Asus AiMesh causes almost no 2.4GHz throughput

[LD500]

No, I mean turning off AiMesh totally.

Last day I turned off Roaming Assistance on both 2.4 and 5GHz, turned off igmp snooping, and airtime fairness. Actually think a couple were off already. No HomeKit devices have gone No Response for 36 hrs now. Fingers crossed.

 

[LD500]

Just remembered, I turned off all QOS too as I read somewhere it activated the Trendnet features that were apparently causing some issues for others

 

[LD500]

Quick update: Everything still working fine. I think it's the shutting off of QOS that achieved the improvement. Too early to say it's fixed but about 48 hours of no Homekit devices going NO RESPONSE is certainly a change. Seems like each time I flip between rooms in my HOME app each devices goes 'Updating' to showing the status of the device faster now.

Not sure what disabling Roaming Assistant achieved, I think I am still moving between AiMesh nodes but I could be wrong. It could be that I am leaving my house, coming back and initially connecting to a different node (instead of roaming between them)

 

[OzarkEdge]

Quick update: Everything still working fine. I think it's the shutting off of QOS that achieved the improvement. Too early to say it's fixed but about 48 hours of no Homekit devices going NO RESPONSE is certainly a change. Seems like each time I flip between rooms in my HOME app each devices goes 'Updating' to showing the status of the device faster now.

Not sure what disabling Roaming Assistant achieved, I think I am still moving between AiMesh nodes but I could be wrong. It could be that I am leaving my house, coming back and initially connecting to a different node (instead of roaming between them)

Well, now you have to turn it all back ON except QoS so we can really know what the issue was!

OE

 

[LD500]

Well, now you have to turn it all back ON except QoS so we can really know what the issue was!

OE

Ozark, I'll try to test it this weekend if I get a chance.

Is there a list of the default settings for the RT-AC86U? Been tinkering with so many over the last few months trying to fix the Homekit drops issue and also my Airplay receiver disappearing intermittently I'm not sure what has changed and what has not any more.

 

[LD500]

Homekit devices still haven't gone NO RESPONSE for about 5 days now. Seems like it truly does work.
Someone suggested I try turning Roaming Assistant back on as it should still work but I have to find time to try it out.
Travelling soon so can't take the chance of causing Homekit issues while I'm away. Has anyone else tried disabling QOS entirely along with disabling all AiProtection but leaving Roaming Assistant on?

 

[LD500]

I just tried turning Roaming Assistant back ON. After turning it on, I did a REBOOT setting from the main router setup screen.
Gave the routers a few minutes to re-connect with the various wireless devices in the house. Noticed very quickly that one of my Homekit devices went NO RESPONSE on my iPhone Home app. Tried rebooting the router again but still no good.

I then turned Roaming Assistant OFF and reboot the main router again. The devices still was NO RESPONSE.
I ended up deleting and re-installing that device.

Did not try deleting and re-installing with Roaming Assistant on. At this point, don't really want to devote more time to trying to figure out. I guess it's possible it could work but I didn't want to test it right now. No more time.

The combination that did work (no Homekit devices dropped for about 10 days which I'm 99% sure is success) and hopefully will continue working is: All QOS features OFF, Roaming Assistant OFF, IGMP Snooping DISABLED, Airtime Fairness Disabled. All on both frequencies.
This is not to say 100% of these feature settings are needed to work but I haven't been able to figure out the magic minimal settings that work except for this combination.

I will try to report back if it continues to work. That last issue of having to delete and reinstall a switch has me a bit concerned.

By the way, does anyone know what it means when under the device listings in the Asus router page it shows "Distributing IP" instead of showing an assigned IP address. Currently the one device I deleted/re-installed shows "Distributing IP", others have IP address. Seen this before but never noticed a pattern.

 

[LD500]

After going back to the settings that worked for about 10 days I am getting Homekit device NO RESPONSE again.
What is weird is if I wait a few minutes the device shows the proper status in my Home app again.
Seems almost like the devices are being dropped and then reconnected after a few minutes.

