Release Asuswrt-Merlin 3004.388.9 is now available

[aex.perez]

AX86U:
Upgraded and had the same issue as @aex.perez and @ExtremeFiretop, where I needed to change my GuestNetwork2 bands to WPA2 mode. Mixed WPA2/WPA3 mode which has been solid since the router was new is now broken. That's for both bands. Home page(Network Map) now shows WPA2 in the security box but the main network for the 5GHz band still shows WPA2/WPA3(which is unchanged).

Used an iPad 7th Generation for testing, as it lost its connection on the GN2 slot 5GHz band on mixed mode WPA2/WPA3. This was previously working rock solid on 3004_388.8_4.
GN1 and GN3, both bands, are unused. Have used the GN2 bands since new.

Normally, I have a pretty broad and flexible change control window, to make changes and can with little effort back out of them if I anything goes wrong.

But with the wife under the weather, having cancelled all her extra currircular activities, lying in bed, streaming movies on the TV and scrolling through her social media feeds and shopping using the network voraciously. My change control window is non-existant this weekend (otherwise known as Happy Wife Happy Life effect). This just saved me a lot of time and effort in changing around things to isolate the issue. I still want to take AiMesh and the AX86u's out of the picture and just setup the AX88u on its own with the three SSIDs (main Smart Connect and the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz only, Guest SSID's) and see what happens.

But seeing you had the issue as well, and noting I had similar (but not identical) issues with the AX88u and since I have it working now with WPA2.
I've been "strongly encouraged and advised" to leave it alone for others with more time, and equipment and flexibility that don't have a spouse to upset

Though what I might do is just set the main Smart Connect SSID to WPA2/WPA3 to see if devices on that network can connect through all three, when she's asleep

 

[ExtremeFiretop]

Normally, I have a pretty broad and flexible change control window, to make changes and can with little effort back out of them if I anything goes wrong.

But with the wife under the weather, having cancelled all her extra currircular activities, lying in bed, streaming movies on the TV and scrolling through her social media feeds and shopping using the network voraciously. My change control window is non-existant this weekend (otherwise known as Happy Wife Happy Life effect). This just saved me a lot of time and effort in changing around things to isolate the issue. I still want to take AiMesh and the AX86u's out of the picture and just setup the AX88u on its own with the three SSIDs (main Smart Connect and the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz only, Guest SSID's) and see what happens.

But seeing you had the issue as well, and noting I had similar (but not identical) issues with the AX88u and since I have it working now with WPA2.
I've been "strongly encouraged and advised" to leave it alone for others with more time, and equipment and flexibility that don't have a spouse to upset

Though what I might do is just set the main Smart Connect SSID to WPA2/WPA3 to see if devices on that network can connect through all three, when she's asleep

I usually do not have a big window by comparison, maybe half an hour to an hour since I host a few services from home. (I.e Plex for example) And many family and friends expecting things to be up.

However I had an 8 hour window where my girlfriend went to work in the evening for a night shift and was returning late night and had also sent out a mass email to my users to advise of network issues and just shut it all down lol.

Once I had a reasonably long window and the network all shut down i started troubleshooting but up until that point I only had maybe an hour or so "here and there" to poke at it when I was making my original reports in alpha/beta stages.

Keep us updated on the developments as you keep looking at stuff; but considering things seem fairly solid for me since I disabled WPA2/WPA3-Personal I've decided to also just let it be and not touch it for now. I do want to eventually use WPA2/WPA3-Personal as it's intended purpose again as a "transitional" network SSID. But for now everything is hard set.

My next opportunity to test that will be on the next major release hopefully.

 

[Halfi]

Hey, i got question about USB drive. Can I use 1TB ssd drive for install amtm - diversion with swap and use second partition with rest of free disk space for ftp / media server?

 

[meat]

Anyone having issues deleting Manually Assigned IPs under LAN --> DHCP Server?
I have failed using the latest Windows 11 versions of Firefox and Edge.

