SOLVED: Very slow WiFi reception after a few minutes of connecting on 5ghz

tldr; turn off Bluetooth on your phones/tablets

Just a quick share of a solution to a problem I've been having that I couldn't figure out for a few days.

ASUS RT-AC68U

I had a BT Homehub on BT Infinity 2, and overtime the wireless N signal (802.11n) was pretty tortuous, down from an acceptable 20mbps to around 0.5mbps.

I bought a new router and really splashed out on an Asus RT-AC68U. I got it relatively cheap for £149.99 from Pixmania when most sites had it for closer to the £180 mark (Dabs & ebuyer)

Initially I was blown away by the speeds, after setting up the SSIDs and joining the 5ghz range, I was up to 76mbps downstream and 18.6mbps upstream - the maximum capped by my ISP.

But shortly after, things went sour, after only a few minutes the connection would inevitably snail down to around 1-5mbps. The upstream however, would still be around 18mbps. Something was clearly very wrong.

After trying various solutions, such as reconfiguring the QoS settings (bandwidth prioritization), I had no luck. I even disconnected and removed the batteries from all our household phones. I disconnected a powerlink access point downstairs, being a shoddy cheap brand I thought it may be causing interference even though it is only 802.11n capable.


Still no luck, but then I had a silly idea. Bluetooth runs in 
the 2.4ghz range, not the 5ghz WiFi range I was running on 802.11ac. But surely, as a smartphone, it would kind of understand it's now using both connection types and not interfere with each other? Wrong. Sony Z1 Compact, Samung S3 and a Windows Surface 2 RT tablet ALL had the SAME issue.




Disabling Bluetooth on all of them, put my connection on all devices back up the ISP cap and it's been there now successfully for 3 days.

Maybe give this a go if you're having WiFi woes on your new 802.11ac 5ghz access point!