Release ASUS RT-AX86 Series(RT-AX86U/RT-AX86S) Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388.23285 (15-05-2023)

[Tech9]

and the wifi analyzer (winInfoView) shows that it occupies a channel with a width of only 80 MHz, why?

Perhaps because your Wi-Fi analyzer doesn't see 160MHz channel.

Check channel information and link rates in System Log, Wireless Log instead.

 

[Portalnet]

And what application (wifi analyzer) correctly detects and shows 160Mhz channels?

 

[willyburz]

I haven't posted here in awhile, and found something that finally made the router work at 160HZ consistantly like the Firmware from January of 2022...where you can actually keep it working without fail without dropping to 80 hz, or dumping to ch. 161 randomly. SOOOOOO, long story short.

The auto channel still wants to live at 161 which completely defeats the purpose. I mean, if you check up allow 160hz, it should not allow the auto switch to choose a non 160hz channel option.

I have other channels that are actually really clean or have very low competing channel interference that SHOULD run 160HZ well, but it would not stay or go back to 160HZ after an hour, it would keep stuck at 80hz. It seems that the 160hz is SUPER finicky compared to older firmware versions with ANY little competing interference. IE: If it feels any subltle interference across the spectrum it shuts down to 80hz, but would NOT bounce to a better channel to when set to auto, it would just go to 161 SMDH... NOT because of radar, but because it trips too easily back to 80hz compared to older firmware.

I have now found the sweet channel spot and locked it in to Channel 52 (50) which is the cleanest spot I have and it lives 100% at 160HZ when AX compatible devices are on. "verified on WiFi Analyzer (open-source) and transmit rates in menu" It's a damn miracle.

There have to be much better firmware tweaks in the works, because this is rediculous, but hey I finally got it consistantly running 160hz and my 2,400+ transmit rates are back, WOO HOO!!

 

[perka.home]

I haven't posted here in awhile, and found something that finally made the router work at 160HZ consistantly like the Firmware from January of 2022...where you can actually keep it working without fail without dropping to 80 hz, or dumping to ch. 161 randomly. SOOOOOO, long story short.

The auto channel still wants to live at 161 which completely defeats the purpose. I mean, if you check up allow 160hz, it should not allow the auto switch to choose a non 160hz channel option.

I have other channels that are actually really clean or have very low competing channel interference that SHOULD run 160HZ well, but it would not stay or go back to 160HZ after an hour, it would keep stuck at 80hz. It seems that the 160hz is SUPER finicky compared to older firmware versions with ANY little competing interference. IE: If it feels any subltle interference across the spectrum it shuts down to 80hz, but would NOT bounce to a better channel to when set to auto, it would just go to 161 SMDH... NOT because of radar, but because it trips too easily back to 80hz compared to older firmware.

I have now found the sweet channel spot and locked it in to Channel 52 (50) which is the cleanest spot I have and it lives 100% at 160HZ when AX compatible devices are on. "verified on WiFi Analyzer (open-source) and transmit rates in menu" It's a damn miracle.

There have to be much better firmware tweaks in the works, because this is rediculous, but hey I finally got it consistantly running 160hz and my 2,400+ transmit rates are back, WOO HOO!!

Could you please share a screenshot of your 5G radio settings page ?

Thanks !

 

[willyburz]

And what application (wifi analyzer) correctly detects and shows 160Mhz channels?

WiFi Analyzer (open-source)

 

[willyburz]

Could you please share a screenshot of your 5G radio settings page ?

Thanks !

Too lazy to pull that over I haven't done anything crazy outside of using WPA2/WPA3, manual channel lock 2.5 and 20mhz, then on my 5G, manual lock channel, checked up allow 160mhz and the 20/40/80/160 from that drop down option. No real other tweaks outside of manually setting my DNS and I DO NOT use smart connect, smart connect is trash.

