384.3 for 3200 Series should be pulled...seriously!

[ispgeek]

I don't come to these conclusions on a whim nor do I normally raise the alarm but this time it needs to be done. Before anyone asks I always perform the usual covermyasses before updating any firmware and especially the likes of this version, I took the warnings seriously. It didn't matter however....this version is flawed at so many levels I had no choice but to go into rescue mode and revert back to the previous version (which you can still do btw).

So where do I begin....first and foremost this conclusion was not as result of just one attempt. I actually wiped the device twice and reloaded fresh copies of the firmware twice just to make sure I wasn't dealing with a whacked copy or perhaps just a bad upgrade which can happen so don't bother asking those questions been there done that....should also be noted the very minute I roll back all the issues go away....imagine that.

So what's broken (or perhaps maybe I should just cover what isn't as it would be a shorter list)

• Stability and this firmware know not of each other. Random lockups were many and when it wasn't the whole device going unresponsive key features would simply stop working, resulting in weird page faults, the wheel of browser death or simply a blank screen.
• Randomly the router will cease responding via the GUI in other words attempts at navigating to the admin page result in page faults or no response at all. The only way to resolve it is rebooting the router. Interval between these events is hours at most, you wont have to wait too long for it to happen.
• When the firmware was first installed immediately noticed that wireless was completely non-functional even after configuring. Reboots resolve it temporarily or until you make a change to any wireless setting at which point wireless dies completely and a reboot of the router is required.
• Forget restore previous router settings configs as they are useless despite appearing to load normally.
• Many of the AI, QOS, Traffic pages at either broken or don't populate with data or won't display anything at all. What I did see of the new pages looked nice when they did work.
• Changing configurations pretty much anywhere within the GUI would result in random GUI hangs or blank pages
• Router response is sluggish across the board, does not seem to correspond to current load as minimal loading resulted in same and it didn't improve over time.
• DYNDNS updating broken, resulted in near constant errors

Bottom line I have to question if anyone actually tested this router version because I have never seen this bad of an epic release fail from Merlin. I have always enjoyed your pre-release betas and never had an experience this bad. This revision is no longer on my device and no plans to reinstall until I'm comfortable with a future version. I can't afford to have issues like this in single quantities but to have them all at once has me asking lots of questions......

 

[RussellInCincinnati]

I don't come to these conclusions on a whim nor do I normally raise the alarm but this time it needs to be done. Before anyone asks I always perform the usual covermyasses before updating any firmware and especially the likes of this version, I took the warnings seriously. It didn't matter however....this version is flawed at so many levels I had no choice but to go into rescue mode and revert back to the previous version (which you can still do btw).

So where do I begin....first and foremost this conclusion was not as result of just one attempt. I actually wiped the device twice and reloaded fresh copies of the firmware twice just to make sure I wasn't dealing with a whacked copy or perhaps just a bad upgrade which can happen so don't bother asking those questions been there done that....should also be noted the very minute I roll back all the issues go away....imagine that.

So what's broken (or perhaps maybe I should just cover what isn't as it would be a shorter list)

• Stability and this firmware know not of each other. Random lockups were many and when it wasn't the whole device going unresponsive key features would simply stop working, resulting in weird page faults, the wheel of browser death or simply a blank screen.
• Randomly the router will cease responding via the GUI in other words attempts at navigating to the admin page result in page faults or no response at all. The only way to resolve it is rebooting the router. Interval between these events is hours at most, you wont have to wait too long for it to happen.
• When the firmware was first installed immediately noticed that wireless was completely non-functional even after configuring. Reboots resolve it temporarily or until you make a change to any wireless setting at which point wireless dies completely and a reboot of the router is required.
• Forget restore previous router settings configs as they are useless despite appearing to load normally.
• Many of the AI, QOS, Traffic pages at either broken or don't populate with data or won't display anything at all. What I did see of the new pages looked nice when they did work.
• Changing configurations pretty much anywhere within the GUI would result in random GUI hangs or blank pages
• Router response is sluggish across the board, does not seem to correspond to current load as minimal loading resulted in same and it didn't improve over time.
• DYNDNS updating broken, resulted in near constant errors

Bottom line I have to question if anyone actually tested this router version because I have never seen this bad of an epic release fail from Merlin. I have always enjoyed your pre-release betas and never had an experience this bad. This revision is no longer on my device and no plans to reinstall until I'm comfortable with a future version. I can't afford to have issues like this in single quantities but to have them all at once has me asking lots of questions......

