Adding an AIMesh Node - why is this so hard?!?

[mmacedo]

Make sure Ethernet Backhaul Mode if disabled on AiMesh | System Settings:

 

[IslandGator]

Make sure Ethernet Backhaul Mode if disabled on AiMesh | System Settings:

View attachment 48858

You nailed it macedo!!!!! ... thanks alot!!!!!!! I cant tell you how appreciative I am of your efforts and all you guys who make this question/answer/discussion forum so valuable.

Regards///Gator

 

[IslandGator]

PS I fibbed a little about how far the boat dock was from the house. I said it was 200ft but actually its closer to 400ft. It's really impressive how powerful these ASUS routers are. On the exterior wall of my house there is is a 44" stem wall with a oncrete floor and and access to the entire 1st floor of the house. So it was easy to mount a AC68U on the interior wall behind the panel antenna which points toward the boat hose. Antennae is a 2.4/5Ghz on a single line. Line-of -sight from house to dock. See pics 1-3.

 

[IslandGator]

PS I fibbed a little about how far the boat dock was from the house. I said it was 200ft but actually its closer to 400ft. It's really impressive how powerful these ASUS routers are. On the exterior wall of my house there is is a 44" stem wall with a oncrete floor and and access to the entire 1st floor of the house. So it was easy to mount a AC68U on the interior wall behind the panel antenna which points toward the boat hose. Antennae is a 2.4/5Ghz on a single line. Line-of -sight from house to dock. See pics 1-3.

Pic 4 shows the panel antenna on the boat house to the right of the light
Pic 5 shows the AC1900P which runs the VOIP phone with 911 capability, Day/Night Camera monitored 24/7/365 all on UPS
Pic 5 Before you ask ... yes there is a beer cooler!

 

[IslandGator]

Pic 4 shows the panel antenna on the boat house to the right of the light
Pic 5 shows the AC1900P which runs the VOIP phone with 911 capability, Day/Night Camera monitored 24/7/365 all on UPS
Pic 5 Before you ask ... yes there is a beer cooler!

Pic 6 shows the boat slip with PTZ camera
Pic 7 Shows the the tough life of retirement. Top right, yes that dot you see is my Gator, Please no swimming after dark.

Thanks again for all the help recently and over the years

Regards////Island Gator

 

[jdeitch]

I have spent three days now trying to get two RC-AC68U's to aimesh.

It flat out doesn't work. Tried it wireless, tried it wired, tried every single trick in every single post on this website. It never sees the node to add it.
I'm basically baffled and out of options, and these units are about to go on eBay (or to recycle). It's absolutely ridiculous this is this hard.

One fun fact -- two identical RC-AC68U models. Same hardware. Same firmware. One insists on defaulting to 192.168.1.1, the other to 192.168.50.1.
I'm pretty sure this is why they fail, the default IPs don't match.
Again, these are the OEM IP ranges, with identical hardware (same revisison), and firmware.

If Asus can't manage their own quality control, it's no wonder this is the #1 topic on this forum where people have problems.

If anyone has any more suggestions before I chuck these useless units, please let me know.

 

[unsynaps]

The pairing systems of Asus routers is the most horrible thing that any intern could design.

I ONLY ever got them to pair with them physically connected to each other.
DIRECTLY. You can not just have it on the same network for some stupid reason. They must be directly connected.

 

[Strud]

Well, might be just your setup.
I have my ac68u and a Lira trio nodes correctly discovered and connected to the main ax86u using ethernet cable via TP-link switch, always works first try.

 

[jdeitch]

The pairing systems of Asus routers is the most horrible thing that any intern could design.

I ONLY ever got them to pair with them physically connected to each other.
DIRECTLY. You can not just have it on the same network for some stupid reason. They must be directly connected.

Tried that, too ... still didn't work.
The "node" unit just never appears in search.

 

[Smokey613]

I suggest running Merlin on the main router and run the latest AsusWRT on all nodes.

You can try connecting your nodes by network initially, even of it means putting them next to your main unit.

