R700 performs worse than AirPort Extreme

[sasan_cyrusian]

I have a r700 without controller for my house. We are using it with few iPhones and iPads . The performance is only good if few devices far from each other are working. Usually it takes some time for r700 to focus the beam on the device. Overall performance worse than Apple AirPort Extreme. I have latest firmware version. What is wrong?

[michael_brado]

Examine the support info file output. Look for Athstats radio 0 and 1 Histogram,
to view a 2 minute rolling sample for RF conditions. You may have interference
on your selected channel, resulting in packet errors and retransmissions. Try
using different channels and compare, hopefully you'll find a clean air channel.

[sasan_cyrusian]

R700 is on smartselect. Supposetly it finds best channel itself. I thought it will find rf interferences and avoid them.

[sasan_cyrusian]

I achieve between 5 Mbit/s to 35 Mb/s depending on location. My distance to r700 is between 15 to 60 feet with only a single wall in between. The speed does not seem to depend very much from distance. I expected much better performance.

[sasan_cyrusian]

I used an wifi analyzer to see whether there are other wifi devices in neighborhood using the same channel as R700 in 5GHz band is using. There are many routers in 2.4GHz band but in 5GHz band only my R700 is active. I unplugged all electric devices in my home and had only the ATT-UVERSE modem, R700 and ipad air 2 powered up. I tried many locations as close as 5 feet from router. I tried also many orientation of the the ipad. All results are very similar. At the beginning of the test I achieve around 10 MB/s than I achieve close to 40 Mb/s for 10 to 15 seconds, than the data throughput breaks down to around 10 Mb/s for couple seconds and than it goes back up.
This explains, why I can't watch youtube movies at high resolution.
There is no RF-interference in my single floor, open home. It is just R700 unable to to maintain the throughput.