Definitely everything worked perfectly for about 10 days. Now it has problems many times a day even with seemingly the exact same settings.
I'm out of ideas on what it could be.

 

[OzarkEdge]

After going back to the settings that worked for about 10 days I am getting Homekit device NO RESPONSE again.
What is weird is if I wait a few minutes the device shows the proper status in my Home app again.
Seems almost like the devices are being dropped and then reconnected after a few minutes.

Definitely everything worked perfectly for about 10 days. Now it has problems many times a day even with seemingly the exact same settings.
I'm out of ideas on what it could be.

If it's just the Homekit stuff having issues, then maybe it's just that... the Homekit stuff having issues... some incompatibility glitch somewhere. Did you have this issue when running the ASUS router without AiMesh?

OE

 

[LD500]

Problem only with AiMesh. Further, was 100% fine for 10 days until I tested if I could re-enable Roaming Assistant. Seems definitely like an AiMesh bug

 

[OzarkEdge]

Problem only with AiMesh. Further, was 100% fine for 10 days until I tested if I could re-enable Roaming Assistant. Seems definitely like an AiMesh bug

Google suggests other routers have similar disconnect issues with Homekit and/or Apple Bonjour/mDNS. Here's one read:
https://jlian.co/post/reliable-homekit/

Seems like a mess for something that should just work.

OE

 

[LD500]

I saw those router settings listed elsewhere before, likely pulled from the same article.
While I don't have those exact settings now, I did go through trying them previously. Didn't work.
Getting persistent NO RESPONSE every day, actually a few times every day now.

Makes me wonder what magic happened previously to allow everything to work perfectly for 10 days straight before I decided to try a setting tweak. Going back didn't fix it so I wonder if it's something that AiMesh dynamically does which could cause issues and for some reason it didn't do it previously (for those whole 10 days).

 

[karma]

silly question perhaps, but did you try rebooting the node after you rebooted your main router?

 

[LD500]

silly question perhaps, but did you try rebooting the node after you rebooted your main router?

Not crazy at all. I've been trying so many combinations of settings I could easily forget a step along the way.
The other day, when the troubles restarted, I totally reset the nodes and re-setup them on AiMesh. So yes.

However, since then I haven't rebooted them separately. Actually is there a way to reboot them separately after they have been added to the AiMesh as I don't think I can access them separately once they are turned into AiMesh nodes. Is there a way?

 

[karma]

Not crazy at all. I've been trying so many combinations of settings I could easily forget a step along the way.
The other day, when the troubles restarted, I totally reset the nodes and re-setup them on AiMesh. So yes.

However, since then I haven't rebooted them separately. Actually is there a way to reboot them separately after they have been added to the AiMesh as I don't think I can access them separately once they are turned into AiMesh nodes. Is there a way?

if you have ssh enabled you can ssh to them and just type reboot if I remember correctly.

 

[LD500]

What's SSH?

 

[karma]

What's SSH?

oh, probably best not to mess around with it then. it allows to you to remotely and securely connect to a host via a terminal. like telnet but with an additional security layer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell

 

[LD500]

Did some quick Google searches. No I haven't used SSH.
Does a reboot of the router not automatically reboot the AiMesh nodes?

Now you got me thinking. When I changed the Roaming Assistant back to off in the router, shortly thereafter I rebooted one of my AiMesh nodes.
At what point does the router push the changed setting to the nodes? Is it possible that the router pushed the Roaming Assistant OFF to the node while it was rebooting and it never changed to OFF? I'm assuming the router doesn't constantly monitor the node and keep updating it constantly?
I'm wondering if this is why my lucky magic combination of settings that allowed my Homekit to work correctly for 10 days didn't work when those settings were put in place again (the node might have still had Roaming Assistant ON)? Hope that makes some sense, guesswork but maybe?

 

[karma]

i don't think the nodes get rebooted as well (or if they do, if they restart after the main router) which is why i suggested it. for the other stuff i have no idea. i'm just grasping at straws.

 

[LD500]

Is turning the AiMesh node off and back on equivalent to a REBOOT in firmware?
Easier for me than to figure out SSH