ASUS RT-AC87 Firmware - Official Releases

[dfran1]

Has anyone tried/had issues with AirPrint and this router?

I have an HP printer/scanner combination which worked flawlessly with my old RT-N66U connected to a MacBook Pro on the 2.4GHz network. Now, with the RT-AC87U, most times the computer doesn't even recognize that the printer is turned on. I was able to remove the printer from the MacBook, reconnect it to the wireless network, and reestablish the connection last night but it's stopped working yet again today.

i just tried,
i had to wake my printer (iphone did not find it otherwise), I do not know why, or if its caused by the router.
I woke it by just hitting a button on it.
my phone detected it and printed fine.

my printer is an HP on my wifi 2.4GHz, iphone 6+ is on 5GHz.
I do not use the router as my print server.

 

[got_milk]

I have this same issue with RT-AC66U, and RT-AC87R, This is a bug with Printer Serve, ASUS don`t fix this. When my hp printer is not rocognized, just powercycle the router.

I'm not using the Print Server however (I've had this issue before), I'm exclusively using Apple's AirPlay implementation.

 

[toor]

Just an update, I backed down my firmware to the latest 376 and the router is rock stable again. Also; I decided to open up my 87R and remove the heatsinks, the thermal tape they used is complete garbage.

I ripped it off and replaced it with thermal paste on all three heatsinks.
Just from the CPU, it was running at 84C normally and since I replaced the thermal tape it is now running at ~70C.

If anyone is running into a heat problem and dont want to go with laptop cooler fans, I recommend replacing the crappy thermal tape.

 

[raphaelogy]

Just an update, I backed down my firmware to the latest 376 and the router is rock stable again. Also; I decided to open up my 87R and remove the heatsinks, the thermal tape they used is complete garbage.

I ripped it off and replaced it with thermal paste on all three heatsinks.
Just from the CPU, it was running at 84C normally and since I replaced the thermal tape it is now running at ~70C.

If anyone is running into a heat problem and dont want to go with laptop cooler fans, I recommend replacing the crappy thermal tape.

Thanks for letting us know. However due to various regional rules and regulation by 3rd party service centres, I guess my warranty will be outright voided if i do so..

I hope asus will come out with a hardware revision soon..

 

[mucci]

After a lot of emails with ASUS suport, about 5.0GHz band stop to work:

apologize for the inconvenience.

We have already intimated this issue to the development team and they are working on it.

Once the issue is fixed a new firmware will be released and we will let you know.

Keep visiting the support site for further updates.


If you need any further assistance from our end, kindly contact the support lines below my signature.


Thank you very much,
Edin
Customer Service Center,
ASUSTek Computer Inc.

 

[mucci]

Just an update, I backed down my firmware to the latest 376 and the router is rock stable again. Also; I decided to open up my 87R and remove the heatsinks, the thermal tape they used is complete garbage.

I ripped it off and replaced it with thermal paste on all three heatsinks.
Just from the CPU, it was running at 84C normally and since I replaced the thermal tape it is now running at ~70C.

If anyone is running into a heat problem and dont want to go with laptop cooler fans, I recommend replacing the crappy thermal tape.

Really do not know if there's heating problem, or if this is a problem of this router. My router is on 24 hours a day and did not notice heating problems. I live in Sao Paulo city, Brazil, and in thisweek has ambient temperature of 36C, and had no problems.

I believe some units have a heating problems, not all.

 

[dfran1]

Just an update, I backed down my firmware to the latest 376 and the router is rock stable again. Also; I decided to open up my 87R and remove the heatsinks, the thermal tape they used is complete garbage.

I ripped it off and replaced it with thermal paste on all three heatsinks.
Just from the CPU, it was running at 84C normally and since I replaced the thermal tape it is now running at ~70C.

If anyone is running into a heat problem and dont want to go with laptop cooler fans, I recommend replacing the crappy thermal tape.

This is what I am getting with laptop cooler, I wonder if removing the tape would help me at all???

Is it hard to do? Can clips or ?? be broken? Or is it straight forward?

Also can you post a link to some great thermal paste (amazon?)