On the "WiFi Analyzer (open-source)" app, once you select your wifi, It's under Access Points tab at bottom, look up top... filter to just show 5G and be sure you have selected your wifi. It'll show the channel you are using, the spectrum window below it, and the MHZ in parenthesis. You can also see the specrum window on the Channel Graph tab along with all else to try to find that window after a few days of watching and looking it over. It'll stay at 80mhz until an AX device is active then it'll go to 160mhz. Sometimes it'll stay at 160 all the time, othertimes it'll drop until you use the AX devices again. "As I'm typing this after I fired it up, it flipped to 160mhz"

 

[iFrogMac]

I'm addressing this post to @drinkingbird since, you're the one who's helped me with the issue. Seems like I've had to update my guest network settings for my lights. Initially, if you remember, I created the guest network with intranet access disabled. Well, Wiz updated their lights to support matter, which wasn't working, even if I put the iPhone and Apple TV 4K (home hub) on the same guest network as the bulbs, matter still would not pair, or work. Seems like enabling intranet access in the guest network settings is the only thing that fixed it.

I was concerned doing so, would start the random drop offs again, but, so far it hasn't. I'm still using Guest 1, which has a different subnet from the main network, so that still may be helping it.
As far as the router, and this firmware in general, still been rock solid. The new printer I got even connects to 2.4ghz on the main network without problems, and keeps a solid connection.

For Reference: the printer is model # Epson ET-2800.
So overall happy with the setup. Just thought I would ask about the matter situation to see what your thoughts were since I'm not real familiar with it yet on a technical level, and what it requires from a network to work.

Thanks

 

[drinkingbird]

I'm addressing this post to @drinkingbird since, you're the one who's helped me with the issue. Seems like I've had to update my guest network settings for my lights. Initially, if you remember, I created the guest network with intranet access disabled. Well, Wiz updated their lights to support matter, which wasn't working, even if I put the iPhone and Apple TV 4K (home hub) on the same guest network as the bulbs, matter still would not pair, or work. Seems like enabling intranet access in the guest network settings is the only thing that fixed it.

I was concerned doing so, would start the random drop offs again, but, so far it hasn't. I'm still using Guest 1, which has a different subnet from the main network, so that still may be helping it.
As far as the router, and this firmware in general, still been rock solid. The new printer I got even connects to 2.4ghz on the main network without problems, and keeps a solid connection.

For Reference: the printer is model # Epson ET-2800.
So overall happy with the setup. Just thought I would ask about the matter situation to see what your thoughts were since I'm not real familiar with it yet on a technical level, and what it requires from a network to work.

Thanks

Yes with Asus stock firmware, when you disable "access intranet" it also enables AP isolation which makes it so devices on the guest network can't see each other. These are two separate things but I guess Asus assumed people would want both. It is possible via a script in Merlin to disable the AP isolation but leave LAN access blocked. You can also install the Yazfi addon which gives you the ability to do this in the GUI (also gives you several other more flexible options for guest networks).

Note that YazFi doesn't work with AImesh, not sure if you're using that or not. If not, and you want this ability to block LAN but have guests able to talk to each other, Yazfi is probably the easier path and gives you more features.

But yes the fact that Asus has Guest Wireless 1 on a separate subnet, thus having a router in between the two networks, is what is actually helping you, since that is blocking broadcasts, MDNS, multicast, etc. With a lot of these IOT devices is is that traffic that can start to snowball effect and overload stuff. But as you've found, you have to have some devices on the same network so they can discover each other (using that broadcast traffic that is blocked between networks).

With Yazfi, you can actually put every guest network on a different subnet letting you divide and isolate things even more. You can also allow LAN to talk to guest but not the other way around, etc. Of course the more SSIDs you have, the more overhead and impact on your wireless, so you have to find a balance.

If one guest network is enough and you don't care if those devices have access to/from your main LAN, then what you have set up now is fine.

I'm not familiar with Matter - depending on how it connects and does discovery, you may still be able to have it on a separate network, but with access intranet enabled. Or it may have to be on the same network as the bulbs, you'd have to test and see. Based on the fact that isolation prevented it from working, my guess is it relies on broadcast traffic for discovery and probably needs to be on the same guest network. You may need to do some research on it, maybe you can tell it IP addresses instead of relying on it to discover them, no idea.

