AX88U painful first few days

[Christophe]

I've been running on an old AC3200 with an AC68U access point attached for a while now and have had generally great experiences.
I recently upgraded to an AX88u placed in center of the house, and the signal strength is goo throughout. I have many Amazon Echo devices which I was able to get registered. I also have many smart devices (dimmer switch, smart plugs, Hue, Smart lights connected) I have found a few things that either do not work at all, or ONLY sometimes work.

Issues:
1) I have a smart plug by CE Smart that simply will not connect to the AX88u. I've been able to connect it to ISP Modem Wifi (SmartRG 516).
This is a 2 Ghz device, and I am using the 2Ghz SSID - and the ASUS channel I use is much stronger an less congested than the SmartRG channel.
2) *** the most annoying symptom *** - My Amazon Echo devices (different generations, and models) all connect and respond to commands, but
streaming media is really hit and miss. For example, when I say "Alexa play BBC radio 2 on Tune-in", Alexa responds "playing BBC radio-2 on Tune-in"
but then there is just silence. Sometimes it does work - but then cuts out a bit later. I've had similar results with "Play Frank Sinatra on Spotify".
The ability to play music to speaker groups has not been a huge success either - sometimes works, sometimes not.

Set-up:
1) AX88U Merlin f/w 388.1
2) AI-Mesh - not used
3) Smart Connect - off
4) Wireless mode - Auto
5) 802.11ax - disable (I don't need this now, but had issue on or off...)
6) Agile Multiband - Disable
7) Target Wake Time - disable
8) Channel bandwidth 20/40
9) Control Channel 4
10) Extension channel - Above
11) WPA-2-Personal / AES
12) Protected Management Frames - Disable
13) Group Key Rotation - 3600

I've tried with the devices either on my LAN SSID or on a Guest Network SSID. I did not try Amazon WiFi simple setup because I could not find any description of how to use it.

My wife is getting a bit agitated with the on/off of the network and missing her beloved BBC - But I'd hate to have to revert back to the old AC3200 switch which is not even supported anymore.... all suggestions welcome.

 

[Spartan]

Just for testing, Install and older firmware, none of the 386.XX or 388.XX ones: ASUS RT-AX88U Router Firmware 3.0.0.4.384.9579

When I had the AX88U, it was working perfectly on 384.xx firmware but would always randomly disconnect the internet on newer firmware so I had to stick to the older firmware

Also, when you install the above firmware for testing, reset the router to its defaults and don't change any settings yet to isolate the issue.

 

[Christophe]

Thanks - I'll give that a try. Its such a pain re-registering all the devices and retesting everything... If that turns out to resolve things, it will negate some of the reasons for moving to a new router in the first place (up to date support), but I'll find a time to do this and see.

 

[Spartan]

Thanks - I'll give that a try. Its such a pain re-registering all the devices and retesting everything... If that turns out to resolve things, it will negate some of the reasons for moving to a new router in the first place (up to date support), but I'll find a time to do this and see.

I understand and I always felt bad becaue I have a fairly modern router that I am stuck to using old firmware and I've seen many similar threads about random disconnections where the router would be on and it says it is connected but it wouldn't have any internet connectivity until you rebooted it. On the other hand, there were many who didn't have this issue. All I'm saying is, test out the old firmware, I'm very interested to know the result then we can take it from there.

One thing that also affected my AX88U was enabling 160hz channel, that also caused it to randomly disconnect more often than with the 160hz not enabled (which is the default setting)

 

[mstar]

regarding the smart plug, i just got a amazon smart plug and it worked. No more messing about and testing firmware. sometimes if its feasible just replace the device (if its not to expensive)

 

[Dr Mono]

I've been running on an old AC3200 with an AC68U access point attached for a while now and have had generally great experiences.
I recently upgraded to an AX88u placed in center of the house, and the signal strength is goo throughout. I have many Amazon Echo devices which I was able to get registered. I also have many smart devices (dimmer switch, smart plugs, Hue, Smart lights connected) I have found a few things that either do not work at all, or ONLY sometimes work.

Issues:
1) I have a smart plug by CE Smart that simply will not connect to the AX88u. I've been able to connect it to ISP Modem Wifi (SmartRG 516).
This is a 2 Ghz device, and I am using the 2Ghz SSID - and the ASUS channel I use is much stronger an less congested than the SmartRG channel.
2) *** the most annoying symptom *** - My Amazon Echo devices (different generations, and models) all connect and respond to commands, but
streaming media is really hit and miss. For example, when I say "Alexa play BBC radio 2 on Tune-in", Alexa responds "playing BBC radio-2 on Tune-in"
but then there is just silence. Sometimes it does work - but then cuts out a bit later. I've had similar results with "Play Frank Sinatra on Spotify".
The ability to play music to speaker groups has not been a huge success either - sometimes works, sometimes not.

