Issues running two RT-AC87U

[afh3]

I gave up on this issue. Replaced them with two Nighthawk X6 units in AP mode and the problem vanished immediately.

I had a pair of N56s that I upgraded to N66s that I upgraded to AC87s. Yeah, I was their dream consumer. Now I have $600 worth of doorstops. Not likely to buy another ASUS anything, for as little difference as that will make in the big picture.

Thanks, ASUS, for marketing a flagship product at a premium price, and not considering that people might use two of them in a large home.

In the end though, I'm much happier now that my LAN doesn't go down every few hours.

Live and learn.

 

[phloid01]

ME TOO!!!!

I gave up on this issue. Replaced them with two Nighthawk X6 units in AP mode and the problem vanished immediately.

I had a pair of N56s that I upgraded to N66s that I upgraded to AC87s. Yeah, I was their dream consumer. Now I have $600 worth of doorstops. Not likely to buy another ASUS anything, for as little difference as that will make in the big picture.

Thanks, ASUS, for marketing a flagship product at a premium price, and not considering that people might use two of them in a large home.

In the end though, I'm much happier now that my LAN doesn't go down every few hours.

Live and learn.

I had actually bought 5 of them, it was supposed to be awesome! ... NOT! However, they do work as individual routers (if you put them in houses, and make sure to raise them above anything hard with toilet paper rolls) ... so we moved them to client homes, and seem to be ok there.

 

[kvagtholm]

I seemed to be having a unique issue that has challenged Asus support. Hoping someone can help and/or has seen similar situation. I went out and bought two RT-AC87U routers. Which provide outstanding performance when up and running! Very impressed! My problem is I can’t seem to keep them up. I’ll explain…

I have a two-story home. On the first floor I have one unit setup as a router. On the second floor I have another unit setup as an AP. What happens at least 3-4 times a day is my network goes down and Internet is lost. Well mostly lost if not completely lost. What I mean by that is when the issue arises Internet is down from the AP for sure. Sometimes I can switch to the router (wirelessly or LAN) and I will still have Internet. Other times its down for my entire network. What’s strange is I seem to maintain access to all devices on the network no matter if connected to router or AP. Now incoming traffic to my Plex server on my network is blocked. Here is what is strange… if I power off the AP all is fine. Router returns to normal, internet is restored and remote access is granted. Power the AP back on and works great until next crash.

Let me explain what I have done and/or tried to eliminate the problem:
1. Updated both units to latest firmware on Asus support to 3.0.0.4.376.2769. And now Merlin's 376.47
2. When setting up second unit in AP mode I have tried the following:
a. Set LAN to obtain IP automatically – No luck
b. Set LAN to static IP – No luck
c. Set LAN to static IP on different subnet – No Luck
d. Set LAN to static IP and configure router to skip the IP in DHCP – No luck
e. Configured unique SSID names for not only 2.4 & 5g bands but also unique of what router is using.
f. Manually set channel for 2.4 bands. Channel 4 for router and 9 for AP.
g. I have also rebooted both units after every settings change and have done a factory restore on both units multiple times.
3. When speaking with Asus tech support I was at one point advised to replace the router with a new unit as it was defective. I have done this. No luck. I have also switch the two current units I have to see if maybe my other unit was the issue. So unit that was a AP is now a router. Same problem.

What I have noticed is when the issue comes up I can no longer ping the router through the AP. I feel like the AP locks up the router and the minute I power off the AP everything returns to normal.

Something that I had come across a few times during setup of the AP is when I set the LAN IP to static and assign an IP, there are times that the IP changes on its own and takes on a new IP from the router even though its set to static. One time even though the UI showed a LAN IP I had assigned I was accessing it through the browser through its default setting of 192.168.1.1

My gut feeling is there is some kind of firmware bug and the AP is switching IP and conflicting on the network thus taking the Internet down. At one point I lowered the lease time on the routers DHCP to 2 minutes to see if it happens when the AP obtains a new lease and that didn’t seem to affect it. It just happens randomly and can be anywhere from after 15 minutes to after 1 hour to after 5 hours. But eventually it will go down and powering off the AP returns everything back to normal. Even without rebooting the router.

If anyone has any suggestions that would be great! I have called Asus support many times and been emailing their support team back and forth for two weeks now. No luck. ☹

Hi

Sorry to say I have the exact same problem as described.
Have also tried countless different changes in setup on both devices with no result.

I really hope that ASUS will figure out what is causing this, since I am giving up on them very soon - returning them.

it is a shame since they really are among the best routers out there - when they work that is.

If I find a solution I will post here also.

 

[kvagtholm]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd mention an observation I've made running my RT-AC87U as an AP with a couple of other routers connected to it, one as a repeater and another as a bridge. But I don't have two RT-AC87Us and I'm not seeing the problems described here.

