Has the RT-AC87U been fixed?

[Beherit]

The local store offers a discount on ASUS products this week, incl routers. I'm especially interested in the RT-AC87U, but got a few concerns after reading reviews about it. Can anyone help in letting me know if these bugs have been fixed in the latest firmware updates and/or merlinwrt custom firmware?

1) Using the USB 3.0 port causes interference with the WiFi signal. This problem does not occur when using USB 2.0.

2) The 5 GHz WiFi suffers problems with shutting itself down, disconnecting, bad transfer rate etc, due to bad firmware and the chip overheating.

Is the RT-AC68U a better buy? I've not found any reviews about it having these issues. I could really use the extra Ethernet-ports on the RT-AC87U, but the reports I read about it made me consider a different router (unless they've been fixed?).

 

[VANT]

For me work ok.

Ad.1 USB3.0 in 87u work ok without slowdown like in 68u
Ad.1 No problem with 5GHz in my enviroment.

 

[Pierino]

The rt-ac87 only has 4 lan ports. There are no extras.

 

[pete y testing]

hi

if its where my money i wouldnt buy the 87u as you gain very little in real terms over the rt-ac68u with your current wireless adapters , if you are going to splash some cash far better to invest it in the rt-ac88u or rt-ac3100

the usb 3 interference issue is spread throughout all routers so i cant say its any better or worse than other models , there is a way to reduce the interference in all firmware

 

[imurhuckleberry]

Keeping fingers crossed but mine is behaving with Merlin 61


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[sfx2000]

If it were my money - pick the RT-AC68U over the angry ball of hate that is the RT-AC87U...

And the 68U will be more stable...

 

[RMerlin]

the usb 3 interference issue is spread throughout all routers so i cant say its any better or worse than other models , there is a way to reduce the interference in all firmware

Using a properly shielded cable usually resolve the issue. I never had any interference myself with my rev A1 RT-AC68U and a USB 3.0 Vantec enclosure.

Remember that shielding isn't just the router's job. If the router's internal connector is fully shielded however you are using a poorly shielded cable, that cable will emit plenty of interference on its own, something no router design could protect you against.

 

[Beherit]

Thank you all for the replies, you've been very helpful!

After reading VANT's reply I kind of jumped the gun and bought one. I flashed it with merlinwrt and so far so good. I've got nfs, smb, iptv up and running and no issues so far with 5 GHz clients losing connection or anything..

I learned that USB 3.0 interference only occurs with the 2,4 GHz net, which is no problem for me as I exclusively use the 5,0 GHz net.

It's true that the RT-AC87U doesn't have 8 ethernet ports, my mistake. I couldn't convince myself to instead buy the RT-AC88U as the costs twice as much. For those kind of money I can instead buy 5 switches with 8 ports each.

There's one thing worrying me. Right now the router has a CPU load of 0-3% on each core, yet the CPU temperature is 82 degrees (Celsius) and the 5 GHz chip is 67 degrees. Is this normal? It seems a bit steep.

 

[HardCat]

Thank you all for the replies, you've been very helpful!

After reading VANT's reply I kind of jumped the gun and bought one. I flashed it with merlinwrt and so far so good. I've got nfs, smb, iptv up and running and no issues so far with 5 GHz clients losing connection or anything..

I learned that USB 3.0 interference only occurs with the 2,4 GHz net, which is no problem for me as I exclusively use the 5,0 GHz net.

It's true that the RT-AC87U doesn't have 8 ethernet ports, my mistake. I couldn't convince myself to instead buy the RT-AC88U as the costs twice as much. For those kind of money I can instead buy 5 switches with 8 ports each.

There's one thing worrying me. Right now the router has a CPU load of 0-3% on each core, yet the CPU temperature is 82 degrees (Celsius) and the 5 GHz chip is 67 degrees. Is this normal? It seems a bit steep.

My RT-AC87R is running at 75 degrees (Celsius) and has been in that range since I installed it 2 years ago. Those temps are quite normal for this router.

 

[hispanico957]

I returned it for many many problems and buy AC68U and all is OK

Hispa

 

[naseem142]

My ac87u has been a nightmare to deal with.. I'm just sad i bought it for so much money and had to face problems just after at-least 4 months of buying it, but before that it was functioning perfectly.

My wired connection constantly drops and the wifi keeps disconnecting users for no reason and when it doesn't there is no internet at all every few minutes and then its fine for the rest of the day but it does it again after a while, I have had to reset to factory settings many times one of them was because the admin UI was completely bugged and i couldn't change anything in the settings.

Also the 5GHz band doesn't even work at all, it doesn't let any device connect to it, even though the range on this thing is great everything else was horrible and i seriously want to replace it as soon as i can.

If anybody has a suggestion for a stable , reliable and good range wireless router that would be nice.

 

[SoCalReviews]

If anybody has a suggestion for a stable , reliable and good range wireless router that would be nice.

