Beta Asuswrt-Merlin 386.1 Beta (stage 2) is now available

[New2This]

You need to use the Firmware Recovery Tool to upgrade from beta 4, that build was broken and pulled off after a few hours.

I thought so sh*ts and giggles I would try and flash 384.19( from being on beta 4) and see if that would take, and to my surprise it took, after flashing I gave them a nuke and then flash them again but this time with beta 5, and again it was able to flash that firmware as well, so I repeated with another nuke, just to clean it out, so far after 10 hours of using beta 5, working like a charm

 

[ATLga]

Just to here to report that Beta 5 seems to run smoothly on my RT-AC86U (Main) en RT-AC68U (AIMesh Node). Would like to thank @RMerlin and @themiron for their continous efforts.

I am, even though my post count doesn't reflect so, a long time user but due to health issues I have no access to my previous credentials and the linked mailaccount doesn't exist anymore. As my brain has been affected, I kindly request you to be a bit patient with me, like I have been with others in the past who faced similar challenges in their lives.

I just only hopped back on the Merlin-train starting with b4, so I can't say if the issues was present before, the search offers no useful info, but it appears that the Wifi Radar isn't working. Is this beta specifific or should I start a new thread?

It just shows my own AP's, both bands and the guest network and no matter what I try, I can't get a site survey. Is it broken or does it need to be configured beforehand? It wasn't present yet in the builds I used before I was hospitalized for a long, long time. I've tried both the internal wifi adapter as well as a an external dual band USB adapter with a RTL8812AU chipset, but I could really use some assistance to get this to work (if possible).

Your help is being appreciated and thanks to @RMerlin that returning here after several years of being sick the project is still alive and kicking, hats of to you, sir.

Best regards,
Marco

Maybe @thiggins can help you get back in your old account?

 

[tlacko]

Moving beta feedback to the correct thread:
Blocking wifi client device from internet doesn't work on RT-AX86U. On the Asus framework I just clicked the "Block Internet Access" on the client, worked properly.
- Tried the beta4 and now the beta5 too, with factory reset.
- Tried without any advanced features turned on (with factory reset too)
- Tried with guest wifi too (on the 2nd or 3rd place too).
- Also tried some workaround like setting a non existing DNS address for the client IP in the DHCP server settings, didn't help.

If it's useful:
- the device uses 2.4ghz wifi,
- and it's an IP camera and I would like to prevent it to stream the video externally (so not sure which protocol it uses) and use it only locally.

@RMerlin thanks for checking this, and if you or anybody else have any workaround please share it.

 

[spedwards]

AX88u after 25hrs of stable B5 use:

Per-IP (XBox in this case) parental control timers are now working again (broken in B4b).

IPv6 is rock stable again (broken in B4b)

Built in DDNS appears to have an issue with deciding when to send updates:

DDNS is set to:
Use WWW.DNSOMATIC.COM
dns name: fredsIP.ddns.somewhere
No wildcard support.
Force update interval: 1
WAP IP and hostname verification: yes
Check every 30 minutes

dnsomatic emails me the responses from the ddns provider, I see very odd timing patterns. These do not start every 30mins. There are big gaps between each sequence, anywhere between 15-45 mins, but no obvious pattern to the timing of them.

In each sequence there are always at least two email responses 7-8 minutes apart, the first with a blank response and the second confirming a change to a new IP I'll call "X"

This "X" is always the same IP. It matches the external IP for the system.

Sometimes I will see 4 of these emails 7-8 minutes apart in a blank-content/changed IP/blank-content/changed IP sequence. Mostly its just a pair of emails.

I was expecting to see one DDNS email per day, unless the router was re-booted. My ISP (BT) likes to assign new IPs most times the router reboots.

BTW the router's uptime is around 25hrs now and I've had a few dozen DDNS update emails in that time.

Internal DNS is not reporting the DDNS address for the local system.
If I set my phone to use WiFi and ping "fredsIP.ddns.somewhere" it reports request timeouts.
If I set my phone to use mobile data and repeat the ping it gets the correct current DDNS-derived IP and works properly.

I have set the DNS servers in DHCP to point to the Google servers and to include the local routers IP in addition to the google servers.

I wonder; could this DNS issue have some bearing on the erratic and unwanted DDNS registration retries?

WiFi Radar: Site Survey didn't seem to be working, until I figured out I needed to "Start Data Collection" under the Configure tab.
Should there be any default WiFi Radar information available without requiring a manual start/stop effort?

 

[seabell]

Just to here to report that Beta 5 seems to run smoothly on my RT-AC86U (Main) en RT-AC68U (AIMesh Node). Would like to thank @RMerlin and @themiron for their continous efforts.

I am, even though my post count doesn't reflect so, a long time user but due to health issues I have no access to my previous credentials and the linked mailaccount doesn't exist anymore. As my brain has been affected, I kindly request you to be a bit patient with me, like I have been with others in the past who faced similar challenges in their lives.

