Router crashing AC86U. Software issue prob

[Matthew Patrick]

Hey guys. So yeah. My old AC86U was starting to crash every few days on 384.19 . Did a whole lot of troubleshooting. It's always installed clean with reformatted jffs and everything. Tried without using any scripts either and it's still rebooting every few days. My thought was it's a software issue since it only happens after 384.19 (still same issue on 386 stable from asus. The one without aimesh 2.0) ...

Then I checked and remember mine was a 2018 china unit. Okay then. It could be a hw issue then. Replaced mine with a new one from 2020 china. It's so new the bootloader is I think x.1.x.x it's that new. Everything works (as always clean install 384.19 with jffs format and everything) and ... it rebooted just awhile ago after 3 days.

Well what are the chances that both are hw issue? Close to nothing I think. And the fact that it happened even here on the brand new unit makes me think that my first assumption about the problem on my old AC86U was correct. It was a software issue. Since it only happens after 384.19 . So now I'm trying to narrow it down on which things are causing it. Last time before going to my new ac86u, I've been testing a few things out

Mainly , disabling Traffic analyzer , webhistory, or trend micro stuff in general and hw acceleration. And it did run a day more than it used to but I didn't manage to see if it reboots again since I changed to the new router. So now I'm going to disable traffic analyzer and webhistory. If it reboots . I'll disable trend micro stuff and then last hw accel.

Also the log doesn't seem to show anything. So yeah it's just like it suddenly rebooted..

Question. Anyone here using AC86U on 384.19 have traffic analyzer and webhistory turned on with uptime more than a week?

 

[Matthew Patrick]

Well I don't know then. It can't be the hw since my old one was fine until this new 384.19 . And well the new 2020 unit behaves the same way. So idk

 

[juju]

My wifi will drop for a few seconds every once in a while. Thats the only issue I have with my AC86U

 

[MrReis]

I have a RT-AC86U manufactured in 2017 running ausuwrt-merlin firmware Version 384.19. The syslog shows that it restarts once or twice a day. I only know that it restarts from the syslog not from its behavior. That is, it doesn't seem to lose any functionality (that I can tell) when the syslog shows it restarted.

The reason I started looking at the syslog was that a NAS would disconnect from the network once or twice a day and not reconnect unless I power cycled the NAS. The NAS was connected to the network through a switch. Just to see if it would help I connected the NAS to one of the RT-AC86U LAN ports and the NAS stopped disconnecting from the network. On examining the syslog I found that the NAS still disconnected from the network once or twice a day, but it would reconnect eight seconds latter (always eight seconds).

There are a lot of devices disconnecting from and reconnecting to the network but I don't see any correlation between that and the RT-AC86U restarting. I don't know if disconnects and reconnects are harmless or not. Don't know why the disconnects would happen in the first place.

 

[Matthew Patrick]

I don't know. Mine with clean and new unit seems to be the same way. I think there is one or more clients that's causing the router reboots every few days. But as I said from the beginning. This happened on 384.19 . So I assume something there with my clients caused it. I'm trying to find it. I'm currently in trial by disabling trend micro and disabling fc and Runner. Since I know those can cause reboots with clients. I saw some on threads here so I thought no harm in testing it out

 

[MrReis]

I think there is one or more clients that's causing the router reboots every few days.

On Nov 30 I replaced the NAS attached to my network because on Nov 26 it failed (it permanently disconnected from the network and the RT-AC86U no longer detected it). An unintended consequence of the NAS replacement is that the RT- AC86U now restarts “just “once every other day (rather than once or twice every day as it did before I replaced the NAS).

I think this supports your thought that “there is one or more clients that's causing the router reboots every few days.”

Between Nov 26 and Nov 30, there was NO NAS was connected to the network and the RT-AC86U still restarted once or twice a day (just as it had when the old NAS was attached to the network before Nov 26). I don’t understand that.

The old NAS front panel status LEDs show that it is powered on and has a LAN connection and activity but the router does not detect it and when I connect the NAS directly to my computer’s network adapter the adapter status is “Network cable unplugged.” I believe the NAS HW failed due to a faulty power adapter. The adapter is supposed to deliver 5.0 volts at 3 amps, but the voltage of the adapter fluctuates between 4.7 and 4.9 volts. The new NAS doesn’t disconnect from the network at all.

 

[Matthew Patrick]

On Nov 30 I replaced the NAS attached to my network because on Nov 26 it failed (it permanently disconnected from the network and the RT-AC86U no longer detected it). An unintended consequence of the NAS replacement is that the RT- AC86U now restarts “just “once every other day (rather than once or twice every day as it did before I replaced the NAS).

I think this supports your thought that “there is one or more clients that's causing the router reboots every few days.”

Between Nov 26 and Nov 30, there was NO NAS was connected to the network and the RT-AC86U still restarted once or twice a day (just as it had when the old NAS was attached to the network before Nov 26). I don’t understand that.

The old NAS front panel status LEDs show that it is powered on and has a LAN connection and activity but the router does not detect it and when I connect the NAS directly to my computer’s network adapter the adapter status is “Network cable unplugged.” I believe the NAS HW failed due to a faulty power adapter. The adapter is supposed to deliver 5.0 volts at 3 amps, but the voltage of the adapter fluctuates between 4.7 and 4.9 volts. The new NAS doesn’t disconnect from the network at all.

Yeah that's why it's so weird

 

[cooloutac]

I had a 2020 version. had the same issue and returned mine. Here is a thread of most of the problems I had with it. brand new AC86u has a crashlog. what does any of this mean? | SmallNetBuilder Forums (snbforums.com)

Alot of the issues stem from running a vpn client, while having features like ai trend micro, qos or traffic analyzer enabled. I didn't use any usb functions and had those disabled. But eventually the 2.4ghz band would keep dropping all connections forcing me to manually reboot the router and thats when I had enough. I went back to my ac66u_b1 which runs the same network with almost 40 devices and same config with all features enabled and no issues. Not a single error in the logs and I've had it for almost 3 years.