Have had a flawless experience thus far with the close cousin ac2900 or ac86u, wonder what version you rolled back to?

 

[jerry6]

Wow , worked well on my 3200 , now on 384alpha4 for 4 days with no reboots or hangs , yet

 

[AndreiV]

AC3200 here , I have used all the 384 alphas , betas, final and now the latest preview version .....

Not one single problem seen , NOT ONE. My router is as usual , working flawlessly with Merlin's firmware.


If you READ the release notes you would learn that you can't go back to older versions and previous settings configs won't be usable on a new branch .

I have not seen any issues with GUI / WiFi / changing settings , no broken pages, no lag or slow loading of pages , everything is functioning perfectly.

Have also checked with my nephew who is running 3 x AC3200's he reports the same flawless performance.

Yes, this version has been very well tested by many people .

 

[Jack Yaz]

I suggest that you try the stock Asus firmware. I'll bet your router still has issues.

 

[skeal]

I don't come to these conclusions on a whim nor do I normally raise the alarm but this time it needs to be done. Before anyone asks I always perform the usual covermyasses before updating any firmware and especially the likes of this version, I took the warnings seriously. It didn't matter however....this version is flawed at so many levels I had no choice but to go into rescue mode and revert back to the previous version (which you can still do btw).

So where do I begin....first and foremost this conclusion was not as result of just one attempt. I actually wiped the device twice and reloaded fresh copies of the firmware twice just to make sure I wasn't dealing with a whacked copy or perhaps just a bad upgrade which can happen so don't bother asking those questions been there done that....should also be noted the very minute I roll back all the issues go away....imagine that.

So what's broken (or perhaps maybe I should just cover what isn't as it would be a shorter list)

• Stability and this firmware know not of each other. Random lockups were many and when it wasn't the whole device going unresponsive key features would simply stop working, resulting in weird page faults, the wheel of browser death or simply a blank screen.
• Randomly the router will cease responding via the GUI in other words attempts at navigating to the admin page result in page faults or no response at all. The only way to resolve it is rebooting the router. Interval between these events is hours at most, you wont have to wait too long for it to happen.
• When the firmware was first installed immediately noticed that wireless was completely non-functional even after configuring. Reboots resolve it temporarily or until you make a change to any wireless setting at which point wireless dies completely and a reboot of the router is required.
• Forget restore previous router settings configs as they are useless despite appearing to load normally.
• Many of the AI, QOS, Traffic pages at either broken or don't populate with data or won't display anything at all. What I did see of the new pages looked nice when they did work.
• Changing configurations pretty much anywhere within the GUI would result in random GUI hangs or blank pages
• Router response is sluggish across the board, does not seem to correspond to current load as minimal loading resulted in same and it didn't improve over time.
• DYNDNS updating broken, resulted in near constant errors

Bottom line I have to question if anyone actually tested this router version because I have never seen this bad of an epic release fail from Merlin. I have always enjoyed your pre-release betas and never had an experience this bad. This revision is no longer on my device and no plans to reinstall until I'm comfortable with a future version. I can't afford to have issues like this in single quantities but to have them all at once has me asking lots of questions......

Oddly it would seem you are the only one presently having the issues you report. You did say you followed a tight regime to update but fail to mention if after you factory reset (post flash) whether you in fact manually configured or if you imported a saved settings configuration (not advised for a person having so much trouble). Try reflashing and after the flash restore to factory defaults and reconfigure manually. Like I said you seem to be having weirdness after a flash. Reset and reconfigure manually.

 

[AndreiV]

I can't get the numbers from Merlin's One Drive (alpha, beta or final) but there are @ 1200 people using 384.3 final and I don't see them having/reporting issues .

