ASUS RT-N56U beta firmware

[CL-Jeremy]

Hello,

We understand everybody's frustration over the MgmtRing error and we appreciate any information you can provide about the matter. We are looking into the issue and it seems to be affecting only select networking environments. If anyone has this specific error, please provide the info requested on this thread - http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=9943

You do have the option to downgrade firmware or try custom firmware if that is more preferred.

 

[svs2013]

UPNP help needed

I followed all instructions related to upgrading from my earlier 1.0...18 to the 3.0.....342 and upgraded. After that I seem to have lost my upnp feature. I can't see the drives on any computer or my devices (xbox, media player, etc) I did remove the previous dms etc on the hard drives, no old ASUS software on my computer either. also I tried install download master and media server but keep getting message server not found for download master and for media server it hangs at about 99%. and after the usb drives are recognized, the media server feature disappears altogether from the USB application menu.

can anyone help please?

 

[Frank]

New as a forum member, but have been following it for some time as I’ve also been experiencing frequent 2.4ghz wifi connectivity drops with RT-N56U. Four days ago I flashed to latest ASUS firmware .342 using this process: Cycled router power and held in reset button. Loaded .342.trx from web GUI and let run to completion. Immediately cycled the router power, configured network, and finished by using http://192.168.1.1/Main_AdmStatus_Content.asp to enter mtd-erase -d nvram and again cycled power.

I’ve only received one kernel error (Qidx(0), not enough space in MgmtRing, MgmtRingFullCount=1!) about six hours after the .342 update. Since then no additional errors and 2.4/5/wired connectivity have been rock solid. Router has no printer or USB drive directly connected, nor use IPv6; it supports about 20 wired and wireless devices including PCs/laptops, two Ethernet connected NAS, several iPhone/Android phones and some home entertainment equipment.

Thanks to RogerSC, baadnewz and kayakj for their helpful forum contributions.

 

[pogle]

Still going...

Similar experience to Frank above.. upgraded to .342 using the procedure described, and have only seen 2 mgmtring errors, both within 10 minutes of the new f/w upgrade.. major drop in System log entries from before.. only 9 in the last 3 days.

Now into 4 days of continuous uptime and router has been fast and not dropped any connections that I can determine.. running about 20-24 clients on both channels. Keeping my fingers crossed..

 

[taedan]

Is there not a toggle for turning off the 2.4 radio in .342? I see that there is an on/off toggle for 5 GHz but not for the 2.4.

 

[RogerSC]

Is there not a toggle for turning off the 2.4 radio in .342? I see that there is an on/off toggle for 5 GHz but not for the 2.4.

Isn't the "enable radio" button under the "Professional" tab for 2.4GHz. band?

 

[taedan]

RogerSC:

Yes, I missed that. It's there. Thanks!

 

[iamstillvince]

weird hookup, works great

so i have been running on 342 for a few weeks now and everything seems great. even changed my setup to something that as far as i know shouldn't work. i upgraded to telus 25mb internet, they only provide a actiontec router combo.no stand alone modem available. Its locked down so i cant easily enable bridging, i decided to just try plugging the 56u directly into the lan port on the actiontec , and changed no setting except turning off wireless on actiontec. everything works great, im testing a full 25mb speed, "A" ratings on pingtest.net , xbox live is great..... no drops. Guess this router handles it great.

 

[pogle]

MgmtRing Errors Back again..

After running flawlessly for nearly 8 days, the MgmtRing Errors have returned.. 115 so far in the last two days.. Thought I was past this.. pretty frustrated.

Unlike the initial two errors, 8 days ago, this time there was no message:

"Free TX/RX Ring Memory!" in the log after the MgmtRing errors.

Beginning to wonder if ASUS can/will fix this....???


I also just noticed that the System Log time on the errors is incorrect.. at least an hour ahead of the "System Time " shown on the same page.. what's up with that?

 

[RogerSC]

After running flawlessly for nearly 8 days, the MgmtRing Errors have returned.. 115 so far in the last two days.. Thought I was past this.. pretty frustrated.

Unlike the initial two errors, 8 days ago, this time there was no message:

"Free TX/RX Ring Memory!" in the log after the MgmtRing errors.

Beginning to wonder if ASUS can/will fix this....???


I also just noticed that the System Log time on the errors is incorrect.. at least an hour ahead of the "System Time " shown on the same page.. what's up with that?

