Merlin 386.2_4 on RT-AX86U missing wifi 6 toggle after flashing

[dawm]

Hello!

Today I installed Merlin 386.2_4 on my RT-AX86U.

I'm now missing the setting that would allow me to toggle wifi 6 on either band.

Any and all input is appreciated, thanks.

 

[dev_null]

2.4 does not have a choice for AX; 5gHz shows AX as a choice on my AX86U. FWIW I leave it at auto and am able to connect with AX.

 

[dawm]

Hello!

Today I installed Merlin 386.2_4 on my RT-AX86U.

I'm now missing the setting that would allow me to toggle wifi 6 on either band.

Any and all input is appreciated, thanks.

2.4 does not have a choice for AX; 5gHz shows AX as a choice on my AX86U. FWIW I leave it at auto and am able to connect with AX.

View attachment 34064

I appreciate your reply!

I'm used to seeing this:

And

These settings seem to now be gone completely. I wanted to adjust it for the 2.4 band due to some issues I'm having. Does this mean both bands are locked to wifi 6? Or am I missing something? I'm somewhat new to this stuff so excuse my lack of knowledge.

Much appreciated.

 

[L&LD]

@dawm, did you do a full reset after flashing the RMerlin firmware on your router?

What was the previous version that you had running?

Best Practice Update/Setup Router/AiMesh Node(s) 2021

 

[dawm]

@dawm, did you do a full reset after flashing the RMerlin firmware on your router?

What was the previous version that you had running?

Best Practice Update/Setup Router/AiMesh Node(s) 2021

I was on the latest stock firmware. I know there was a 386 in there but don't know exactly what version. Admittedly, no. I did not do a full reset. I saw that being advised but also read in the download notes that because I was already on a version of 386 that flashing Merlin without a reset could be fine. The router itself is less than a month old if that means anything. Everything seems to be working fine minus the missing settings. Although my initial problem with the reliability/range of the router doesn't seem to have changed much. But its only been a few hours I guess. Thanks for your help!

 

[bbunge]

I was on the latest stock firmware. I know there was a 386 in there but don't know exactly what version. Admittedly, no. I did not do a full reset. I saw that being advised but also read in the download notes that because I was already on a version of 386 that flashing Merlin without a reset could be fine. The router itself is less than a month old if that means anything. Everything seems to be working fine minus the missing settings. Although my initial problem with the reliability/range of the router doesn't seem to have changed much. But its only been a few hours I guess. Thanks for your help!

Going from Asus to Merlin a reset is strongly recommended. Hard Factory Reset: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1039078

Also recommend WIFI settings:
Use Dual Band Smart Connect. One advantage to this is if your 5 GHz band gets bounced due to RADAR the clients will switch to the 2.4 GHz band and keep working until the 5 GHz comes back up.
2.4 GHz at 20 MHz on a fixed channel. 1, 6 or 11 recommended
5 GHz at 160 MHz on channel 36. This will allow eight consecutive channels and clients that do not like DFS channels will connect.
Use WPA2/WPA3. There is a remote chance that an older client will not like this in such a case set up a guest WIFI (2 or 3) with WPA2. This works!
Disable Airtime Fairness and Universal Beamforming in both bands.
As in most things settings wise I will get criticism and blow back on the above. But, these settings work for me on Asus or Merlin firmware.

 

[Darcy]

I appreciate your reply!

I'm used to seeing this:

View attachment 34065

And

View attachment 34066

These settings seem to now be gone completely. I wanted to adjust it for the 2.4 band due to some issues I'm having. Does this mean both bands are locked to wifi 6? Or am I missing something? I'm somewhat new to this stuff so excuse my lack of knowledge.

Much appreciated.

Mine looked like this as well and now it does not. Also anytime I change a setting and hit apply nothing happens. Latest Merlin FW and did hard reset

 

[dev_null]

I appreciate your reply!

I'm used to seeing this:



And



These settings seem to now be gone completely. I wanted to adjust it for the 2.4 band due to some issues I'm having. Does this mean both bands are locked to wifi 6? Or am I missing something? I'm somewhat new to this stuff so excuse my lack of knowledge.