If you want to re-enable blocking of LAN traffic but keep guests able to talk to each other, you can try Yazfi or the script route to do that.

 

[iFrogMac]

Yes with Asus stock firmware, when you disable "access intranet" it also enables AP isolation which makes it so devices on the guest network can't see each other. These are two separate things but I guess Asus assumed people would want both. It is possible via a script in Merlin to disable the AP isolation but leave LAN access blocked. You can also install the Yazfi addon which gives you the ability to do this in the GUI (also gives you several other more flexible options for guest networks).

Note that YazFi doesn't work with AImesh, not sure if you're using that or not. If not, and you want this ability to block LAN but have guests able to talk to each other, Yazfi is probably the easier path and gives you more features.

But yes the fact that Asus has Guest Wireless 1 on a separate subnet, thus having a router in between the two networks, is what is actually helping you, since that is blocking broadcasts, MDNS, multicast, etc. With a lot of these IOT devices is is that traffic that can start to snowball effect and overload stuff. But as you've found, you have to have some devices on the same network so they can discover each other (using that broadcast traffic that is blocked between networks).

With Yazfi, you can actually put every guest network on a different subnet letting you divide and isolate things even more. You can also allow LAN to talk to guest but not the other way around, etc. Of course the more SSIDs you have, the more overhead and impact on your wireless, so you have to find a balance.

If one guest network is enough and you don't care if those devices have access to/from your main LAN, then what you have set up now is fine.

I'm not familiar with Matter - depending on how it connects and does discovery, you may still be able to have it on a separate network, but with access intranet enabled. Or it may have to be on the same network as the bulbs, you'd have to test and see. Based on the fact that isolation prevented it from working, my guess is it relies on broadcast traffic for discovery and probably needs to be on the same guest network. You may need to do some research on it, maybe you can tell it IP addresses instead of relying on it to discover them, no idea.

If you want to re-enable blocking of LAN traffic but keep guests able to talk to each other, you can try Yazfi or the script route to do that.

I'm fine with having everything on one network as I know what everything is doing, that wasn't the reason I put the bulbs on the guest. It was simply to stop them from being flooded by the unnecessary traffic / broadcasts. As long as they continue to work this way, it will be acceptable. As far as matter, it goes hand and hand with thread. In the case of the bulbs, they use a combination of WiFi and Bluetooth. Also another feature Wiz enabled is called SpaceSense which means the bulbs themselves can detect motion using BT and WiFi. Somehow, even if I leave the phone put down, I can walk up to the lights, or in their area, and they turn on. There is absolutely no physical contact when this happens, so maybe you know how that works.

So, anyway, I want the devices on my network to be able to freely communicate with each other as possible that's not opening any unreasonable security holes, or causes the network to be unstable.

Yes, as soon as I enabled intranet access in the guest, the Home app on the iPhone also discovered the matter compatible bulbs near by prior to this, they didn't show up, and they didn't manually pair. So, it was blocking some kind of discovery and connection between devices without that communication enabled.

Thanks again @drinkingbird

 

[drinkingbird]

I'm fine with having everything on one network as I know what everything is doing, that wasn't the reason I put the bulbs on the guest. It was simply to stop them from being flooded by the unnecessary traffic / broadcasts. As long as they continue to work this way, it will be acceptable. As far as matter, it goes hand and hand with thread. In the case of the bulbs, they use a combination of WiFi and Bluetooth. Also another feature Wiz enabled is called SpaceSense which means the bulbs themselves can detect motion using BT and WiFi. Somehow, even if I leave the phone put down, I can walk up to the lights, or in their area, and they turn on. There is absolutely no physical contact when this happens, so maybe you know how that works.

So, anyway, I want the devices on my network to be able to freely communicate with each other as possible that's not opening any unreasonable security holes, or causes the network to be unstable.

Yes, as soon as I enabled intranet access in the guest, the Home app on the iPhone also discovered the matter compatible bulbs near by prior to this, they didn't show up, and they didn't manually pair. So, it was blocking some kind of discovery and connection between devices without that communication enabled.

