Release Asuswrt-Merlin 384.19 is now available

[Vimes]

The last time this happened, 2.4Ghz radio shows all devices connected but nothing works, nothing new can connect, following a WPS type reset and manually entering details, my 2.4Ghz radio lasted for over 4 days before this same error occurred. It has just happened again and can be seen in the screen shot. Nothing to notice in the logs.......

Spoiler

Just cycle the 2.4Ghz radio is enough to start it working again, not need to power cycle the whole router.

Now all is well.....

Spoiler

As the Wireless aspect of this firmware is closed to adjustments then it could be that there is a hardware issue with my 2.4Ghz radio. I could go back to try 384.18 as it didn't happen than to see if that is the case or it could be that Asus changed something in the radio to contribute to or cause this problem.
My router was made in 2017, I have seen several posts, and a thread, about some people having radio issues.
I have turned off MiMo and beamforming, IIRC they were suggested, perhaps not related to what I'm experiencing tho.
Other than this radio issue the 384.19 firmware is running fine, with 8 days uptime. I'm no longer power cycling it when the issue arises with the radio.

 

[larsnet]

The last time this happened, 2.4Ghz radio shows all devices connected but nothing works, nothing new can connect, following a WPS type reset and manually entering details, my 2.4Ghz radio lasted for over 4 days before this same error occurred. It has just happened again and can be seen in the screen shot. Nothing to notice in the logs.......

Spoiler

View attachment 26510

Just cycle the 2.4Ghz radio is enough to start it working again, not need to power cycle the whole router.

Now all is well.....

Spoiler

View attachment 26511

As the Wireless aspect of this firmware is closed to adjustments then it could be that there is a hardware issue with my 2.4Ghz radio. I could go back to try 384.18 as it didn't happen than to see if that is the case or it could be that Asus changed something in the radio to contribute to or cause this problem.
My router was made in 2017, I have seen several posts, and a thread, about some people having radio issues.
I have turned off MiMo and beamforming, IIRC they were suggested, perhaps not related to what I'm experiencing tho.
Other than this radio issue the 384.19 firmware is running fine, with 8 days uptime. I'm no longer power cycling it when the issue arises with the radio.

I had the same issue on the 2.4Ghz band and try a lot of different things such as disable beamforming and al the new AX settings.
For me the solution to get it stable was to set the Modulation Scheme to MCS7 (802.11n) under professional settings.

 

[Vimes]

^^^^ thanks for the idea, I have given it a go and now will just wait and see what happens within the week. Not sure what the change brings, hoping for stability...!

 

[larsnet]

yeah i hope it works for you

 

[archiel]

I have to disable it on 2,4GHz in order to get my old Logitech SqueezeBox Radio to work.

I was having some issues with my Logitech BoomBox, but did not check if AX on 2.4 was the issue, just switched to using a wired connection via a Devolo Homeplug. No other devices on 2.4 are having any problems.

 

[shabbs]

I have to disable it on 2,4GHz in order to get my old Logitech SqueezeBox Radio to work.

Oh man! THROWBACK!

Man, I miss mine. I had the original Squeezebox (upgraded the lcd display too) and the SB3. Both died after many years of heavy use. Such great devices.

 

[archiel]

Oh man! THROWBACK!

Man, I miss mine. I had the original Squeezebox (upgraded the lcd display too) and the SB3. Both died after many years of heavy use. Such great devices.

I also have the SB3 (wired version) - both BoomBox and SB3 have needed replacement power supplies, but otherwise are working fine.

 

[thecheapseats]

@thecheapseats Personal attacks are not allowed on SNBForums. A repeat offense will earn you a 1 week ban.

it was an appropriate statement...

 

[aurora]

You may want to try this and see if it works for you. It is just my personal experience on RT-AC68U and RT-AC86U.

I had wifi dropout issue many months ago with Asus stock FW, it happened after certain FW updates. I fixed it by changing the wifi channel from 'auto' to a fixed channel. Asus FW tends to aggressively searching for a 'better' wifi channel and the connected devices cannot keep up with the channel change.

 

[lattugatartaruga]

hello, just got a new ax88u and flashed it with merlin 384.19 and I'm planning to set it up as my main - along with 2 x ac86u aimesh nodes that have the latest stock 384.82072 fw ... any point in flashing merlin on the nodes at this point? i have not seen many reports of people running 19 on both these models in mesh mode in my searches so far so I thought I would kindly ask - tia - massive thanks to merlin and everyone on the forum - amazing support

I ended up putting the latest merlin releases (384.19) on the ax88u first (both nodes were stock):

ax88u rev1.1 aimesh (master)
ac86u (2018) (wireless mesh node)
ac86u (2019) (wireless mesh node)

used all the recommended procedures and settings... it all ran amazingly for 9 days and then the (nodes) started to drop off randomly. This past Friday, I reset and flashed the nodes to 384.19 but also had node dropoff issues... Then I spent all of Saturday on 384.18 for all 3 and then Sunday going back to stock by performing full resets back to stock on all 3 routers but the nodes continue to drop and last night the ax88u even lost wan and had to be manually rebooted. I don't have much time left (10 days) to return the ax88u but at this point, I may not have a choice. I do believe that the 86u's are my weak link here (considering all that I've read around here) and I have no way to get the nodes wired. Worst case, I can remove 1 of the nodes but I still believe the 86u will continue to give me trouble... or even do a master/node with both ac86u (but merlin - but which fw)... I do have a gt-ac2900 (obviously not merlin supported) laying around that also didn't play nicely with the 86u's... so I am completely open to suggestions...as I am too far into the ASUS rabbit-hole at this point to turn back lol. Currently hopping along all stock with random node dropoffs but no wan dc's since last night's manual reboot. Thank you kindly