 

[Tech9]

Hey, i got question

Your question is unrelated to this firmware release. AMTM is included in firmware and you can use more than one partitions.

since I disabled WPA2/WPA3-Personal

Indeed. I see this issue reported for different routers and on stock Asuswrt. Obviously something around Asuswrt base. I don't see why @aex.perez insists to spend more time attempting to fix it. Just use WPA2-Personal for now, roll back or wait for an update.

 

[aex.perez]

Your question is unrelated to this firmware release. AMTM is included in firmware and you can use more than one partitions.



Indeed. I see this issue reported for different routers and on stock Asuswrt. Obviously something around Asuswrt base. I don't see why @aex.perez insists to spend more time attempting to fix it. Just use WPA2-Personal for now, roll back or wait for an update.

Can't fix it, not fixing it.
Just seeing if its the Guest Networks only.
But seeing as its reported for stock Asuswrt as well (Thanks for sharing that!), and on different routers no less.
I'm leaving as is utill the next release as Asus is no doubt aware of it.

 

[Tech9]

This mixed WPA2/WPA3-Personal mode creates issues and not only for Asus/Broadcom. My advice - use WPA3-Personal on networks with all WPA3 capable devices, leave WPA2-Personal for everything else with mixed or IoT clients. Your wife will be happier and you'll have free time for more enjoyable than network reset activities. Not sure if you tested this, but if your nodes still offer WPS as other forum members discovered - you have potentially much bigger issue than non-working mixed mode. Asus is perhaps aware of it too.

 

[aex.perez]

This mixed WPA2/WPA3-Personal mode creates issues and not only for Asus/Broadcom. My advice - use WPA3-Personal on networks with all WPA3 capable devices, leave WPA2-Personal for everything else with mixed or IoT clients. Your wife will be happier and you'll have free time for more enjoyable than network reset activities. Not sure if you tested this, but if your nodes still offer WPS as other forum members discovered - you have potentially much bigger issue than non-working mixed mode. Asus is perhaps aware of it too.

Mixed mode not perfect but has been working well on Asus for a couple of years now. Was about to setup each SSID individually to WPA3-Personal to determine which of my devices do support it and connect, may still do that. This issue cropped with the Alpha releases and the Beta, we figured is was resolved in the release because nothing was reported and @RMerlin did a quick test for me when we thought is was related to AiMesh. @ExtremeFiretop stumbled upon changing WPA2/WP3-personal to WPA2-Personal when he got his system going as we were working on the issue from different angles, I was seeing only roamast low signal strength errors in the log and was chasing that - see "Getting 388.9 going". Then I made the same change, and everything came back up fine. But sure enough we both thought, through the various release stages (and now you've sort of confirmed it) this was going to be an Asus issue, now we know.

By the way, you got a quick link you can share to point me/us in the direction of the reports of the issue for Asuswrt?
WPS (Disabled both frequencies )
Thanks

 

[Tech9]

By the way, you got a quick link you can share to point me/us in the direction of the reports of the issue for Asuswrt?

See this:

Release - ASUS RT-AX86 Series (RT-AX86U/RT-AX86S) Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388_24338 (2025/03/25)

Version 3.0.0.4.388_24338 71.55 MB 2025/03/25 1. Fixed the UI issue in Chrome. 2. Fixed client binding issues in Mesh scenarios. 3. Enhanced input parameter handling techniques to improve data processing stability and system security. 4. Enhance system access control mechanisms. ZIP SHA-256 ...

www.snbforums.com

.. but I remember seeing it for other models with the recent round of Asuswrt updates.

 

[aex.perez]

See this:

Release - ASUS RT-AX86 Series (RT-AX86U/RT-AX86S) Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388_24338 (2025/03/25)

Version 3.0.0.4.388_24338 71.55 MB 2025/03/25 1. Fixed the UI issue in Chrome. 2. Fixed client binding issues in Mesh scenarios. 3. Enhanced input parameter handling techniques to improve data processing stability and system security. 4. Enhance system access control mechanisms. ZIP SHA-256 ...

www.snbforums.com

.. but I remember seeing it for other models with the recent round of Asuswrt updates.

