Solved Internet dropping out frequently (RT-AC87U)

[djeedjee]

Yes may 5th also for me. Some kind of reboot issue. But I don't know what triggers it.

I'm in dialogue with ASUS technical service, who are helping out on resolving the issue. Will report back, if and when I hear news.
Yet the problem is, that the AC87U is end of life, so as we know, nothing new will come to the router.

Here also the 5th of may. (Mexican thing? )

 

[djeedjee]

This is written in Dutch, but it can't be a coincidence that around the same time people start complaining about frequent reboots.

ASUS router start ongevraagd opnieuw op/verbinding valt weg - Netwerken - GoT

gathering.tweakers.net

(1st post april 18)

 

[BobyMike]

Hi everyone and nice to meet you all!

I have the same issue with my RT-AC87u, starting few month ago. I tried to install also a KIWI log-server to see the logs in the moment of rebooting, opened multiple ssh connection and monitor in the same time the CPU load, processes, other logs etc. but nothing seem to indicate why the crush/sudden reboot.
Then i searched many hours over the internet and, even on the official ASUS site the last firmware is 3.0.0.4.382_52545-ga0245cc , there seem to be newer versions too according to this security sites:

https://severity.io/cpe/cpe:2.3:eek::asus:rt-ac87u_firmware:3.0.0.4.386.46061:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVE-2021-43702 from Discovery to Patch | Kroll

While studying for my master's degree in cyber security, I co-authored a paper regarding the rollout of IoT devices. Read more.

www.kroll.com

NVD - Detail - cpe:2.3:o:asus:rt-ac87u_firmware:3.0.0.4.386.46061:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

nvd.nist.gov

Rt-Ac87u Firmware - vsociety

www.vicarius.io

CVE-2023-47678 - vulnerability database | Vulners.com

An improper access control vulnerability exists in RT-AC87U all versions. An attacker may read or write files that are not intended to be accessed by connecting to a target device via tftp.

vulners.com

So, it seems that all versions bellow 3.0.0.386.xxx are afected... and we are on 3.0.0.382... The problem is that i am not able to find any 3.0.0.386 version and i wonder why...because now i am sure they exist.. Maybe even newer than 3.0.0.0386.46061..

BTW, i do not think that it has something to do with Win updates, but with browsers, mostly with chrome (at least in my case). I observed that this occurred very often when i used chrome and left a lot of tabs open over night, then the second day, as i was trying to refresh one page, all of the sudden the router was rebooting it (buffer-overflow? broadcast-storm?).
I reset the router to default, did new settings from the scratch: new users-names, new passwords, new ssid-s etc.. I even hide the ssid, and put MAC filtering..nothing helped until now. But i am very sure it is a software problem, hence the router is rebooting also at 3 A.M. when everyone was sleeping in the house... (i exclude power problems, hence the router is connected to an UPS and next to it it's a 8port switch witch does not reboot, but maybe could be the router power adapter faulty?? -Also hard to belive since so many people are complaining about the same issue in the same time..)

 

[Philip Rohrhuber]

Welcome to the forums @user42.

You are using firmware from 2021/05/18 on a router that is EOL for many years today.

End-of-life product list

This model is known to be buggy and finicky, even when it was supported. I would suggest you find a replacement asap.

What ASUS AX router would you suggest, that is not buggy?

 

[Philip Rohrhuber]

According to my internet service provider, it is complete BS, what ASUS technical support is saying, that ASUS routers (including AC87U) can't handle IP adresses that start with either 10 or 100. I've had a IP with 100 for a long time and used the ac87u for many years. But only recently have had my issues like the rest of you. MUST be a asus issue.

Am now using a different router (provided from the service provider) to test. An Icotera router. So far no issues at all. Been running for two days now. So again, must be an ASUS issue.

Latest mail I got from ASUS is, that they want me to send feedback directly from the ASUS router. So I'm gonna do that.

 

[BobyMike]

According to my internet service provider, it is complete BS, what ASUS technical support is saying, that ASUS routers (including AC87U) can't handle IP adresses that start with either 10 or 100. I've had a IP with 100 for a long time and used the ac87u for many years. But only recently have had my issues like the rest of you. MUST be a asus issue.

