Need help troubleshooting - problem started out of nowhere

[JTnola]

Hi I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction—I’m not sure what happened.

I’ve been running Merlin 386.9 on my RT-AC86U since very shortly after the final version was released — my most stable experience in a long time!! No freezing. No lock files. No nothing. (Additionally, I run diversion standard, SkyNet, & scMerlin — all were up to date as of a few days ago. I use SomeWhereOverTheRainBow’s custom blocking list on SkyNet.) I also run VPN client on the router, that starts when the router boots up. And quad9 DNS-over-TLS.

I haven’t made any changes to my settings since before updating to 386.9

there was an auto-reboot this morning. But everything was still running fine for a little while after it came back up.

I was sitting around this morning watching TV on my Apple TV and surfing the web on my iOS device, when all of a sudden there was no internet connection through the router. (I later checked the modem itself—connection is still all good there, as well as the Ethernet port/cable coming from the modem.) I was still connected by WiFi, so I logged into the web gui and rebooted the modem from there … stupidly, I did not bother ti check out the log first. After restarting the router, my phone could still *technically* connect to the WiFi … but I can’t ping the router or any devices on the network. And there’s no internet connection. And I can’t get the web gui to load, nor connect by SSH. (I even resorted to trying the asus app, but it couldn’t connect.) I hard rebooted. I let it sit unplugged for a while. I tried booting it without the flash drive plugged in. I tried restarting the modem and power cycling the modem, too.


Any clues as to what might be wrong? Or how I can log on to the router, SSH or Web gui etc. while the router is seemingly not getting internet (/is stuck in this odd state)?

I have a fresh copy of my settings saved, keyed to this firmware … just hoping to avoid a factory reset. (Just did a full factory reset in early December. Things were solid then, and only MORE SOLID STILL ever since the move up to 386.9)

 

[Tech9]

What the status LEDs show?

 

[heysoundude]

I've crossed my fingers your machine didn't decide it was done working...

you reboot the router daily? Is that a requirement, or just a best practices thing for you?
I'd just use the scheduler to turn wifi off while I'm sleeping...but everybody needs different things.

 

[JTnola]

I've crossed my fingers your machine didn't decide it was done working...

you reboot the router daily? Is that a requirement, or just a best practices thing for you?
I'd just use the scheduler to turn wifi off while I'm sleeping...but everybody needs different things.

I reboot twice weekly. I used to do once weekly, then things got a little lock-up happy on one of the recent past firmware versions, so I upped it to twice a week. but this new fw version was basically my most stable ever. So I guess I could’ve lowered it back to once a week? Just a best practices thing for me.

yeah I was trying to lookup how to tell if something was dead hardware-wise …

 

[JTnola]

What the status LEDs show?

White lights across the board.

 

[drinkingbird]

White lights across the board.

At this point I think a factory reset is the only way to see if the router is still functional and maybe even reinstall the current firmware. But sounds like its time may be up.

 

[siickboii]

I had to go back to stock Asus after having this same issue. Merlin was always too advanced for my little network anyway.

 

[Tech9]

White lights across the board.

Did you fix it?

Changing Control Channel does not seem to work.

Using the Wireless web page, I changed my 2.4 GHz band from control channel 1 to control channel 6. I press apply and the web page shows this change, but the "WiFi Site Survey" page continues to show channel 1. The Wireless setup page and the WiFi Site Survey page disagree! Am I doing something...

www.snbforums.com

I had no time to play with it, but I believe something is wrong with Dnsmasq version used in 386.9 release.

 

[bertilak]

What the status LEDs show?

All the usual ones are lit.

 

[pplui]

I have the same problem. AC3100 with ac86u as mesh. First I lost internet connection on 2.4ghz. Did a factory reset, started for scratch. I still had no 2.4 internet but eventually it started to work. Today I lost 5.0ghz internet but 2.4 started to work.

Something interesting: my Samsung phones have problems with 5.0ghz, but my son Huawei p30 pro has no problems at all.
I am thinking to downgrade my routers

 

[JTnola]

Something weird happened. But it works now.

it was behaving strangely during parts of the reset (I ended up resetting it like 3x’s)

it was particularly strange when I updated the trend micro certificate at one point during the reset process. —Though, that may be more correlation than cause (it might have been the fact of the reboot and not the update in and of itself)


ultimately I also put a fresh OVPN client config file on there and that made the biggest difference

Maybe something got screwed up and the kill switch wouldn’t let the router go online if it couldn’t establish a tunnel when if rebooted? (What is the magic to connecting to the router when the internet/wan is down? Either IRL or because of some issue with router settings? … and also, why won’t it let you connect to the WiFi when the router doesn’t have internet? … don’t people do network tasks that don’t involve an internet connection?)

Thanks for all the moral support y’all