Thanks again @drinkingbird

Technically stuff is still on two different networks (assuming you're using Guest Network 1 with the 192.168.101.x and 192.168.102.x IPs for your bulbs, and the regular LAN for other stuff). You're just allowing them to talk to each other.

If you're not concerned with isolating the two networks (security reasons etc) then you're all set, in reality it allows more things to work between the networks but still gives you the broadcast isolation. Out of curiosity, if your iphone and/or apple TV are on the main LAN and the bulbs on the guest, does that work? That would imply discovery is being done in a more specific manner (possibly using the internet), or does it only work if they're on the same network?

The wifi motion sensing is an interesting concept, and I've been curious to know how it will work since hearing about it. All it does is monitor changes in wifi (and/or bt) signal strength being received by the bulb's wifi radio (nothing to do with your phone or anything else so that's why you don't need it on you). As you walk around, you block the signal a bit and it fluctuates and the bulb sees that as motion. Of course wifi signal fluctuations happen all the time, and would happen if you walked in front of your router on the other end of the house too, so I'm assuming they've had to design some algorithm to differentiate nearby motion from other types of signal fluctuation. Has it been pretty accurate so far?

Either that or it is all just a cover story and there is a hidden camera in the bulb feeding back to China

 

[iFrogMac]

Technically stuff is still on two different networks (assuming you're using Guest Network 1 with the 192.168.101.x and 192.168.102.x IPs for your bulbs, and the regular LAN for other stuff). You're just allowing them to talk to each other.

If you're not concerned with isolating the two networks (security reasons etc) then you're all set, in reality it allows more things to work between the networks but still gives you the broadcast isolation. Out of curiosity, if your iphone and/or apple TV are on the main LAN and the bulbs on the guest, does that work? That would imply discovery is being done in a more specific manner (possibly using the internet), or does it only work if they're on the same network?

The wifi motion sensing is an interesting concept, and I've been curious to know how it will work since hearing about it. All it does is monitor changes in wifi (and/or bt) signal strength being received by the bulb's wifi radio (nothing to do with your phone or anything else so that's why you don't need it on you). As you walk around, you block the signal a bit and it fluctuates and the bulb sees that as motion. Of course wifi signal fluctuations happen all the time, and would happen if you walked in front of your router on the other end of the house too, so I'm assuming they've had to design some algorithm to differentiate nearby motion from other types of signal fluctuation. Has it been pretty accurate so far?

Either that or it is all just a cover story and there is a hidden camera in the bulb feeding back to China

To answer your first question, NO discovery worked between the phone and bulbs UNTIL I turned on intranet access. While it was disabled they could be controlled by the cloud, but local communications didn't work reliably e.g. they can talk locally over UDP. Matter / tread is a local network communication, nothing to do with cloud as far as I know.

The bulb accuracy isn't bad, but I disabled it because it didn't work in the way that I wanted it to, as the tech matures, it might at some point. The only down side is, the bulb I chose as the beacon, doesn't turn on and off, so that's one thing I don't like. I need to see if Wiz makes a non light device I can set that as a beacon so I don't lose one of the lights in the room to that function.

The problem is, and why I probably won't use this feature yet is, each bulb turns on and off individually. I can't currently set them to turn on and off as a group using matter currently in this configuration. Buying a motion sensor, might allow that to happen more reliably.

The other thing is, only certain lights seem to work with matter. Either not all my bulbs have received the update, as it's still rolling out to devices, or they aren't supported devices to receive that update as their chipset is too old. It's not a big deal, as they all work by the cloud and non matter platforms, and to be honest, right now the matter controls for color and other functions are very limited compared to the cloud services control. So, at least I can turn the supported bulbs on and off and adjust brightness reliably with matter in the Home app.

A lot of my current smart home devices, are designed that, if they don't detect at least WPA2 encryption on the SSID, they won't connect. So, I feel there is enough fail safe built in combined with good usage practices to keep the network safe. Also everything I have gets regular firmware updates, so, not using any out of date, or unsupported devices on the network, which would also be a security hold due to lack of patches. So, I think I'm good to go, and it's just about finding the right settings so things can internally talk so local communication features work as expected /intended.

