Release ASUS ZenWiFi AX (XT8) Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388.23285

[Blivit]

I am currently at 17 hrs uptime which is by far the longest I have seen since I started really monitoring this. I am still not using the fw here but I do plan to update to it soon. I wanted to see if I could work with what I had before updating. I have been changing things then waiting each time to see if I get dropouts. Takes a while as sometimes it would drop out after 20 minutes, other times 8-9 hours. Currently I have the following: (not entirely sure if all of this is necessary or if my final change that I did before the 17 hour uptime is what did it)

-5ghz-2 wifi first for backhaul priority
-2.4ghz band locked to 20mhz, auto control channel
-5ghz-1 band locked to 40mhz, auto control channel
-5ghz-2 band locked to 80mhz, auto control channel. 160mhz not enabled. DFS not included.
-universal beamforming disabled for all

With all of the above, I was still getting dropouts. The last thing I changed was turning off QoS. After doing that with all of the above, like I said I am now at 17 hours uptime.

 

[glens]

Okay, I've got to ask, how much trouble, really, would it be to link the units with wire?

 

[Blivit]

Okay, I've got to ask, how much trouble, really, would it be to link the units with wire?

Not impossible but probably more than I would like to do. I had to leave my house for the weekend now but before I did, I had 24 hours uptime which is great so far.

 

[glens]

I forget what I was using, an ISP-supplied pretty-good AC router for 500Mb symmetrical fiber feed.

"Grandma's house" next door became vacant and for the summer was going to be used by some college boys. ISP provided a set of Eeros, which I swapped into my system. Sitting in the garage (as I am now) it was great to be connected at a fantastic link rate, but the throughput was abysmal. So I ran a wire up from the basement into the attic, back down into the central interior wall by the node. Bingo!

Thereafter I employed a set of XT8s.

Wired is the way to go. Even if you've got to spend some $. It's money in the bank. Connectivity is a way of life anymore.

 

[Blivit]

I will see what my uptime is when I get back tonight. When I left, it was at 24 hours. If it held, I am going to try updating to this firmware, set my settings and see how it does.

 

[seilaaja]

How would you describe the stability of XT8 with latest firmware? Thinking of buing these to replace older models (RT-AC68U). I'd be using two devices, one as the main router and other one as mesh node. Gigabit ethernet backhaul would be used. OpenVPN server would be used too. Some manual DHCP mapping to MAC addresses would be configured. Otherwise nothing special.

From these discussions it seems that wireless backhaul has been the main problem, but I wouldn't be using it.

 

[FreddyP]

How would you describe the stability of XT8 with latest firmware? Thinking of buing these to replace older models (RT-AC68U). I'd be using two devices, one as the main router and other one as mesh node. Gigabit ethernet backhaul would be used. OpenVPN server would be used too. Some manual DHCP mapping to MAC addresses would be configured. Otherwise nothing special.

From these discussions it seems that wireless backhaul has been the main problem, but I wouldn't be using it.

Replaced our old RT-AC68U with a set of these. We have been running on this version of firmware for over 30 days with no issues. No WAN or device drop outs, no intermittent re-boots, cell phones transfer as we walk through the property and, best of all, no dead zones. We have 500 MBs service from our ISP and the system gives us consistent 500MBs (+) throughput.

Used the cell phone app for initial setup with the default settings (changed the login settings of course). We did select the option to separate the 2.5 and 5GHz SSIDs. This allowed us to re-use the existing SSIDs which made connecting the IoT devices a snap.

Our system is lightly loaded. A couple of laptops, a few cell phones, some TV streaming, about 40 IoT devices and a poor man’s NAS with a 256GB SSD on the USB 3.0 connection running SAMBA. We are using the 5GHz-2 WiFi backhaul. We are in a single family house in a community with moderate density so WiFi interference is not a big issue. Lucky that the nearest weather radar is over 50 miles away.

Hope this helps!

 

[Blivit]

Happily, I am finally stable and am using this latest firmware. I have an uptime of roughly 4 days at this point. I had a few storms come through here taking power out so that has reset things but other than that I have been good. I updated to this version without a reset; I just used the app to do it. My settings are outlined within this thread but even with those, I was still getting wifi dropouts. I now think the source of my whole issue was my external hard drive. I had a normal, non externally powered, non-nas hard drive plugged in to my router through the usb port. I would access that through ftp which worked fine, when it worked. I hadn't really paid attention to it but remember that sometimes when I would access it, that would trigger a reboot of my router or a dropout. I ignored that initially. 4 days ago, I unplugged the drive from my router and so far, no reboots or dropouts. Interference, power consumption, whatever it was...I think that drive is what did it. I will look for a dedicated nas setup instead.

