AI Protection Latency and Resolution

[Marvin Gage]

ASUS RT-AX86U
ASUS RT-AX58U

OK today I found out that AI Protection and was blocking websites even though malicious websites were turned off. How it affected me, why it happened, and how I resolved it.

1. Bufferbloat - Rating was very bad a C as download latency was well over 74+ ms
2. URL were being blocked even though it was turned off

Fortunately I found the article about withdraw consent under policy tab in Administration and that resolved the issue but the real culprit was that a firmware update somehow caused consent to be applied twice.. One was a very old one that was still being applied and the new one from the update. So the policy was being applied twice and ignoring the router settings for the one even though I turned off the malicious website blocking.

Resolution if you have had your router setup for a while and AI Protection is acting up withdraw any policy of sharing and it will reset all AI Protection settings. I was than able to test with it off and enabled and the results were good both ways and very little latency applied and no more sites being blocked.

1. Disabled all privacy consent under Administration > Policy Tab

No AI Protection Enabled

Download Active​

+15 ms

Upload Active​

+22 ms

With AI Protection Enabled with IPS & IDPB

Download Active​

+20 ms

Upload Active​

+25 ms

The test results were very minimal on impact just need to clear out the old settings by withdrawing consent than re-enable making a huge impact. Strange how the router can apply multiple privacy policies and cause this problem.

 

[Ripshod]

Bufferbloat tests are useless. I got different results every time I tested -all the way from a C to A+.
Don't run your life on what the internet tells you

 

[Tech9]

AiProtection has to start blocking Waveform. It's a malicious website.

 

[Marvin Gage]

Yeah but the point is somehow this router had two consent policies so it was like putting an firewall behind a firewall. It really affected latency majorly causing latency readings over over 74 ms before. Removing both consent policies than re-enabling resolved the issue. And yes it was affecting things image boards slow loading images, youtube videos would stall and stagger. Now that buffer bloat reading latency lower in 25 ms meaning that AI Protection is not running with duplicate policies my browsing is back to normal.

So if you see some slowness for odd reasons verify that you don't have two agreement consents like I did under policy where you remove consent.

 

[Tech9]

Withdrawing Trend Micro data sharing agreement stops not only AiProtection, but also all the features using Trend Micro engine like Traffic Analyzer, Apps analyzer, Adaptive QoS, Game Boost (in fact still Adaptive QoS) and Web History. This is a big chunk of actively advertised Asuswrt features. Otherwise your observations are perhaps correct - the less tasks the CPU is busy with the more resources will be available and the router will feel more responsive. This is clearly noticeable on older hardware like RT-AC68U, less noticeable on newer models with faster CPUs.

 

[Marvin Gage]

well I am using AI Protection now but only a single policy agreement shows not duplicates. Before I had duplicates it was acting as if policies were applied twice to the router causing major latency. When I went into my policy tab there was literally 2 consent agreements not the one. I was like why is there two consents there for the same thing? That is why I said it acted as if there was two sets of policies running for them features.

I am using QOS and AI Protection except for block malicious web sites now with only an additional 5 latency and not the additional 60+ latency it was before I reset AI protection by removing both consents than making a single consent.

Let me show you what I had in my router when I had all the latency. This is what I meant by I literally had two consent agreements so it was applied twice causing immense latency. I edited picture to show you what I meant and I even had a ticket up with second tier service with ASUS and they saw nothing wrong. Yeah if it is just same policies applied twice probably easily missed. Their email today said to reset my router and redo my configuration I did not want to do all the custom configurations so I came here to find out how to turn off AI Protection and found out about withdraw which fixed the system now I only see a single consent now and it is working properly. This forum saved me a ton of time redoing all my custom ip addresses for devices and port forwards.

 

[Tech9]

You may have two agreements if you used Asus App and wanted remote notifications. I've never seen two Trend Micro agreements. If you had exactly this - it's a bug. Remove, reboot, activate again, test. If still not good - reset, reconfigure, activate, test again. On this specific model router the CPU is capable enough to run AiProtection almost transparently to the user and above Gigabit speeds. There will be some negative impact on latency, but not affecting daily use. It's a trade off after all, Trend Micro engine does additional things with passing traffic.