RT-ac1900p

 

[sfx2000]

My ac87u has been a nightmare to deal with.. I'm just sad i bought it for so much money and had to face problems just after at-least 4 months of buying it, but before that it was functioning perfectly.

Based on some informed comments on the Asus subforum here - there was a run of 87U's that were a bit challenged - if the latest factory firmware isn't meeting expectations, then reach out to Asus Support directly...

Be nice and approachable, and empower the support team to meet your needs - be firm, but be nice...

 

[ankhazam]

I was more than happy with recent firmwares both from ASUS and from RMerlin ... Running smooth and fast.

Only suggestion -> go through all 5GHz and check which has best output for ya. Choosing the 'one right' channel boosted my transfers from 25MB/s up to 45MB/s

 

[joegreat]

For me work ok.

Ad.1 USB3.0 in 87u work ok without slowdown like in 68u
Ad.1 No problem with 5GHz in my enviroment.

Same here.

Only after some firmware upgrades I had issues which where easily solved by re-flash and/or factory resets with manual re-config.

WLAN is stable and speed is great. CPU power is also much better then on the previous AC68U (even overclocked).
I am a really happy camper with the AC87U as main router!

 

[Beherit]

I'm having no issues or problems after the first week of using it.

* No USB 3.0 interference (though I have 2,4 GHz WiFi turned off as all our devices support 5 GHz)
* No sudden disconnections, neither using the wired link or WiFi
* No abnormal battery drain on mobile phones or tablets connected to the RT-AC87U
* No problems at all with Apple iPads, Macbooks or iPhones connected to it
* I can use my 250 mbit fibre connection at full speed

So far, I'm a happy camper.

 

[Stefan1200]

I have a RT-AC87U since 4 days too (Asus firmware 3.0.0.4.380_3459). WLAN is working great (2,4 and 5 GHz), but I'm already happy if I have more than 100 MBit using WLAN. But my Asus Ultrabook is able to handle the 200 MBit of my internet connection using the 5 GHz WLAN connection.

The only problem I have, that the USB 3 stack of the AC87U seems to crash sometimes, if my Intenso USB 3 (3 TB) hard drive (self powered, no need for USB power) is connected to it. This hard drive is working stable at the USB 2 port of the router, but at the USB 3 port sometimes the hard drive will not mounted. All I get are the following two log lines in the system protocol:

Sep 29 17:08:58 kernel: usb 2-1: device not accepting address 4, error -71
Sep 29 17:08:58 kernel: hub 2-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1

As soon as I get this log lines, it does not matter which USB drive will be connected to the USB 3 port, I only get this log lines and no mounted USB 3 devices. The USB 2 port is working (with the same devices).

Sometimes after a router reboot (not every time) the hard drive will be mounted successfully on the USB 3 port. In this case, it can happen, that the router will crash after writing many gigabytes of data to the hard drive using the SMB protocol.

Does someone have an idea, if this can be fixed? I guess installing the Merlin ROM won't fix this?

Update: I startet ntfsck 3014.5.21 on my Asus router to fix some errors on the Intenso USB 3 hard drive. It found some corrupt directories. Maybe this was the reason for the crash of the router and/or USB 3 stack.

 

[Beherit]

A few suggestions I can think of:

1) Backup the config, flash the router with Merlin firmware, do a factory reset and reconfigure everything (do not load the previously backuped config from the ASUS firmware, that's just if merlinwrt doesn't fix it for you)

2) What filesystem are you using on the USB drive? If it's NTFS, try EXT4 or vice versa.

3) Does the drive work better if you disable the 2,4 GHz WiFi? It could be the interference.

 

[Stefan1200]

1) Backup the config, flash the router with Merlin firmware, do a factory reset and reconfigure everything (do not load the previously backuped config from the ASUS firmware, that's just if merlinwrt doesn't fix it for you)

Maybe this is my next try. Currently I wait if this problem happen again after fixing file system errors with ntfsck.

2) What filesystem are you using on the USB drive? If it's NTFS, try EXT4 or vice versa.

NTFS

3) Does the drive work better if you disable the 2,4 GHz WiFi? It could be the interference.

Is not an option for me, because I need 2,4 GHz for some of my devices.

 

[Stefan1200]

Today I installed the new Merlin firmware 63_2 on my RT-AC87U, it still has problems with my Intenso USB3 Harddrive on the USB3 port of the router, but the Merlin firmware is writing more stuff to the log:

