Intermittent loss of Wi-Fi since upgrading to 386.7

[lindros2]

Tried to figure it out on my own- but did not manage.
AX88U is having WIFI dropping as well, any known beta for that matter?

Not yet.
Have you tried the release firmware from this week, on Asus site?

RT-AX88U｜WiFi 6｜ASUS Global

www.asus.com

 

[Damit1]

Not yet.
Have you tried the release firmware from this week, on Asus site?

RT-AX88U｜WiFi 6｜ASUS Global

www.asus.com

Nope

I decided to ditch stock FW long ago after their support did not know to debug simple bugs with me, which in MerlinWRT it is resolved on its own.

 

[laracroftonline]

i hope an updated variant comes for the 5300 and ac68 too.

 

[Threska49]

Yep, I tend to automatically update stuff as soon as there's an update available. I'd rather hear about an exploit then and find out that I patched it weeks ago rather than rushing to get everything patched.

Of course there are times like this when you end up rolling back and applying a bit more caution before your next update, but they're rare enough for the cons not to outweigh the pros imo.

I agree, and I'm glad I can "roll back" unlike some equipment (didn't help). With that all said I was having WiFi issues, and to resolve everything I blew it all away with a hard reset. Reentered the important stuff, and so far everything works even the RT-N66U which I repurposed as an AP. Amazing all the other stuff that breaks when the network isn't good.

 

[lindros2]

Nope

I decided to ditch stock FW long ago after their support did not know to debug simple bugs with me, which in MerlinWRT it is resolved on its own.

um, but... there is a wifi bug in 386.7... so... you might want to temporarily re-think about stock FW.

 

[eibgrad]

Well except from a security standpoint one doesn't know it will affect them till it happens. Pretty much all computers have this problem, even routers. Hence the exploits you hear on the news. In other words people upgrade for more than just features but security.

I understand the concern. But in my experience, router vulnerabilities are pretty rare, esp. w/ third-party firmware. Most times Merlin will directly respond to questions about such threats in such a way as to make it clear the router is NOT vulnerable. As such, most upgrades do NOT address security issues, or at least they're NOT of sufficient concern to warrant the upgrade on that basis alone. Esp. when we're talking about a version that is *reasonably* current. I don't expect users to hold back indefinitely. As I've said before, I normally only update every 8-12 months UNLESS I know it's addressing a known, serious vulnerability or bug.

Frankly, the bigger risk imo are the things many users do willingly everyday, such as expose the GUI to the WAN, continue to use port forwarding over the WAN rather than a VPN, use AiCloud (!), etc. IOW, users are far more likely to make themselves vulnerable due to actions of their own choosing regardless of firmware version, than from failing to upgrade.

 

[splendid_koi]

Downgraded to 386.5, noticed hundreds of below entries in the syslog (MAC address sanitized as XX):

Deauth_ind XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX, status: 0, reason: Deauthenticated because sending station is leaving (or has left) IBSS or ESS (3), rssi:0
Disassoc XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX, status: 0, reason: Disassociated because sending station is leaving (or has left) BSS (8), rssi:0

...and even more of the ones below:

wlc_ampdu_recv_addba_resp: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX: Failed. status 37 wsize 64 policy 1
wlc_ampdu_recv_addba_resp: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX: Failed. status 1 wsize 64 policy 1

I have close to 75 clients comprising of a variety of 2.4GHZ Tuya devices, Apple phones / laptops / tablets / watches etc. plus outlets and cameras.
They all appear on those errors at one point or another.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

Downgraded to 386.5, noticed hundreds of below entries in the syslog (MAC address sanitized as XX):

Deauth_ind XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX, status: 0, reason: Deauthenticated because sending station is leaving (or has left) IBSS or ESS (3), rssi:0
Disassoc XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX, status: 0, reason: Disassociated because sending station is leaving (or has left) BSS (8), rssi:0

...and even more of the ones below:

wlc_ampdu_recv_addba_resp: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX: Failed. status 37 wsize 64 policy 1
wlc_ampdu_recv_addba_resp: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX: Failed. status 1 wsize 64 policy 1

I have close to 75 clients comprising of a variety of 2.4GHZ Tuya devices, Apple phones / laptops / tablets / watches etc. plus outlets and cameras.
They all appear on those errors at one point or another.

