GT-AX11000 Deauth-ing only 2.4GHz clients, no internet connection on other devices

[zombeeh8er]

Hi all,

I'm having a strange problem with my GT-AX11000. There is no pattern to it and no indication of a problem in the log, at least, that I can see.
I attached a snippet of my syslog where the "problem" occurs.
Here's what I'm experiencing (on the daily):

- ALL 2.4ghz wifi clients (voice assistants, thermostat, etc) get deauthenticated, and cannot reconnect to the main router - BUT they can
reconnect to the two mesh routers I have in my network. But no internet access.
- No internet access on any other devices, but my cable modem is still online and the router thinks it still has a WAN connection
- Local network stops working as well, can’t connect to my self hosted file server or anything, but can still connect to the router web interface

The router never recovers from this on its own. I always have to reboot it, and it works great after that for a random amount of time.
I posted here about 8 months ago with a similar problem however a firmware reflash and hard factory reset + jffs format fixed it for some time,
two or three months, before it had to be restarted because of a power outage... then this started happening again.

Doesn't matter what version of firmware I use, or how many times I hard factory reset the thing, it keeps having the same problem. I'm going to
reset it again and run a minimum config for a while and see if it helps, but in the meantime, any ideas?

 

[RMinNJ]

Do you have your 2.4 on auto channel selection? I had my Mysa thermostats all in unison doing what you describe..I noted the channel had changed in the UI..dont know if it gets logged.

I set to a fixed channel and they have been fine since.

 

[zombeeh8er]

Do you have your 2.4 on auto channel selection? I had my Mysa thermostats all in unison doing what you describe..I noted the channel had changed in the UI..dont know if it gets logged.

I set to a fixed channel and they have been fine since.

Yes, it is on auto channel select. I did some reading on other threads here to try and find a possible solution and did try setting it to a fixed channel, but it didn’t help the issue.

 

[Tech9]

Doesn't matter what version of firmware I use

Including latest available stock Asuswrt for your model?

 

[zombeeh8er]

Including latest available stock Asuswrt for your model?

Now that you mention it, I did not try stock firmware yet, just various versions of Merlin. Do I need to do anything differently to flash back to stock, or just update like normal?

 

[zombeeh8er]

Alright I just watched this happening live, never seen my log look like this before.
Starting at "Oct 27 18:21:41"

 

[Tech9]

Do I need to do anything differently to flash back to stock, or just update like normal?

When hardware issues are suspected I personally recommend testing the device with stock firmware and as stand lone without AiMesh nodes. You have to do the same reset to factory defaults followed by manual configuration procedure like when changing firmware between stock Asuswrt and Asuswrt-Merlin. Stay close to default settings. If the router still doesn't work properly - look for replacement.

 

[sfx2000]

Including latest available stock Asuswrt for your model?

And Smart Connect perhaps...

 

[Tech9]

And Smart Connect perhaps...

It's quite messy on Asus routers, in AiMesh configuration with older model nodes it may not be supported, most people keep it disabled especially for connectivity troubleshooting purposes. It is offered as default setting by Quick Internet Setup, the overall user experience may vary.

 

[zombeeh8er]

When hardware issues are suspected I personally recommend testing the device with stock firmware and as stand lone without AiMesh nodes. You have to do the same reset to factory defaults followed by manual configuration procedure like when changing firmware between stock Asuswrt and Asuswrt-Merlin. Stay close to default settings. If the router still doesn't work properly - look for replacement.

Thanks. Didn't have much time to play with it today, I will flash back to stock Asuswrt tomorrow morning and report back on what happens.

 

[Tech9]

Looking at latest Asuswrt-Merlin release thread - quite a bit of people had to reset and reconfigure their routers after update. Perhaps your router needs a refresh too?

 

[zombeeh8er]

Looking at latest Asuswrt-Merlin release thread - quite a bit of people had to reset and reconfigure their routers after update. Perhaps your router needs a refresh too?

Believe I was running 388.4 before so I reset it both before and after updating to the latest. Since I was still encountering the issue after the update, I reset/re-flashed the latest Merlin firmware twice over as a troubleshooting step and it didn't seem to help anything... It might have extended the interval between these "crashes" but that's about it as far as I can tell.
Kinda starting to think it might be a hardware issue based on that but I don't want to jump to any conclusions yet.

 

[zombeeh8er]

Including latest available stock Asuswrt for your model?

Well, we're stable for over 30 hours so far on the latest stock firmware, and a minimal configuration. That's a big improvement, before I was only able to get a maximum of 23-24 hours out of it.
That said, I also found and follwed L&LD's Nuclear Reset guide as closely as I could this time around. Maybe the GUI factory reset option by itself might not be enough of a "reset" for my particular router?

 

[Tech9]

I see a few currently ongoing stability issues threads including wireless. Look around and make a decision what firmware you want to run based on your observations how your router and nodes behave. I haven't tested the latest Asuswrt-Merlin and I don't have AiMesh to test it with.

 

[jerry6]

fixed channel nthing smart , have yet to have any stability issues 68 days nothing in the logs

 

[zombeeh8er]

Alrighty so the router has been perfectly stable for the past 2.5ish weeks after nuclear reset, flashing stock firmware, and some customization. Only downtime was from GUI initiated reboots after making a configuration change. Buuuuuuuuut...
A couple days ago our power was shut off for long enough that my network UPS shut down, causing the router to lose power. And wouldn't you know it, two days later it is right back to doing this same thing again, only now ALL wireless clients get deauthed...
Loss of power seems to be a common denominator here(?). Last time it was stable, a power outage "caused" the problem to start occuring again. Am I potentially looking at a hardware issue now?
(Also - the power does not go out that often here, couple times a year max, this time was because of some maintenance on my street)