 

[GHog]

I have an RT-AX88U and a RT-AC68U in a mesh setup. I do not experience the drops as many have experienced. I do believe it has to do with how you set the routers up prior to setting up the mesh through your master. So here is how I do the setup.
1) You must analyze the room your going to place the router in to see what background networks are going to be seen by the node or master. This is critical if you live in an apartment or homes in your area are crowded close together. I also turn roaming off in all my routers as well smart connect.
2) With that info in hand, I log into the router and manually select the channels for both 5ghz and 2.4ghz that have the least amount of traffic and the lowest signal levels for the background networks.
3) I have found that I must setup mode node devices to give me the best performance prior to adding to a mesh network.
4) Once that work is complete, I place routers where I tested and then setup the mesh network.
Both my routers use Merlin 384.19 firmware
You can find good analyzers on the web for the AC routers. I use the Wi-Fi radar for the AX router when I analyze the the room for that device. RMerlin sent me a link the other day for an analyzer for use with Windows devices and it works great. He is the link

https://www.helge-keck.com/download.html

Hope this helps

 

[lattugatartaruga]

I have an RT-AX88U and a RT-AC68U in a mesh setup. I do not experience the drops as many have experienced. I do believe it has to do with how you set the routers up prior to setting up the mesh through your master. So here is how I do the setup.
1) You must analyze the room your going to place the router in to see what background networks are going to be seen by the node or master. This is critical if you live in an apartment or homes in your area are crowded close together. I also turn roaming off in all my routers as well smart connect.
2) With that info in hand, I log into the router and manually select the channels for both 5ghz and 2.4ghz that have the least amount of traffic and the lowest signal levels for the background networks.
3) I have found that I must setup mode node devices to give me the best performance prior to adding to a mesh network.
4) Once that work is complete, I place routers where I tested and then setup the mesh network.
Both my routers use Merlin 384.19 firmware
You can find good analyzers on the web for the AC routers. I use the Wi-Fi radar for the AX router when I analyze the the room for that device. RMerlin sent me a link the other day for an analyzer for use with Windows devices and it works great. He is the link

https://www.helge-keck.com/download.html

Hope this helps

I made sure to do what you described but I used inSSIDer. Thanks for your input and especially for the tip on this other tool (will download immediately!), I will definitely use it for my next test. I wish I had hung onto my 68u vs buying the 86u's at this point

 

[bbunge]

While 384.19 is working well on my AC86U I am a bit concerned with the increase in RAM usage. RAM is going up by 1% per day. First week of operation RAM got to 80%. Reboot set it back to 72% and it going back up slowly again. Memory leak?

 

[Clark Griswald]

@bbunge
My 86U RAM has consistently hovered @ 93%, and has become one of those items I merely glance at without concern.

 

[DAVID LONG]

Mine AC86U gets up to about 88% and stays there.

No issues at all with that memory usage.

 

[QuikSilver]

@bbunge
My 86U RAM has consistently hovered @ 93%, and has become one of those items I merely glance at without concern.

Same here....

 

[Butterfly Bones]

While 384.19 is working well on my AC86U I am a bit concerned with the increase in RAM usage. RAM is going up by 1% per day. First week of operation RAM got to 80%. Reboot set it back to 72% and it going back up slowly again. Memory leak?

This goes round and round. Non Linux users do not understand Linux RAM management.
https://www.linuxatemyram.com/

This is my AC86U, looks like all the RAM is being used, right?

Look at all the cached memory below!
Also the second line - buffers and cache, FREE and ready for any task!

usr_name@RT-AC86U-4608:/tmp/home/root# free

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        440420     408748      31672       1260       2376      69624
-/+ buffers/cache:     336748     103672
Swap:       524284      19552     504732

More readily available to the router for use than the hardware RAM! Very cool, huh? Someone was really thinking about this! Welcome to Linux! I've run it as my main desktop computer OS for some 15-20 years. And my laptop is a Macbook, very similar OS to Linux, so drop me to a command prompt and I know my way around there too.

 

[Vimes]

Sadly the 2.4Ghz radio only lasted a couple of days.....

Spoiler

Setting it this time to a fixed channel was enough to get the radio working again.

I will try the default firmware just to test that. I assume that can be flashed without issue over Merlin's....? I have never used the std firmware but I realise that I'll need to make alternative arrangements for policy based routing.


EDIT: Can anyone familiar with the default firmware tell me where the "Tools" equivalent would be to find uptime, JFFS information etc...? Can't seem to find it, never used std firmware before. Thanks


Spoke to ASUS and the support agent took my detail, still under the three years warranty. He advised me to downgrade the firmware as they have had calls related to the current firmware giving such issues.
I'll try that and if the issue is still present I can return the almost three years old router to Amazon.

 

[gattaca]

^^^^ WRT 384.19, very interesting comments via ASUS support on backleveling the FW due to others also reporting issues. TY for posting that. IDK where similar tooling is located or even IF some of these items are available in ASUS's stock FW.. Many things in RMerlin's releases are unique. Someone else may be able to definitively answer. Stay safe, stay alive. Peace.

 

[Vimes]

I thought that it was interesting as well, with what the support agent noted.
He even referred to a call that he took himself a few days ago from a 86U user with the same issues being reported, regarding WiFi problems since using the latest firmware.
Whether it has any merit with the recent problems that has been troublesome for me, seemingly since using the 384.19 firmware, I'll wait to see. Either way at least I have options to return the router via Amazon if I need to.

Thanks regarding the Tools and JFFS query. I wondered if it might be due to this firmwares changes that are unique. I am now adapting to using vanilla for testing purposes. I am not using their latest, but the previous version.