Random Router Reboots during high bandwidth events (GT-AX11000 & RT-AX88U in Mesh). How to troubleshoot more?

[Danifunker]

Greetings Everyone,

I've been struggling with this issue for quite a while. I've done multiple settings resets over the year or so, but still have the same issue.

It appears when I'm doing some high-throughput stuff, usually things like MS Teams, sometimes when I'm copying a large amount of data from my NAS over SMB the main router GT-AX11000 will crash and restart (I see the lights flashing and everything during an initialization phase). This tends to happen once or twice a day when I'm working from home and have a lot of teams meetings. I try to minimize this by performing an automated restart every day on the router, but this only helps so much. Sometimes the router also just hangs, where it doesn't reboot but also stops servicing any clients, there may or may not be anybody at home those days. Usually a physical power cycle resolves the issues.

I'm not sure how to troubleshoot this any further, but I have configured the router to send logs to my NAS.

Connected Devices:
Synology NAS
3x Nanoleaf smart home lights (I believe the one still uses 802.11b)
Apple homepod & apple homekit devices
1 Windows PC
2x MacBook Pro (2019)
3x Sonos speakers
A bunch of video game consoles
iPhones & iPads

Current configuration is as follows:
AI-Mesh setup

Primary Router: GT-AX11000
Mesh Node: RT-AX88U

Using mesh in wireless mode (I am using the secondary band on the GT-AX11000 to share out with the RT-AX88U)

AI Protection is off
Parental Controls are off
Adaptive QOS is on

Game Mode is on (no devices specified)
No USB device connected
AICloud 2.0 disabled

Tools -> Other settings:

Wifi Settings 2.4G

WPS is on
WDS is off
No wireless MAC filter
No RADIUS Settings
2.4 Professional Settings:

No Roaming Block List



I've also tried upping the dns-forward-max to 1024

I will add more comments to attach my settings to this thread.

 

[Danifunker]

5.0 Radio 1

Professional Settings:

 

[Danifunker]

5.0 Radio 2

Professional:

 

[John Fitzgerald]

All bands, turn off Universal Beamforming
Try setting DTIM to 3
Uncheck 160MHz band, post#2 first image

Instead of leaving channel selection on auto, try fixing 2.4G on 1,6, or 11
5G band to 36 (I use 40). 2nd radio fix on 161

Your mesh node is on stock firmware?
Primary is on???

try wpa2/wpa3

Recommended settings for Wi-Fi routers and access points – Apple Support (UK)

For the best security, performance and reliability, we recommend using these settings for all Wi-Fi routers, base stations or access points used with Apple products.

support.apple.com

 

[Tech9]

main router GT-AX11000 will crash and restart

I don't think Wi-Fi settings changes will help. There were previous reports of AX11000 crashing with TrendMicro components enabled. Try withdrawing the data sharing agreement in Administration, Privacy and see what happens. It will disable your Adaptive QoS, but on Auto bandwidth setting it doesn't help much anyway. The categories are messed up on many firmware versions as well. When you are running Asuswrt-Merlin and you are looking for troubleshooting help please list everything potentially related as custom scripts and configurations used. Otherwise the help includes lots of guessing.

 

[John Fitzgerald]

When you are running Asuswrt-Merlin and you are looking for troubleshooting help please list everything potentially related as custom scripts and configurations used. Otherwise the help includes lots of guessing.

Q the game show music while I consult my crystal ball

 

[Tech9]

This has become a real issue in new firmware release threads. Reports about router crashing with this firmware and after 3 pages of troubleshooting - oh, I actually run 10 custom scripts on top and did some changes in ssh, but forgot to mention. Not saying @Danifunker did all that, but more information about the configuration definitely helps.