After they are recognized and showing up on your main unit, you can power them off and place them back where you want them. They should reconnect wirelessly. Also, do not change any of the AiMesh backhaul settings, just leave them at the default settings.

You do not need or want Merlin on your AiMesh nodes… of course, this is JMHO

 

[Smokey613]

One other note, make sure all your nodes are reset to factory defaults before the pairing attempt.

 

[L&LD]

@jdeitch, what is an RC-AC86U? What firmware version do you have installed? Did you perform a full reset after flashing the RMerlin firmware on them? Without using a saved backup config file, nor inserting a previously used USB drive that was used for amtm/scripts?

How are you trying to create the AiMesh? You should be fully resetting the 'node', and then let it sit there without going into the GUI or anything else. Use the main router to find and create the AiMesh network.

Plug in the node in the same room as the main router and if it doesn't connect like that, fully reset the node again and then try associating them once more with an Ethernet cable between the main router's LAN port and the node's WAN port.

 

[jdeitch]

Typo - meant RT-AC68U.

Have tried it both wifi and wired. The comment above about non-merlin on the node is interesting. Will have to try that.

It's about the only thing I've not yet tried.

 

[HH22]

Probably not.

Just to be clear and find out exactly where you are having issues:
1) Disconnect all ETH cables from the node
2) Reset the node: a) turn the node off; b) press and hold WPS button; c) turn node on; d) wait until the power led starts flashing (around 25 seconds on my nodes); e) release the WPS button; f) wait for the node to boot up
3) Connect your desktop / laptop / tablet / etc to the router either wirelessly or wired
4) In your browser, navigate to either router.asus.com or your router's IP address. You should be accessing you router's GUI, not your node's then
5) Disable WAN/Internet
6) Connected an ETH cable to one of the LAN ports of the router and to the WAN port of the node
7) In the router's GUI, start the Add AiMesh Node and wait for it to complete. It may finish fine before reaching 100% and display a success message. It happened to me more than once to think it was an error as it finished earlier than I expected. So, be sure before you assume it failed.
8) Enable WAN/Internet

Bumping this as others might find themselves upgrading their Asus router and find out the AiMesh setup isn't recognized by the new router. I recently upgraded my RT-AX86U to an RT-AX88U Pro in order to take full advantage of my ISP's 2Gbit service (along with new switches, etc.).

I struggled for several hours and finally followed the steps above and the RT-AX86U become recognizable as a Mesh node and could be installed/integrated properly. It's been running for nearly an hour without issue, and I've updated its firmware, so I think it's going to stick.

More of a PSA for others similarly struggling and a shoutout to "mmacedo" for the provided steps.

 

[Wisiwyg]

I suggest running Merlin on the main router and run the latest AsusWRT on all nodes.

You can try connecting your nodes by network initially, even of it means putting them next to your main unit.

After they are recognized and showing up on your main unit, you can power them off and place them back where you want them. They should reconnect wirelessly. Also, do not change any of the AiMesh backhaul settings, just leave them at the default settings.

You do not need or want Merlin on your AiMesh nodes… of course, this is JMHO

This... I've found stock on nodes and Merlin on main has always been successful for me.

 

[heywire]

I think @RMerlin should include a Warning on the Aimesh page that Aimesh it not officially supported, and therefore, if Aimesh pairing fails one should try flashing to Official FW and do the pairing there, then flash back.

First try official on the non-main node that should be paired, then if that doesn't work; flash to official on both.

Unbelievable the amount of hours and hair wasted on not including such a basic message in the GUI.

 

[bennor]

I think @RMerlin should include a Warning on the Aimesh page that Aimesh it not officially supported, and therefore,

Huh? AiMesh has been officially supported since the Asuswrt-Merlin 384.13 (31-July-2019) firmware.