I'm getting lots of the Deauth entries as well, but not the other one you mentioned. I have no idea what they mean though, but one of the experts on here will no doubt be able to enlighten us.

 

[lindros2]

I'm getting lots of the Deauth entries as well, but not the other one you mentioned. I have no idea what they mean though, but one of the experts on here will no doubt be able to enlighten us.

@splendid_koi and @TheLyppardMan
Do you use the same SSID for both 2.4 and 5Ghz?

Apologies as I'm totally shooting in the dark here... but two ideas:

1. When you downgraded, could it have accidentally blocked the devices (unlikely...).
My thinking is that there could be a corruption which created a block rule and the Asus router needs to be factory reset, but I've found that going from 386.5_2 to even 386.4 or 386.3 couldn't clear out everything... and still don't know what went wrong with mine...
2. Or, do you have "smart connect" enabled (also possibly doubtful since I think this is only part of the proprietary ROG firmware?)
EDIT 3 --> I forgot to mention that on my Asus, I've used "MAC and IP Address Binding" for my smart devices. Funny that after resetting and getting a new main router, I haven't done it, but did in the past (GT-AC5300, RT-AC5300, GT-AX11000, and RT-AX88U)

Regarding #1, especially on the 2.4Ghz band, and for 2.4Ghz-only IoT smart devices (i.e. smart plugs, garage door, thermostats, etc.), this is not uncommon, but a pain in the butt to fix.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

@splendid_koi and @TheLyppardMan
Do you use the same SSID for both 2.4 and 5Ghz?

No. Also, I created new SSID names when I did a clean install of the upgrade firmware.

Apologies as I'm totally shooting in the dark here... but two ideas:

1. When you downgraded, could it have accidentally blocked the devices (unlikely...).

All devices on the network seem to be functioning correctly as far as I can tell.

My thinking is that there could be a corruption which created a block rule and the Asus router needs to be factory reset, but I've found that going from 386.5_2 to even 386.4 or 386.3 couldn't clear out everything... and still don't know what went wrong with mine...
2. Or, do you have "smart connect" enabled (also possibly doubtful since I think this is only part of the proprietary ROG firmware?)

Smart Connect is available, but I've never used it and I don't trust it to be reliable.

EDIT 3 --> I forgot to mention that on my Asus, I've used "MAC and IP Address Binding" for my smart devices. Funny that after resetting and getting a new main router, I haven't done it, but did in the past (GT-AC5300, RT-AC5300, GT-AX11000, and RT-AX88U)

A few of my devices have the mac address bound to an IP address (such as my Synology NAS), but most don't.

Regarding #1, especially on the 2.4Ghz band, and for 2.4Ghz-only IoT smart devices (i.e. smart plugs, garage door, thermostats, etc.), this is not uncommon, but a pain in the butt to fix.

 

[ec.auction]

FYI - I reverted back to 386.5_2, after experiencing wifi issues with 386.7, lastt night and now my RT-AX88U just crashed and did not want to restart properly.
Ended factory reset and reconfigure everything.
Hopefully, this issue with 386.7 got fixed soon.

 

[prosperot]

um, but... there is a wifi bug in 386.7... so... you might want to temporarily re-think about stock FW.

I need scripts for my IPTV to work properly. I will also revert to last stable merlin software. And wait till this problem is sorted.

 

[dbell]

Over the last month or so I have had 3 episodes of Internet connection failure, having to reboot the main router to resolve. Router is unreachable and unresponsive. I was away on vacation for 2 of those but today I see this in the log right before the failure:

Jul 18 10:42:46 dnsmasq-dhcp[1841]: failed to write /var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases: No space left on device (retry in 60 s)

Only customization I run is YazFi - currently v4.4.2

No active VPN server or client.