Am now using a different router (provided from the service provider) to test. An Icotera router. So far no issues at all. Been running for two days now. So again, must be an ASUS issue.

Latest mail I got from ASUS is, that they want me to send feedback directly from the ASUS router. So I'm gonna do that.

Nonsens what ASUS said. My IP does not start with 10 nor 100.

 

[Philip Rohrhuber]

Nonsens what ASUS said. My IP does not start with 10 nor 100.

Asus point is, that if your WAN IP starts with either 10 or 100, then the router crashes and reboots continuously

 

[BobyMike]

Asus point is, that if your WAN IP starts with either 10 or 100, then the router crashes and reboots continuously

Understood perfectly from the first time, and i said that i do not belive it, hence my WAN IP does not start with 10 nor with 100.

 

[L&LD]

What ASUS AX router would you suggest, that is not buggy?

With the almost infinite configurations and environments possible, they're all buggy.

The best bang for the buck router worth buying today (and expecting to get several year's worth of use out of it) is the RT-AX88U PRO.

 

[Philip Rohrhuber]

With the almost infinite configurations and environments possible, they're all buggy.

The best bang for the buck router worth buying today (and expecting to get several year's worth of use out of it) is the RT-AX88U PRO.

Yeah, was actually looking at exactly that model. Thanks

 

[dosborne]

Just to fill in some blanks....

My RT-AX88U has F/W 384.19 (I know it is old, but it is stable). I did roll back to 384.18 just to check, and install a fresh copy, and it still rebooted.
It sits behind my ISP router, and the WAN IP is 192.168.0.1, with an internal LAN range of 192.168.0.x
The windows 11 laptop is the only device that seems to trigger the router to reboot. Other wired and wireless Windows 10 and android devices (and Iot devices) do not trigger this.
I've investigated as far as I can on the laptop side (updated and/or replaced drivers), run the suggested commands from MS. It still happens now and then and does not seem related to a particular task.
I do run Chrome, do not keep tabs open, do close the lid to let the laptop sleep (no issues when sleeping). I have ublock origins plugin and gmail checker only. I've had a reboot without Chrome running, so do not believe it is related.
I do allow and install all available MS updates.
I don't run any additional anti-virus.

Since this seems to be a larger issue, and others have reported no effect, I'm not going to bother reconfiguring the router from scratch at this point.

Very strange. Started roughly a month ago. Based on the feedback so far, I blame MS

 

[Philip Rohrhuber]

Hi everyone and nice to meet you all!

I have the same issue with my RT-AC87u, starting few month ago. I tried to install also a KIWI log-server to see the logs in the moment of rebooting, opened multiple ssh connection and monitor in the same time the CPU load, processes, other logs etc. but nothing seem to indicate why the crush/sudden reboot.
Then i searched many hours over the internet and, even on the official ASUS site the last firmware is 3.0.0.4.382_52545-ga0245cc , there seem to be newer versions too according to this security sites:

https://severity.io/cpe/cpe:2.3:eek::asus:rt-ac87u_firmware:3.0.0.4.386.46061:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVE-2021-43702 from Discovery to Patch | Kroll

While studying for my master's degree in cyber security, I co-authored a paper regarding the rollout of IoT devices. Read more.

www.kroll.com

NVD - Detail - cpe:2.3:o:asus:rt-ac87u_firmware:3.0.0.4.386.46061:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

nvd.nist.gov

Rt-Ac87u Firmware - vsociety

www.vicarius.io

CVE-2023-47678 - vulnerability database | Vulners.com

An improper access control vulnerability exists in RT-AC87U all versions. An attacker may read or write files that are not intended to be accessed by connecting to a target device via tftp.

vulners.com

So, it seems that all versions bellow 3.0.0.386.xxx are afected... and we are on 3.0.0.382... The problem is that i am not able to find any 3.0.0.386 version and i wonder why...because now i am sure they exist.. Maybe even newer than 3.0.0.0386.46061..