Nov 19 19:54:21 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:0c.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep
Nov 19 19:54:21 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:0c.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep
Nov 19 19:54:21 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:0c.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep
Nov 19 19:54:21 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:0c.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep
Nov 19 19:54:21 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:0c.0: disable burst on ep 1
Nov 19 19:54:21 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:0c.0: WARN no SS endpoint bMaxBurst
Nov 19 19:54:21 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:0c.0: disable burst on ep 2
Nov 19 19:54:21 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:0c.0: WARN no SS endpoint bMaxBurst
Nov 19 19:54:22 kernel: scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Intenso  External USB 3.0 0006 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
Nov 19 19:54:22 kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
Nov 19 19:54:22 kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 732566646 4096-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB)
Nov 19 19:54:22 kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Nov 19 19:54:22 kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 19 19:54:22 kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 732566646 4096-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB)
Nov 19 19:54:22 kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 19 19:54:31 kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 732566646 4096-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB)
Nov 19 19:54:31 kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 19 19:54:31 kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
Nov 19 19:54:31 usb: USB /dev/sda1(ntfs) failed to mount At the first try!
Nov 19 19:54:33 usb: USB ntfs fs at /dev/sda1 mounted on /tmp/mnt/INTENSO.
Nov 19 19:54:34 rc_service: hotplug 766:notify_rc restart_nasapps
Nov 19 19:54:34 iTunes: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:34 FTP Server: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:35 Samba Server: smb daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:35 kernel: gro disabled
Nov 19 19:54:35 Timemachine: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:35 kernel: gro enabled with interval 2
Nov 19 19:54:36 Samba Server: daemon is started
Nov 19 19:54:44 kernel: tntfs error (device sda1, pid 801): ntfs_end_buffer_async_read(): Buffer I/O error, logical block 0xc0005.
Nov 19 19:54:44 kernel: tntfs error (device sda1, pid 801): ntfs_end_buffer_async_read(): Buffer I/O error, logical block 0xc0005.
Nov 19 19:54:44 kernel: tntfs error (device sda1, pid 801): ntfs_mft_record_map(): Failed to map page containing mft record 0x5 (error 5).
Nov 19 19:54:44 kernel: tntfs error (device sda1, pid 801): ntfs_mft_record_map(): Failed with error code 5.
Nov 19 19:54:44 kernel: tntfs error (device sda1, pid 801): ntfs_write_inode(): Failed (error 5).  Run chkdsk.
Nov 19 19:54:44 kernel: tntfs error (device sda1, pid 801): ntfs_bio_end_io_write(): Bio write I/O error.
Nov 19 19:54:44 kernel: tntfs error (device sda1, pid 801): ntfs_bio_end_io_write(): Bio write I/O error.
Nov 19 19:54:44 kernel: tntfs error (device sda1, pid 801): ntfs_end_buffer_async_read(): Buffer I/O error, logical block 0xc003c.
Nov 19 19:54:44 kernel: tntfs error (device sda1, pid 801): ntfs_end_buffer_async_read(): Buffer I/O error, logical block 0xc003c.
Nov 19 19:54:44 kernel: tntfs error (device sda1, pid 801): ntfs_mft_record_map(): Failed to map page containing mft record 0x3c (error 5).
Nov 19 19:54:45 hotplug[843]: USB partition unmounted from /tmp/mnt/INTENSO
Nov 19 19:54:45 rc_service: hotplug 843:notify_rc restart_nasapps
Nov 19 19:54:45 rc_service: hotplug 844:notify_rc restart_nasapps
Nov 19 19:54:45 rc_service: waitting "restart_nasapps" via  ...
Nov 19 19:54:45 iTunes: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:45 FTP Server: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:46 Samba Server: smb daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:46 kernel: gro disabled
Nov 19 19:54:46 Timemachine: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:46 kernel: gro enabled with interval 2
Nov 19 19:54:47 Samba Server: daemon is started
Nov 19 19:54:48 iTunes: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:48 FTP Server: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:49 Samba Server: smb daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:49 kernel: gro disabled
Nov 19 19:54:50 Timemachine: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:54:50 kernel: gro enabled with interval 2
Nov 19 19:54:51 Samba Server: daemon is started

If I connect my harddrive to the USB2 port (which always works without problems), I get this lines:

Nov 19 19:57:51 kernel: scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Intenso  External USB 3.0 0006 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
Nov 19 19:57:51 kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
Nov 19 19:57:51 kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] 732566646 4096-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB)
Nov 19 19:57:51 kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Nov 19 19:57:51 kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 19 19:57:51 kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] 732566646 4096-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB)
Nov 19 19:57:51 kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 19 19:58:00 kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] 732566646 4096-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB)
Nov 19 19:58:00 kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
Nov 19 19:58:00 kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
Nov 19 19:58:00 usb: USB /dev/sda1(ntfs) failed to mount At the first try!
Nov 19 19:58:03 usb: USB ntfs fs at /dev/sda1 mounted on /tmp/mnt/INTENSO.
Nov 19 19:58:03 rc_service: hotplug 942:notify_rc restart_nasapps
Nov 19 19:58:04 iTunes: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:58:04 FTP Server: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:58:05 Samba Server: smb daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:58:05 kernel: gro disabled
Nov 19 19:58:06 Timemachine: daemon is stopped
Nov 19 19:58:06 kernel: gro enabled with interval 2
Nov 19 19:58:07 Samba Server: daemon is started

It takes around 10 tries to get my USB3 drive working on the USB3 port of the router, ntfsck don't find any more problems at the file system. Someone have another idea?