The only reason I am thinking about doing this, is heat in the summertime for me, and many others. I know once the firmware is great, this router will be the best of the best, now that we know heat with these is a major issue, maybe not at first but if not addressed the router will most likely prematurely fail. At this price we all paid at least for me, I can not throw that kind of money out every year. Especially if I can not sell it as used, in good working order.

admin@RT-AC87R:/tmp/home/root# qcsapi_sockrpc get_temperature
temperature_rfic_external = 0.0
temperature_rfic_internal = 44.7
temperature_bbic_internal = 50.0
admin@RT-AC87R:/tmp/home/root# cat /proc/dmu/temperature
CPU temperature : 57?C

To get this you telnet into the router (I use a mac, in mac open terminal, then type below)

But first you need to go into your router
"Administration"
"System"
"Enable Telnet" to "Yes"
"Apply"

Now commands on computer

telnet "your router ip" ie: telnet 192.168.1.1
when asked type your uses ie: admin
when asked type your router password

use these commands (provided by merlin and or ??, thank you)

For the Quantenna SoC:

qcsapi_sockrpc get_temperature

For the Broadcom CPU:

cat /proc/dmu/temperature

EDIT: My 87 is performing quite well now, for 3 days so far.

I am also leaving Lan 1 jack unused now, after reading about that, not a big deal to me anyway and MAYBE nothing at all.

 

[toor]

I used some arctic silver 5 I had already on hand for the thermal paste. It wasnt too difficult to remove the case. The front has no clips. (the front being where the LEDs are) I probably should have taken some pics; but there is one clip on each side, and I believe it was either 4 or 5 clips on the back.

I pried it open starting from the side using a plastic pry that looks like a guitar pic. you should be able to do it with a credit card as well for a pry. The clips they use are the same they have used for all of the asus routers; there should be some pics around for people taking apart the N66u to use the internal sd slot.

The heatsinks are held on with simple plastic clips with springs, using a simple needle nose pliers to squeeze the end together is what I used to push them through.

The reason I said the thermal tape is garbage is because after removing the heatsink; I could tell that the actual contact being made between the heatsink/tape/cpu was about the size of a pencil eraser. Now the heatsink has full contact. I might have gotten away with just pushing the heatsink on harder to make sure there was full contact, but paste imho is just better.

 

[mromero]

I found this image.

I assume the clips are around the heatsinks, your remove them, lift off the heatsinks, then remove the el-cheapo thermal tape underneath.

I have Artic Silver lying around I believe I can do this same as with computer CPUS.

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r254/maylyn22/ASUS RT-AC87U/PCB-1.png~original

I used some arctic silver 5 I had already on hand for the thermal paste. It wasnt too difficult to remove the case. The front has no clips. (the front being where the LEDs are) I probably should have taken some pics; but there is one clip on each side, and I believe it was either 4 or 5 clips on the back.

I pried it open starting from the side using a plastic pry that looks like a guitar pic. you should be able to do it with a credit card as well for a pry. The clips they use are the same they have used for all of the asus routers; there should be some pics around for people taking apart the N66u to use the internal sd slot.

The heatsinks are held on with simple plastic clips with springs, using a simple needle nose pliers to squeeze the end together is what I used to push them through.

The reason I said the thermal tape is garbage is because after removing the heatsink; I could tell that the actual contact being made between the heatsink/tape/cpu was about the size of a pencil eraser. Now the heatsink has full contact. I might have gotten away with just pushing the heatsink on harder to make sure there was full contact, but paste imho is just better.

 

[ahduck]

This is what I am getting with laptop cooler, I wonder if removing the tape would help me at all???

Is it hard to do? Can clips or ?? be broken? Or is it straight forward?

Also can you post a link to some great thermal paste (amazon?)

The only reason I am thinking about doing this, is heat in the summertime for me, and many others. I know once the firmware is great, this router will be the best of the best, now that we know heat with these is a major issue, maybe not at first but if not addressed the router will most likely prematurely fail. At this price we all paid at least for me, I can not throw that kind of money out every year. Especially if I can not sell it as used, in good working order.



To get this you telnet into the router (I use a mac, in mac open terminal, then type below)

But first you need to go into your router
"Administration"
"System"
"Enable Telnet" to "Yes"
"Apply"

Now commands on computer

telnet "your router ip" ie: telnet 192.168.1.1
when asked type your uses ie: admin
when asked type your router password

use these commands (provided by merlin and or ??, thank you)

For the Quantenna SoC:

qcsapi_sockrpc get_temperature

For the Broadcom CPU:

cat /proc/dmu/temperature

EDIT: My 87 is performing quite well now, for 3 days so far.

I am also leaving Lan 1 jack unused now, after reading about that, not a big deal to me anyway and MAYBE nothing at all.

Some pics for you to experiment with
http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/91564085-post1530.html

 

[dfran1]

Some pics for you to experiment with
http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/91564085-post1530.html

Thank You all,
So basically just the cooling pad is good enough it seems from the tests.
voiding warranty for a maybe 3 degrees less (on the cpu, not the 5GHz chip yet) does not seem worth it
I think we can all agree on that ?

I had to turn wifi off and back on on my iphone, but still working pretty well on day 3 so far
newest official firmware and laptop cooler.