 

[drinkingbird]

To answer your first question, NO discovery worked between the phone and bulbs UNTIL I turned on intranet access. While it was disabled they could be controlled by the cloud, but local communications didn't work reliably e.g. they can talk locally over UDP. Matter / tread is a local network communication, nothing to do with cloud as far as I know.

The bulb accuracy isn't bad, but I disabled it because it didn't work in the way that I wanted it to, as the tech matures, it might at some point. The only down side is, the bulb I chose as the beacon, doesn't turn on and off, so that's one thing I don't like. I need to see if Wiz makes a non light device I can set that as a beacon so I don't lose one of the lights in the room to that function.

The problem is, and why I probably won't use this feature yet is, each bulb turns on and off individually. I can't currently set them to turn on and off as a group using matter currently in this configuration. Buying a motion sensor, might allow that to happen more reliably.

The other thing is, only certain lights seem to work with matter. Either not all my bulbs have received the update, as it's still rolling out to devices, or they aren't supported devices to receive that update as their chipset is too old. It's not a big deal, as they all work by the cloud and non matter platforms, and to be honest, right now the matter controls for color and other functions are very limited compared to the cloud services control. So, at least I can turn the supported bulbs on and off and adjust brightness reliably with matter in the Home app.

A lot of my current smart home devices, are designed that, if they don't detect at least WPA2 encryption on the SSID, they won't connect. So, I feel there is enough fail safe built in combined with good usage practices to keep the network safe. Also everything I have gets regular firmware updates, so, not using any out of date, or unsupported devices on the network, which would also be a security hold due to lack of patches. So, I think I'm good to go, and it's just about finding the right settings so things can internally talk so local communication features work as expected /intended.

Yeah I meant after enabling "access LAN" if they still have to be on the same SSID to work properly or if they're working between networks. Even if they have local communication, they may be using the cloud to learn the IP address/status of the other devices or discover them initially. Every system is different.

Yeah I suspected the accuracy would be a problem, probably they will fine tune and tweak it as time goes on (people with it enabled may actually be uploading "signatures" it learns, usually the terms have something in there allowing them to do that). Does it have a "learn" feature where you walk in and out of the room a few times? Sort of like training Alexa to your voice etc. There are motion sensors available that will be far more reliable as they use infrared to see motion. Obviously every system is different so whether you could set a single motion sensor to turn on multiple bulbs, depends on the manufacturer.

It isn't so much the encryption that people are usually concerned with, it is more that the manufacturer (or the wifi chip maker) could be doing untrustworthy things, or the device could get infected with malware. Not necessarily a huge concern, but that's typically the reason for wanting to isolate devices like this with no LAN access. If you wanted to do that, you could, but your iphone/appletv hub etc would probably all have to be on that guest network to be able to see the bulbs, and you'd have to disable the AP isolation either through script or by using YazFi.

With my setup, my few IOT things are on an isolated guest with no LAN access. I have the AP isolation disabled so they can see each other, and if I need to cast from my phone or control them etc I have the guest network saved and just tap it on my phone to switch. But honestly, I never do that so probably will turn the AP solation back on when I'm toying with it next.

 

[iFrogMac]

Yeah I meant after enabling "access LAN" if they still have to be on the same SSID to work properly or if they're working between networks. Even if they have local communication, they may be using the cloud to learn the IP address/status of the other devices or discover them initially. Every system is different.

Yeah I suspected the accuracy would be a problem, probably they will fine tune and tweak it as time goes on (people with it enabled may actually be uploading "signatures" it learns, usually the terms have something in there allowing them to do that). Does it have a "learn" feature where you walk in and out of the room a few times? Sort of like training Alexa to your voice etc. There are motion sensors available that will be far more reliable as they use infrared to see motion. Obviously every system is different so whether you could set a single motion sensor to turn on multiple bulbs, depends on the manufacturer.

