Need Help--AC66U (R) restarting randomly

[Grievous Angel]

To the tune of every 20 or 30 minutes. I know it's restarting by the "uptime" in the log.

Any tips you guys can suggest for diagnosing would be appreciated. Edit: I did do a search--which is how I came up with disabling the HW acceleration.

I had been running Merlin's .43 release for some time, and I don't recall a lot of fuss. I had run prior Merlin releases for weeks (and a month in one case) of uptime without incident.

I tried grabbing Asus's latest release (376_1123) to see if that might help. I did a factory reset from the GUI, and later the nvram clear thing in a telnet session.

I still have the problem creep up.

I just disabled NAT Acceleration (formerly HW acceleration) and still experienced a reboot.

I just powered off the router, and unplugged it, let it stay off, and started it back up--no idea if this will matter.

One thing different: it seems like the TX power adjustmentis now "zero to 100 percent" . . defaulting to 100%. It has a little slide rule, whereas I recall before it was just an entry, and it defaulted to 80--which I never touched. Should I try adjusting this downward? Does "100%" equal "100mW" in the new world, or "80mW"?

I haven't strayed too far from the defaults--everything is auto channel, I turned off the wifi scheduler, unchecked b/g protection for the 2.4 band, specified 20MHz for the 2.4 band--nothing exotic, or nothing I hadn't done before.

Any thoughts you guys might have would be appreciated.

Edit: I wonder if I have a hardware issue? I'd been running .43 from merlin for a good while and didn't notice an issue (and we would notice--we stream, xbox live, typically have 5-15 devices connected at one time). If it is a hardware issue, I'm of the mind to just go get an N66 . . as I STILL don't have a single AC client. Edit 2: But dat AC87 is in stock and getting good reviews on Best Buy . . $279 . . I must--be--strong.

 

[Grievous Angel]

Well the last thing I tried was completely unplugging the router. I'm surprised this does something above just turning the thing off using the button.

But it's been up for 90 minutes. Fingers crossed.

 

[RMerlin]

Well the last thing I tried was completely unplugging the router. I'm surprised this does something above just turning the thing off using the button.

But it's been up for 90 minutes. Fingers crossed.

I've had similar experiences with all kind of hardware over the years. A reset/reboot doesn't reinitialize the electronics. I remember a few months ago, a customer's USB ports on her PC stopped working. No amount of reboot helped. What I did when I went on-site was to turn off the PC, unplug the power supply, drain any residual charge by pressing the power button a few seconds, then plugged everything back on. Her ports have been working flawlessly since then.

 

[Grievous Angel]

Thanks Merlin. I'll let it ride to see if it clears it up. I'm surprised the "off switch" doesn't completely cut the power.

By the way--I have the NAT (HW) Acceleration off. I have searched and googled--lots of stuff about turning it on or off, about ISP speeds, and causing problems.

But I can't find what it PURPORTS to do . . what is the benefit of this setting? We don't do a lot of LAN sharing . . just a lot of different devices connected and using the internet/WAN/ISP.

Am I missing out on some benefit by leaving this off?

I don't want to turn it back on until I figure out if my "unplug" solution has solved my stability issues. But if there's no benefit to me (mainly: valuing stability, smooth operation, and ISP/WAN performance), then I'd as soon leave it off.

 

[e94mli]

I'm having the same issue with my new (replacement) router. Tried unplugging to reboot and a bunch of other things but with no luck. Switched to the latest beta Merlin firmware and it has been up for a few hours now, so fingers crossed. I'm still suspecting that it might be having some sort of heat issues since my old one definitely had heat problems (ran longer if booted up after being left to cool down). In any case I would suggest placing it somewhere well vented and cool and see if that helps.

 

[Grievous Angel]

Well I had that thought. It's pretty warm to the touch. My A/C is running but it is hot here in Alabama. It's out in the open and on its stand, and I would say it's not hotter than it's been in the past.

I just don't know about the passive cooling on this thing. Maybe it's time to get one of those laptop coolers or something. Maybe something that can run off the USB power.

 

[Grievous Angel]

I re-enabled NAT (HW) Acceleration and it's been up for 2 and a half hours. Still hoping the complete power down (unplugging, not just powering off) was the fix.

Because while I don't know exactly what HW Acceleration affects in every day use, I know it sounds like something I should have enabled. I get what NAT is(Network Address Translation) but I don't know how accelerating it would affect typical internet/WAN usage. But, subjectively, it felt slower.

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks Merlin. I'll let it ride to see if it clears it up. I'm surprised the "off switch" doesn't completely cut the power.

It does, however internal capacitors can keep up some residual charge. If you really want to do a complete power reset on a device, you need to unplug it, then turn it on to force any residual charge to be drained.

By the way--I have the NAT (HW) Acceleration off. I have searched and googled--lots of stuff about turning it on or off, about ISP speeds, and causing problems.

But I can't find what it PURPORTS to do . . what is the benefit of this setting? We don't do a lot of LAN sharing . . just a lot of different devices connected and using the internet/WAN/ISP.

An RT-AC66U can route up to 150 Mbps of WAN traffic without HW acceleration. Beyond that (or if running any other CPU-intensive task on the router at the same time), you need HW acceleration to be enabled.

 

[Grievous Angel]

Ok. Thanks for the info. I wish the documentation for this stuff was better. I've re enabled HW acceleration. 4 hours of uptime since.

It's looking like had a ghost in the machine that was solved by the complete power down. Voodoo.

I'll go back to .44 once it is out of beta and I'm for sure beyond this issue.