AC86U laggy on latest Merlin

[Luboknok]

I finally picked up a AC86U ($112 Newegg refurb go get em). Installed Merlin 384.7.2, did a factory reset and setup OPENVPN. Everything checks OK and I am getting ~100MBps VPN on benchmarks with 20ms ping.


Problem is noticeably lag opening web pages... sometimes 5+ seconds before they start loading. AC86U CPU barely registering use. QOS off, ipv6 off, 5ghz off, AIprotect off, ethernet to modem and desktop, essentially all defaults except VPN. Basically it's performing much slower than AC68p I replaced.

Only thing I noticed is new AES-GCS cypher in OpenVPN but also tried AES-CBC. VPN doesn't seem to be the problem.

I'm stumped.

 

[Easy Limits]

Have you tried rebooting your modem, 86U and devices?

 

[Luboknok]

I did but maybe not long enough so I will turn them off overnight. I suspect it is DNS related. I set "Accept DNS Configuration" to relaxed and ran namebench. I'm seeing a ton of timeouts, including:

"How odd! Only 8.7 percent of name servers were pingable."

After reset and a ISP modem refresh I'll try it again in the AM.

 

[Luboknok]

Modem was refreshed and both modem and router left off overnight. I am still seeing some dramatic lag, Namebench is failing on most DNS servers, reporting hijacked domains, and average response times of over 3500ms on popular OpenDNS servers, which is the maximum measurable response.

I'm wondering if it could be a hardware issue? It is a refurb, but in my experience routers are all or nothing. I'll do a factory restore from the recover mode before trying again then sending it back.

 

[ASadani]

Modem was refreshed and both modem and router left off overnight. I am still seeing some dramatic lag, Namebench is failing on most DNS servers, reporting hijacked domains, and average response times of over 3500ms on popular OpenDNS servers, which is the maximum measurable response.

I'm wondering if it could be a hardware issue? It is a refurb, but in my experience routers are all or nothing. I'll do a factory restore from the recover mode before trying again then sending it back.

I have seen Asus Routers especially the AC5300 perform in a degraded mode extensively. For example.

Unit 1 exhibited degraded 2.4 performance and eventually didn't connect at all. At times it would connect randomly
Unit 2 would sometimes respond with extensive ping times ONLY over VPN so therefore it was very hard for me to explain to Asus that the unit is defective. Eventually, they replaced it and its all working well.

One thing I have realized is that on these routers, try to hardwire most devices such as NAS, Media Players etc as they practically kill your wifi. I've had three routers die and ever since they are on hard wire its running very smooth.

In my opinion, I am confident it's your hardware. You can try all you want but if it is behaving like this there is only one cause as Merlin's firmware is very stable. I'm on the 86u as well but not on the latest firmware. For me, everything is working perfect and I see no need to make any changes.

 

[wizin]

I agree, similar issues and some more i am trying to figure out

 

[Easy Limits]

I have not tried 384.7.2 on my 86U yet, still on 384.7 currently. I did notice my 86U settle down and things worked a lot better once I rebooted it more than a few times over several days.