Does AC68U and AC68P hang for anyone else?

[ssideratos]

UPDATE...

Upgraded to 3.0.0.4.378.6975 firmware and it locked up again. Once it locks up and the WAN IP is no longer there your basically down. I think I'm at a point where I'm going to get rid of this Router once and for all, too much maintenance.

I too am soooo torn. On the one hand, the ASUS Routers provide a set of features in a single device than can't be beat. But I agree that in the end it's only worth it if it works.

For me, I don't need many of the features, Cloud / USB/NAS/Media Sharing, etc, so I have those all turned off. I have separate devices for that. Which lends credence to the common recommendation that all-in-one devices rarely work as well as dedicated devices.

What I need, and all very important are
1) SECURITY - More than just a firewall, but some form, even basic, of threat management (malicious sites blocking, virus detection, etc) at the NETWORK level (AiProtection)
2) Routing/Web Speed
3) Wireless Range

If the ASUS is rock solid reliable as an access point, I could use it for that function alone, and keep it's amazing wireless range. But then what would I can I find to replace it's routing abilities and protection abilities?

The solution I'm working on for my office is that just today I bought and partially configured an EdgeRouter POE for my office to cover the routing and basic firewall, and then I'll use a pfSense configuration running inside a Hyper-V virtual machine for Intrusion Detection and threat management. The EdgeRouter was purchased on the claims that it is FAST FAST FAST. But I'm finding the configuration beyond the most basic to be daunting, and so far, I'm not feeling as if I'm getting anything more than the ASUS RT-AC68P in routing speed and fire walling abilities. In fact, I ran some wired speednet tests, and it seems slower, and certainly less consistent than the 68P.

I have spun up a VM with pfSense but every time I start to configure i, I decide that maybe another configuration would be better and then start over. I'll concentrate on this part more after I finish configuring the EdgeRouter's basic routing and firewall first.

If this all sounds complicated and time consuming, IT IS! and EXPENSIVE! And so far I'm pretty sure it won't work any faster than the Asus 68P, probably slower. Also, with complexity, come more points of failure, so reliability is in question and won't be known for a while. And finally, given it's complexity, I doubt maintenance effort will be any less than what I'm dealing with now.

So, in the end, if you can make due without many of the features, maybe you can find a simpler device that works and that makes sense. On the other hand, if you want what ASUS is promising, even if not yet reliably delivering, your other options are COMPLEX, EXPENSIVE, and questionably more reliable.

Now, for a bit of POSITIVE news. On my home router, I'm about 24 hours now on a reflash with 378.55 and haven't experienced the hang. Hardly conclusive, but I'm hopeful. I left a few more things at their stock settings. I did not touch anything in the Wireless Professional section this time to eliminate that something in there hanging the router, even though I rarely use wireless. I turned on all of the AiProtection settings like I did before, except that I left DNS Filtering off, for now, since I suspected problems with the DNS lookups. Result: One day, no hangs, hardly conclusive, but I rarely had a day where the router didn't hang. I will leave it for several more days. If I can get through 4 or 5 days, that would be so far greater than my previous longest streak, that I can be sure the problem is "Fixed". Then I'll turn on DNS based filtering and see what happens.

 

[ssideratos]

So far, over 3 days, 22 hours of up time with no hangs since flashing and re-configuring under 378.55.

Other changes besides upgrading to new firmware is that I left more settings at stock. Primarily,

1) In wireless, didn't change anything on the Professional Tab this time, even though I so rarely use wireless and all my hangs were triggered from my wired desktop

2) In AiProtection, I did not "Enable DNS-based Filtering". Previously, I used "OpenDNS Home". I did enable "Malicious Sites Blocking, Vulnerability Protection, and Infected Device Prevention and Blocking" after the first 24 hours.

The next test would be to "Enable DNS-based Filtering". I left DNS based Filtering off since I have suspected the hangs to occur during periods of heavy DNS Lookups and thought the filtering layer may be introducing the issue. 94 hours of up-time without it, while not conclusive, is another piece of at least circumstantial evidence in support of that theory.

I write this update now to share my findings and possibly point others to at least test "DNS Filtering" being the cause of their hanging issues.

Unfortunately, my testing on this issue needs to be placed temporarily on the back burner since I am moving on to set up OpenVPN and will need to reboot frequently during the configuration process.

 

[shdwkeeper]

Well my previous problem is gone where the WAN IP address was dropping, but now I'm experiencing the router hanging just like in the 1st post.

Any ideas? I'm on 378.55, the router appears to be fully functioning all lights are blinking and it looks normal, except that it is completely locked up. Only a reboot of router fixes the issues.

 

[shdwkeeper]

Well I gave up on the ASUS routers, I tried the 68P and the 87U and both locked up on me using every available firmware out there. I am now an R7000 owner and it hasn't locked up once. The funny thing is, I flashed the R7000 with the ASUSWRT (http://xvtx.ru/xwrt/) Merlin firmware, and it locked up on me just like when I was using the ASUS routers, so the firmware definitely has a bug in it. Once you hit 30+ devices on wifi, mobile, hard wired etc and everyone is using it the router just locks up drops everyone from internet access, than it re-connects everyone 5 min later, looking at router all lights looks normal, login to dashboard and it says WAN disconnected. Once this is fixed maybe I will go back to the ASUS routers because I like the dual-wan failover using a USB 3G modem.

Wish I could get that working with DD-WRT on an R7000

 

[currter]

Upgrading to 378.55 did not help the issue on my end, I now flashed to the Asus updated firmware posted on their site, 378.6975.

We will wait and see.

I am new here . here is an email I attempted to send to that merl @ something but it bounced
back. I hope I found the right thread to address this issue before I flash back to
the native/Asus firmware.

Hello

I had been using the Merlin firmware for a few Asus RT line routers
namely and mainly for the RT-AC68R (and RT-AC66R and RT-N66R)
wireless routers to bridge them on the 5 GHz band. The main purpose
I considered the firmware modification usage was that it allows
naming or labeling each MAC Address and IP Address association
around the DHCP assignment, a feature Asus has yet to implement
despite my pleas for nearly 3 years.

However, several times, I have seemed to lost access to the main router
(RT-AC68R) using your firmware. The router seems to get in a weird
state that the only way it can recover is for me to power cycle it.
This has happened about 7 times and I am tired of it so unfortunately,
I am beginning to trust your firmware less and I am going to have to go
back to the native, stock firmware from Asus on all the routers.

I just cannot explain why the router loses connectivity as really nothing
eventful is happening in my network for the wireless clients to lose access
to its SSIDs that are broadcasting.

Thank you for your efforts while I wait for Asus to come around to adding
the labeling of each MAC and IP address association. Keep up the good
work. Besides sometimes I wonder about 3rd party firmware or even
native firmware if there is any software that could be spying on websites
and the data sent across the network. Could some data and personal
information be forwarded to unknowing websites and emails? There is
a level of trust. This is not saying that is being done, but I could be of
some concern as who knows what software is running within the router?

<My real name>, M. Sc.