Asus RT-AC3200 issues and impressions

[Deleted member 22229]

This is an age-old issue specific to Comcast's IPv6. Comcast blames Asus, Asus blames Comcast, and one year later neither of them have come up with any solution.

Personally, I blame mostly Comcast, since other ISPs have no issue and the packets that are causing these errors should never reach an end-user router in the first place, and partly the old Linux kernel used by all Broadcom routers.

At this time, the only solution is to go with a third party firmware that implements a workaround for this. The RT-AC3200 being new, there's currently no third party firmware available for it at this time.

Yes and the only comcast employee that was looking into this issue no longer works for comcast so i guess it will be up to Asus or Merlin to filter these bogus packets out. I dont believe comcast will spend another second trying to fix it. I dont see these with my R-7000 but Netgear may also have filtered them in there firmwares.

 

[ssahnan]

yeah new fw has forced me to turn off the quick connect feature too, iPhone 6s would just not connect anymore along with a few other issues

 

[RMerlin]

Yes and the only comcast employee that was looking into this issue no longer works for comcast so i guess it will be up to Asus or Merlin to filter these bogus packets out. I dont believe comcast will spend another second trying to fix it. I dont see these with my R-7000 but Netgear may also have filtered them in there firmwares.

I know that one manufacturer (can't remember which one) "fixed" the issue by removing the line of code in the Kernel that logs these messages to syslog. That doesn't fix anything, that just sweeps the issue under the rug so users won't see it, and they can stop complaining about it.

The closest thing to a solution that actually helps (but is not a real solution either) is by filtering the requests like Asuswrt-Merlin and Shibby's Tomato (I think) do. Dropping the packets won't eliminate the hundreds of megabytes of daily traffic that come with this issue, but at least you aren't sending back ICMP replies to these packets.

 

[RMerlin]

USB performance of this router is impressive. I can't test it with the stock firmware because it does not like my USB 3.0 enclosure, but with my firmware, running Samba 3.6.24, this is what I get when transferring a 1.5 GB file over the LAN (same test file and same disk I used in RT-AC87U benchmarks):

Expect even higher numbers with the stock firmware (as its Samba 3.0.25b version is a tad faster than 3.6.24).

 

[hackintoshsr]

Checking in after turning off smart connect. Everything seems ok so far, just disappointing I couldn't have one SSID. I think I have had maybe one disconnect vs. the several every 10 minutes with smart connect on.

At this point, I am leaning towards business class routers with AP's. Depends on how big my bonus check from work is this year

 

[dlandon]

Checking in after turning off smart connect. Everything seems ok so far, just disappointing I couldn't have one SSID. I think I have had maybe one disconnect vs. the several every 10 minutes with smart connect on.

All three bands can have the same SSID. You don't have to have smart connect on to accomplish that. With smart connect off and one SSID, client devices will try themselves to get the clearest and fastest channel.

I think that there may be some over blown expectations about what smart connect can and cannot do. While in theory smart connect manages wireless connections to direct clients to the clearest channel of the three and tries to arrange the clients into like speeds on the same channel, it has to contend with clients that are more aggressive about doing that themselves. I am not an expert here by any stretch of the imagination, but from my experience and what others have posted, Apple devices are pretty aggressive about managing their wireless connections and any interference by smart connect confuses the Apple devices and they appear to give up trying to get a connection.

I think that smart connect also has trouble contending with noise and interference on the wireless channels. I tried a set of higher gain antennas on the AC3200 and the dropouts and disconnects on my iPad were so bad, I couldn't get a reliable connection at all. Going back to the stock antennas cleared it up. What this tells me is that the quality of the wireless signal does affect smart connect.

I have turned off smart connect. I have one SSID for all channels and will let the client devices make their decisions on what channel they want.

 

[RMerlin]

When upgrading firmwares, make sure you do a factory default reset, or at the very least click on the Default button on the Smart Connect rules pages. Asus is still tinkering with the default rules.

They have a new firmware coming (no idea when) which includes, among other things, a newer version of the Broadcom SDK.

 

[mikeisu]

When upgrading firmwares, make sure you do a factory default reset, or at the very least click on the Default button on the Smart Connect rules pages. Asus is still tinkering with the default rules.

They have a new firmware coming (no idea when) which includes, among other things, a newer version of the Broadcom SDK.

Merlin, are you suggesting to do the reset before or after the new firmware is applied?

 

[hackintoshsr]

All three bands can have the same SSID. You don't have to have smart connect on to accomplish that. With smart connect off and one SSID, client devices will try themselves to get the clearest and fastest channel.

I have turned off smart connect. I have one SSID for all channels and will let the client devices make their decisions on what channel they want.

