ssideratos
Occasional Visitor
I have an AC68U and an AC68P.
I used the AC68U since September 2014 on Merlin's 376.47 and things worked great! The router was ultra reliable and stable. Uptime seemed unlimited. The router may only have been rebooted a few times in several months and that probably to dust or re-arrange power cords. Honestly, that is what I have come to expect from a router as my D-Link DIR-655 that the 68U replaced also never needed to be rebooted.
In late April 2015, I realized it was time to give some attention to my routers make sure their firmware was updated to help plug a few of the published security risks.
On my upgrade day, I upgraded the firmware on my home AC68U after full reset to Merlin's 378.53 and re-programmed all of my Reserved DHCP addresses from scratch. For a second location (small office), since I was so happy with the AC68U, I purchased an AC68P from Best Buy and immediately reset and flashed the same 378.53. In a 3rd location, a seldom used vacation home, I upgraded my RT-N66U to the same level.
Both my AC68U and AC68P hang periodically. My computers show limited internet connectivity. I can still access everything else on my internal networks that go through an independent switch. The router itself gives no indication that anything is wrong. The LED's seem to blink away normally. I cannot access the GUI, or Putty into the router though - router hangs.
If I power off the router then turn it back on, even for just a few seconds, the connection comes right back and all seems well again. I DO NOT need to power off the cable modem, switch, or anything else, just the router.
The 68P gets much more use than the 68U and so the problem is noticed much more frequently (can be daily, or even a couple times per day). I though maybe it was a hardware problem, so I exchanged the 68P at Best Buy for another within the 30 days. No change -- same issue.
Even though neither is overclocked, I added a small USB fan next to the 68P hoping it might some help with stability -- No change.
I have performed several full resets on both routers and manually re-entered all my settings several times. It is a time consuming process as I have at least 20 wired devices at each location. Wireless is used only by a couple of cell phones and one laptop. The problem remains despite the full resets.
When 378.54_2 became available, I upgraded all 3 routers both 68U, 68P and N66U to 378.54_2. In this case, the upgrade was done in-place over the existing configuration because it is so time consuming and the release notes did not seem to require a reset for this release, especially since it was only a single minor revision away from my previous release. Again, the problem remains.
I continue to experiencing these overly frequent hangs on both the AC68U and the AC68P. Once a week would be too much, but it can happen daily. I have not noticed the problem on the N66U, but it has probably only been used about 15 days since April.
Again, almost everything is wired.
On the AC68U and AC68P
1) DNS Filtering is set to OpenDNS Home
2) AiProtection (Malicious Sites Blocking, Vulnerability Protection, and Infected Device Prevention and Blocking) are all turned on.
Is anyone else experiencing similar behavior? Does anyone else think it may be related to the AiProtection settings?
I may turn them off to test, but I HATE to do that. I have very few computer security incidents over the years (only a couple of incidents of mal-ware causing pop-ups), but recently, a week after I upgraded these routers, a remote office I am responsible for that I have not yet upgraded, had a very nasty and aggressive security breach where one of the computers was fully compromised over the internet and turned into a spam generator. I just feel safer knowing that the router is keeping an eye on things by blocking known malicious sites, and suspicious activity, etc. I know it works, because I have seen the router warning twice myself on sites that were indeed probably suspicious.
Anyway, before I turn off the security features, is anyone else experience the same symptoms and/or have any thoughts? Either way, even if the security features are indeed to blame, I'll be looking to for a router with edge protection, probably pfSense.
Any assistance or thoughts appreciated.
I used the AC68U since September 2014 on Merlin's 376.47 and things worked great! The router was ultra reliable and stable. Uptime seemed unlimited. The router may only have been rebooted a few times in several months and that probably to dust or re-arrange power cords. Honestly, that is what I have come to expect from a router as my D-Link DIR-655 that the 68U replaced also never needed to be rebooted.
In late April 2015, I realized it was time to give some attention to my routers make sure their firmware was updated to help plug a few of the published security risks.
On my upgrade day, I upgraded the firmware on my home AC68U after full reset to Merlin's 378.53 and re-programmed all of my Reserved DHCP addresses from scratch. For a second location (small office), since I was so happy with the AC68U, I purchased an AC68P from Best Buy and immediately reset and flashed the same 378.53. In a 3rd location, a seldom used vacation home, I upgraded my RT-N66U to the same level.
Both my AC68U and AC68P hang periodically. My computers show limited internet connectivity. I can still access everything else on my internal networks that go through an independent switch. The router itself gives no indication that anything is wrong. The LED's seem to blink away normally. I cannot access the GUI, or Putty into the router though - router hangs.
If I power off the router then turn it back on, even for just a few seconds, the connection comes right back and all seems well again. I DO NOT need to power off the cable modem, switch, or anything else, just the router.
The 68P gets much more use than the 68U and so the problem is noticed much more frequently (can be daily, or even a couple times per day). I though maybe it was a hardware problem, so I exchanged the 68P at Best Buy for another within the 30 days. No change -- same issue.
Even though neither is overclocked, I added a small USB fan next to the 68P hoping it might some help with stability -- No change.
I have performed several full resets on both routers and manually re-entered all my settings several times. It is a time consuming process as I have at least 20 wired devices at each location. Wireless is used only by a couple of cell phones and one laptop. The problem remains despite the full resets.
When 378.54_2 became available, I upgraded all 3 routers both 68U, 68P and N66U to 378.54_2. In this case, the upgrade was done in-place over the existing configuration because it is so time consuming and the release notes did not seem to require a reset for this release, especially since it was only a single minor revision away from my previous release. Again, the problem remains.
I continue to experiencing these overly frequent hangs on both the AC68U and the AC68P. Once a week would be too much, but it can happen daily. I have not noticed the problem on the N66U, but it has probably only been used about 15 days since April.
Again, almost everything is wired.
On the AC68U and AC68P
1) DNS Filtering is set to OpenDNS Home
2) AiProtection (Malicious Sites Blocking, Vulnerability Protection, and Infected Device Prevention and Blocking) are all turned on.
Is anyone else experiencing similar behavior? Does anyone else think it may be related to the AiProtection settings?
I may turn them off to test, but I HATE to do that. I have very few computer security incidents over the years (only a couple of incidents of mal-ware causing pop-ups), but recently, a week after I upgraded these routers, a remote office I am responsible for that I have not yet upgraded, had a very nasty and aggressive security breach where one of the computers was fully compromised over the internet and turned into a spam generator. I just feel safer knowing that the router is keeping an eye on things by blocking known malicious sites, and suspicious activity, etc. I know it works, because I have seen the router warning twice myself on sites that were indeed probably suspicious.
Anyway, before I turn off the security features, is anyone else experience the same symptoms and/or have any thoughts? Either way, even if the security features are indeed to blame, I'll be looking to for a router with edge protection, probably pfSense.
Any assistance or thoughts appreciated.