Much appreciated.

Mine looked like this as well and now it does not. Also anytime I change a setting and hit apply nothing happens. Latest Merlin FW and did hard reset

Hmm, I have those settings as well on 386.2_4. I think as @L&LD points out, you need a re-set between firmware types. Don't restore from any backups or you're likely to have the same issues again.

 

[Darcy]

Hmm, I have those settings as well on 386.2_4. I think as @L&LD points out, you need a re-set between firmware types. Don't restore from any backups or you're likely to have the same issues again.

View attachment 34067

View attachment 34068

I started fresh and with no backup as my router is new. I will do a full reset over the weekend and see if that works. Funny thing is I can make changes on my phone browser and hit apply and it works - go figure.

 

[dev_null]

I started fresh and with no backup as my router is new. I will do a full reset over the weekend and see if that works. Funny thing is I can make changes on my phone browser and hit apply and it works - go figure.

Then your issue is browser-related. Clear the cache on your browser (CTRL+R, CTRL+F5 sort of thing) or try a different browser. You don't need a reset if you can see the controls on a different device/browser, just a good cache-cleaning.

 

[ColinTaylor]

@dawm Change the Wireless Mode back to "Auto" or "AX only" and the "802.11ax / Wi-Fi 6 mode" option will appear.

 

[Darcy]

Then your issue is browser-related. Clear the cache on your browser (CTRL+R, CTRL+F5 sort of thing) or try a different browser. You don't need a reset if you can see the controls on a different device/browser, just a good cache-cleaning.

Thank you. I will give that a try. I may do a reset as well as I have some devices which I had better speeds with my AC86U. It’s probably settings that I need to adjust so we will see.

 

[Darcy]

Going from Asus to Merlin a reset is strongly recommended. Hard Factory Reset: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1039078

Also recommend WIFI settings:
Use Dual Band Smart Connect. One advantage to this is if your 5 GHz band gets bounced due to RADAR the clients will switch to the 2.4 GHz band and keep working until the 5 GHz comes back up.
2.4 GHz at 20 MHz on a fixed channel. 1, 6 or 11 recommended
5 GHz at 160 MHz on channel 36. This will allow eight consecutive channels and clients that do not like DFS channels will connect.
Use WPA2/WPA3. There is a remote chance that an older client will not like this in such a case set up a guest WIFI (2 or 3) with WPA2. This works!
Disable Airtime Fairness and Universal Beamforming in both bands.
As in most things settings wise I will get criticism and blow back on the above. But, these settings work for me on Asus or Merlin firmware.

Anybody here try these settings or recommend them? I may try them this weekend and see what results I get.

 

[dev_null]

Anybody here try these settings or recommend them? I may try them this weekend and see what results I get.

I don't use smart-connect. I prefer to set my devices to use one band or the other (only my old stuff gets 2.4; anything modern goes on 5).

W/r/t channels: for 2.4, I agree: use 1, 6 or 11.

For 5gHz, I am actually partial to the DFS bands because I'm in a low/no-radar area and no neighbors have hardware that can use UNII-2/UNII-2 Ext channels. So I get those to myself. Others find that to be too risky - leading to unexpected channel change, but I have a solution for that.

If you are in an area with low/no radar risk, then I'd recommend the UNII-2 channels, but I'm probably an outlier being a fan of DFS channels.

Note: some devices (Roku, Amazon) don't pick up DFS channels, so you'll need to decide if the trade-off is worth it.

***

For the record, my solution is to be notified if radar is detected with this cronjob, which checks the log for the word radar and then emails me using the div-email script described in the vnStat-on-Merlin thread.

cru a radar_detect "7 4 * * * grep Radar /opt/var/log/messages | /jffs/scripts/div-email.sh 'Radar detected - check channel'"

Note: I then need to manually restart wireless via the gui. I tried using adamm's channelhog script but found that the commands embedded in his script did not respect the channel selection in the gui, they simply restarted the 5gHz radio on whatever automatic channel had been selected. Completely as intended but not fit for my purposes. Besides it's only happened once in three months, and that was quite likely a false-positive.