 

[FreddyP]

Happily, I am finally stable and am using this latest firmware. I have an uptime of roughly 4 days at this point.

Glad things are settling for you. Our systems have been running great for over 30 days now!

I had a few storms come through here taking power out so that has reset things but other than that I have been good.

We have each of our units on their own UPS Backup Battery Power Supply. Our old router and modem was on one and it really paid off. Most of our power lines are buried, but a vehicle did manage to knock the power out for almost 12 hours last year by hitting an above ground distribution box. Our ISP has their network backed up on batteries in our community so we did not initially lose Internet. We have one line at home on VoIP that continued to work along with WiFi calling on our cell phones (we do have a cell tower nearby too). Of course the batteries finally died and things went down, but not before we could do orderly shutdowns and make contact with those who needed to know. Think the UPS also filtered any power surges and sags.

I updated to this version without a reset; I just used the app to do it. My settings are outlined within this thread but even with those, I was still getting wifi dropouts.

We also just updated using the app.

I now think the source of my whole issue was my external hard drive. I had a normal, non externally powered, non-nas hard drive plugged in to my router through the usb port. I would access that through ftp which worked fine, when it worked. I hadn't really paid attention to it but remember that sometimes when I would access it, that would trigger a reboot of my router or a dropout. I ignored that initially. 4 days ago, I unplugged the drive from my router and so far, no reboots or dropouts. Interference, power consumption, whatever it was...I think that drive is what did it. I will look for a dedicated nas setup instead.

My money is on the Hard Drive causing an issue. We are using an SSD with very little power load. SSD use is stable with no problems. I'm no expert and am just basing opinion on our experience

Fingers crossed you have your problem solved!

 

[RogerSC]

How would you describe the stability of XT8 with latest firmware? Thinking of buing these to replace older models (RT-AC68U). I'd be using two devices, one as the main router and other one as mesh node. Gigabit ethernet backhaul would be used. OpenVPN server would be used too. Some manual DHCP mapping to MAC addresses would be configured. Otherwise nothing special.

From these discussions it seems that wireless backhaul has been the main problem, but I wouldn't be using it.

This firmware version has been great so far. Stable and working well. Also, no problems with the wireless backhaul, as usual. The 160MHz. wireless backhaul channel width with the UNII-4 channels is very stable. Actually, I've never had a problem with wireless backhaul with this mesh. The ZenWiFi seems to be optimized for wireless backhaul, the internet download and upload speeds at the remote node are very close to what my ISP provides. No complaints, very happy.

 

[Wifi6-7]

(new user but long time lurker)

I have owned XT8-V1 since launch, and since May it has been on the latest firmware Asuswrt 3.0.0.4.388.23285. I've had some weird issues from time to time, connection timeout, reloading and hiccup's when browsing like half of a page won't load. Reddit and twitter apps would randomly stop loading anything. Downloading torrents would jump between full speed or drop below 50kbps for a long period.

I can't say I ever experienced lag when gaming regardless of game, and it has usually felt really stable. Scheduled weekly night reboots.

Today i decided to try GNUton's Asus Merlin 3004.388.4_0 stable, and it's like i just got a new, faster unit that fixed all annoyances. Highly recommend for better stability with a single XT8. I had a second unit that i sold, so not so sure about node stability.

My DNS has been Cloudflare on both firmware's. I have tried other DNS's to find a fix to my previous issues thinking that was it.

