OFark
Occasional Visitor
I'm starting a new question as my old question was Web Camera related and I was starting to turn into something else.
I've had an Asus RT-AC3200 for a few years now. Thinking it would be a good stable router as it cost a fair bit. It has not been stable, every few months I had to reset the damned thing as it would stop working. I never paid much attention to it, just reset it.
A few months ago, amid a pandemic and being furloughed we had to move house, also internet service provider. So I don't know if this is "new house", with lots of new smart IOT stuff, or perhaps a lot more work from home, but the router now lasts about 3.5 days before falling over.
When I say fall over, IF you have an IP address you can access the internet like nothing is wrong. However, no new IP addresses are given, meaning the WiFi is useless. Web UI is unavailable, like nothing is responding to HTTP requests, SSH the same. Scripts stop working, syslog stops logging.
First thing I tried was moving DNS to a PiHole. Then I tried, Advanced Tomato, wouldn't boot. DD-WRT, got really confused about what port was for what and basically I couldn't get the internet through it. So now I'm on Merlin, and I still have the same issue.
Thanks to some helpful people here I've fixed an issue with a web camera that kept dropping out on wireless. So my wireless settings are heavily manual, but the rest of the settings are mostly Auto. I have QOS off, I tried it on. I have a LetsEncrypt FQDN DDNS, Wireless, a few reserved IP addresses, VPN server and that's about it.
I've done an NVRAM clear and setup everything from fresh, no change.
What I have noticed is the RAM usage, basically, it all get's used up, then the thing falls over. I've tried monitoring everything I can to InfluxDB, which stops when it falls over, but I can see nothing that would indicate what's using up RAM.
I have logged every running process, "ps -T" to InfluxDB, and the memory variation of any process is negligible.
Here you can see the yellow area (use RAM kb) the green area (free RAM kb) (on the Right Y) the sudden jumps are hard resets I've had to do. During the last few days you can see the difference in process memory consumption (Left Y), the purple one is spdmerlin logging ookla speedtests. As you can the variation in memory usage a) doesn't climb for any particular process, and b) variations are mostly a few kb. So I have no idea what's consuming RAM. I've tried clearing log files, see that small change in the middle of the second phase, around lunch time on the 19th, that's the difference it made.
A close up since PS logging:
Here is the same time frame, but with the total amount of memory use reported by PS:
As you can see just before it dies some of the memory usage starts dropping away irratically, my thoughts are the system kills somethings useful, to save memory, but I can't see what because it stops logging anything. Logging is to JFFS.
The cream line that flutters away is a sum of the many "wred-B" processes.
I've enabled a SWAP on a USB, it's barely used. (It was 21MB before it fell over, been that way for a few hours too)
Maybe memory usage is normal and I'm barking up the wrong tree, but it doesn't seem right to me that free RAM is dropping when nothing is using it. Or apparently not using it.
I appreciate that PS is not an accurate way of adding up memory usage, and I've deliberately stayed away from totalling memory usage from it, but I would expect it to show a change if one was happening.
Can anyone point me in a direction that will help me get this router stable?
I've had an Asus RT-AC3200 for a few years now. Thinking it would be a good stable router as it cost a fair bit. It has not been stable, every few months I had to reset the damned thing as it would stop working. I never paid much attention to it, just reset it.
A few months ago, amid a pandemic and being furloughed we had to move house, also internet service provider. So I don't know if this is "new house", with lots of new smart IOT stuff, or perhaps a lot more work from home, but the router now lasts about 3.5 days before falling over.
When I say fall over, IF you have an IP address you can access the internet like nothing is wrong. However, no new IP addresses are given, meaning the WiFi is useless. Web UI is unavailable, like nothing is responding to HTTP requests, SSH the same. Scripts stop working, syslog stops logging.
First thing I tried was moving DNS to a PiHole. Then I tried, Advanced Tomato, wouldn't boot. DD-WRT, got really confused about what port was for what and basically I couldn't get the internet through it. So now I'm on Merlin, and I still have the same issue.
Thanks to some helpful people here I've fixed an issue with a web camera that kept dropping out on wireless. So my wireless settings are heavily manual, but the rest of the settings are mostly Auto. I have QOS off, I tried it on. I have a LetsEncrypt FQDN DDNS, Wireless, a few reserved IP addresses, VPN server and that's about it.
I've done an NVRAM clear and setup everything from fresh, no change.
What I have noticed is the RAM usage, basically, it all get's used up, then the thing falls over. I've tried monitoring everything I can to InfluxDB, which stops when it falls over, but I can see nothing that would indicate what's using up RAM.
I have logged every running process, "ps -T" to InfluxDB, and the memory variation of any process is negligible.
Here you can see the yellow area (use RAM kb) the green area (free RAM kb) (on the Right Y) the sudden jumps are hard resets I've had to do. During the last few days you can see the difference in process memory consumption (Left Y), the purple one is spdmerlin logging ookla speedtests. As you can the variation in memory usage a) doesn't climb for any particular process, and b) variations are mostly a few kb. So I have no idea what's consuming RAM. I've tried clearing log files, see that small change in the middle of the second phase, around lunch time on the 19th, that's the difference it made.
A close up since PS logging:
Here is the same time frame, but with the total amount of memory use reported by PS:
As you can see just before it dies some of the memory usage starts dropping away irratically, my thoughts are the system kills somethings useful, to save memory, but I can't see what because it stops logging anything. Logging is to JFFS.
The cream line that flutters away is a sum of the many "wred-B" processes.
I've enabled a SWAP on a USB, it's barely used. (It was 21MB before it fell over, been that way for a few hours too)
Maybe memory usage is normal and I'm barking up the wrong tree, but it doesn't seem right to me that free RAM is dropping when nothing is using it. Or apparently not using it.
I appreciate that PS is not an accurate way of adding up memory usage, and I've deliberately stayed away from totalling memory usage from it, but I would expect it to show a change if one was happening.
Can anyone point me in a direction that will help me get this router stable?
