Recent RT-AC87U firmwares make avast! installations absurdly long

[RejZoR]

Took me ages to test this one out, but from the looks of it, I've finally narrowed it down. Now I need the Merlin wizard to figure it out what's causing this exactly...

DESCRIPTION:
When installing avast! antivirus on a system that is connected to internet through ASUS RT-AC87U using 380.69 Merlin firmware (and one version back for sure, possibly even more as I didn't have these problems before summer of 2017 I'm 100% sure of that), installation takes ridiculously long, from 40 up to 60 minutes for an installation that should only take 1 minute at most on my system because installer keeps failing to download components and it's waiting for a retry until it eventually manages to get data. I've worked closely with avast! team providing them with installation logs and even WireShark connection logs. Everything was indicating that data is being sent from their servers, but my system is for some reason rejecting it. This was happening on ALL my devices connected through the same router, 1x wired PC and 2x laptops. Tried with and without QoS, with and without DNS filtering, even tried fully unconfigured (reset) router, apart from few very basic things to make it work, same results. Until I've decided to go back to stock ASUS firmware and see if it makes any difference. And it did.

REPRODUCTION:
- Use ASUS RT-AC87U with Merlin 380.69 firmware
- Download Online installer for avast! Free from here https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=212045.0
- Run the installer, it will take incredibly long to install because it keeps on failing to acquire required data because of Merlin firmware (normally it takes under 1 minute to install)

CONFIRMATION:
To confirm it's in fact an issue with Merlin firmware, I have downloaded stock ASUS firmware, specifically the latest 3.0.0.4.380.7743 for RT-AC87U. Fully configured it like I usually use it. avast! online installer completed in under minute. Consistently.

If any extra info is needed, feel free to contact me, I'll help as much as I can. I love Merlin firmware, but this really makes me sad since I can't use it anymore. I'm avast! beta tester so I make installations of it almost on daily basis and that's just not gonna work well with Merlin firmwares as of recent...

 

[RMerlin]

Try disabling AiProtection, in case it might get triggered by something in the installer.

Otherwise, I don't see anything in the router that could have any impact, provided you're not doing any unpexpected customization, using custom firewall rules, etc...

 

[RejZoR]

Try disabling AiProtection, in case it might get triggered by something in the installer.

Otherwise, I don't see anything in the router that could have any impact, provided you're not doing any unpexpected customization, using custom firewall rules, etc...

I tried disabling that too with no effect. Not sure what changed in last 2-3 builds that cause this.

 

[CapricornDog]

I can confirm im running 380.69 on my rt-ac5300 and have just installed from the link you gave in under 2 minutes i have ai protection on.
Maybe if another user of the rt-ac87u could test.

 

[RejZoR]

If just one can confirm for RT-AC87U specifically, it means something is wrong with this particular version. I also have AiProtection enabled in stock ASUS firmware, but it works fine. And so did with ALL Merlin builds before the summer. I'm certain of that. But after summer, I have no clue which was the last good build

 

[RejZoR]

Btw, even when initial progress bar above taskbar goes fast, opening avast! interface son after and checking the "Avast installation is finishing" the thing gets stuck at 33% and stays there for ages. And it takes forever to complete this. I just went back to Merlin 380.69 build and it's doing this again as soon as I've flashed it to my router. With stock ASUS, all is fine.

 

[RejZoR]

Ok, I've been testing this whole morning and I think I found the last version that worked fine was 380.66. Both progress bars went relatively fast, well within expected time. All the newer versions seemed to take very long. Faster than usual, but still significantly longer than with this one or stock ASUS. I hope it wasn't just a random occurrence when it installed quickly. But from the looks of it, it wasn't...

 

[snakebite3]

Ok, I've been testing this whole morning and I think I found the last version that worked fine was 380.66. Both progress bars went relatively fast, well within expected time. All the newer versions seemed to take very long. Faster than usual, but still significantly longer than with this one or stock ASUS. I hope it wasn't just a random occurrence when it installed quickly. But from the looks of it, it wasn't...

Did you try using the offline installer? Don't waste your time on this if the offline installer works better.

 

[RejZoR]

So, instead of finding out what's causing this weird problem, we should just wipe the crap under the rug and call it a day. At which point, I'm wondering what else is getting blocked and I don't even know it since it has no progress bars, it just takes days to perform behind the scenes... That's not how you fix things...

 

[john9527]

Did you flush your browser cache after installing 380.69 (prior to trying to install avast)?

