Release ASUS ZenWiFi AX (XT8) Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388.22068

[Pmlonewolf68]

I didn't want to have to think about wifi anymore either and have replaced my XT8s with two Synology RT6600ax which seem stable so far after a week.

[edit, have to say though, one thing i'll definitely miss is this fantastic community which is very active and adds a ton of value to asus routers]

So... as an addendum, the Eero 6e that I bought will also be going back to Best Buy ... It seems that Asus is not the only company that cannot produce a stable firmware these days - my Eero network was rock solid as long as I didnt try to restart anything, if I did, the second and third nodes would go offline and I would have to physically bounce them. Pain in the buttsky! So... now I am back to Asus, but this time am looking at the ET12 which I must say is pretty rock solid so far (n-1 firmware though, the latest firmware was a bit buggy too).... sigh.

So, I'm back, but in the ET12 forum! lol.

 

[karma]

So... as an addendum, the Eero 6e that I bought will also be going back to Best Buy ... It seems that Asus is not the only company that cannot produce a stable firmware these days - my Eero network was rock solid as long as I didnt try to restart anything, if I did, the second and third nodes would go offline and I would have to physically bounce them. Pain in the buttsky! So... now I am back to Asus, but this time am looking at the ET12 which I must say is pretty rock solid so far (n-1 firmware though, the latest firmware was a bit buggy too).... sigh.

So, I'm back, but in the ET12 forum! lol.

heheh good luck!! It's amazing how all wifi routers from all brands have issues, isn't it?

 

[ptshrdn]

So... as an addendum, the Eero 6e that I bought will also be going back to Best Buy ... It seems that Asus is not the only company that cannot produce a stable firmware these days - my Eero network was rock solid as long as I didnt try to restart anything, if I did, the second and third nodes would go offline and I would have to physically bounce them. Pain in the buttsky! So... now I am back to Asus, but this time am looking at the ET12 which I must say is pretty rock solid so far (n-1 firmware though, the latest firmware was a bit buggy too).... sigh.

So, I'm back, but in the ET12 forum! lol.

Yikes. Thanks for that bit of feedback, I am still deciding whether or not to unwrap the 6e I bought that is sitting next to my (stable, for the last few days) XT8 router.

 

[slrt]

Not sure why you would even consider the eero. It has crappy hardware, especially for the price, and Amazon gets full access to your Internet usage.
See here.

 

[RogerSC]

Not sure why you would even consider the eero. It has crappy hardware, especially for the price, and Amazon gets full access to your Internet usage.
See here.

I've got a couple of eero Pro 6's you can have if you'll come and pick them up *smile*. Have tried a couple of years worth of new firmware releases to get stable performance, at least at my place. The eero Pro 6's look pretty good for a few hours with wireless backhaul, but then always revert to about 50% of the performance that they start with. I don't know how eero does it, but they've never managed to stabiilize their wireless backhaul performance. I got the ZenWiFi AX after it became clear to me that eero wasn't going to get their arms around their problems, but I still trotted out the eeros for each new firmware release, to see if things were working better.

The ZenWiFi AX performance is consistently at least twice as fast as the eero Pro 6's, best mesh that I've used.

 

[Pmlonewolf68]

Not sure why you would even consider the eero. It has crappy hardware, especially for the price, and Amazon gets full access to your Internet usage.
See here.

Desperation… sigh.

 

[YellowPhox]

FWIW: All "388" versions were unstable for me (mixed wired and wireless backhaul), some initially seemed fine but after a week or so had issues. It behaved a lot like it could be issues with my provider, or DNS, etc, but after downgrade to 3.0.0.4.386_49873 it now has been rock solid for weeks.

See also this very similar description: https://itnerd.blog/2022/10/24/psa-...pgrade-to-firmware-version-3-0-0-4-388-21099/

 

[tmuller]

Doing a dirty upgrade from 49873 to 22068 worked for about a day maybe a bit more, node dropped off.

After reading through another post in this line, downgraded the node to 21099 and kept the main node on 22068. Lasted about 3 days, this time, node didn't drop off, it was slowing and disconnecting constantly. Laptop was disconnecting throughout the day, multiple times the wifi would just disappear.

Frustrated, I did a 'hard' reset to the main router and the node, took time to bring it up, but at least all the settings went to default. Left them on 22068 and 21099.

it's been 4+ days now and not 1 disconnect on the laptops, speed has been excellent and the node has not dropped off yet.

Hopefully, this isn't a fluke and it stays this way and works this well moving forward.

Update: 17 days in and nare an issue with 22068/21099 combo.
also using wireless backhaul with 160 MHz.

 

[bradbort]

I've also kept the main router on 22068, and downgraded the node to 21099 due to numerous losses of node connectivity (red light). Since that change, things have been pretty stable for me. I have the backhaul hard wired.

 

[Dodgydrains]

FWIW: All "388" versions were unstable for me (mixed wired and wireless backhaul), some initially seemed fine but after a week or so had issues. It behaved a lot like it could be issues with my provider, or DNS, etc, but after downgrade to 3.0.0.4.386_49873 it now has been rock solid for weeks.