It may be that with all the messages that are being output (indicative of the router being very busy dealing with internal problems) that it doesn't have the bandwidth to also keep the clock in sync with ntp.

Asus has expressed a desire to fix this, they need logs from users that experience it:

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=60723&postcount=1

When this happens, please save your logs and a description of the clients that you have connected, what you were doing when it started (if you know), your "settings" file, whatever you can give them in the spirit of a normal bug report, send it to Jeremy at the email address in the thread above.

Asus has fixed a lot of problems (and created some, of course *smile*), and I have every reason to believe that they can fix this given enough information to reproduce it. It is most likely not a difficult problem to fix, but they're apparently not seeing it at their place. The more people that send them information, the faster they can fix the problem.

 

[pogle]

It may be that with all the messages that are being output (indicative of the router being very busy dealing with internal problems) that it doesn't have the bandwidth to also keep the clock in sync with ntp.

Yes, but the System Time as shown on the System Log page is correct.. it's the time stamp on the actual error message in the log that is in the future for some reason..

I have sent the logs to Jeremy (again)

 

[RogerSC]

Yes, but the System Time as shown on the System Log page is correct.. it's the time stamp on the actual error message in the log that is in the future for some reason..

I have sent the logs to Jeremy (again)

Thanks very much for sending the logs...I'm hoping that they'll have this latest problem fixed in their next firmware release as a result of that sort of user help.

 

[High_Yield]

Thanks to all and Jeremy.

I have been running my rtn56u for quite some time and do upgrade as soon as available.
However, running presently 342 and it a mess for me, mainly on an android device (MK808) which used to run flawlessly until asus firmware upgrade ???.

Note that I also upgrade device firmware(s) as well so it's hard for me to tell where this thing went wrong, but version 342 really sucks for me now - useless wireless.

It seems that perhaps after a reboot, all is fine for a few minutes, or when connecting a new device, but then after a period of time is simply "lags out" and provides almost no wireless data, to any web site. Note that the connectivity bars remain high - the connection "looks good", but in fact does nothing. PLEASE fix this asap, good gracious !!!

 

[Mat77]

I know I asked it some time ago. But is there something done against Bufferbloat?

http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/codel/wiki/Best_Practices_for_Benchmarking_CoDel_and_FQ_CoDel

Some People say it don´t exist - but I think there is something wrong if even people from Google help to solve the Problem.

If you can do something against this and advertise it i´m sure your router will be sold much better. If you google Bufferbloat you see many Gamers who try to optimize their gaming settings. And many gamers (on youtube for example) say that there are Problems with Buffebloat. In Tomato Firmware it´s included but most of the users can´t install a firmware like tomato. And on the Asus router you can´t use it. It would be cool if you can do something against it.

to test Bufferbloat you can use: http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/
(Java needed)

 

[ceeKayy]

And many gamers (on youtube for example) say that there are Problems with Buffebloat.

Taking networking advice from a youtube commentator is like taking advice from Bill Gates on how to setup Apple devices.

 

[Mat77]

Taking networking advice from a youtube commentator is like taking advice from Bill Gates on how to setup Apple devices.

That´s not what I mean. If you look here:

http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/codel/wiki/Best_Practices_for_Benchmarking_CoDel_and_FQ_CoDel

The thing I mean is. In youtube this Problem is also "known". So all those videos gets watched every day - especially from Gamers. If there is a Router out there who can reduce Bufferbloat, I´m sure many of the youtube watchers will buy this Router.

 

[Dave Trouser]

That´s not what I mean. If you look here:

http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/codel/wiki/Best_Practices_for_Benchmarking_CoDel_and_FQ_CoDel

The thing I mean is. In youtube this Problem is also "known". So all those videos gets watched every day - especially from Gamers. If there is a Router out there who can reduce Bufferbloat, I´m sure many of the youtube watchers will buy this Router.

Laughable. A non-existant problem perpetuated by people with cheap routers and bad ISPs. None of the "experiments" on that site gave me any trouble and nor would they give anyone trouble if they have a properly set up network, a decent ISP and a decent router. Even the Wikipedia entry for this nonsense is full of "citation needed" markups - because it's a load of rubbish.