This totally defeats the purpose of having 3 bands. Slow devices should be steered towards the 2.4 ghz or 5ghz 1 with 5ghz 3 being fastest lane. You basically have an AC68U now

Thanks for the info Merlin on the new SDK coming

 

[InspectHerGadget]

This totally defeats the purpose of having 3 bands. Slow devices should be steered towards the 2.4 ghz or 5ghz 1 with 5ghz 3 being fastest lane. You basically have an AC68U now

Thanks for the info Merlin on the new SDK coming

And the Smart Connect issues mean it doesn't work as intended either. It might just be impossible to get it to work with all devices.

It sounds like for many people it is just an AC68U with an extra adapter.

The same issues would happen with the Netgear R8000 I would guess.

 

[Dustin.Spaulding]

Has anyone been able to test USB 3.0 transfer rates with this bad boy, yet? I know that in the past, that hasn't really been ASUS's focus, but wondering if anyone had noticed an improvement over the 68 or 87.

-Dustin

 

[L&LD]

Has anyone been able to test USB 3.0 transfer rates with this bad boy, yet? I know that in the past, that hasn't really been ASUS's focus, but wondering if anyone had noticed an improvement over the 68 or 87.

-Dustin

Don't you read the thread you're actually on?


http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=165468&postcount=188

 

[Dustin.Spaulding]

Don't you read the thread you're actually on?


http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=165468&postcount=188

Apologies. I thought I had read through the entire thread, but I must have missed this post.

Thank you!

Edit: I posted before refreshing the webpage, after looking at it for the last time yesterday. Merlin's post was from this morning. Nice, idiotic maneuver for a first-time poster to make, wouldn't you say?

 

[dlandon]

This totally defeats the purpose of having 3 bands. Slow devices should be steered towards the 2.4 ghz or 5ghz 1 with 5ghz 3 being fastest lane. You basically have an AC68U now

Agreed.

I should have added "Until ASUS gets the kinks worked out of smart connect."

 

[Greg222]

Just installed my AC3200

I'm not too PC savy, but do program IBM iSeries's. I previously had a DIR-825. Was happy with it, but I recently bought an iPhone 6+ and a Surface Pro 3 and wanted to take advantage of 802.11ac. After replacing the DIR-825, at the same spot in the house, WiFi signal greatly increased and WiFi speeds went from 33.5 Mbps down/ .87 Mbps up to 60 Mbps down/ 6 Mbps up. Not sure why I never had more than 1Mbps upload with my DIR-825, but really happy that this AC3200 gives me 6Mbps.

Greg

 

[RMerlin]

Merlin, are you suggesting to do the reset before or after the new firmware is applied?

Always after. There is no real point in doing a factory defaut before - you would still be using whatever default values applying to the old FW.

 

[jerry6]

So far I'm getting great connection rate on my AC clients , 1170 on my ac 66 media bridge , 870 on my edimax 1200 , transfer rates on large file transfers are way up , on n clients now getting 9 or 10MBPS where used to get 3-6 MBPS , on the AC clients it over 25MBPS so far where it used to get 9- 11 MBps , this is from 35 feet 3 walls . Not using any smart connect , just plain old router with 3 radios , me in control .
So far I'm happy with the router . Big improvement , at least in my case .

 

[Stephen]

So far I'm getting great connection rate on my AC clients , 1170 on my ac 66 media bridge , 870 on my edimax 1200 , transfer rates on large file transfers are way up , on n clients now getting 9 or 10MBPS where used to get 3-6 MBPS , on the AC clients it over 25MBPS so far where it used to get 9- 11 MBps , this is from 35 feet 3 walls . Not using any smart connect , just plain old router with 3 radios , me in control .
So far I'm happy with the router . Big improvement , at least in my case .

What router did you have before the ac3200? I have the RT-N66 and am interested in a comparison on the range and speed.

 

[mikeisu]

So far so good for me too... I also disabled smart connect until they improve it via firmware. I am coming from an 87R, and I can say the range on the R is definitely better.. but not by a lot. The huge improvement in my experience has been on the 5ghz radio. I do get some drops here and there, which I wasn't seeing on my 87R, but it took a few iterations of firmware to get there.

The 87R 5ghz seemed flakey to me.. speeds were all over the place, and I think I was having issues when using LAN1. The Quantenna chipset just didn't seem to be as stable to me.

The router is great so far in my opinion. It is nice knowing my older 5ghz devices aren't bottlenecking my newer AC devices such as my note 4 and tab S.

 

[jerry6]

What router did you have before the ac3200? I have the RT-N66 and am interested in a comparison on the range and speed.

N-66 with AC-66 as meida bridge , range and signal are all improved .
Using the latest FW , waiting for Merlin version