Buggy RT-AC86U firmware...

[tbessie]

As we all know, ASUS firmware tends to be quite buggy at first release.

I decided to upgrade my venerable RT-N66U, and got an RT-AC86U (one of their newer routers).

Setup went as expected; however, the DHCP Assigned IP settings only allow a maximum of 31 assigned IPs. It is supposed to allow 64, and I have more than 31 devices on my home network, and need to be able to assign IPs to them manually, so this is a very annoying bug.

I've sent an email to Asus about it; hopefully they'll fix it in their next firmware release.

Pretty stupid, tho' - Asus has been making wireless routers with this feature for many, many years; you'd think that they could get this working the first time 'round on a new router.

 

[helio58]

As we all know, ASUS firmware tends to be quite buggy at first release.

I decided to upgrade my venerable RT-N66U, and got an RT-AC86U (one of their newer routers).

Setup went as expected; however, the DHCP Assigned IP settings only allow a maximum of 31 assigned IPs. It is supposed to allow 64, and I have more than 31 devices on my home network, and need to be able to assign IPs to them manually, so this is a very annoying bug.

I've sent an email to Asus about it; hopefully they'll fix it in their next firmware release.

Pretty stupid, tho' - Asus has been making wireless routers with this feature for many, many years; you'd think that they could get this working the first time 'round on a new router.

Merlin have a alpha firmware in the test builds.
I haven't try because haven't received my unit

 

[RMerlin]

Pretty stupid, tho' - Asus has been making wireless routers with this feature for many, many years; you'd think that they could get this working the first time 'round on a new router.

Trust me, it's not THAT simple. A lot of changes in the low-level code for that new platform from Broadcom, combined with a lot of low-level changes to nvram management to protect against buffer overruns. Some of these changes are having an impact on totally unexpected areas of the firmware. Been dealing myself with some of these unexpected issues first-hand, where openvpn code that used to work fine now requires fixes and changes left and right to deal with this new firmware code base.

From the webui level it does look fine to me, the addGroup() call does check against a limit of 64. So if it's really broken, it's not something obvious or expected.

The RT-AC86U and GT-AC5300U are a major platform change from Broadcom - the biggest since the move from MIPS to ARM with the RT-AC56U.

 

[wouterv]

A little addition to Merlins explanation: although the Asus router user interface of all routers look very similar, the underlying router hardware has lots of variations which result in lots of engineering efforts to make it all work as intended.
The hardware of the good old RT-N66U is ancient compared to the RT-AC86U.
Like a car of the past and today, both have 4 wheels and a steering wheel, that's about where similarity ends (and today we have the "recall" phenomena).

 

[sm00thpapa]

Buggy firmware from Asus is nothing new. Seems like all of their firmware releases are in Beta or even Alpha form.

 

[jim769]

Buggy firmware from Asus is nothing new. Seems like all of their firmware releases are in Beta or even Alpha form.

 

[Temchenko]

I can second this=) Got CN version of router back in the August. Still my main problem isnt solved. Wereless connection is stable for all of the connected devices. However for some unknown reason it's not letting connected to internet. Local network is fine. None of existing firware haven't solved it. Tried AiMech official beta, all of Merlins firmwares. Still wating for the fix from Asus. Read that someone with CN version had similar problems here. Hope that Asus is working hard to fix this. Other than that roter is great. With recent Merlins update OVPN is fantastic!

 

[Pir8pete]

I can second this=) Got CN version of router back in the August. Still my main problem isnt solved. Wereless connection is stable for all of the connected devices. However for some unknown reason it's not letting connected to internet. Local network is fine. None of existing firware haven't solved it. Tried AiMech official beta, all of Merlins firmwares. Still wating for the fix from Asus. Read that someone with CN version had similar problems here. Hope that Asus is working hard to fix this. Other than that roter is great. With recent Merlins update OVPN is fantastic!

mine works fine, other then some odd logs errors