Release Asus ZenWiFi XT8 - New Firmware: 3.0.0.4.386_45898

[ncrr]

Upgrade a couple of days ago.

There are a few of things I noticed:
1. Lower WAN speeds
2. The WAN Speedtest is missing
3. Loosing Internet connection daily once in the mornings.

 

[gz2021]

I downgraded back to 42095 yesterday

 

[TMcC]

I’m having no issues at all with the new firmware. Didn’t bother to reset either of the units, just upgraded both via a couple of clicks in the web interface. Hadn’t noticed the speedtest has gone.

 

[Dodgydrains]

Which Speedtest has gone? Is it the one under Adaptive QoS? If so, I still have it.

 

[Straasha]

I upgraded from 42095 to 45898 without doing a reset and have not had any problems. Everything is very stable. @ncrr I have the WAN speedtest under Adaptive QOS, Internet speed test. I also have not been losing internet every morning nor do I have a slower WAN speed. I am getting the same speed as I did with 42095.

 

[karma]

Seems ok for the moment, dirty upgraded from 42095.

 

[sgoldswo]

It certainly isn’t proving as unreliable as each firmware after 42095 prior, but I am confirming random node dropouts to 2.4ghz on the backhaul after 24-48 hours of uptime. This is with a hard reset of all three units after manual upgrade. This could have causes other than firmware, but was not observed on 42095. I may try swapping the router for another unit to see if that helps.

On the upside I fixed dropouts of 2.4ghz IOT devices with a few tweaks to settings. Will give it another week to try and achieve stability.

 

[robgbc]

It certainly isn’t proving as unreliable as each firmware after 42095 prior, but I am confirming random node dropouts to 2.4ghz on the backhaul after 24-48 hours of uptime. This is with a hard reset of all three units after manual upgrade. This could have causes other than firmware, but was not observed on 42095. I may try swapping the router for another unit to see if that helps.

On the upside I fixed dropouts of 2.4ghz IOT devices with a few tweaks to settings. Will give it another week to try and achieve stability.

After reading this yesterday I had a look and my backhaul is dropping to 2.4 as well, "weak signal" with an RSSI of -38, 5 RSSI is normally around -44...Reset last night did not resolve, as I woke up to a 2.4 backhaul. Currently rolling back to 42095

 

[s0x]

Good way to start a work monday..

XT8 node was showing as disconnected, despite working fine?
On the XT8 router I forced the roaming to happen by re-applying the roaming block list, and doing so caused the XT8 router to kernel panic and hard crash.

Sent email to ASUS, but if the past is something to go by, I've yet to receive any response to the emails.

https://pastebin.com/raw/ke3wCCWk

 

[Jimmyca69]

Updated from 43181 to 45898 - updated the firmware on main node and then the secondary node then did factory reset on both.

So far have seen my 5GHz backhaul link remain stable which it wasn't on 43181, this was my first firmware since owning the XT8's and after a month of perfection, it started to drop to 2.4GHz often, reporting weak signal.

Negative on the new one is that I am noticing oddities where there are almost blips on connectivity where all devices seem to struggle to connect for 10 secs at same time and then will be fine. No issues for browsing but kids gaming and working from home has caused some issues. Need to investigate to 100% make sure not actual connection issues but have seen some say about dropouts.

Can anyone recommend where to check in logs if it happens again?

 

[robgbc]

After reading this yesterday I had a look and my backhaul is dropping to 2.4 as well, "weak signal" with an RSSI of -38, 5 RSSI is normally around -44...Reset last night did not resolve, as I woke up to a 2.4 backhaul. Currently rolling back to 42095

36 hours later and no issues with backhaul dropping to 2.4, since rolling back to 42095

 

[Mikael]

Upgraded all three units, ethernet backhaul, but where the previous firmware ran for months with no stability issues, this new one starts to loose the two nodes resulting in the led blinking blue. This happened often on older firmware but the one before this latest was very stable. If this continues, I guess I will revert back to the stable version.

 

[sgoldswo]

It certainly isn’t proving as unreliable as each firmware after 42095 prior, but I am confirming random node dropouts to 2.4ghz on the backhaul after 24-48 hours of uptime. This is with a hard reset of all three units after manual upgrade. This could have causes other than firmware, but was not observed on 42095. I may try swapping the router for another unit to see if that helps.