BTW, i do not think that it has something to do with Win updates, but with browsers, mostly with chrome (at least in my case). I observed that this occurred very often when i used chrome and left a lot of tabs open over night, then the second day, as i was trying to refresh one page, all of the sudden the router was rebooting it (buffer-overflow? broadcast-storm?).
I reset the router to default, did new settings from the scratch: new users-names, new passwords, new ssid-s etc.. I even hide the ssid, and put MAC filtering..nothing helped until now. But i am very sure it is a software problem, hence the router is rebooting also at 3 A.M. when everyone was sleeping in the house... (i exclude power problems, hence the router is connected to an UPS and next to it it's a 8port switch witch does not reboot, but maybe could be the router power adapter faulty?? -Also hard to belive since so many people are complaining about the same issue in the same time..)

What exactly indicates that the router reboots based on the router system log? How do you know it reboots at 3 am?

Yeah, the power adapter. I have not tried to replace it yet. But I do also think it is some kind of firmware/software issue instead. I can't pinpoint it to Chrome, windows, or the router itself.

I have had a different router run for 3 days, with no issues at all. Just now I plugged in the ac87u router instead to test, and all of a sudden I got disconnected again.

 

[shadowjk]

Adding another data point from completely unrelated device. Apologies if this is considered offtopic to the thread.

My Blue Cave started rebooting itself repeatedly this week. Date resets to 5th of May. I figured PSU was getting tired, so I disconnected harddrive. It did not improve things. It especially seemed to reboot whenever I sat down at my Windows 11 laptop. I had actually bought a 3-pack of blue caves, and only ever used 2, so I changed it out for the brand new (well, New Old Stock) one. Well, today that one also started rebooting, it rebooted once when I opened my windows 11 laptop, and a second time when I fired up my windows 11 workstation.

Theories:
"AiProtection by Trend micro" signature causing crash? Timing doesn't add up. Signature update came before crashes.
Something new came in windows 11 recently that triggers bug? Perhaps, but "brand new" device worked fine for a bit even in presence of windows 11 machines.
Some sort of attack from internet side of things on the device? Maybe, but why do crashes correlate with windows machines?

I've disabled VPN server for now (pptp), next step would be to disable QOS and then AiProtection to see if any of that improves things. I've never had remote access enabled.

 

[rmlang0]

I just joined SNB just because of this thread. I've been tearing my hair out for weeks on this problem, that, due to poor search results, I thought was unique to my network!

I thought at first it was related to my ISP, COX, who sold/gave its email system to Yahoo to manage at this same time. But the internet dropouts persisted; so I started looking for physical issues like bad cable connections, or other equipment failures (modem, switches).

I finally started looking for patterns and noticed that almost every dropout seemed to be related to a new link clicked on through web sites via MS Edge - either from my Win10 wired desktop or my Win11 wired desktop, but I could not find any posting related to that action. (I can't be sure at the moment whether my wife can cause it with her wireless laptop). The fact that it is not predictable when a link will cause a dropout, and that I haven't spotted a type of link which might be the cause has muddied the water.

I can clear the dropout within minutes nearly every time by disabling/enabling the PC's ethernet adapter; so right now this problem is in the annoying category.

I decided that it was possible that the Adaptive QoS function could be malfunctioning or interacting with some other protocol and switched it to Traditional. It might have reduced the frequency; need more time to be sure.

 

[rmlang0]

As an afterthought, I am confirming that we are using the RT-AC87U, 10 years old, showing it updated to 3.0.0.4.382_52545-ga0245cc on 6/11/24, with log entries that jump from May 4 (yes, Star Wars day) to present day when "WAN was restored". Maybe with enough of us collecting information, looking for patterns, and trying things, we can figure this out.

 

[Anthonywkho]

Hi everyone, I am using AC87U as well and I experienced same problem with wifi drop off a lot times a day recently and I originally thought it is due to openvpn and PPTP server set up. And looking at what have been shared here, I am sure it is an Asus problem and I asked them to help and solve it in Hong Kong.