 

[Sinner]

Id suggest trying it again with full reset and power cycle. The power cycle may be key after that update

 

[ispgeek]

Apparently nobody actually paid attention to what I put up in my original post. The router up this point was working flawlessly on the most current stable version and I too have been the guy who adopted all the betas without fail and never had anything like this. As I stated clearly, I started with a clean device, no config, everything wiped the old fashioned way (not via software), now if I have to explain what that means then theres a bigger issue than even me but I digress. Thinking I had a bad download, downloaded again (same sourceforge loc as the main site was down with DNS issues oddly enough). I spent the better part of last night trying everything over again this time I was able to get the main download mirror version and while its better still have issues, oh and no I didn't import any configs (please I have half a brain), I rebuilt them by hand as lengthy as that was multiple times. So as it stands now, any modification to any setting at all immediately causes the wifi to drop both bands, the network map also drops going from 79 assorted devices shown to ZERO. I can't reboot via software (for those who don't get it the REBOOT button in the GUI) I have to power cycle the device because software initiated reboots never recover. I have reloaded the firmware now twice same result but hey at least its running sort of. The QOS Web History is a fail nothing populates..ever. The build was loaded via the recovery consol, the device hard reset and then configured...no dice. The firmware was reloaded again via he GUI just for grins....no joy same thing. The bottom line here is that everything worked flawlessly until this build. I'm not an unfan....just deeply concerned something is very wrong with this build.

 

[ispgeek]

Oh the irony lol.... sooo at someones mention I pulled a copy of the pre-beta4 version of this code and installed it right smack on top of the release version, no reset of config, nothing. Immediately went in and changed a config setting which previously would have immediately killed wifi (all of it) and also tossed the entire network map resulting in zero clients shown....much to my surprise wifi remained constant, network map repopulated immediately and everything BUT http://192.168.1.1/AdaptiveQoS_WebHistory.asp works and I do mean everything. Now you can say nothing has been changed in the prebeta that would result in everything well almost everything working fine now....but something did. Given the number of times I reflashed a native and very very defaulted router last night with the same release code resulting in the same result each time I can only conclude something truly is borked with that version because now all is well.....

 

[ispgeek]

Hell even the software reboot feature works again......

 

[john9527]

Did you follow the release notes where it states it's necessary to force a reload of the gui in your browser (either clear it's cache or reload the pages withe Ctrl-F5) due to major changes in the gui code?

Assuming you are moving from 380 to 384...

Also note, that once you load 384 code, you can't go back to 380 since there is a bootloader update in 384 that is incompatible with the earlier code.

 

[ispgeek]

Did you follow the release notes where it states it's necessary to force a reload of the gui in your browser (either clear it's cache or reload the pages withe Ctrl-F5) due to major changes in the gui code?

Assuming you are moving from 380 to 384...

Also note, that once you load 384 code, you can't go back to 380 since there is a bootloader update in 384 that is incompatible with the earlier code.

Oh god yes even went so far as to use a different browser because his releases commonly break between browsers one week chrome in fashion next week IE. This wasn't a browser issue half the damn router ceased functioning the minute any change was made until the next power cycle. Now sadly this isn't the first time this has happened but never this bad....a major release or two back same thing happened causing me o roll back for a few weeks until the next subversion and viola like magic all works again. I suspect something very simple is being overlooked and perhaps in some versions of the router it works fine others not so much...won't be the first time the same model but different hardware versions no matter how tiny caused something like this.

 

[ispgeek]

http://192.168.1.1/AdaptiveQoS_WebHistory.asp still broken...nothing populates whereas previously it was quite the busy page on this network.

 

[ispgeek]

And finally the Disable Asusnat tunnel switch is persistent....