See also this very similar description: https://itnerd.blog/2022/10/24/psa-...pgrade-to-firmware-version-3-0-0-4-388-21099/

Exactly the same findings from me. This was both with official 388 firmware and 388 Merlin. Downgrading to 386.49873 resolved everything. Problem is I no loger have the latest security patches with 386.49873.

I am on full wireless backhaul.

I think the issue may be when you have multiple mesh nodes in your setup

 

[harvindhillon]

Just registered on the forums to confirm too, I have 3 XT8s with 2 wired backhaul APs. With the 388 firmware it randomly disconnects and reconnects with the red LED. It's only the wireless, anything connected directly to the nodes with an Ethernet cable are connected and reachable just fine

 

[Raven76]

I have two different XT8's installations (both with only wireless backhaul):
- two XT8s with 388.22068 firmware
- four XT8s with 388.21617 firmware
Both systems are rock solid.... no disconnections.

ps: I use 80Mhz bandwidth on 5Ghz-2 wireless backhaul network

 

[bbunge]

I have two different XT8's installations (both with only wireless backhaul):
- two XT8s with 388.22068 firmware
- four XT8s with 388.21617 firmware
Both systems are rock solid.... no disconnections.

ps: I use 80Mhz bandwidth on 5Ghz-2 wireless backhaul network

You may have hit on a good setting by using 80 MHz for WIFI backhaul. 160 MHz is subject to being bounced by RADAR as it will use DFS channels in most areas. Locking in the WIFI backhaul to fixed channel and bandwidth should fix a lot of disconnect issues.

 

[harvindhillon]

Not sure how wired backhoul is being impacted by disconnects however. Its weird as hell. Have had good luck with the firmwares to be fair until the 388 versions

 

[RogerSC]

You may have hit on a good setting by using 80 MHz for WIFI backhaul. 160 MHz is subject to being bounced by RADAR as it will use DFS channels in most areas. Locking in the WIFI backhaul to fixed channel and bandwidth should fix a lot of disconnect issues.

You can get away from DFS with 160MHz. backhaul by using the added UNII-4 channels, if available in your region. That is, enabling 160MHz. backhaul and setting channel 149 as your control channel gives you 8 channels (up to 177) that aren't subject to DFS for backhaul. Works great here.

 

[Robo]

Doing a dirty upgrade from 49873 to 22068 worked for about a day maybe a bit more, node dropped off.

After reading through another post in this line, downgraded the node to 21099 and kept the main node on 22068. Lasted about 3 days, this time, node didn't drop off, it was slowing and disconnecting constantly. Laptop was disconnecting throughout the day, multiple times the wifi would just disappear.

Frustrated, I did a 'hard' reset to the main router and the node, took time to bring it up, but at least all the settings went to default. Left them on 22068 and 21099.

it's been 4+ days now and not 1 disconnect on the laptops, speed has been excellent and the node has not dropped off yet.

Hopefully, this isn't a fluke and it stays this way and works this well moving forward.

This is exactly what I did too for my main and my node. It has not only remained stable for a few weeks I am still getting strong backhaul performance (wired) and WIFI on both nodes (>800 Mbps) on a 1gig Fiber internet. I am staying here for a (long) while I think!

 

[mountain_man]

I'm on 49873. It's been stable for months. Yesterday it started dropping all the time. I've rebooted multiple times. Turned off the child node. Etc. Nothing works. Buggy as hell. I have had more issues with this router than any other I've ever owned. Really frustrating. Anyone got any advice?

 

[j4y-t]

I'm on 49873. It's been stable for months. Yesterday it started dropping all the time. I've rebooted multiple times. Turned off the child node. Etc. Nothing works. Buggy as hell. I have had more issues with this router than any other I've ever owned. Really frustrating. Anyone got any advice?

Yikes, just out of nowhere? You didn't make any changes to any settings?

 

[mountain_man]

Yikes, just out of nowhere? You didn't make any changes to any settings?

Nope no changes. I found this thread to see if updating to the more recent build could help, but it seems like many are having problems with this version too. Does anyone have any other ideas for me on a stable build? Currently I'm using an old router cuz this one won't even work.

 

[j4y-t]

Nope no changes. I found this thread to see if updating to the more recent build could help, but it seems like many are having problems with this version too. Does anyone have any other ideas for me on a stable build? Currently I'm using an old router cuz this one won't even work.

That sounds like a nightmare. Anecdotal, but I've been on 388_21617 (wireless backhaul, separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz channels, Smart Connect off, WPS off) since I got these (just over 2 mths, so certainly not a long sample) and managed to stabilize my connection with these tweaks:

• set Backhaul Connection Priority to "5GHz-2 Wifi first" (won't be applicable if you're using wired backhaul)
• set 2.4GHz bandwidth to 20MHz
• set control channels on 2.4GHz/5GHz-1/5GHz-2 bands to 1, 36, and 149, respectively
• disable Universal Beamforming on all bands
• disable Roaming Assistant on 5GHz-2 band (probably not applicable if you're using wired backhaul)

Not knowledgeable enough to know which tweak did what. Other than that, I left everything at default settings (didn't factory reset after updating firmware, but that's highly recommended); turned AiProtection and Traffic Analyzer on, but left QoS off. I also don't have access to 160MHz bandwidth (not sure if it matters).