For info, my setup:

ISP: Virgin Media, 60Mbit/3Mbit
Modem: Netgear VMNG480 in "modem only" mode
Router: ASUS RT-N56U with firmware 3.0.0.4.334, hardware NAT enabled
Switch: Netgear GS108E gigabit switch
PC: Win 7, NVidia nForce gigabit ethernet controller

Pingtest.net reveals 15ms or less average over 50 miles, with 2-3ms jitter.
Downstream max. out at around 62Mbps (7.7MB/s), upstream at 3Mbps (375KB/s)

Similar results to any fast enough server - I can ping all day long and not see this so-called "bufferbloat".

Any bad latency is down to overloaded servers, servers on slow connections, physical distance, or ISP faults ("faults" include deliberate shaping in this case).

If you are having latency issues in games or have trouble streaming a youtube video, you can be assured the problem is not the mythical "bufferbloat". Either your kit, or your ISP, or the server you use, or all of the above, are shoddy or broken - or you are just too far from the server for it to be possible to have a low-latency and stable connection. Physical distance is a barrier you won't defeat with current consumer technology.

 

[Mangix]

IIRC bufferbloat is an effect that occurs when uploading at max speed where your download speed goes down and ping times go up.

Simple solution, use a bandwidth limiter.

fq_codel will help in the case where you're uploading at max speed but that's about all it will do.

 

[icarus]

Hi, I've been following this thread for a while and despite the forewarnings made the decision to upgrade to the latest firmware 3.0.0.4.342

The first two days I had no problems. Everything worked as normal, and performance generally seemed on the up.

Unfortunately, I use a lot of apple devices. Apple TV, and an airprint printer, and I'll often mirror the display of my Mac to my Apple TV and both my wife and I print using airprint. For no reason that I can think of, the router will allow us to say, mirror a display for anywhere between 5 minutes up to 3 hours and then *pop*. Everything else works as normal, except anything to do with bonjour or airplay drops.

My iPad, mine and my wife's iPhone, and both Macbooks drop their airplay / airprint abilities. My wireless Airplay speaker wont talk to anything (but is pingable, the web interface loads, but airplay won't pick it up), and the airplay icon disappears from iOS devices and the Macbooks. At first we thought it was the apple TV but obviously that isn't the case if a separate airplay speaker is dropping as well and neither of us can print to the airprint enabled printer.

Again, I can ping the device, even get to it's web config page. Heck even the Apple TV can talk to the web for trailers and movies.

We can't really figure out why this is happening however I generally have to reboot the router before I can use my printer or mirror to my apple tv or use the airplay speaker.

It's almost as if a firewall picks up the Apple services and selectively blocks them until a reboot. Again, all devices can talk to the web as normal. It's just the Airplay / Airprint / Bonjour services that drop out.

We upgraded from 1.0.1.8.n directly to 3.0.0.4.342 hoping it would fix some of our WiFi stability issues (We were seeing lockups and dropouts of the 2.4 and 5ghz) however, Airplay / Airprint - all of this had no issues whatsoever and worked flawlessly, every single time.

I'm on the verge of trying to downgrade to the 1.0.1.8n firmware once again to fix this, but overall the latest is offering us some speed and stability improvements.

Before I go ahead and try and downgrade a still in warranty router (hence why I'm not using custom) does anyone have any suggestions, or have you seen anything like this?

I don't mind being a testbed if someone wants some diagnostics etc.

Has anyone else seen this by the way?

Thanks!

 

[RogerSC]

Hi, I've been following this thread for a while and despite the forewarnings made the decision to upgrade to the latest firmware 3.0.0.4.342

The first two days I had no problems. Everything worked as normal, and performance generally seemed on the up.

[Description of problems with Apple clients and client software...]

We upgraded from 1.0.1.8.n directly to 3.0.0.4.342 hoping it would fix some of our WiFi stability issues (We were seeing lockups and dropouts of the 2.4 and 5ghz) however, Airplay / Airprint - all of this had no issues whatsoever and worked flawlessly, every single time.

I'm on the verge of trying to downgrade to the 1.0.1.8n firmware once again to fix this, but overall the latest is offering us some speed and stability improvements.

Thanks!

Have you tried the latest release of Padavan's firmware? There's a thread on this subforum about it, and you can download it here:

https://code.google.com/p/rt-n56u/

Worth a try to see how well it works for you before you go back into the future *smile*.