 

[ispgeek]

Oh while I'm bitching....why oh why would you have the IPV6 Firewall enabled default? Because it is....after loading the firmware last night despite all being defaulted I have to turn it off.....I generally don't use IPv6 the option because the HE Tunnel option was so unreliable I just couldn't stomach it. This network averages 79-90 devices at all times...right now its at its lowest 67 which means obviously people are depending on it running....enabling it was akin to playing Russian roulette

 

[scjr]

5 noted experiences of 3200’s running the 384.3 firmware successfully in this thread and 1 having issues. The evidence is, your issues aren't enough evidence to pull the firmware.

 

[jernau]

Whilst I'm not saying pull the 384.3 final firmware on the 3200 I do concur with some of the issues @ispgeek is seeing mainly around network restarts after minor config changes and the big issue for me, wi-fi reliability. Whilst I had no issues with stats being populated I have had numerous instances of clients disconnecting and then refusing to re-connect, even throwing up the re-enter wifi key dialogue and then only when I power cycled the router would they re-connect. This has been happening on dfferent devices, sonos, Windows PC, IOS and printers. I didn't have any of these issues on the 384.3 betas and I have reconfigured from scratch. I also tried 384.4 alpha which resulted in me loosing 2Ghz wifi altogether even after reconfig following a factory reset and power cycle and only managing to get 2Ghz back after I tried restoring a config from 384.3. I've now reverted back to 384.3 beta 3 which I believe is exactly the same as the final 384.3 build? however at the moment it seems to be more stable but I will continue to monitor.

 

[ispgeek]

Spoke too soon....allowed things to stew a bit overnight, totally forgot that I had an automated reboot via software scheduled for 4am (as part of the test night before last) anyway woke up this morning to no Network Map and wireless radios completely offline again. Everything else with the exception of what I noted above is working, working quite well actually, so power cycled and of course everything restored fine.....need to repeat this because people only read what they want to here.....THIS ROUTER WAS FINE UNTIL THIS BUILD. I only updated because I have always kept beta or at minimum the current stable build on the device. So there is something still very off. I honestly don't care that a handful of others aren't having any problems (assuming they have the same router model) in the grand scheme of things that handful means that a handful of members here (who know about this place and may or may not have the exact same model and hardware revision) that aren't having issues is about as relevant as my single case. Reason being that not everyone knows about SNB, not everyone is going to participate anyway, not everyone has the same model or hardware revision and finally not everyone has even updated yet or taken the time to put it through its paces or even has the extreme home network that I do.... So honestly I don't care that five of you aren't having issues other than its noted it doesn't mean that a problem doesn't exist. I know there is an issue there is no doubt that an issue exists with this firmware the only question now is it (1) Directly related to a firmware flaw introduced by Asus (2) Directly related to a firmware flaw introduced by Merlin (3) The result of an unexpected interaction between my specific model and this firmware (4) The result of an unexpected interaction between my specific hardware revision and this firmware OR some sick twisted combination of all of the above. Hardware failure carries about a 5% chance right now because there was NOTHING wrong with this hardware prior upgrading to this specific firmware and while it is possible that the mere act of upgrading the firmware has caused or exposed a latent hardware failure the possibility of that alone is extremely low at or around 5%. Given that this firmware is brand new we don't know yet however I suspect we will soon find out because this stinks of a gift from Asus.....

 

[ispgeek]

Whilst I'm not saying pull the 384.3 final firmware on the 3200 I do concur with some of the issues @ispgeek is seeing mainly around network restarts after minor config changes and the big issue for me, wi-fi reliability. Whilst I had no issues with stats being populated I have had numerous instances of clients disconnecting and then refusing to re-connect, even throwing up the re-enter wifi key dialogue and then only when I power cycled the router would they re-connect. This has been happening on dfferent devices, sonos, Windows PC, IOS and printers. I didn't have any of these issues on the 384.3 betas and I have reconfigured from scratch. I also tried 384.4 alpha which resulted in me loosing 2Ghz wifi altogether even after reconfig following a factory reset and power cycle and only managing to get 2Ghz back after I tried restoring a config from 384.3. I've now reverted back to 384.3 beta 3 which I believe is exactly the same as the final 384.3 build? however at the moment it seems to be more stable but I will continue to monitor.

Gonna try the beta _3 build real quick and see if that changes anything....back in a few hours.