dosborne
Very Senior Member
Not really. Sorry. When I got my RT-AX88U a month ago, I installed Merlin firmware and manually configured the router after resetting to defaults. I have no issues with any of my many legacy 2.4Ghz devices, I don't run Samba as I have multiple NAS units and I have no issues with SSH. Essentially though the only thing I added from default was VPN client and server.Do you have other ideas?
I still strongly suggest you reset to factory and install / configure the bare minimum of items and test along the way. Add only 1 or 2 changes a day until you find what is causing your problems. SSH is pretty basic so should be an easy thing to test.
Although you do not feel all those services are related to your issues, my 40 years of experience throws up red flags immediately when I read your post. I could've wrong, but I could be right. You are trying to use a device that was designed and engineered for a specific task (router) and a NAS and a half dozen other things. The ad blocking alone uses huge amounts of memory to store the block lists. Playing videos via SMB uses huge chunks of CPU.
Just my opinion, but the same unit works just fine in my setup, but I'm only using it for basic functions.