 

[dawm]

@dawm Change the Wireless Mode back to "Auto" or "AX only" and the "802.11ax / Wi-Fi 6 mode" option will appear.

This worked for me. Thanks!

 

[Darcy]

I don't use smart-connect. I prefer to set my devices to use one band or the other (only my old stuff gets 2.4; anything modern goes on 5).

W/r/t channels: for 2.4, I agree: use 1, 6 or 11.

For 5gHz, I am actually partial to the DFS bands because I'm in a low/no-radar area and no neighbors have hardware that can use UNII-2/UNII-2 Ext channels. So I get those to myself. Others find that to be too risky - leading to unexpected channel change, but I have a solution for that.

If you are in an area with low/no radar risk, then I'd recommend the UNII-2 channels, but I'm probably an outlier being a fan of DFS channels.

Note: some devices (Roku, Amazon) don't pick up DFS channels, so you'll need to decide if the trade-off is worth it.

***

For the record, my solution is to be notified if radar is detected with this cronjob, which checks the log for the word radar and then emails me using the div-email script described in the vnStat-on-Merlin thread.

cru a radar_detect "7 4 * * * grep Radar /opt/var/log/messages | /jffs/scripts/div-email.sh 'Radar detected - check channel'"

Note: I then need to manually restart wireless via the gui. I tried using adamm's channelhog script but found that the commands embedded in his script did not respect the channel selection in the gui, they simply restarted the 5gHz radio on whatever automatic channel had been selected. Completely as intended but not fit for my purposes. Besides it's only happened once in three months, and that was quite likely a false-positive.

DFS has been working for me with most devices. Oddly my AC86U in bridge mode won’t connect

 

[dev_null]

DFS has been working for me with most devices. Oddly my AC86U in bridge mode won’t connect

By design, as I'm sure the AC86 isn't 'certified'. My AC66U_B1, which does not have DFS channels as selectable, will actually broadcast on DFS channels when connected as a mesh node.

I use the AC66U_B1 as a wired node. You might try that with the AC86U. I'll bet it mirrors the DFS channels (the AC66U_B1 uses the same firmware).

 

[dev_null]

I don't use smart-connect. I prefer to set my devices to use one band or the other (only my old stuff gets 2.4; anything modern goes on 5).

W/r/t channels: for 2.4, I agree: use 1, 6 or 11.

For 5gHz, I am actually partial to the DFS bands because I'm in a low/no-radar area and no neighbors have hardware that can use UNII-2/UNII-2 Ext channels. So I get those to myself. Others find that to be too risky - leading to unexpected channel change, but I have a solution for that.

If you are in an area with low/no radar risk, then I'd recommend the UNII-2 channels, but I'm probably an outlier being a fan of DFS channels.

Note: some devices (Roku, Amazon) don't pick up DFS channels, so you'll need to decide if the trade-off is worth it.

***

For the record, my solution is to be notified if radar is detected with this cronjob, which checks the log for the word radar and then emails me using the div-email script described in the vnStat-on-Merlin thread.

cru a radar_detect "7 4 * * * grep Radar /opt/var/log/messages | /jffs/scripts/div-email.sh 'Radar detected - check channel'"

Note: I then need to manually restart wireless via the gui. I tried using adamm's channelhog script but found that the commands embedded in his script did not respect the channel selection in the gui, they simply restarted the 5gHz radio on whatever automatic channel had been selected. Completely as intended but not fit for my purposes. Besides it's only happened once in three months, and that was quite likely a false-positive.

Updated version of the cronjob is below. The one above sent an email regardless of the presence of the word "Radar" in the log, whereas this one is a little more sophisticated, and it cleans up after itself. It also deletes the line with the word Radar in it so you don't get false-positive notifications based on an old detection event.

cru a radar_detect "7 4 * * * grep Radar /opt/var/log/messages > /opt/var/log/radar.txt && sh /jffs/scripts/div-email.sh 'Radar detected - check channel' /opt/var/log/radar.txt  && rm /opt/var/log/radar.txt && sed -i '/Radar/d' /opt/var/log/messages 2>/dev/null || echo 'No radar detected'"

(Yes this could be a script, but concatenation is fun!)