Asus RT-AX86U Disconnection Issue

[Rhylar]

Hi,

Beginner here with basic knowledge. New to the forum but have been lurking around for a solution. I purchased an Asus RT-AX86U 3 weeks ago. However, the connection just randomly drops sometimes and has been quite an annoyance watching streams, gaming or online school. For example, I am watching stream on twitch.tv but all of a sudden, my connection would be cut off (stream loading, wifi icon on the windows bar is down etc.) This would last about 1 minute then the internet is fine again. This would happen every hour or so and I dont know why. I have tried resetting the router to default settings, flashing the firmware (from asus website) and still I would experience this drop.

Pulling my hair for desperation, I decided to jump into installing Asus Merlin and but it is still occuring. These are the latest steps I tried to do:

Reset the router to factory settings and rebooted it.
Installed Asus Merlin for RT-AX86U version 386.1
Reset the router again to factory settings after installing Merlin Firmware.
Followed "Best Practice" installation settings.

The connection speeds definitely had an improvement. However, I would still get drops in my connection. I am tired of trying to figure this out on my own and need expert help please. Thank you very much
I have attached a text file with my system log. I tried to capture the connection drop within the hour it happened, so the pasted log is approximately an hour long.

 

[KingBravery]

Maybe because of WPA 2 Enterprise?

 

[Rhylar]

Maybe because of WPA 2 Enterprise?

Just checked, im on WPA2 Personal

 

[Rhylar]

(Note I also posted in the Asus AX subforum but im so desperate that I am trying for wider coverage. Sorry mod, pls delete if redundant)

Hi,

Beginner here with basic knowledge. New to the forum but have been lurking around for a solution. I purchased an Asus RT-AX86U 3 weeks ago. However, the connection just randomly drops sometimes and has been quite an annoyance watching streams, gaming or online school. For example, I am watching stream on twitch.tv but all of a sudden, my connection would be cut off (stream loading, wifi icon on the windows bar is down etc.) This would last about 1 minute then the internet is fine again. This would happen every hour or so and I dont know why. I have tried resetting the router to default settings, flashing the firmware (from asus website) and still I would experience this drop.

Pulling my hair for desperation, I decided to jump into installing Asus Merlin and but it is still occuring. These are the latest steps I tried to do:

Reset the router to factory settings and rebooted it.
Installed Asus Merlin for RT-AX86U version 386.1
Reset the router again to factory settings after installing Merlin Firmware.
Followed "Best Practice" installation settings.

The connection speeds definitely had an improvement. However, I would still get drops in my connection. I am tired of trying to figure this out on my own and need expert help please. Thank you very much
I have attached a text file with my system log. I tried to capture the connection drop within the hour it happened, so the pasted log is approximately an hour long.

 

[joe scian]

I dont think the log actually shows the router restarting - however
are you using guest wifi 1 - if so use guest wifi 2 instead. Failing that I suggest a WPS reset - instead of factory default reset - and enter everything manually again - dont use a backup. Also please post your 5ghz and 2ghz wifi settings basic and professional. Also since most failed messages appear with AMPDU - make sure AMPDU Optimise Aggregation is disabled in professional settings for 5ghz and 2ghz. You should set AMPDU RTS enabled and RTS Threshold at 2347. Do you run scripts - if the connection drops on the hour check which scripts run hourly.

 

[L&LD]

Which 'best practice' installation did you follow, precisely?

 

[Rhylar]

I dont think the log actually shows the router restarting - however
are you using guest wifi 1 - if so use guest wifi 2 instead. Failing that I suggest a WPS reset - instead of factory default reset - and enter everything manually again - dont use a backup. Also please post your 5ghz and 2ghz wifi settings basic and professional. Also since most failed messages appear with AMPDU - make sure AMPDU Optimise Aggregation is disabled in professional settings for 5ghz and 2ghz. You should set AMPDU RTS enabled and RTS Threshold at 2347. Do you run scripts - if the connection drops on the hour check which scripts run hourly.

I am not using guest wifi, it is turned off

These have been configured like this, I didnt touch them:
AMPDU Optimise Aggregation is disabled
AMPDU RTS is enabled
RTS Threshold is 2347

What do you mean by scripts? If I dont know what that means, I probably dont.

 

[Rhylar]

Which 'best practice' installation did you follow, precisely?

Yours, its one of your post I found online, it was dated somewhere around December 2020 I think, so its pretty recent. Dont know how I got there though, history is gone lol

 

[L&LD]

Since your issues are not normal, I would suggest trying those steps again.