Set-up:
1) AX88U Merlin f/w 388.1
2) AI-Mesh - not used
3) Smart Connect - off
4) Wireless mode - Auto
5) 802.11ax - disable (I don't need this now, but had issue on or off...)
6) Agile Multiband - Disable
7) Target Wake Time - disable
8) Channel bandwidth 20/40
9) Control Channel 4
10) Extension channel - Above
11) WPA-2-Personal / AES
12) Protected Management Frames - Disable
13) Group Key Rotation - 3600

I've tried with the devices either on my LAN SSID or on a Guest Network SSID. I did not try Amazon WiFi simple setup because I could not find any description of how to use it.

My wife is getting a bit agitated with the on/off of the network and missing her beloved BBC - But I'd hate to have to revert back to the old AC3200 switch which is not even supported anymore.... all suggestions welcome.

The second problem (I think) is a recent Alexa bug. I have experienced it twice in the last week. I try to play a radio station, Alexa says okay, but then, silence. It was fine before, and nothing has changed in my network setup since October. Spotify is still working fine.

 

[Christophe]

My Updates:

1. I tried going back to a 384 version of the fw as suggested by Spartan. It really did not make any difference, and the issues continued. This was doing a full factory reset and reverting to a 384 stock f/w.
2. I then thought I'd do some general clean-up. I had been running with my old AC3200 double NATed and it had been workign ok for quite some time, but I figured this was not the optimal configuration. So after some mucking around managed to get the ISP box configured in bridge mode so the PPPoE tunnel terminated on the AX88u. This seemed to resolve most of the problems. The only issue was getting all the smart devices set-up again and in the proper Alexa group so the responded as I expected. This was frustrating for my wife because I could only work on it from time to time, but I got it done. And this is with a full factory reset done on the AX88u and back to running the Merlin 388.1 with all the default settings (i.e. allowing 802.1x)
3. One other change I made was to set up a guest network, and to put as many of my smart devices as I could in the guest network. There is no need for my home devices (PC/TV/phone...) to be addressable by these devices, so I figured that was better from a security perspective. So the only devices on my home LAN are the ones that NEED to be there. Eventually I will try changing the guest SSID so it is not broadcast as well.
4. Dr Mono - thanks for saying that you had experienced some problems that sound exactly like what I was having. Since the Double NAT is gone, it is far better then it was - it seems to work in almost all cases, but there have still been a few times where after Alexa says OK to play something, there is silence.

Thanks for all the input - and sorry this took so long to find the time to work through - but it looks good now.

 

[OzarkEdge]

My Updates:

1. I tried going back to a 384 version of the fw as suggested by Spartan. It really did not make any difference, and the issues continued. This was doing a full factory reset and reverting to a 384 stock f/w.
2. I then thought I'd do some general clean-up. I had been running with my old AC3200 double NATed and it had been workign ok for quite some time, but I figured this was not the optimal configuration. So after some mucking around managed to get the ISP box configured in bridge mode so the PPPoE tunnel terminated on the AX88u. This seemed to resolve most of the problems. The only issue was getting all the smart devices set-up again and in the proper Alexa group so the responded as I expected. This was frustrating for my wife because I could only work on it from time to time, but I got it done. And this is with a full factory reset done on the AX88u and back to running the Merlin 388.1 with all the default settings (i.e. allowing 802.1x)
3. One other change I made was to set up a guest network, and to put as many of my smart devices as I could in the guest network. There is no need for my home devices (PC/TV/phone...) to be addressable by these devices, so I figured that was better from a security perspective. So the only devices on my home LAN are the ones that NEED to be there. Eventually I will try changing the guest SSID so it is not broadcast as well.
4. Dr Mono - thanks for saying that you had experienced some problems that sound exactly like what I was having. Since the Double NAT is gone, it is far better then it was - it seems to work in almost all cases, but there have still been a few times where after Alexa says OK to play something, there is silence.

Thanks for all the input - and sorry this took so long to find the time to work through - but it looks good now.

It's not clear from your post, so I'll mention that you should reset the installed firmware to its defaults before you configure it.

OE