I just only hopped back on the Merlin-train starting with b4, so I can't say if the issues was present before, the search offers no useful info, but it appears that the Wifi Radar isn't working. Is this beta specifific or should I start a new thread?

It just shows my own AP's, both bands and the guest network and no matter what I try, I can't get a site survey. Is it broken or does it need to be configured beforehand? It wasn't present yet in the builds I used before I was hospitalized for a long, long time. I've tried both the internal wifi adapter as well as a an external dual band USB adapter with a RTL8812AU chipset, but I could really use some assistance to get this to work (if possible).

Your help is being appreciated and thanks to @RMerlin that returning here after several years of being sick the project is still alive and kicking, hats of to you, sir.

Best regards,
Marco

Hi Marco, try this: Wi-Fi Radar
You need to go to the Configuration 'tab' of the WiFi Radar page that opens (or click 'Settings' on the main GUI WiFi Radar tab), then click 'Start Data Collection' and give it a minute or so to do it's thing.

 

[spedwards]

Moving beta feedback to the correct thread:
Blocking wifi client device from internet doesn't work on RT-AX86U. On the Asus framework I just clicked the "Block Internet Access" on the client, worked properly.
- Tried the beta4 and now the beta5 too, with factory reset.
- Tried without any advanced features turned on (with factory reset too)
- Tried with guest wifi too (on the 2nd or 3rd place too).
- Also tried some workaround like setting a non existing DNS address for the client IP in the DHCP server settings, didn't help.

If it's useful:
- the device uses 2.4ghz wifi,
- and it's an IP camera and I would like to prevent it to stream the video externally (so not sure which protocol it uses) and use it only locally.

@RMerlin thanks for checking this, and if you or anybody else have any workaround please share it.

Have you tried using a Parental Control timer for that MAC? From watching the behaviour of the systems affected here it appears that this prevents the camera accessing DNS requests. It wouldn't break an existing link, but once set to have no access time a re-boot of the camera should switch off external comms. Unless the camera has a fixed-IP call-home embedded within it, which is unlikely.

 

[john9527]

It just shows my own AP's, both bands and the guest network and no matter what I try, I can't get a site survey.

Not sure about the current implementation, but in the past setting any MAC filters or using DFS channels would prevent site survey from working correctly.

 

[cplay]

I updated both my AX88U routers to version 386.1 b5 (coming from 386.1 b4b) and all went smooth


The only detail I still see is that download/upload speeds are shown incorrectly in the Adaptive QoS section. This only happens when traffic goes through a VPN:
View attachment 29916

In the screenshot above a download (via VPN) is in progress. However this traffic is shown as 'Upload'.

When downloading 'direct' via the WAN, traffic statistics are shown correctly.


Is there anything I can do to fix this from my side? Or is this a known issue that needs to be fixed in the firmware?


Thank you for this release

+1 for a fix/ looking into this issue.

I have exactly the same issue on my ac86u

 

[MvW]

Hi Marco, try this: Wi-Fi Radar
You need to go to the Configuration 'tab' of the WiFi Radar page that opens (or click 'Settings' on the main GUI WiFi Radar tab), then click 'Start Data Collection' and give it a minute or so to do it's thing.

This did the trick, thank you. I saw the setting, but I thought it was for scheduled data collection only. As soon as I hit Start Data Collection all graphs are being filled with all surrounding SSID's, even without the need to hit Scan.

 

[FelixGV]

Moving beta feedback to the correct thread:
Blocking wifi client device from internet doesn't work on RT-AX86U. On the Asus framework I just clicked the "Block Internet Access" on the client, worked properly.
- Tried the beta4 and now the beta5 too, with factory reset.
- Tried without any advanced features turned on (with factory reset too)
- Tried with guest wifi too (on the 2nd or 3rd place too).
- Also tried some workaround like setting a non existing DNS address for the client IP in the DHCP server settings, didn't help.

If it's useful:
- the device uses 2.4ghz wifi,
- and it's an IP camera and I would like to prevent it to stream the video externally (so not sure which protocol it uses) and use it only locally.

@RMerlin thanks for checking this, and if you or anybody else have any workaround please share it.

I also have an RT-AX86U and have encountered the same issue, with all beta versions. If I configure aiprotection time scheduler, I can just block access to the web pages (for an android device). Other accesses to spotify, netflix, etc, are not blocked.

 

[brummygit]

There's definitely something strange going on with 2.4Ghz in my setup using Beta 5. My RT-AX56Us as mesh nodes for the RT-AX88U have the issues with devices struggling to connect and getting poor performance. I tested with my RT-AC68U as an AP and it worked fine. So I upgraded it to beta5 then when I added it as a mesh node it suddenly started with the problems. Downgrading it to stock 386_41634 and it still had the same issues until I removed it from the mesh and configured it as an AP again. WiFi configuration was the same on both RT-AX88U and RT-AC68U for these tests.

