Thanks, it shows even your 2.4Ghz wifi signal is also very very weak.
You can mix and match for sure but like i mentioned above, its recommended to match 3 bands with 3 bands. Your situation already prove what I said - mixing 3 bands with 2 bands AIMesh will screw up your setup.
I am not sure why you didnt get 2 XT8 initially but from your above AX6000 2.4Ghz signal, it shows only 1 bar.
To get to the root of your problem , I can only guess its a few possibilities
1) The 2 units of your XT8 and GT-AX6000 are too far away.
2) Your current setup is using GT-AX6000 as main node and XT8 as sub node. I feel having XT8 as main node should do much better since it has 3 bands and dedicated 5Ghz-2 for wireless backhaul. If XT8 is main, then its 5Ghz-2 will be used as the wireless backhaul band to communicate with your GT-AX6000.
Reason is simple , your whole AIMesh setup is not determined by XT8 but rather your GT-AX6000 deciding which band it uses as backhaul. XT8 as a secondary node will only communicate what the main nodes tell it to connect to.
Having the GT-AX6000 as secondary node in your bedroom, if LOS and position is not a issue, it should be using its 5Ghz band to communicate to main node XT8 5GHz-2.
You may want to try this setup and see if it makes any difference.
I want the XT8 to be the node since I want to utilize it's 5GHz-2 for backhaul only and no other devices will connect to it, with 5GHz-1 dedicated to my mobile devices (similar to dual band with wired backhaul), and it's working as I intended it to be. As you can see in the screenshot below, 5GHz-2 is used as the DWB (Dedicated Wireless Backhaul) to connect to the GT-AX6000 like the Asus article describes.
If I swap them around then GT-AX6000 (node) will not have a dedicated wireless backhaul to connect to the XT8 (router) , thus mixing up the signals of wireless backhaul and mobile devices. I want each band on the node to handle only 1 job.
And no, the 2.4GHz 1/3 signal image does not mean the signal strength is bad. In the AiMesh page 2.4GHz = Weak signal and 5GHz = Strong signal (same for wired backhaul, 100Mbps = weak and 1Gbps = strong). I have also used the Asus Router app to check the signal strength. It fluctuates between -57dBm (room door opened) and -60 to -63dBm (room door closed). Signal strength is the same for both 2.4 and 5GHz backhaul.
https://www.screenbeam.com/wifihelp/wifibooster/wi-fi-signal-strength-what-is-a-good-signal/
I have also done some further testing using ssh terminal, all the while keeping the channel width to 20/40/80/160MHz in the WebGUI.
If I set the 5GHz on GT-AX6000 to be Channel 100 at 160MHz, either of the following will happen:
A) It reverts back to 80MHz, and XT8 will auto connect back to it after some time
B) The channel is changed to one of the conventional ones (36-64), and XT8 will fall back to 2.4GHz backhaul
A is not surprising since routers are extremely sensitive at 160MHz, any slight interference and it will fallback to a more stable setting. Also this channel is surprisingly clean with very few networks using (at least in my neighborhood).
B is related to Channel 116 which has always been problematic as weather radar are known to actively use this channel, thus choosing Channel 116 at 80MHz will lead to the same result as well. Also since the conventional channels are in use since the 802.11a in 1999, they are pretty congested by now.
So for my own setup a single XT8 working as a node with 5GH-2 used as the DWB, Channel 100 at 80MHz works the most stable. AiMesh GUI reports connected to the router node at 800Mbps-1.2Gbps. Real world speedtest with my Galaxy S23 gives 600+Mbps,compared to only 300+Mbps on a good day if I don't use AiMesh setup, and 800+Mbps if standing next to GT-AX6000.
