Asus RT-AC87U - Intel 7265/8265 5GHz Freezing.

[Stuey3D]

Hi all first time posting so go easy on me.

I have an Asus RT-AC87U that I've had since March and a HP Omen gaming laptop that I've had since February, up until recently (a few weeks) these have worked amazingly together with lovely high speeds.

Now I have massive issues with the 5GHz network, the laptop can be connected with a full strength and have no throughput at all. This issue is random and is sometimes instant and other times can take a while to manifest itself.

I have in an attempt to diagnose the issue done the following:

Upgrade/Downgrade Router Firmware
Switch Between Stock/Merlin
Used recovery mode to fully reset the NVRAM
Used recovery mode to flash firmware upgrades and then flush NVRAM.
Upgraded/Downgraded Wifi card drivers
Uninstalled wifi card drivers and fully reinstalled
Tried a Linux live USB (the issue is in Linux too)
Changed Wifi card inside the laptop from the Intel 7265 - Intel 8265
Played with various settings on the router and laptops wifi drivers.

The issue still persists no matter what I seem to do, amazingly the new wifi card didnt fix it either.

Every other 5GHz device works as normal on the Asus, which consists of multiple iPhones an iPad a works laptop with an Intel 8260 (which is why I tried the 8265), and a 2012 MacBook Pro (802.11N only)

And likewise the HP Omen works perfect with my ISP router which is also a Wave 2 802.11AC router with Mu-MIMO same as the Asus.

Is there anything I am missing as I am at a loss, and I can't understand why after months of working perfect together the laptop and the router now suddenly dont want to work together over 5GHz.

 

[Stuey3D]

Quick update, I've rolled back the firmware all the way back to the oldest one on Asus's website which is a firmware from 2015 and oddly enough it performs far better than the newer firmware. 5GHz seems to be running ok for now (Time will tell) but the stand out thing I noticed is that I pulled a file over from my NAS and with the latest firmware I was getting around 60MB/s which I thought was decent until I just repeatedly did the same test now and it pulled the file over consistently at just under 80MB/s which is insane speed. Not sure why the older firmware seems to be working better as I thought older firmwares had issues with the Quantenna stuff powering the 5GHz but in my case it seems to be working much better but as I said time will tell the freezing may come back.

However the problem now is that my network is now one massive security hole which I am not too comfortable with.

 

[Stuey3D]

The issue presented itself again as I upgraded to newer firmware on the router but I noticed what happens, the TX rate stays at 867Mb but the RX rate drops to 6Mb if this helps someone diagnose.

 

[Stuey3D]

So I’ve put the ancient firmware back on to test and the laptop now seems to work perfect but the freezing issue is now occurring on my wife’s iPhone although mine is working fine.

However with this firmware the iphones continually drop off wifi when in standby rather than stay connected, they do it in later versions of you disable beamforming but on this version the beamforming trick doesn’t seem to work.

I am beginning to regret this router, I emailed Asus yesterday so hopefully they will RMA it’s only 3 months old.

A question to anyone who has returned a router to Asus what are the chances of getting a different model as clearly the 5Ghz part of the router is having massive compatibility issues and I’d rather not have 87U after 87U in the hope that one seems to work fine.

 

[VANT]

I have problems with intel wifi card when i use latest intel drivers. When i use default windows drivers problems gone.

 

[Stuey3D]

I am using the default windows drivers or are there other ones I can use? When I installed the 8265 I fully deleted the drivers for the older 7265 and when Windows booted the wifi was working but it appeared to be Intel drivers downloaded via Windows update without all that ProSet stuff.

 

[sfx2000]

I have in an attempt to diagnose the issue done the following:

Upgrade/Downgrade Router Firmware
Switch Between Stock/Merlin
Used recovery mode to fully reset the NVRAM
Used recovery mode to flash firmware upgrades and then flush NVRAM.
Upgraded/Downgraded Wifi card drivers
Uninstalled wifi card drivers and fully reinstalled
Tried a Linux live USB (the issue is in Linux too)
Changed Wifi card inside the laptop from the Intel 7265 - Intel 8265
Played with various settings on the router and laptops wifi drivers.