I also tried to reconfig the AC87U as a second router in my network and diable DHCP DNS NAT etc and only allow SSID to broadcast and connect an USB Drive. I am able to access the USB drive within my home network on andriod phones and win 11 laptops. However, I cannot access the usb drive when I am using vpn on main router. Does anyone know any solution, i tried port forwarding etc no luch. Appreciate your advice

 

[OzarkEdge]

Hi everyone, I am using AC87U as well and I experienced same problem with wifi drop off a lot times a day recently and I originally thought it is due to openvpn and PPTP server set up. And looking at what have been shared here, I am sure it is an Asus problem and I asked them to help and solve it in Hong Kong.

I also tried to reconfig the AC87U as a second router in my network and diable DHCP DNS NAT etc and only allow SSID to broadcast and connect an USB Drive. I am able to access the USB drive within my home network on andriod phones and win 11 laptops. However, I cannot access the usb drive when I am using vpn on main router. Does anyone know any solution, i tried port forwarding etc no luch. Appreciate your advice

This thread is marked 'Solved'. If the solution does not work for you, you should start your own topic discussion.

OE

 

[shadowjk]

I finally started looking for patterns and noticed that almost every dropout seemed to be related to a new link clicked on through web sites via MS Edge - either from my Win10 wired desktop or my Win11 wired desktop, but I could not find any posting related to that action. (I can't be sure at the moment whether my wife can cause it with her wireless laptop). The fact that it is not predictable when a link will cause a dropout, and that I haven't spotted a type of link which might be the cause has muddied the water.

I can clear the dropout within minutes nearly every time by disabling/enabling the PC's ethernet adapter; so right now this problem is in the annoying category.

I decided that it was possible that the Adaptive QoS function could be malfunctioning or interacting with some other protocol and switched it to Traditional. It might have reduced the frequency; need more time to be sure.

I think you're on to something with Edge, I think that's a part of every crash I had as well.

I disabled QoS, Web History and Traffic Analyzer. No crashes since, even with edge.

 

[sfx2000]

As an afterthought, I am confirming that we are using the RT-AC87U, 10 years old, showing it updated to 3.0.0.4.382_52545-ga0245cc on 6/11/24, with log entries that jump from May 4 (yes, Star Wars day) to present day when "WAN was restored". Maybe with enough of us collecting information, looking for patterns, and trying things, we can figure this out.

It's old - and it has two different radios - the Broadcom for 2.4 and Quantenna for 5GHz - and Quantenna walked away from that device some time back.

And it's an old platform at best from the Broadcom side...

There's a lot of $100USD devices out there in the AX1800 class that are very performant...

One of my test boxes is a MediaTek based AX device, and it's less than $50USD - one gets what they pay for, but it's there...

 

[dosborne]

Just to fill in some blanks....

My RT-AX88U has F/W 384.19 (I know it is old, but it is stable). I did roll back to 384.18 just to check, and install a fresh copy, and it still rebooted.
It sits behind my ISP router, and the WAN IP is 192.168.0.1, with an internal LAN range of 192.168.0.x
The windows 11 laptop is the only device that seems to trigger the router to reboot. Other wired and wireless Windows 10 and android devices (and Iot devices) do not trigger this.
I've investigated as far as I can on the laptop side (updated and/or replaced drivers), run the suggested commands from MS. It still happens now and then and does not seem related to a particular task.
I do run Chrome, do not keep tabs open, do close the lid to let the laptop sleep (no issues when sleeping). I have ublock origins plugin and gmail checker only. I've had a reboot without Chrome running, so do not believe it is related.
I do allow and install all available MS updates.
I don't run any additional anti-virus.

Since this seems to be a larger issue, and others have reported no effect, I'm not going to bother reconfiguring the router from scratch at this point.

Very strange. Started roughly a month ago. Based on the feedback so far, I blame MS

UPDATE:
My issues of the router rebooting got worse. Every time I fired up a browser session on my laptop it would cause the router to reboot. If I left that session running, I'd be fine for a long while. This started to be replicated on my desktop that was initially immune. The final straw was when even my android tablet and samsung phone loading a browser would also cause the router to reboot.

Due to the recent security issues, but primarily because almost any interaction caused a reboot, I bit the bullet and installed FW 3004.388.8_4 in a dirty upgrade (a long way from 384.19). I just had to re-save (without changing anything) my VPN server info and I've been run for a solid week of uptime.

I don't really know what the root issue was but it seems to be resolved for me by installing new firmware.