[Release 384/NG] Asuswrt-Merlin 384.5 is now available

[agilani]

Ok, I've mentioned some strange behavior with my more complex setup of using an 86U as the Wireless router, connected to a 68P as media bridge, and now a 3200 as AP (replacing a 66U as of today). I thought that there was possibility of the 66U being on the 380 firmware causing the issue I'm seeing, but think otherwise now having replaced it.

I have ~35 devices connected, most on 5GHz on the (now) 3200 AP, however they will intermittently drop internet for about 10-20 minutes during the day only to restore connection with no user intervention. When this occurs, the router, MB, and AP will show entering and exiting promiscuous mode in the logs and when that stops, the connection is restored. On a Windows 10 client or mobile, I can see the WiFi connection, but the IP address is lost and sometimes the connection disconnects and reconnects several times, but this appears to be dependent on the device (Windows, Android, Amazon Echos, etc.). Again, no restarts are needed and this happens randomly throughout the day, but does seem to be an issue that is no solvable by restarts, factory default and reconfigures (have done so more times than I care to admit) or by eliminating variables, e.g. custom scripts like AB-Solution, Spynet, OpenVPN, dnscrypt, etc.

Is there a general thought that 384 and above have a wireless connection stability issue outside of a single device in router mode or based on number of clients? Any thoughts on how I can help troubleshoot further or help the community with what I've done my best to isolate without success?

I had the same issue with an ac88 as my central router and two ac68 as repeaters. I enabled logging and and absolutely sure that you wipe the config on every device and configure from scratch. I had to do that multiple times. Then enable debug logging and check and see if they show anything for the period of time you lose network connectivity. I found quite a few devices go in some sort of DHCP loop over and over. I moved those to 5ghz ssid and now everythings been relatively stable.

 

[agilani]

This client has no problem getting IP on previous version of fv. It is an AV receiver from Yamaha. I dont have many config options on this client so I want to diagnose on server side.

enable debug logging and check the logs for the mac address of the device. Assign a static address if possible. I have excluded the first 100 addresses of my subnet for static addresses and they are not part of my dhcp scope.

 

[joe scian]

384.5 working great on my RT-AC5300 with 40+ clients!
13 days 6 hours 4 minute(s) 23 seconds uptime!

same here

 

[cowst]

What version of firestick and which phone? Only the newer firesticks support 5ghz.

Latest.
It was connecting until morning, when I replaced the n66u with the ac86u, and eventually again when I fixed channel 36.

 

[telUK]

Latest.
It was connecting until morning, when I replaced the n66u with the ac86u, and eventually again when I fixed channel 36.

I found with the firestick I needed to use the lower channels on 5ghz, with higher channels it would not find the 5ghz band.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

you dont look further in summer when room temperature will rise from 20 to over 30°C and maybe heavy load too, router temps will rise linar up and than over 90° it is hitting design limits.
Nothing is good operated at its rating limits all time!
Then on higher temps semiconductors will have less resistance what means more current as voltage is regulated and unchanged and so power consumption will increase even more.
All power is transformed to heat which must have to be cooled anyhow.

Asus did design it well within limits, but many devices are really badly put together with bent circuit board, so leaving space between processor and plate.
I have seen it on two of my previous 68U !

All I want to say is NOT to add a cooler fan but much better to resolve this production problem by repairing and correcting it.
They can easily be opened with a credit card after remooving screw on back.

It is one thing to change the design by adding hardware and another to correct faulty assembling.

One thing I have discovered is that for those routers that can be wall-mounted, like my RT-AC88U, it knocks about 10 degrees C off the temperature. So in my case, if I place the router horizontal on a hard surface, the CPU temperature is about 80-81 degrees in a room with an ambient temperature of 22-23 degrees, whereas when it is wall-mounted (as now), the CPU runs at about 71 degrees.

 

[Morac]

One thing I have discovered is that for those routers that can be wall-mounted, like my RT-AC88U, it knocks about 10 degrees C off the temperature. So in my case, if I place the router horizontal on a hard surface, the CPU temperature is about 80-81 degrees in a room with an ambient temperature of 22-23 degrees, whereas when it is wall-mounted (as now), the CPU runs at about 71 degrees.

I added a few inches of rubber feet to raise my 88u off my desk. That seems to help as well.

 

[ghostek]

enable debug logging and check the logs for the mac address of the device. Assign a static address if possible. I have excluded the first 100 addresses of my subnet for static addresses and they are not part of my dhcp scope.

How to ebable debug mode?

 

[kfp]

Is there a general thought that 384 and above have a wireless connection stability issue outside of a single device in router mode or based on number of clients? Any thoughts on how I can help troubleshoot further or help the community with what I've done my best to isolate without success?

I have had a vaguely similar experience with using the 3200 in AP mode. For the longest time it’ll still try to grab 192.168.1.1 even though it is supposed to grab an IP from my router using DHCP. So, for a while I have just used it in wireless mode and manually turned off DHCP, firewall, NAT etc. to put it in a pseudo-AP mode. And that worked well for a couple years.

That being said, couple weeks ago I thought I’d do a factory default and set it up as an AP properly to see if the behaviour has changed. During the initial setup for a brief time window it still announced itself as 192.168.1.1 and was causing IP conflicts with the router, I quickly removed it’s connection to the router on the WAN, let it finish all the changes it needs to make to set itself into AP mode, then plug WAN back in and it was able to grab IP from the router.

This is anecdata or course, but since it’s working fine now I didn’t really try to track down what the root cause is. If you can monitor the traffic between the AP and your main router and see if there are IP conflicts for 192.168.1.1 and confirm that is indeed the issue, I can spend some time to track this down once and for all.