The issue still persists no matter what I seem to do, amazingly the new wifi card didnt fix it either.

One thing you didn't try, or at least didn't note above - what happens when you use the 2.4GHz only on the laptop - does the problem still occur?

Since the 87U uses Quantenna for the 5GHz, and Broadcom for the 2.4GHz - it's a valid test case to sort out if this is an interoperability issue between Intel client and Quantenna radio config on the AP side.

 

[Stuey3D]

Ahh yes I totally forgot to mention that, as a work around I am on 2.4GHz now via a guest network which is 100% reliable no issues at all including using the 40MHz wide channels

 

[Stuey3D]

I've done further testing. The 2015 firmware the Laptop worked perfect on 5GHz wifi (or seemed to) but then the iPhones started to freeze and also drop connection in standby mode. Put new firmware on the router then the iPhones work much better (occasional slight hiccup but mostly good) but the laptop then has the freezing issue so I cant win.

However the 2.4GHz band has been perfect the whole time.

 

[sfx2000]

Have you disabled the MU-MIMO on the 5GHz?

 

[Stuey3D]

Have you disabled the MU-MIMO on the 5GHz?

Currently it’s off but every setting I can get to on the 5GHz part of the router has been toggled through its various settings to test.

Also when the issue occurs I noticed on the Network Map Page that the connection to my laptop is indicated as TX867Mb/s but RX drops to 6Mb/s

 

[Stuey3D]

Not sure if something I can tweak in the Intel driver but I’m pretty sure I’ve tried most of those settings too, apart from the ones I had no clue what they did and couldn’t find an adequate explanation on google for.

 

[sfx2000]

You didn't mention which version of Windows - but the WHQL drivers in Windows update are generally stable enough in Win7/10 in my experience...

 

[Stuey3D]

Windows 10 Home 64Bit using the drivers downloaded by Windows itself I’ve not manually installed any, I believe I am on driver 19.60.7 (not in front of laptop at the mo to confirm)

 

[sfx2000]

Windows 10 Home 64Bit using the drivers downloaded by Windows itself I’ve not manually installed any, I believe I am on driver 19.60.7 (not in front of laptop at the mo to confirm)

There's a setting in the advanced config within device manager - I forget off-hand, but I think it's turbo or something like that.

@RMerlin found the setting in the Intel driver, and it seemed to settle things down quite a bit..

 

[john9527]

The issue presented itself again as I upgraded to newer firmware on the router but I noticed what happens, the TX rate stays at 867Mb but the RX rate drops to 6Mb if this helps someone diagnose.

The reported rates dynamically change depending on demand. start a large upload from the client (remember the rates are from the router point of view, so rx rate means receiving from client) and you should see it change.

 

[sfx2000]

The reported rates dynamically change depending on demand. start a large upload from the client (remember the rates are from the router point of view, so rx rate means receiving from client) and you should see it change.

Also note that there's been many performance reports here on the forums with regards to the Win10 Creator's Update - and this has been across multiple wifi client adapter vendors - not just Intel, but Broadcom, QC-Atheros, and Realtek...

 

[Stuey3D]

The reported rates dynamically change depending on demand. start a large upload from the client (remember the rates are from the router point of view, so rx rate means receiving from client) and you should see it change.

Yeah I do always see those figures change but when this issue presents itself there is a distinctive pattern. All throughput stops the wifi icon goes from max signal to dropping a bar occasionally the warning triangle comes up next to it but that’s rare and then the signal increases again but throughput is still next to non existent sometimes I can get tiny amounts of data through.

It’s just a couple of times when this happened I was in the network map page and the RX rate plummeted at the exact moment the throughput dropped

 

[Stuey3D]

Also note that there's been many performance reports here on the forums with regards to the Win10 Creator's Update - and this has been across multiple wifi client adapter vendors - not just Intel, but Broadcom, QC-Atheros, and Realtek...

Ahh I did think it might be a windows issue as my wife’s work laptop runs win7 with a 8260 and has no issues, however the issue is still present when I boot a Ubuntu live USB I did the test to rule out windows being the problem.

 

[Stuey3D]

Don’t see any turbo option in advanced driver settings there is a throughput booster which is disabled by default but I’ve already tried that.