of USB port you are connected to USB1 for Mode 1 / USB2 for Mode 2 / USB3 for Mode 3)
VHT 2.4G: Disable
VHT 2.4G IOT: Disable
Wifi Config: Performance
Wireless Mode: IEEE 802.11 ac

Hope that helps someone!

7stars · 20 Apr 2018 at 21:58

the issues with these dongles are the 5ghz channels...
there are the U-NII rules for indoor only use (typically channels 36-40-44-48)

so, apart from the drivers matter, the main router must be manually set to range 36-48 (as correctly reported) and not left to "auto"

in fact, suppose you want to bridge one router with another...if the main router is set to auto and goes over 48, while the other router is restricted to 48, this never will see the 1st router and the scan doesn't work....so you can't do a bridge and you could think that's a wifi performance issue but really the routers can't see each other on a different range of channels (above all if on the DFS range, where other kind of interference can come into play)