Issues with RP-AC68U repeater

[Dancing Lemur]

(Apologies fro the cross-post -- this might be a better place for this)

I have a RT-AC3100 that's running Merlin and operating as a router. I'm running Diversion on it after having run AB solution previously.

I also have a RP-AC68U repeater that's running the latest stock firmware (as I don't believe there is Merlin available for that).

Some history:

To get my first RP-AC68U repeater to work, I had to assign it a static IP address of 192.168.1.100. However, my repeater would periodically reset/reboot. Sometimes when this happened, the boot up procedure wouldn't work properly. The repeater would stay at 192.168.1.1 and cause all sorts of havoc with IP contention. When I managed to logon via the web interface, I saw the repeater also had it's default time in the system log. Devices connecting to the repeater could sometimes access the internet but it appeared some ports/services on the devices did not work properly. ASUS technical support was abysmal and finally they said to RMA the repeater.

With the new repeater, for some reason I have not been able to manually assign it an IP address -- I'm not sure if I'm using the wrong MAC Address for it although it seems right. ASUS told me to try making my repeater 192.168.1.1 and my router 192.168.1.100. That seemed odd but I gave it a try. The router appeared to function properly with devices connecting to it accessing the internet. I could access the repeater's web page via my network. Devices were able to connect to the repeater but for some reason they could not connect through to the Internet.

With everything else the same, I changed the IP address of the router back to 192.168.1.1. It caused all sorts of IP contention but when I managed to connect a device to the repeater, it was able to access the Internet.

I wasn't sure if this was an issue with Diversion or Merlin -- usually when i mention to ASUS that I have Merlin installed they stop being as helpful even if it's on the router and not the repeater.

ASUS technical support hasn't been very helpful so I was hoping to see if people have suggestions here:

1. How can I confirm the MAC Address of the repeater and statically assign it to 192.168.1.100 in my Merlin Router?
2. Or if that doesn't work, is there a reason that the router at 192.168.1.100 does not work?
3. Are there settings in Diversion that I'm not configuring correctly?
4. Any other suggestions/debug?

If this should be in a different forum, please let me know

Thank you,

Lemur

 

[Dancing Lemur]

Anyone know what these messages mean? ASUS Tech Support never explained them:

*** "dnsmasq-dhcp[529]: DHCP packet received on wl1-vxd which has no address"
*** "kernel: br0: received packet on wl0-vxd with own address as source address"

 

[L&LD]

Did you try google?

 

[Dancing Lemur]

I have... but a lot of it goes above my head as I'm not an expert here. I just know enough to probably cause more problems for myself.

With these messages, my repeater enters a state where it connects to the router but doesn't move to the static IP assigned to it. Nor does it or any devices connected to it access the Internet even though it is visible on my internal network (albeit the repeater webpage is not).

I'm working with ASUS Technical support but they are not supportive once I tell them I'm running Merlin on my router. (I'm also running Diversion and pixelserv-tls.

What causes these messages/errors? Is there a Merlin/Diversion setting that I need to toggle? Apart from Merlin/Diversion I'm not doing anything unusual for my router/repeater configuration.

 

[L&LD]

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/n...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573

The link above may be useful to get you back to a good/known state for your network in a 'basic' way. Make sure you update both routers to the latest firmware version available and then do a full reset to factory defaults with minimal and manual configuration of each.

I would then proceed to add things one at a time, testing with each addition to see that nothing breaks. I would add amtm and Diversion last (for no other reason than to no have to install it over and over again) after using amtm to format the USB stick you're using with Ext4 with journaling.

 

[DeSproggster]

(Apologies fro the cross-post -- this might be a better place for this)

I have a RT-AC3100 that's running Merlin and operating as a router. I'm running Diversion on it after having run AB solution previously.

I also have a RP-AC68U repeater that's running the latest stock firmware (as I don't believe there is Merlin available for that).

Some history:

To get my first RP-AC68U repeater to work, I had to assign it a static IP address of 192.168.1.100. However, my repeater would periodically reset/reboot. Sometimes when this happened, the boot up procedure wouldn't work properly. The repeater would stay at 192.168.1.1 and cause all sorts of havoc with IP contention. When I managed to logon via the web interface, I saw the repeater also had it's default time in the system log. Devices connecting to the repeater could sometimes access the internet but it appeared some ports/services on the devices did not work properly. ASUS technical support was abysmal and finally they said to RMA the repeater.

With the new repeater, for some reason I have not been able to manually assign it an IP address -- I'm not sure if I'm using the wrong MAC Address for it although it seems right. ASUS told me to try making my repeater 192.168.1.1 and my router 192.168.1.100. That seemed odd but I gave it a try. The router appeared to function properly with devices connecting to it accessing the internet. I could access the repeater's web page via my network. Devices were able to connect to the repeater but for some reason they could not connect through to the Internet.

With everything else the same, I changed the IP address of the router back to 192.168.1.1. It caused all sorts of IP contention but when I managed to connect a device to the repeater, it was able to access the Internet.

I wasn't sure if this was an issue with Diversion or Merlin -- usually when i mention to ASUS that I have Merlin installed they stop being as helpful even if it's on the router and not the repeater.

ASUS technical support hasn't been very helpful so I was hoping to see if people have suggestions here:

1. How can I confirm the MAC Address of the repeater and statically assign it to 192.168.1.100 in my Merlin Router?
2. Or if that doesn't work, is there a reason that the router at 192.168.1.100 does not work?
3. Are there settings in Diversion that I'm not configuring correctly?
4. Any other suggestions/debug?

If this should be in a different forum, please let me know

Thank you,

Lemur

Hi Lemur,

i have upgraded the hardware at home and this weekend gone i have purchased both the DSL-AC88U and AP-AC68U in the hope that they would create a flawless network flow.

