AC86U sometimes powers completely off during reboot

[L&LD]

Leaving the power switch 'On' and unplugging the power plug from the router (and not from the AC wall socket) and waiting a couple of minutes before holding the WPS button and plugging the power plug back in allows the router to fully power down.

 

[shark]

Leaving the power switch 'On' and unplugging the power plug from the router (and not from the AC wall socket) and waiting a couple of minutes before holding the WPS button and plugging the power plug back in allows the router to fully power down.

oh yeah, I've noticed that if after you removed the power plug and cycle the power button, there is a discharge of energy left on the router!

Anyway, while following the guide like i said, i got the annoying all lights off problem lol

 

[L&LD]

oh yeah, I've noticed that if after you removed the power plug and cycle the power button, there is a discharge of energy left on the router!

Anyway, while following the guide like i said, i got the annoying all lights off problem lol

Did you try flashing the same firmware, again?

 

[shark]

Did you try flashing the same firmware, again?

yeah, i forgot to mention that like the guide said, on step 5 i flashed 384.12 again like it said i should do... but on step 7 when i was doing the minimal setup to connect to my isp, after i set the vlan and click apply when the router was suppose to reboot, i got the all lights off issue

 

[L&LD]

yeah, i forgot to mention that like the guide said, on step 5 i flashed 384.12 again like it said i should do... but on step 7 when i was doing the minimal setup to connect to my isp, after i set the vlan and click apply when the router was suppose to reboot, i got the all lights off issue

This one is perplexing.

 

[shark]

This one is perplexing.

Yeah, so dam annoying and intermittent! I mean wtf???

 

[Val D.]

I don't understand the point of "plug the power cable while the power button was on"? The safest and most reliable way to turn the router on is to push the power button. While you are trying to insert a live power plug in a device already turned on, you jeopardize that device. From a device that draws more current you can se sparks flying using that procedure.

The button at the back of the router is a simple mechanical switch. Pulling the plug or pushing the button do exactly the same thing. Basically the button is placed there for convenience so we don't have to pull the plug every time the router needs to be turned off. Routers are low power devices, no risk of sparks flying.

OK, I have to bring some equipment tomorrow to see what exactly is going on here.

Turns out RT-AC86U during boot process does not draw more than 0.85A and it happens for a very short period of time. The provided power brick by ASUS should be good enough*, except if a mechanical external drive is connected and powered by the router's USB**. In this case the current maximum reaches 1.6A during HDD spin up. If the router is powering something else also (another USB drive, cooling fans, etc), then the stock power brick has to be upgraded.

* - Not sure about the quality of it though. Everything these days is made cheaper and cheaper.
** - Not recommended in first place. Router's ports are communication ports, not a power source.

So the results are inconclusive. The power brick may play some role, but there is most likely something else involved. Anyway, I'm going to use the 65W power supply "upgrade" from now on, put the router in place and forget about the issue for now. Nothing else I can do at the moment.

 

[Grisu]

Arent there 2 bootloaders in 86U?
What if one of them has some fault or the logic to use one ore the other and it defaults to wrong one after reboot causing the hang?

 

[faria]

Firmware: merlin-384.12

Hi Guys I had the same problem about a while ago as the title states and even posted it here in the forum ,then suddenly it stopped but then another issue started occurring randomly, usb drive random umount and not mounting even after a reboot , only way to mount it was by removing and re-inserting the drive.
anyway....
Im finally able to reproduce the the (powers completely off during reboot) at will
by simply going to Lan, switch control , and enabling/desabling : "Spaning-Tree Protocol"
This will shutdown the router without fail in my case .
Perhaps you guys with the same issue could try it an see if can be replicated in your devices.

 

[no_name]

Firmware: merlin-384.12

Hi Guys I had the same problem about a while ago as the title states and even posted it here in the forum ,then suddenly it stopped but then another issue started occurring randomly, usb drive random umount and not mounting even after a reboot , only way to mount it was by removing and re-inserting the drive.
anyway....
Im finally able to reproduce the the (powers completely off during reboot) at will
by simply going to Lan, switch control , and enabling/desabling : "Spaning-Tree Protocol"
This will shutdown the router without fail in my case .
Perhaps you guys with the same issue could try it an see i can be replicated in your devices.

My knowledge of Spanning-Tree Protocol is zero but I was curious

I just turned off Spanning-Tree Protocol on my RT-AC86U and it rebooted properly

I turned Spanning-Tree Protocol back on and the router completely shutdown


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Grisu]

Well done after 2 years with this annoying bug and Asus did just nothing (from my personal perspective), users had to find the reason for it !!!

Now layback and wait months for a fix ...

 

[L&LD]

I'm not having current issues with the router shutting down after a reboot, but I am testing this too.

The Spanning-Tree Protocol was set to Enable when I started.

I set it to Disable and the router rebooted. No issues noted even after having the network up for over an hour.

After using it in 'Disable' mode for just over an hour, I then set it back to 'Enable' and the router rebooted normally for me.

As I said, this hasn't been an issue for me (shutdown while rebooting) for over three months now.

Will be interesting to see if @RMerlin finds post 190 a good clue to this issue or not. Or, maybe @Grisu is right and we'll have to wait for Asus to fix it.

 

[faria]

I'm not having current issues with the router shutting down after a reboot, but I am testing this too.

The Spanning-Tree Protocol was set to Enable when I started.

I set it to Disable and the router rebooted. No issues noted even after having the network up for over an hour.

After using it in 'Disable' mode for just over an hour, I then set it back to 'Enable' and the router rebooted normally for me.

As I said, this hasn't been an issue for me (shutdown while rebooting) for over three months now.

Will be interesting to see if @RMerlin finds post 190 a good clue to this issue or not. Or, maybe @Grisu is right and we'll have to wait for Asus to fix it.

You Just happen to have a faulty devicea proper rt-ac86 shutsdown when it feels like

 

[Val D.]

I just turned off Spanning-Tree Protocol on my RT-AC86U and it rebooted properly

I turned Spanning-Tree Protocol back on and the router completely shutdown

This setting can't trigger no boot issue on my particular RT-AC86U. It reboots properly with STP ON or OFF.

 

[FLA_NL]

This setting can't trigger no boot issue on my particular RT-AC86U. It reboots properly with STP ON or OFF.

Is there something in common (service/driver) with configuring STP, AiProtection and DoT? I really think when changing those settings there is a higher chance that the reboot can go wrong afterwards.

 

[Val D.]

Possibly. I really wish we had a Merlin Lite version of the firmware with no third party bloatware like Trend Micro. I personally don’t use any of their services.

 

[miroco]

You touched on a subject I've been thinking on for some time. A hardened version of Merlin, when indeed all bloatware has to go.

 

[visortgw]

Possibly. I really wish we had a Merlin Lite version of the firmware with no third party bloatware like Trend Micro. I personally don’t use any of their services.

You can opt to disable it.

 

[dave14305]

Possibly. I really wish we had a Merlin Lite version of the firmware with no third party bloatware like Trend Micro. I personally don’t use any of their services.

Adaptive QoS with CTF hardware acceleration is valuable for a lot of folks, and it's part of Trend Micro's engine that ASUS licenses. I understand the sentiment behind your post, but I'm not sure it's fair to call it bloatware.

You're actually describing John's fork, which forked before Trend Micro features were added. But it's not available for your 86U.

 

[RMerlin]

You touched on a subject I've been thinking on for some time. A hardened version of Merlin, when indeed all bloatware has to go.

Not possible. The closed source components would need to be recompiled with the new build options, so only Asus could do that.