Was running RT-AX86U_386.7_beta2 while on vacation and the first 2 failures; right now running RT-AX86U_386.7_1-g8fd8deefbb_49599.

Both main router and mesh node report:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
ubi:rootfs_ubifs 79592 77476 2116 97% /

Anyone else ?

 

[szimat]

I'm having also WiFi droppouts since about a week or so. Had been running fine for around two years.
I was on 386.5_2 until yesterday. Upgraded to latest yesterday (386.7) to see if this helps.
Running two AC66U B1 routers, one being Aimesh node (with wired gigabit backhoul).
5 GHz is perfectly fine. But I get problems with 2.4 GHz. After a reboot it works for a few hours, then nothing can connect - for example phone connects to 2.4 GHz, but drops connection right after. Reboot, then everything works for hour or so.
I can put logs here, just let me know what log level should I set.

 

[splendid_koi]

@splendid_koi and @TheLyppardMan
Do you use the same SSID for both 2.4 and 5Ghz?

Apologies as I'm totally shooting in the dark here... but two ideas:

1. When you downgraded, could it have accidentally blocked the devices (unlikely...).
My thinking is that there could be a corruption which created a block rule and the Asus router needs to be factory reset, but I've found that going from 386.5_2 to even 386.4 or 386.3 couldn't clear out everything... and still don't know what went wrong with mine...
2. Or, do you have "smart connect" enabled (also possibly doubtful since I think this is only part of the proprietary ROG firmware?)
EDIT 3 --> I forgot to mention that on my Asus, I've used "MAC and IP Address Binding" for my smart devices. Funny that after resetting and getting a new main router, I haven't done it, but did in the past (GT-AC5300, RT-AC5300, GT-AX11000, and RT-AX88U)

Regarding #1, especially on the 2.4Ghz band, and for 2.4Ghz-only IoT smart devices (i.e. smart plugs, garage door, thermostats, etc.), this is not uncommon, but a pain in the butt to fix.

Thanks for trying to help! I have 3 distinct SSID's for each band. Nothing is blocked (not on a permanent basis at least). Smart Connect is not enabled.

 

[RMerlin]

Nope

I decided to ditch stock FW long ago after their support did not know to debug simple bugs with me, which in MerlinWRT it is resolved on its own.

Give the RT-AX88U_386.7_1-gc8d0c5e6ca_ubi.w test build a try, I downgraded the wifi radio to the previous version. Unsure however how well that will work since I can't downgrade the rest of the SDK.

Personally both are working fine in my own tests.

 

[Calkulin]

Give the RT-AX88U_386.7_1-gc8d0c5e6ca_ubi.w test build a try, I downgraded the wifi radio to the previous version. Unsure however how well that will work since I can't downgrade the rest of the SDK.

Personally both are working fine in my own tests.

Any possibility you can do the same for the GT-AX11000 to see if the dropping issue gets resolved by using different drivers?

 

[Tech9]

Only customization I run is YazFi - currently v4.4.2

Test again with no custom scripts. I’ve read recently a post about YazFi causing some connection issues.

 

[Damit1]

Give the RT-AX88U_386.7_1-gc8d0c5e6ca_ubi.w test build a try, I downgraded the wifi radio to the previous version. Unsure however how well that will work since I can't downgrade the rest of the SDK.

Personally both are working fine in my own tests.

Testing, thank you!

 

[Damit1]

Give the RT-AX88U_386.7_1-gc8d0c5e6ca_ubi.w test build a try, I downgraded the wifi radio to the previous version. Unsure however how well that will work since I can't downgrade the rest of the SDK.

Personally both are working fine in my own tests.

From initial tests, the first connectivity to the network is way faster than earlier, like in 386 5 2.
WIll have to test further- but it looks fine.

Will update later on

Thank you for your hard work, one more time!