 

[snakebite3]

So, instead of finding out what's causing this weird problem, we should just wipe the crap under the rug and call it a day. At which point, I'm wondering what else is getting blocked and I don't even know it since it has no progress bars, it just takes days to perform behind the scenes... That's not how you fix things...

You would know if things gets blocked.

 

[thelonelycoder]

I can confirm that with AB-Solution and Skynet active, installation of Avast free Antivirus does not finish install within 20 minutes.

However, if AB and Skynet are off, installation works without a hitch through my RT-AC87U on 380.69 firmware.
I'm using my ISPs DNS, no other services affecting DNS resolution are active except my OpenVPN Server, which should have no impact whatsoever.

OP, this has nothing to do with the router model or firmware.

 

[RMerlin]

I can confirm that with AB-Solution and Skynet active, installation of Avast free Antivirus does not finish install within 20 minutes.

However, if AB and Skynet are off, installation works without a hitch through my RT-AC87U on 380.69 firmware.
I'm using my ISPs DNS, no other services affecting DNS resolution are active except my OpenVPN Server, which should have no impact whatsoever.

OP, this has nothing to do with the router model or firmware.

Wouldn't surprise me if they partnered with an advertizing or analytics provider, to cover up for the free version. Someone would haven't to look at the DNS queries to determine what is being blocked.

 

[thelonelycoder]

Wouldn't surprise me if they partnered with an advertizing or analytics provider, to cover up for the free version. Someone would haven't to look at the DNS queries to determine what is being blocked.

I'll check the log tomorrow, but most are cloudfare or some other well known cloud hosts that are blocked.

 

[RejZoR]

You would know if things gets blocked.

You mean, like in avast!'s case where it took me freaking days of fiddling and testing to finally figure out it's router doing it? Which made me wonder what else was getting blocked in a similar way and I didn't even know it was happening, just thought my ISP service was "slow" or something...

I can confirm that with AB-Solution and Skynet active, installation of Avast free Antivirus does not finish install within 20 minutes.

However, if AB and Skynet are off, installation works without a hitch through my RT-AC87U on 380.69 firmware.
I'm using my ISPs DNS, no other services affecting DNS resolution are active except my OpenVPN Server, which should have no impact whatsoever.

OP, this has nothing to do with the router model or firmware.

Care to tell what's AB and Skynet in Merlin firmware? I don't recall of seeing either of this anywhere in menus...

 

[snakebite3]

You mean, like in avast!'s case where it took me freaking days of fiddling and testing to finally figure out it's router doing it? Which made me wonder what else was getting blocked in a similar way and I didn't even know it was happening, just thought my ISP service was "slow" or something...

Do you have anything other problem besides slow installations? Are updates not going thru?
You said you're a beta tester. Are you using Beta software? Do previous version of Avast install slow?

Merlin Firmware doesn't include AB(Adblocker) or Skynet(firewall). You have to install those yourself.
Those aren't causing your problems if you haven't installed them.

 

[RejZoR]

Do you have anything other problem besides slow installations? Are updates not going thru?
You said you're a beta tester. Are you using Beta software? Do previous version of Avast install slow?

Merlin Firmware doesn't include AB(Adblocker) or Skynet(firewall). You have to install those yourself.
Those aren't causing your problems if you haven't installed them.

avast! or AVG (they are now built on same codebase), beta or final builds, it doesn't matter. I cannot test with "older" builds because online installer always downloads latest data. So, it's just that always. I've also gone through lengthy process of logging installation process with avast! logs and even WireShark during installation and avast! engineer told me everything on the side of installer looks ok, servers are sending data and responding as intended, but the data is not reaching the actual installer on my system. Which in return falls into a retry phase and when it retries several times, it falls into a waiting phase where it extends the waiting time between retries.

The thing is, I could reproduce this every single time. Sometimes it completed a bit faster, but it always took absurdly longer than usual. After installing latest stock ASUS firmware, every single avast! install took around 1 minute without exceptions. Installed back Merlin and the install again dramatically extended. That's all I can tell you for certain. Going back with Merlin builds, I don't know, when going all the way back to 380.66 it was faster, but I only did it once so I'm not 100% certain.

I haven't added any 3rd party tools so I don't use the AB or Skynet, so that's not the problem in my case.

 

[thelonelycoder]

I haven't added any 3rd party tools so I don't use the AB or Skynet, so that's not the problem in my case.

Since you did a factory default reset and manually configured after installing 380.69, use Wireshark or some other tool to see what domain gets routed the wrong way on the device you install Avast! on.

 

[Adamm]

With Skynet and AB installed I never have issues installing Avast (using AC68U). So maybe this is a model specific issue.