I didn't see this on the 386_41535 code base (but I did have other issues) so I wonder if the WIFI SDK has been updated between the releases for the AX routers and its pushing different settings out to the RT-AC68U when it's in mesh mode.

It looks like I need to regress for now.

I went back to basics overnight to ensure that we had a network running - RT-AX88U running beta5 as main router with WiFi turned off. RT-AC68U as AP running 41634 covering the problematic cameras, RT-AX56U as AP running beta5 covering main living area of house. Everything was running beautifully overnight and this morning.

I decided to enable WiFi on the RT-AX88U again - default settings with WiFi 6 enabled. 2.4Ghz set to 20Mhz fixed channel, Universal Beamforming off. 5Ghz set to 80Mhz fixed channel, Universal Beamforming off - this seemed to work well and started to take clients from the APs. I decided to try adding a RT-AX56U node running beta5 in place of the RT-AC68U, and as belt & braces I re-configured WiFi on one camera to see if that made any difference. To my surprise all of my cameras are working perfectly today using the mesh node - yesterday they wouldn't stay connected and traffic was incredibly slow when they did.

The only difference I can pinpoint is that I used the WPS button reset on all routers this time instead of relying on the GUI factory reset on the router and removing nodes from the mesh which ASUS say will set the node back to factory. I've seen similar posts recently describing different results, but don't know of any hard facts that you can get different results. However. currently I have beta5 running well although I still seem to have more devices than normal preferring the AX88U over the outlying AX56Us. I will continue to monitor how things go, but so far I can report noticeably strong 2.4Ghz signals.

Thanks as always to @RMerlin and many others for your hard work.

 

[davelian]

Beta5 feedback for AC86U:

• Aiprotection time scheduling is still broken can't blocked client.
• Its can only block internet access when choosing "BLOCK"

 

[FelixGV]

Beta5 feedback for AC86U:

• Aiprotection time scheduling is still broken can't blocked client.
• Its can only block internet access when choosing "BLOCK"

I have the exact same issue on my RT-AX86U. I thought it was a router model specific problem.

 

[vvicked]

Logging has always been quirky. Sometimes I've seen that logs simply took longer to update. Could also be a corrupted database or lack of space in the /jffs partition. You could try deleting the database, then restarting AiProtection:

rm /jffs/.sys/AiProtectionMonitor/*

Thank you, that worked!

 

[distilled]

That's because not all countries and territories apply the same rules and dates, it is not a flaw in the router programming.

Yup, this is the political flaw known as Daylight Savings.

I shouldn't complain - I am American, and we still refuse to use metric units...

 

[elorimer]

On b5 I am no longer being asked for login credentials when accessing the webgui.

 

[dave14305]

Another observation with the GPL is that when using an HTTPS connection to the router, the new WAN DNS dropdown fields do not work due to mixed-content errors in the browser console (loading http URL from asus.com in an https page). Not Merlin's issue to fix, but another discrepancy I've found between using http versus https in the GUI (the first being the drawing of the Speedtest page under http in iPadOS Safari). Can't seem to have it both ways.

Also goes for things like the Time Zone database on the System tab.

 

[Fuechslein]

After updating m AX88U from beta4b to beta5 both my XT8's refused to use the dedicated 5GHz backhaul and always used 2.4GHz. Resetting and adding the nodes again did not help. Did a factory reset of the AX88U without importing a settings backup and everything is working now.

(I know AiMesh is closed source, but still wanted to report.)

 

[KingBravery]

After updating m AX88U from beta4b to beta5 both my XT8's refused to use the dedicated 5GHz backhaul and always used 2.4GHz. Resetting and adding the nodes again did not help. Did a factory reset of the AX88U without importing a settings backup and everything is working now.

(I know AiMesh is closed source, but still wanted to report.)

This one is similar with my situation if only using beta RC2 firmware for XT8. (RT-AX86U (Merlin beta 5) with 2 unit XT8 (RC2-10 beta)

My way is remove and adding node like you still happen 2.4GHz.

But after that I'm just use the optimization button and voila 5GHz backhaul is back.

Sometimes 2.4GHz situation happen again, I'm pushed the optimization button again.

Hope there is explanation about it.

 

[maxbraketorque]

I've spent the last few hours trying to get my Ring Floodlight Cameras to connect to my RT-AX88U and mesh. They are 2.4Ghz and even if I persuade them to connect they are very slow. Other 2.4Ghz devices "seem" to be OK but nothing else generates any amount of traffic.

I'm resorting to making a mesh with only my RT-AX56Us but even these aren't performing well on 2.4Ghz

I've done multiple full factory resets while trying to diagnose.

2.4 GHz set to 40 MHz bandwidth is working fine on my AC86U, so I suppose this issue is specific to the AX88U or possibly AX models in general?