 

[8undy]

So I pulled the router out of the closet after getting frustrated and I was analyzing bad packets on one of my wired switches seeing that two PC's were making many uPNP calls that were rejected. So I turned uPNP off on the main router.

I had also assigned a static IP to the wired switch which was a problem so i deleted that assigned. Finally I changed IPV6 Router advertisement to "NO'. Now that I've made those changes, I think things are running better. I'll post my uptime later. It is frustrating but I think working with the two router settings in router to router mode is helping. By the way, switched to Merlin's 49_5 version and the Log DHCP queries option on the LAN/DHCP tab is what enabled me to see in syslog what was causing rejected network packets. Hopefully I finally have a great setup with 2 AC87R's.

Finally figured out that in addition to turning off uPNP on the 2nd router that I needed to turn it off on the main router as well. This in addition to changing VPN to

Hey just want to give an update on the router/router vs. router/AP config. Both 2.4 & 5 Ghz have been rock solid with no drops in signal! I think I'm going to keep my setup until a new FW releases that allows a stable router/AP config. Anyway, here is a SS of my uptime...

 

[mucci]

Hey just want to give an update on the router/router vs. router/AP config. Both 2.4 & 5 Ghz have been rock solid with no drops in signal! I think I'm going to keep my setup until a new FW releases that allows a stable router/AP config. Anyway, here is a SS of my uptime...

Would you assist me? I have a asus rt-ac87 installed as follows:

The ASU is connected to the router fiber optic for network cable, LAN to LAN. The Asus DHCP is disabled. The ip is in the router's range of optical fiber. This because my ISP has a very difficult setting, because have IPTV. Who provides the IP is the ISP router, D-Link DMG6661, specially designed for the ISP.

Now the question:

Can I use an ASUS RT-AC66U as wifi signal repeater?

 

[ahduck]

Thank You all,
So basically just the cooling pad is good enough it seems from the tests.
voiding warranty for a maybe 3 degrees less (on the cpu, not the 5GHz chip yet) does not seem worth it
I think we can all agree on that ?

I had to turn wifi off and back on on my iphone, but still working pretty well on day 3 so far
newest official firmware and laptop cooler.

For me to only achieve such minor temperature different isn't worth the hassle. Moreover it's just the CPU core temperature.
Just adding a laptop cooler to the router is good enough to see significant temperature drop throughout all 3 cores.

Or maybe my technique of applying the thermal paste is wrong. But I'm too lazy to try it again any time soon.

 

[ktd]

Went back to the 3123 beta build that Gary posted a while back.
Since then my 5GHz has been solid, no Internet drops etc., and the WiFi signal strength is as good as later few's.

I don't use any of the apps/tools/functions so I can't tell if they are working as expected. But as a router my AC87U seems to work fine now.

 

[snbdora]

I just looked at a screenshot of the Administration page on "hardwarzone". It has 2 tabs, Performance and SNMP which don't exist on my router running 378 f/w. The screenshot shows his/her router version as 376. Did they remove these tabs in 378?

I just enabled ssh access and checked temperatures. I wonder what's the threshold of temperature above which would mean my router has a problem?

Thanks

 

[RMerlin]

I just looked at a screenshot of the Administration page on "hardwarzone". It has 2 tabs, Performance and SNMP which don't exist on my router running 378 f/w. The screenshot shows his/her router version as 376. Did they remove these tabs in 378?

I just enabled ssh access and checked temperatures. I wonder what's the threshold of temperature above which would means my router has a problem?

Thanks

That was most likely a screenshot of my firmware, not the stock Asus. Check the complete version number at the top.

 

[snbdora]

Yes seems like it's yours version. Just noticed on top the saying "Powered by Asuswrt-Merlin" and the version is 376.49_5

I'm going to try the latest version of yours. Thank you for your contribution.

I was looking at the Github, there was a new beta release readme but not anymore. I guess a new build is coming in the near future?

Where can I download build 378.50 beta 1 from?

 

[RMerlin]

Yes seems like it's yours version. Just noticed on top the saying "Powered by Asuswrt-Merlin" and the version is 376.49_5

I'm going to try the latest version of yours. Thank you for your contribution.

I was looking at the Github, there was a new beta release readme but not anymore. I guess a new build is coming in the near future?

Where can I download build 378.50 beta 1 from?

From the official website:

http://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/download

 

[toor]

For me to only achieve such minor temperature different isn't worth the hassle. Moreover it's just the CPU core temperature.
Just adding a laptop cooler to the router is good enough to see significant temperature drop throughout all 3 cores.

Or maybe my technique of applying the thermal paste is wrong. But I'm too lazy to try it again any time soon.

Mine was a 14C degree change from the pads to the paste.