It isn't so much the encryption that people are usually concerned with, it is more that the manufacturer (or the wifi chip maker) could be doing untrustworthy things, or the device could get infected with malware. Not necessarily a huge concern, but that's typically the reason for wanting to isolate devices like this with no LAN access. If you wanted to do that, you could, but your iphone/appletv hub etc would probably all have to be on that guest network to be able to see the bulbs, and you'd have to disable the AP isolation either through script or by using YazFi.

With my setup, my few IOT things are on an isolated guest with no LAN access. I have the AP isolation disabled so they can see each other, and if I need to cast from my phone or control them etc I have the guest network saved and just tap it on my phone to switch. But honestly, I never do that so probably will turn the AP solation back on when I'm toying with it next.

OK, the bulbs do show up in the app on the iPhone, and the iPhone is on the main network, and the bulbs are on the guest. The ONLY time I had to put the iPhone on the guest is the lights require the phone to be on 2.4 ghz for paring, they can't pair between 2.4 and 5Ghz. Once paired they can be controlled from anywhere, even outside the home. The main thing enabling intranet access did was get matter communications working. Since I am using Apple Home for Matter, my Apple TV is my home hub which means it has a matter transmitter in it, and a thread border router.
So to answer your question, yes, once paired with the app, the bulbs and phone don't need to be on the same network. They only needed the local communications for matter, or UDP if I wanted local communications. Wiz designed it so the bulbs can communicate locally or by the cloud. So with local communication enabled in the app, they try local first, if that doesn't work, they use the cloud. Since matter is local only, that's why I needed to change settings for that to work.

 

[quick3questions]

Still running my AX86u thanks to everyone here!
quick question:
- Is this firmware solid to upgrade from my current 388_22525? I usually see more positive feedback before I update, this version seems to have mostly crickets. Also curious if a new version will drop soon?

 

[drinkingbird]

Still running my AX86u thanks to everyone here!
2 more quick questions:
- Is this firmware solid to upgrade from my current 388_22525? I usually see more positive feedback before I update, this version seems to have mostly crickets. Also curious if a new version will drop soon?
-for passwords I still use wpa2-personal (aes). Is this still a solid recommendation?
thanks!

I don't run stock but generally crickets are a good thing. Not sure if anyone other than maybe @RMerlin knows their release schedule.

If all your devices support WPA3 (which means they are all AX devices), that is a good upgrade (WPA2 has been cracked, though unlikely anyone is sitting outside your house cracking your wifi). Mixed WPA2/3 mode is a tradeoff but have heard of some problems/quirks with it. You can give it a try and see how it works, not really critical in my opinion.

 

[Andro]

After upgrading to the latest firmware version (3.0.0.4.388.23285), I noticed a problem with the disconnection of the connection to the router. I performed a factory reset after the software update and all settings I entered manually. In the previous firmware version (3.0.0.4.388.22525), I had no problems with the connection to the router dropping off. I did not make any changes to the (Wireless) settings of the router (all settings are default). Are there any settings that can cause this problem? What could I change in the settings, where to look?

 

[bbunge]

After upgrading to the latest firmware version (3.0.0.4.388.23285), I noticed a problem with the disconnection of the connection to the router. I performed a factory reset after the software update and all settings I entered manually. In the previous firmware version (3.0.0.4.388.22525), I had no problems with the connection to the router dropping off. I did not make any changes to the (Wireless) settings of the router (all settings are default). Are there any settings that can cause this problem? What could I change in the settings, where to look?

Can you be more specific as to what disconnected? WAN, WIFI or something else?

 

[Andro]

Can you be more specific as to what disconnected? WAN, WIFI or something else?

I'm losing my WiFi connection. After a while, the phone re-connects to the rourer. On the previous firmware this situation never happened.

 

[iFrogMac]

I'm losing my WiFi connection. After a while, the phone re-connects to the rourer. On the previous firmware this situation never happened.

I don't remember if I factory reset with the latest firmware, or not, I may have just for prevention measures. but I haven't had any connection loss due to the router's firmware. The issues I've had were due to clients, but they are resolved now.

 

[Andro]

The issues I've had were due to clients, but they are resolved now.

I did not change the phone, I have the same device.