Thank you GNUton

 

[Geir Ove]

I wonder what happened with the firmware after ASUS ZenWiFi XT8 Firmware version 3.0.0.4.386.48706 dated 2022/05/03. It is soon 20 months since this release and non of the newer releases are working in my simple mesh with 2 nodes, 1 main router and 1 remote node. The problem is the wireless backhaul that for all newer releases keeps disconnecting for approx. 5 minutes 1-2 timers every hour. So in practice newer FW is totally useless for me. I'm really scared that this is not solved in 20 month. I have a setup just out of the 2-node box and with no configuration done. The FW version 386.48706 works rock solid with no issues/reboot/disconnections for at least a year. The answer from Asus was that I should not upgrade from FW version 386.48706 but I do not like that answer. When logging in to router and in the App it is stated in RED all over the place that there is new firmware available and that I should upgrade. But this is as I have learned something you should NOT do. I really do not understand why Asus have not found why this is happening with all FW versions released after May 2022. So to all that have issues with wireless backhaul/connectivity, try Firmware version 3.0.0.4.386.48706.

 

[johny_2000]

Has Asus decided to abandon this router model (XT8) for further firmware updates?

The last update was 6 months ago.
Version 3.0.0.4.388.23285 2023/05/15

 

[TMcC]

Has Asus decided to abandon this router model (XT8) for further firmware updates?

The last update was 6 months ago.
Version 3.0.0.4.388.23285 2023/05/15

Was wondering the same.

 

[Wifi6-7]

Has Asus decided to abandon this router model (XT8) for further firmware updates?

The last update was 6 months ago.
Version 3.0.0.4.388.23285 2023/05/15

Been three years since release so maybe. Asus could have allocated more resources to the upcoming BE routers, and only releasing a high risk security hotfix if it is necessary. This is just based on my experience with other hardware, usually two years of support and rarely more.

This is why i went with Merlin version last week as it is at least doing something to improve the XT8

 

[ltdduke]

Been three years since release so maybe. Asus could have allocated more resources to the upcoming BE routers, and only releasing a high risk security hotfix if it is necessary. This is just based on my experience with other hardware, usually two years of support and rarely more.

This is why i went with Merlin version last week as it is at least doing something to improve the XT8

Are there any restrictions with the Merlin firmware? For example, no mesh capability or TrendMicro Security protection.

Otherwise I would also like to change, as no "Asus stable" firmware has been running cleanly with the backhaul for years. I am still on the 386_42095, which is the only version where my backhaul runs reliably.

Thank you

 

[Calkulin]

Are there any restrictions with the Merlin firmware? For example, no mesh capability or TrendMicro Security protection.

Otherwise I would also like to change, as no "Asus stable" firmware has been running cleanly with the backhaul for years. I am still on the 386_42095, which is the only version where my backhaul runs reliably.

Thank you

Merlin firmware won't fix the XT8 issues, I fought that router for months(I exchanged a few thinking it was a hardware defect issue) and the only way I fixed the issue was to change to the XT9 after I got tired of it. Since the change, no more backhaul issues for me and it's been 1 yr now along with multiple firmware updates. I would bet the v2 version would also fix the issues as it seems with v1 routers, backhaul stability was pure luck

 

[Wifi6-7]

Are there any restrictions with the Merlin firmware? For example, no mesh capability or TrendMicro Security protection.

Otherwise I would also like to change, as no "Asus stable" firmware has been running cleanly with the backhaul for years. I am still on the 386_42095, which is the only version where my backhaul runs reliably.

Thank you

Think it's the same as stock with more features. App still works as it should. I only have a single unit as a router since it covers my whole apartment, and can't give any feedback on that part. @Calkulin answered that question and would likely be the only solution to the mesh wireless backhaul issue if it is a hardware limitation.

If it doesn't work for your setup you could go back to Asuswrt stock firmware.

I am looking for a new reasonably priced router with minimum dual 2.5Gb, seems like it might be possible next year as this years models drop in price. or if BE routers aren't to premium.

 

[ltdduke]

This is really very annoying in terms of reliability and it is unacceptable that there was no recall of these faulty units.

So far my backhaul is stable, let's see what the next few days bring. But now I can no longer fully utilize my 1Gbit line via the backhaul and can only manage 720Mbit instead of 930Mbit.

I'm now waiting for the Wifi 7 devices and will then take another look.

Thanks for your feedback.

Edit: Had a stable backhaul for one day. What a shame this thing is. Back to the old firmware and waiting for something new and usable

 

[Vincent Clement]

My uptime with ASUSWRT 3.0.0.4.388_23285 is 44 days.

That said, I have noticed that it will show devices in Clients, View List, or AiMesh, as connected that are no longer connected to the network, or not show devices that are connected to the network. A restart of the HTTP/HTTPS client seems to fix that. Maybe a reboot is in order