Best practice to uploading latest Merlin 386.1

I have a AX-86U with update factory firmware. As Merlin 386.1 stable is out, I like to upload it. Can anyone share the best practices to do that? Appreciate it.

www.snbforums.com

 

[jbee90]

i have this same issue, using 2.5gps port as wan dfs channels enabled, occasionally i watch youtube and it takes 3 seconds to load or pages to load, i also randomly get a red wan led and i checked the log this is what it said. i rebooted my modem just after the wan light went red, can someone tell me what caused, i factory reset my rt ax86u twice back to back

kernel: eth0 (Int switch port: 3) (Logical Port: 3) (phyId: 1e) Link DOWN.
Feb 3 20:08:19 WAN Connection: ISP's DHCP did not function properly.
Feb 3 20:08:23 WAN Connection: WAN(0) link down.
Feb 3 20:08:53 kernel: eth0 (Int switch port: 3) (Logical Port: 3) (phyId: 1e) Link Up at 1000 mbps full duplex
Feb 3 20:08:54 WAN Connection: WAN(0) link up.
Feb 3 20:08:54 rc_service: wanduck 1129:notify_rc restart_wan_if 0
Feb 3 20:08:56 odhcp6c[1882]: Failed to send DHCPV6 message to ff02::1:2 (Network is unreachable)
Feb 3 20:08:56 rc_service: dhcp6c 31659:notify_rc restart_ddns
Feb 3 20:08:56 rc_service: waitting "restart_wan_if 0" via wanduck ...

 

[jbee90]

also anybody here i can send my log to so they can tell me what the problem is?

 

[L&LD]

@jbee90 just upload the log to Pastebin and link it here.

 

[jbee90]

my internet provider is rogers i have the modem hitron 4582 bridged to rt ax86u and using cloudflare dns
here is the link to the log https://pastebin.com/SUNhGL99

 

[jbee90]

i have 160mhz enabled, dfs auto select, ul/dl ofdma plus mu mimo, i have ipv6 enabled too

 

[L&LD]

Try using the regular WAN Port instead.

 

[jbee90]

will do, family is working from home, cant really do anything to the router yet, could it be a bug? i will change it tonight and see if it happens again.
anything out of the ordinary from the log?

 

[L&LD]

A bug, maybe. More like an incompatibility with your modem/ONT though. If you have different cables to test with, do so.

Sorry, I don't read 'logs'.

Not usually any point to if the issue is known (and yes, I've read that the 2.5GbE Port may not work with all WAN connections or more specifically, modem/ONT's).

 

[renegadeavenger]

will do, family is working from home, cant really do anything to the router yet, could it be a bug? i will change it tonight and see if it happens again.
anything out of the ordinary from the log?

The problem is with Rogers, not your ax86u.

Check rogers community forums and you will see many others including myself suffering from intermittent disconnects.

 

[jpthsd]

also there's 386.1_2 Merlin released recently, try to update that as well!

 

[skippy_p]

Hello. I don’t mean to revive an old thread but I’m not sure where else to post this. I just wanted to say that this is still an issue with the AX86U router. I’ve been struggling to find the root cause of the problem and stumbled upon this thread.

Approx two weeks ago, I purchased an AX86U router as an upgrade to my ~2 year old AC86U. I didn’t really need AX since I only have one AX capable device at home and I personally think AX is way too overhyped at the moment anyway, but I liked the quad core CPU, 1GB of RAM, new radios, etc. Plus the router was on sale so I took the plunge.

Over the past two weeks of using and testing the router, I experience similar random and intermittent WiFi drops mentioned by others in this thread. I’m not sure how widespread this issue is but given that there are numerous reports of this happening, I’m inclined to believe that Asus might potentially have a consistency or quality control problem on their hands. It’s also possible that this issue is happening with ALL AX86U devices and the majority of users are just not noticing it.

The way I noticed the problem is that several times per week, my Microsoft Teams meetings would randomly freeze and I’d get “something went wrong” on the Teams window or I’d be booted out of the meeting completely. Then a few seconds later it would automatically reconnect. This was on an HP Elitebook 840 G7 laptop, which has a WiFi 6 chipset. I did make sure the firmware/driver of the laptop’s chipset was up-to-date. I’m also running the latest stock firmware of the router. Note - I tried Merlin’s firmware but the issue persisted. I’ve since gone back to stock. My ISP modem is bridged and connected to the AX86U’s regular WAN port (not 2.5G port) since I only subscribe to 150Mbps internet. I use separate SSIDs for 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Almost all of my wireless clients are connected to my 5GHz network. I use 2.4 just for a very small number of legacy clients that don’t have 5GHz support.

When the issue occurs, I can see that the laptop loses its connection to my WiFi network for a brief time and then re-connects. When that happens, I see “ampdu_resp_timeout” entries in the router’s system log. I do have AMPDU enabled along with using default values for RTS threshold, DTIM interval and Beacon Interval, and optimize ampdu is disabled. Enabling the optimization setting made no difference so I kept it disabled as recommended by many. I also tried with and without AX mode enabled but that too didn’t make a difference. I’ve been running the router with AX mode disabled and with the 160MHz channel disabled as well.

So, I don’t know if this is a problem with the router, with the Broadcom radios, or with the firmware.

I NEVER had this issue with my AC86U in the last two years I’ve been using it. That router has been absolutely rock solid for me. I would love to continue using the AX86U as my new router because I like how snappy it feels overall, but this random WiFi drop problem has me at my wits end, and I can’t afford to have these intermittent problems with my Teams meetings because it’s impacting my work. I’m in Teams meetings every day for vast periods of the day. I’d rather just continue using the AC router for its reliability. Sadly, I will probably return the AX router and perhaps wait for a hardware refresh of it or re-buy it in another year or two when AX clients become more prevalent…hopefully Asus will have fixed this problem by then.