 

[SeCrEt BoY™]

I have a problems but I dont know what it is... My router is AC5300
My wifi sometimes slow: Normal my phone with speedtest D/U about 70Mbps/70Mbps. Sometimes it become 5Mbps/5Mbps (test on PC with wired it is always 70/70)
I must reboot the Router and wifi is OK again (a few days later it is slow again). Have disabled AirFainless and MIMO. Does anyone have the same problems?

 

[Grisu]

I have a problems but I dont know what it is... My router is AC5300
My wifi sometimes slow: Normal my phone with speedtest D/U about 70Mbps/70Mbps. Sometimes it become 5Mbps/5Mbps (test on PC it is always 70/70)
I must reboot the Router and wifi is OK again (a few days later it is slow again). Have disabled AirFainless and MIMO. Does anyone have the same problems?

YEAH !
but on PC intel 8265 card. and only 2,4G while 5G has 150-200Mb/s.

 

[SeCrEt BoY™]

YEAH !
but on PC intel 8265 card. and only 2,4G while 5G has 150-200Mb/s.

On PC (wired) My internet is always 70Mbps/70Mbps. But all phones in my house have very slow Internet connection after a few days (Reboot Router solved the problem but It turn back to slow internet connection a few days later) Tried to changed between 2.4 Ghz and 5Ghz while it is slow but nothing changed (slow with all Hhz).
Very annoyed

 

[wiz]

Just popping in, Bought an Asus AC5300, unpacked it, booted it, updated it to 384.5, initialized with defaults and started from scratch. So far it is running fine, and I got a lot of things to move from the N66 to the AC5300 that I customized throughout the years it has been running as main router.
I was pleasantly surprised to see an ipsec vpn server in it, but I still rely on openvpn for the moment. Wifi coverage seems a bit firmer than the N66, and I love the AC speeds. Also good to be back with merlin, although Johns fork never let me down either.

 

[sn2018]

Moved from 384.4-2 to 384.5 on my RT-AC68U about a week ago. Works fine but found I have a lot of the following messages in system log.
Jun 1 16:40:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:41:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:41:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:42:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:42:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:43:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:43:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:44:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:44:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:45:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:45:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:46:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:46:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:47:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:47:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:48:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:48:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:49:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:49:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:50:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:50:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:51:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:51:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:52:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:52:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:53:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:53:59 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync
Jun 1 16:54:29 rc_service: watchdog 301:notify_rc start_cfgsync

 

[Xentrk]

What is your pfsense build look like and what throughput are you getting?

I have most of the details about the build and performance on my blog site: https://x3mtek.com/openvpn-performance/. The CPU and AES-NI feature are probably responsible for most of the VPN performance improvement.

OpenVPN performance was a dramatic increase over my Asus AC88U. I plan to post some updated numbers in the near future.

If I connect to a server closer to my geo location, I would have less latency and be able to achieve even better performance. Using AES-128-GCM with SHA1 results in the best OpenVPN performance.

 

[agilani]

I have most of the details about the build and performance on my blog site: https://x3mtek.com/openvpn-performance/. The CPU and AES-NI feature are probably responsible for most of the VPN performance improvement.

OpenVPN performance was a dramatic increase over my Asus AC88U. I plan to post some updated numbers in the near future.

If I connect to a server closer to my geo location, I would have less latency and be able to achieve even better performance. Using AES-128-GCM with SHA1 results in the best OpenVPN performance.

Thanks,
Do you have suricata enabled or any throughput testing with it?

 

[LHF]

Note: I don't know if it's a bug or that's how it supposed to look but I think it's a bug.

Hello, I have two routers, one is AC86u ( 384.5_0 ) which is a main router and second is AC68u (384.5_0) which I'm using as Access Point connected to main router via LAN.

The problem is on Access Point router ( AC68u ) the wireless log page under System Log doesn't show proper client's IP addresses and hostnames but only show <unknown> ( Picture below )

The AP router does show proper IP addresses when I check from Network MAP, the <unknown> error only present in Wireless Log page, furthermore if I directly connect the devices to my main router ( AC86u ) the wireless log page on that router shows proper IP addresses and hostnames for the devices so the issue is only on AP router.

I've tried after complete factory reset with Intialize and setting it up from scratch but the issue persists, I've even tried with firmware 384.4_2 and it's behaving same way on that firmware too so it's not 384.5 specific issue.

Any input from someone with a similar setup is highly appreciated.

Hi Asad!

I have the same problem here: AC86U running 384.5 and AC68U as AP. The only difference is that the AP is running 380.67.

Have you found any solution? Or it is the way when running AC68U on AP mode?

Thanks!

 

[Asad Ali]

Hi Asad!

I have the same problem here: AC86U running 384.5 and AC68U as AP. The only difference is that the AP is running 380.67.

Have you found any solution? Or it is the way when running AC68U on AP mode?

Thanks!

There you go:

[Release 384/NG] Asuswrt-Merlin 384.5 is now available

Read next few replies too of mine and RMerlin's after this one.

 

[LHF]

There you go:

[Release 384/NG] Asuswrt-Merlin 384.5 is now available

Read next few replies too of mine and RMerlin's after this one.

So, I guess we will have to wait ...

But there is one weird thing: there are about 10 clients coneceted to my AC68U AP. For one of then, an iPad, the name still showing “unknow”, but it shows the IP adress ....

Thanks for your answer!

 

[ghostek]

I'm back to my problem with DHCP. When I restart router my client that have problem get IP without problems. But when I disconnect it and connect again now it dont get IP until again I reboot router.