On the upside I fixed dropouts of 2.4ghz IOT devices with a few tweaks to settings. Will give it another week to try and achieve stability.

It certainly isn’t proving as unreliable as each firmware after 42095 prior, but I am confirming random node dropouts to 2.4ghz on the backhaul after 24-48 hours of uptime. This is with a hard reset of all three units after manual upgrade. This could have causes other than firmware, but was not observed on 42095. I may try swapping the router for another unit to see if that helps.

On the upside I fixed dropouts of 2.4ghz IOT devices with a few tweaks to settings. Will give it another week to try and achieve stability.

I decided not to swap my units or downgrade to 42095 for now, rather I turned off the roaming assistant setting on the 5ghz wireless backhaul. Seems to be stable with no node drops now. Scanning Wifi indicates my neighbours Wifi jumps in on a clashing channel from time to time, so more than likely that is knocking out the backhaul, which drops to 2.4ghz. Turning off roaming assistant stops the drops

 

[robgbc]

I decided not to swap my units or downgrade to 42095 for now, rather I turned off the roaming assistant setting on the 5ghz wireless backhaul. Seems to be stable with no node drops now. Scanning Wifi indicates my neighbours Wifi jumps in on a clashing channel from time to time, so more than likely that is knocking out the backhaul, which drops to 2.4ghz. Turning off roaming assistant stops the drops

Interesting, Ive always had roaming assistant disabled on backhaul, no issues with dropping to 2.4 until I installed 45898 and none since rolling back to 42095

 

[karma]

Seems ok for the moment, dirty upgraded from 42095.

AP mode, 3-4 days running, is stable for 5GHz devices so far. I do have a scheduled reboot every 7 days though. I'm sticking with it for the moment.

 

[virtualh]

I just got a pair couple of weeks ago and I noticed that my nodes are rebooting randomly every other day or so. Contacted support and they said it could be the hardware issue and asked me to return the unit for a replacement.
I am not sure if it was due to hardware because I swapped both the units for primary router and still have the units randomly rebooting (based on uptime). May be Asus is taking an easy route. They told me current firmware has no such issues reported.

So need your advice. Should I return this unit for a replacement and hopefully that solves the issue. If it's truly the firmware issue, should I wait? Should I rollback to a previous version of the firmware?

 

[sgoldswo]

I decided not to swap my units or downgrade to 42095 for now, rather I turned off the roaming assistant setting on the 5ghz wireless backhaul. Seems to be stable with no node drops now. Scanning Wifi indicates my neighbours Wifi jumps in on a clashing channel from time to time, so more than likely that is knocking out the backhaul, which drops to 2.4ghz. Turning off roaming assistant stops the drops

Just to confirm, since my manual upgrade to 45898 and hard reset of each node I’ve had no problems whatsoever since turning off roaming assistant on the backhaul, tweaking the 2.4ghz band to fix it, limit it to 20mhz and setting the professional settings as follows:

 

[karma]

AP mode, 3-4 days running, is stable for 5GHz devices so far. I do have a scheduled reboot every 7 days though. I'm sticking with it for the moment.

I take it back.. some weird connectivity issues with devices connected to the node. I can't be bothered trying to figure it out. downgrading to 42095 again.

 

[ninjabob]

At the risk of being flamed - does anyone think there are too many parameters that can be altered by the end user in the software for these routers resulting in an impossible job (of their own making) for ASUS to work out whether the firmware is stable or not. Roaming, RSSI etc. etc.

 

[L&LD]

No, I don't. If anything (reading the entire forum here), there are not enough parameters to tweak, according to many.

Best Practice:

• Flash the firmware you want to use.
• Fully reset to factory defaults.
• Minimally and manually configure the router to secure it and connect to your ISP (do not use any form of saved backup files).
• Only change settings past defaults if you know what you're doing, and/or, you fully test that you didn't break what was working before.
• If/when you do find the specific action that breaks your network, ask questions here (there and everywhere) and if it can't be fixed, don't bang your head against the brick wall.
• Use (only) the settings (and procedures) that work.