Aimesh unusable since 386?

[terminator]

Up until 386 my Aimesh was working great. I have a AX58U as main and a couple of AC66U_B1 as nodes. Since 386 (and yes the latest one too) the aimesh nodes have gotten slow and sporadic for WiFi. As soon as a device connects to them, users complain of slow internet or no internet. I have 100 mbps up/down on fiber. As soon as I disconnect the Aimesh nodes and devices connect to the main router, all is good again.

I have seen a couple of posts about this previously but seems like not enough? If everyone was having this issue then I would think there would be more chatter and possibly a hotfix. I tried the most recent firmware version and the issue is the same so I guess it didn't get proper attention. My question is that are others having this issue or it is only me (isolated to a few users)? Trying to see if I am missing a step to somehow make this work.

I have reset to factory defaults to see if that would help but it hasn't.

Edit: Updated nodes version to AC66U_B1

 

[MvW]

Sounds like it’s time for a fresh start. I don’t recognize any of the issues you experiencing. It’s not the most fun part but afterwards you’ll have a fast and stable network, which made it worth your while.

I recommend the excellent guide by @L&LD, found here:

Post in thread 'Best practice to uploading latest Merlin 386.1'
http://www.snbforums.com/threads/best-practice-to-uploading-latest-merlin-386-1.69847/post-658263

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Post in thread 'Best practice to uploading latest Merlin 386.1'

Merlin's latest is not 386.1 it is 386.2_2

 

[bbunge]

Nope, no issues on the 386 code base with AC66U_B1 root and AC68U nodes wired and wireless. Have also tested AX86U root AC86U node with no issues.

Could be that you are trying to push the AX58U with 160 MHz? Have read other complaints about the AX58U being slow and it might be with two radio streams. Remember a WIFI mesh node will have half of the bandwidth it connects with. That is just the way a single band WIFI repeater works and the only way around that is Ethernet backhaul

 

[L&LD]

@det721, that's just the thread. The post I made is applicable to (mostly) any firmware version.

 

[terminator]

Nope, no issues on the 386 code base with AC66U_B1 root and AC68U nodes wired and wireless. Have also tested AX86U root AC86U node with no issues.

Could be that you are trying to push the AX58U with 160 MHz? Have read other complaints about the AX58U being slow and it might be with two radio streams. Remember a WIFI mesh node will have half of the bandwidth it connects with. That is just the way a single band WIFI repeater works and the only way around that is Ethernet backhaul

Sorry forgot to mention that both mesh nodes are hardwired with cat 6. And the exact setup works if I go back to 385.

 

[terminator]

Sounds like it’s time for a fresh start. I don’t recognize any of the issues you experiencing. It’s not the most fun part but afterwards you’ll have a fast and stable network, which made it worth your while.

I recommend the excellent guide by @L&LD, found here:

Post in thread 'Best practice to uploading latest Merlin 386.1'
http://www.snbforums.com/threads/best-practice-to-uploading-latest-merlin-386-1.69847/post-658263

Thanks I mentioned in the original post I have done factory reset several times (and then did not restore a backup file set everything up by hand). I usually run all merlin but have also tried merlin on the main router and asus stock on ai mesh nodes with the same result. Everything is cat 6 hardwired. I work in IT field so I am somewhat familiar with these things. If I go back to 385 then all is good - problem is with 386 versions. This is a tricky one for sure but seems like a lot of people are not having this issue so I got to dig deeper on my setup I guess.

 

[terminator]

Also, AX58U by itself as the main router works great. Worked great on 385, works great on 386 (currently all mesh nodes are unplugged). The problem seems to be with only the clients that connect to the nodes. It could have been the hardware of the node but both of them are doing the exact same thing on 386 but not if all devices are on 385.

 

[terminator]

Other than this Aimesh issue, I have no other issues. I run a moderate setup - Static IPs for a few clients, DNS name updated for several clients, VPN Server, VPN Client, Diversion using amtm, 1 Guest Network.
AiProtection, Adaptive QOS , AICloud, etc are OFF

 

[terminator]

Just wanted to update that I tried aimesh again with AX58U merlin 386.7_2 and node AC66U_B1 as stock 3.0.0.4.386_49703-gc2cdfc8. Something much have changed somewhere because this is working pretty good so far! It was not a fresh install - I just in-place update for both. Will try not to update anything for 6 months at least