Changelog (386.xx) | Asuswrt-Merlin

www.asuswrt-merlin.net

384.13 (31-July-2019)
- NEW: AiMesh Router and node support. Note that automatic live
update of Merlin-based nodes is not supported, you will have
to manually update any Merlin-based nodes when a new firmware
is available. Asus-based nodes (which is recommended) will be
able to make use of the automatic live update.
- NEW: ChaCha20-Poly1305 support in Strongswan (themiron)
- UPDATED: RT-AX88U to GPL 384_6210.
- UPDATED: Curl 7.65.3.
- CHANGED: dhcp_staticlist no longer contains hostnames, these
have been moved to dhcp_hostnames for better
compatibility with upstream and closed source
components, also allows more static leases to be
defined before reaching the size limit.
- CHANGED: Replace Nettle with OpenSSL for dnsmasq's DNSSEC
validation, which opens the door to supporting
more ciphers. (themiron)
- FIXED: Firmware Update check button would redirect to Asus
support site if scheduled checks are disabled.
- FIXED: Firefox was showing a no-op Uninstall button on the
AiCloud page
- FIXED: 5 GHz radio showing as disabled on the Sysinfo page for
the RT-AC87U
- FIXED: FTP would be accessible from the WAN even while disabled
if you had DualWAN load balancing enabled, or IPTV
configured.
- FIXED: IGMP Snooper daemon crashing when more than 32 hosts
are present (themiron)
- FIXED: External DDNS IP checker would fail for Chinese users,
as checkip.dyndns.org is blocked - switched to .com TLD.
- FIXED: Devices without a networkmap-defined alias wouldn't fallback
to their hostname on some webui pages like the IPTraffic
and QoS Classification pages.
- FIXED: Remote IP field filtering on Classification page wasn't
working.
- FIXED: Incorrect user permissions displayed on the FTP page.
- FIXED: Performance issues for some users, following the kernel
security fixes in 384.12. (gzenux)

The issue more than a few face with AiMesh is just the wonky nature of Asus's implementation of the feature. People using stock Asus firmware face issues trying to get AiMesh to play nice. Some have found that it works to setup AiMesh Node first using an Ethernet connection, then move it to a WiFi connection.
Edit to add: The Asus-Merlin Wiki entry for AiMesh.

AiMesh

Third party firmware for Asus routers (newer codebase) - RMerl/asuswrt-merlin.ng

github.com

 

[RMerlin]

AiMesh is supported, and I had no issue doing the two test setups I've done these past few months with two different models both running Asuswrt-Merlin.

Often, the issue is with people not following instructions. For instance the setup instructions states that you need to keep both devices nearby while connecting them. This is most likely because AiMesh will refuse to pair with a device that's more than a certain distance away, to avoid "accidentally" pairing with a neighbour's misconfigured device and hijacking it.

 

[Tech9]

Huh? AiMesh has been officially supported since the Asuswrt-Merlin 384.13 (31-July-2019) firmware.

You missed something? AiMesh wireless node discovery in Asuswrt-Merlin wasn't always working properly for the entire 386-series firmware with AiMesh 2.0 and was fixed at some point in 388 firmware with the help of Asus. The reason for so many similar AiMesh + Asuswrt-Merlin threads. When the fix eventually happened - here:

[ 388.2 alpha Build(s) ] Testing available build(s)

Running 388.2_alpha2-g099892a1cf on AXE16000. Can confirm issue with 2.4ghz and 6ghz radio is gone (prev, devices connecting to the 2.4ghz radio would have no exit to internet). Had already seen it work in stock image, glad to see the gpl merge brought the fix to Merlin. OpenVPN to connect...

www.snbforums.com

 

[Tech9]

if Aimesh pairing fails

In your case you have to use wired connection to setup your node with fail back to wireless after it is paired. Backhaul in AiMesh settings page has to be on default Auto. The inconvenience is when wireless AiMesh connection fails for some reason - you have to do it again. There is no other workaround except if you are willing to run stock Asuswrt on the main unit and nodes. I don't know about the latest* available Asuswrt for RT-AC86U, but with the older versions it was pairing wirelessly to RT-AC68U nodes with no issues. You also don't need Asuswrt-Merlin on the nodes. Many folks around run stock Asuswrt on the nodes. Better or not - test and see.

* - perhaps the final release for RT-AC86U as well, this router is on EoL list now along with RT-AC68U and variants.