I missed that as I don't usually follow the Asuswrt releases but if I had seen this - https://www.snbforums.com/threads/a...-0-0-4-388_24338-2025-03-25.94236/post-949340 I would've been looking for it. I also saw t on Reddit in a r/ASUS forum post that someone had this too, with different model after applying a current release. I guess not seeing anything in the change log about the driver version, I took it for granted

 

[northumberland]

@northumberland Thank you for your advice.

I don't use additional scripts or other tricks.

So I can do a dirty update without a reset ?

Sorry for the delay, I did, you should be fine. Always good advice to keep a copy of your settings though. Also every now and again do a full reset anyway, especially if anything odd happening. Mine still appears to be ruining beautifully.

 

[northumberland]

I have exactly the same problem. Anyway to fix it?

View attachment 64939

I had a little bit of that on one device.

 

[Unetwork]

Sorry for the delay, I did, you should be fine. Always good advice to keep a copy of your settings though. Also every now and again do a full reset anyway, especially if anything odd happening. Mine still appears to be ruining beautifully.

Thank you for your reply.

If you didn't need to do a reset after this update, I'll be able to do it this evening without any problems.

I remain cautious, however, as I have read in this post about display problems on the home page and in the customer lists.

 

[underdose]

Auto-magically upgraded from 3004.388.9_beta thanks to MerlinAU and nothing to report. Thanks for your hard work Eric.

 

[Mikeyy]

Anyone else having problems with DDNS after this update?

I have accepted license agreement, but denied privacy policy. DDNS was off, noticed it after few days.
Tried to turn ON DDNS, but can't. I can flip a switch to ON, but can't hit APPLY button after that.

I'm using "custom" DDNS provider.

EDIT: Just wanted to add, that I can hit "Apply" button if I choose no-ip.com or dyndns.org. Didn't test others, but it seams there is an issue if you choose "custom".
Using latest Firefox.

 

[dosborne]

...reboot the router prior to the upgrade, don't know if this is still necessary.

It is ALWAYS a really good idea to reboot, and remove any USB devices plugged into the router. This fixes many of the issues when an update is unsuccessful, or a good practice to ensure it goes well the first time through.

 

[dosborne]

I remain cautious, however, as I have read in this post about display problems on the home page and in the customer lists.

A minor UI glitch. Who, other than you, would notice or care? I wouldn't have seen it other than I tried a long name just to verify as I had read about it.

 

[bennor]

I don't want accept any eula how I skip or downgrade? never expected this crap... if i cannot use product i pay for would like money back

If you don't want to accept one or more of the Notices or EULA's that Asus now presents to users of it's routers, just download to the earlier firmware manually using the router GUI's Administration Firmware page. You can download previous Asus-Merlin firmware from it's download section. One can check if there is earlier Asus stock firmware on Asus's support site for their router.

Reality is, these notices and EULA's started showing up last year in Asus's stock firmware. Its possible some of the notices/EULA might now be governmental mandated in certain markets.

 

[RMerlin]

If you don't want to accept one or more of the Notices or EULA's that Asus now presents to users of it's routers, just download to the earlier firmware manually using the router GUI's Administration Firmware page.

That will not change anything on the router's behaviour beside Asus not telling you to accept what they may be collecting. The EULA does not indicate any change in behaviour, only that Asus are now asking for consent, to comply with some regional laws that are stricter. And since it's written by lawyers, they will try to be as broad as possible just to cover their asses.

The question is not whether someone wants to accept a EULA or not. The question is whether you want to accept what they _might_ be doing. And that hasn`t changed in these newer firmware releases.

 

[pulp]

Sorry I made a mistake, AX86U is supported, check that you are using the correct firmware for the router model. Several years ago, the advice used to be if there was an upgrade problem, to reboot the router prior to the upgrade, don't know if this is still necessary.

That did it! First time ever I reboot the router before upgrading. I'm a dirty basssturd. LOL Thank you all!