The setup is:

1) RT-AC87U, in AP mode, is connected to a FritzBox 7490 (as the gateway, ie. modem) via ethernet cable. FritzBox is running latest vendor firmware and the RT-AC87U is running Merlin 376.48_1. The RT-AC87U is set to get its address via DHCP from the FritzBox.

2) A DIR-865L running Tomato, set as a wireless bridge.

3) A WRT1900AC running latest vendor firmware, set as a wireless repeater.

The FritzBox has a habit of remembering devices it sees and if they haven't already been seen and don't identify themselves properly by name during the DHCP negotiation they get either a name like PC-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx (where the xes are an ip address) or PC-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx (where the xes are a mac address).

Now I can't be sure but it seems that since I've put in the RT-AC87U I've started seeing strange entries in the devices list like (below is: name ip mac FritzBox-port-seen-on):

PC-169-254-0-254 169.254.0.254 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx LAN 1 at 1 Gbit/s

and

PC-169-254-39-2 169.254.39.2 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx LAN 1 at 1 Gbit/s

where the MAC addresses above correspond to the DIR-865L and the WRT1900AC.

Note also that the FritzBox has entries for the actual configured addresses for these devices too.

There is nowhere in my setup that I use these subnets so I have to assume the RT-AC87U is using these for some purpose.

It occurs to me that if the RT-AC87U is using some determinate method to choose these transient addresses that two of them could choose the same address .......

Ian

check this link: http://whois.domaintools.com/169.254.39.2

Read the comment.

 

[Memonstatus]

Asus tech support was useless (Currently I'm waiting for someone to analyze my log files). Same problem with 2 ac87u units; one as router, one as AP.

I have the same loop problem, and eventually the DHCP server on the router stops, and when I manually assign myself an IP and try to access 192.168.1.1, I get the AP instead of the router. I tried disconnecting the router from the AP, still DHCP wouldn't turn back on (on the router), I was trying to figure it out before power cycling it to see what happened when the router was inaccessible to the network.

Reset everything, updated to newest firmware, and now I'm running 5 hours with no loopback issues having assigned a manual IP to the AP; however some of you said even that wouldn't work.

 

[Memonstatus]

Still going strong. The bug seems to be on AP mode, you need to assign a static IP on the AP, because whenever the DHCP lease runs out, it will revert to 192.168.1.1, and that gets messy real fast.

 

[Hagler55]

Hey all! Finally getting back on here to provide an update since the start of this thread. Honestly I had given up completely with ASUS support. Last 3 or so months my second router has just been sitting in a box not connected. Figured some day a firmware update would release to resolve. Now getting back on here I see Merlin has released several new updates since I have messed with it. So now running latest at 378.52_2 on both units with a new cat cable linking them and giving it yet another try. We shall see.

Memonstatus.....I would be interested in knowing if your still up and running strong?? I have no doubt tried the static approach before and failing within hours. Maybe your luck lies within the newer firmware? I now have my AP set with a fixed IP so hoping to achieve same results.

Be back in a day or so with my results!

 

[Jong]

Hey Hagler, I also run 2 AC87s - one as router, one as AP and the good news is the problem you describe (which I also experienced) was fixed with Asus firmware 4608 that is also the basis for RMerlin 378.52.

My 2, actually running Asus 378.4950, not RMerlin, but there isn't a big difference, have now been up 25 days with no problems.

I use static IP for the AP (setup on the AP and excluded from the DHCP range on the router) and the same SSID for both AP and Router, 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz. You should make sure both beamforming options are OFF for 5Ghz. I also recommend leaving OFF Roaming Assist. Devices that expect continuous WiFi (eg. for AirPlay) do not like being kicked off a radio abruptly by the AP.

(Sorry I didn't spot this thread before or I would have posted to say it was fixed one month ago. The beta for 4608 came out on 8th March and it was fully released on the 18th).

 

[Hagler55]

Thanks for the response Jong!

Mine is also still running solid just shy of 24 hours now which I never achieved prior. This is looking good! I was pretty sure we were just dealing with a firmware issue here, just wish ASUS support people were better informed of this issue. They claimed they never heard of this issue and I was the first and kept wanting me to return my units which I refused. Both routers ran solid by themselves. Sad news here is with customer service. Multiple case files, over 10 calls and numerous emails with the last one indicating my service tag was being escalated to the developers and a promise return call I should get....that was over 2 months ago and still heard nothing from ASUS. Even after a firmware release fixing the issue.

 

[Jong]

By the way, you may not have noticed RMerlin .53 is now out, that includes everything in 4950 and a bit besides. Nothing that will improve or worsen this specific issue though. .52_2 is fine for that.

 

[Hagler55]

By the way, you may not have noticed RMerlin .53 is now out, that includes everything in 4950 and a bit besides. Nothing that will improve or worsen this specific issue though. .52_2 is fine for that.

Thanks!!

 

[Hagler55]

A week later and still running strong! I believe it's safe to say this issue is resolved. Thanks to all who shared their experiences and recommendations. It has been a rough road with ASUS but now with fixed firmware we have kick a** routers! Happy networking!