 

[Bodin Praphanthongchai]

i'm using GT-AX6000 as an router firmware 388.2 Alpha 1 and RT-AX88U as an access point firmware 388.1. I have a bit wired issues which couldn't solved such as bandwith drop frop 160Mhz to 80Mhz, GT-AX6000 randomly have no internet connection and webpage randomly freez or not response and more. It can be fix by reboot but some wired random issues will come back again. So, I set Reboot Schedule to reboot everry monring that is fine for temporary fix.

Then one issue happened all of my smart devices could not connect to any routers 2.4Ghz band, change the channels try config everything and reboot none of them helps. I don't want to reseting everything. So, I try to on and off here and there everywhere that possible. Then I found one DISABLE Wifi AX on 2.4Ghz was solved every issues that I'm facing.

For now my network running great for couple days without any wired issue after DISABLE Wifi AX on 2.4Ghz band ( no need to set reboot schedual ). I don't know if I have too many smart home devices ( 50-60 devices ) that cause the issues.

 

[Danifunker]

Thanks for the reminder about "all of the settings".

To address some of the comments here:
No other scripts are running, the only config override I did outside the GUI is settings is the following:
router:/jffs/configs# cat dnsmasq.conf.add
dns-forward-max=1024

I have tried going ahead with the suggestions made in this thread until now (I just implemented the WPA2/3 recommendation), since I believe I may have a couple of devices that still require TKIP on 5G which I will verify at a later time.

To be clear, this issue has been following me for at least a couple of years, I don't believe it's a "new version" issue- it's just since I moved I no longer connect my work macbook via ethernet which has become more of an issue.

Here are some additional settings I have:
WAN Config

(everything underneath that is blank or disabled), MTU 1500 (I'm on cable)

Dual Wan: Off
I have a bunch of port forwards going, mostly for my NAS device but I won't show the config here.
DMZ OFF
DDNS On, configured for my custom domain *.whatever.com, No SSL certificate creation
Alexa / IFTTT off
IPv6 Native (I don't think this is configured via my ISP)
VPN: Off
TOR: Off
Instant Guard: Off

Firewall Config:

URL Filter : Off
Keyword Filter: Off
Network Services Filter: Off

Admin - System:

 

[Danifunker]

Thanks a lot to everyone for their replies. Unless there is something else blatantly wrong I think I'm going to keep my configuration the same for a day or two and see how my network reacts / if the random crashing stops. I will update tomorrow or earlier if I have issues

 

[Tech9]

Must be really bad - you have daily router reboot set. The default DST time zone change is wrong for Ontario, Canada. Asus never fixed this.

 

[drinkingbird]

Thanks a lot to everyone for their replies. Unless there is something else blatantly wrong I think I'm going to keep my configuration the same for a day or two and see how my network reacts / if the random crashing stops. I will update tomorrow or earlier if I have issues

Have you monitored your temperatures? The fact that it happens during heavy load could certainly point to a thermal issue..... Changing or disabling stuff may reduce the load and bring the temperatures down, though that is sort of just masking the issue.

 

[Danifunker]

Have you monitored your temperatures? The fact that it happens during heavy load could certainly point to a thermal issue..... Changing or disabling stuff may reduce the load and bring the temperatures down, though that is sort of just masking the issue.

I haven't been monitoring the temperatures, but thanks for the call out on that.

Currently under what I would consider low load, this is what it's picking up:

What are the temperatures I should be concerned with?

Btw for the record this is a snapshot of top

 

[drinkingbird]

I haven't been monitoring the temperatures, but thanks for the call out on that.

Currently under what I would consider low load, this is what it's picking up:


What are the temperatures I should be concerned with?

Those seem normal for low load. I guess it is the high load/time of reboot temperature that you need to try and capture. It will probably vary with router but you could look up the chip from your particular router and see the spec. I'm sure some will have some general recommendations, I would think you definitely want to be under 90C but probably even lower than that.

 

[Danifunker]

Thanks everyone who chimed in on this thread! No crashes and I've been up for over 24 hours!!! Pretty sure all is well at this point.

 

[Prasanna Ariyanayagam]

So how is this going? No crashes since?