I did the normal and i updated both devices to the very latest stock Firmware

I was surprised to find exactly the same issue was happening to me what has happened to yourself, i assigned Static IP for the AC68U in the AC88U using the MAC address of the AC68U. I had also used the IP of 192.168.1.100 for the repeater.

The repeater was connecting on the 2.4G no issues but the 5G was non-existent and the Internet was unavailable through the 5G when it was connected.

I believe this is an issue with the Firmware and it not applying or allowing the Wifi Configurations to be saved

Using a Wifi Analyser on my phone connected to the router i could see that even though i had set the wifi channel for 5G in the AC88U to channel 60 the 5G channel on the AC68U was hopping around like mad with hops every 10 - 20 seconds between channel 36 and 140 so the 5G would not be stable.

This was causing the AC68U Repeater to become unstable and it crashed out a few times and would reset the settings, on restart it would assign it'self the same ip as the router of 192.168.1.1 and was not connectable on the network through the GUI Frontend

Resolution:-

to resolve this i did a factory reset on the repeater and went through the Setup Wizard process again

It connected to both the 2,4G and 5G channels fine and was stable for 5 minutes

i enable both Telnet and SSH (Administration >> System) on the AC68U Repeater and connected into it on the ip 192.168.1.100 through command prompt using Telnet

Using the command nvram in the Telnet window it gave me the options

admin@RP-AC68U:/tmp/home/root# nvram
usage: nvram [get name] [set name=value] [unset name] [erase] [show] [save file] [restore file] [fb_save file]
usage: nvram [save_ap file] [save_rp_2g file] [save_rp_5g file]
admin@RP-AC68U:/tmp/home/root#

watching the Wifi Analyser app on my phone i could see the 5G channel bouncing around channels, when it hit channel 60 again i executed the following command

admin@RP-AC68U:/tmp/home/root# nvram save_rp_5g rp_5g_savefile

this saves a bin file in the root directory of the AC68U Repeater with all the settings for the 5G on channel 60 on the repeater

I then run the command to restore the file i had just created

admin@RP-AC68U:/tmp/home/root# nvram restore rp_5g_savefile

on doing this the 5G instantly connected to the correct channel i had set in the router and has stayed connected to it

i then run the following command

admin@RP-AC68U:/tmp/home/root# nvram save RP_savefile

and created a backup of the whole AC68U settings

I then run the command

admin@RP-AC68U:/tmp/home/root# nvram restore RP_savefile

and voila, all my 2.4G and 5G settings are flashed over the bad setup of the Firmware and saved, this also restored internet to both 2.4G and 5G

I have contacted ASUS in relation to the bad firmware and how this issue is caused by it not saving and applying settings correctly

I will state that if ASUS has not fixed this issue in the future with future releases of Firmware that these steps will resolve connectivity issues

I hope this helps you resolve your problem

regards

Corrie

 

[DeSproggster]

Anyone know what these messages mean? ASUS Tech Support never explained them:

*** "dnsmasq-dhcp[529]: DHCP packet received on wl1-vxd which has no address"
*** "kernel: br0: received packet on wl0-vxd with own address as source address"

This is related to the 2 Mac addresses used by the 5G, once you do the above you wont see this again. It is caused by the 5G settings not being able to be applied properly by the Firmware update

 

[Dancing Lemur]

This will be very useful. I had to put this project aside for the moment.

But... I was also just told by ASUS that there's a chipset bug in the RT-AC3100. They did not tell me what it is or if it causes the issues I see (it was implied). They said that they'd RMA my router even though it's out of warranty.

But they also said that the RT-AC3200 doesn't have the unnamed bug and I saw similar issues with that. So maybe the NV issue is also a problem on the repeater.

I'll have to download this wifi analyzer app.

Lemur

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/n...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573

The link above may be useful to get you back to a good/known state for your network in a 'basic' way. Make sure you update both routers to the latest firmware version available and then do a full reset to factory defaults with minimal and manual configuration of each.

I would then proceed to add things one at a time, testing with each addition to see that nothing breaks. I would add amtm and Diversion last (for no other reason than to no have to install it over and over again) after using amtm to format the USB stick you're using with Ext4 with journaling.

 

[HuskyHerder]

Im kinda late to the party and truth be told I dont have the RP-AC68U any longer. Did you buy mine off eBay ? In the last 6 months ?

The repeater would stay at 192.168.1.1 and cause all sorts of havoc with IP contention. When I managed to logon via the web interface, I saw the repeater also had it's default time in the system log. Devices connecting to the repeater could sometimes access the internet but it appeared some ports/services on the devices did not work properly. ASUS technical support was abysmal and finally they said to RMA the repeater.

..... Devices were able to connect to the repeater but for some reason they could not connect through to the Internet.

With everything else the same, I changed the IP address of the router back to 192.168.1.1. It caused all sorts of IP contention but when I managed to connect a device to the repeater, it was able to access the Internet.

What I found was a post here in the forums and once I tried it I no longer had issues after using it up until I sold my units.

For me it was the RP-AC68U would never fully turn off its DHCP. Glance over my thread, does it sound familiar? See if it happens to help you any.

TLDR : Specifically the edit/update portion and in my last post. Maybe it will help.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/rp-68u-ap-mode-edited-title.47887/

 

[jerry6]

i wou;fd not use latest FW on the rp 68u i
m using fw 3.0.0.4.382_10513 and it;s the last that works well qwith no problems

 

[jerry6]

fw 3.0.0.4.382_10513 and it;s the last that works well qwith no problems, only FW THAT worked on my rp68u