RT AC3200 limit on the number of 2.4GB clients?

[Carnbroe]

I'm running 384.5 firmware and I cant get more than 10 clients connected to the 2.4GHz SSID. If I turn one off then I can then connect an other device so I know that the devices are set up ok. It doesn't matter which device is trying to connect, if its No 11 it wont work. I've got both 5Ghz SSID's running as well but they don't appear to be affected in that I can still connect new devices to each one irrespective of the number of 2.4Ghz devices (which I would expect) Its a new router which I bought to replace a previous AC66U so that I could move over to the new firmware thread and and I didn't have the same problem with the AC66U with all clients running quite happily on 2.4Ghz.

Have i misconfigured the settings or is there something else not quite right ? Any suggestions?

 

[ChatmanR]

Try lowering your changing your channels to 1 or 11, lower your transmit power a notch, and make the 2.4 Ghz band exclusive to G device only. Use your 5 Ghz band for N & AC devices.

Better yet; simply name all of your SSIDs with identical names, and use Smart Connect.

For guests, use the 2.4 band only. They're guests!

 

[Carnbroe]

I already have channel 1 in use and lowering the power made no difference.

The issue I have is that I have 11 2.4GHz devices (mainly Sonos speakers) so cant use them on 5Ghz

 

[Carnbroe]

I decided to to go back to 380.70 so had to use the recovery mode and then a factory reset. Now got 15 devices on 2.4Ghz.

Not sure if the limit I was getting with a maximum of 10 devices on 2.4Ghz using 384.5 is a bug or an edge condition with how I had it configured or something else

I'd prefer to have the latest firmware so I'll re-configure the router back to what it should be using 380.70 but will add in the smart connect as advised above (I like the idea of a single SSID). Once I get to that point I'll run it fora day to make sure all is well then save the settings and then upgrade to 384.5 to see if the issue re-occurs. Might take me a a couple of days to get there but will post back the outcome.

 

[Carnbroe]

I've done some more experimentation and 380.70 works fine. However 382 and above wont give more than 10 connected devices on 2.4Ghz. I used the 3.0.0.4.382_50010 firmware so it looks like an unexpected issue / limitation has been introduced with the new code thread.

Until Asus/Merlin can resolve this I think I'll set up my old AC66U as an access point for my Sonos devices and lock it down via the speakers mac addresses and then connect that into the back to the AC3200. Not ideal I know but it will get round the current blocker.

 

[someburner]

Been a lurker of these forums + linksysinfo for a while and have been compiling my own flavor of tomato for a while. But seems like there are more AC3200 owners over here so here's my report.

I've also been having issues with 2.4GHz- I can only connect up to 10 devices. After that, you have to boot one off for another to join- so same exact as what others in this thread are describing.

So it appears this is not just Merlin, or tomato, there is a problem lower down. Given that I have (3) AC-3200s, and 2 different HW revisions between them, and a multitude of wireless clients (I have the routers for my job), I will test Merlin @ 380.70 to see if that results in 10+ clients working. And I'll also check to make sure the latest merlin does have the limitation.

I suspect this bug could be causing problems/other bugs, like this one: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/ac3200-and-2-4ghz-issues.47365/ Since this results in clients repeatedly attempting to connect to the router and failing. And in syslog there are dhd errors. Usually weird errors are not good for stability

Edit: More info on my build

tomato:~# dhd -a eth2 version
(null): 1.194 RC33.0
Dongle Host Driver, version 1.194.33 (r526004)
Compiled in drivers/net/wireless/bcmdhd on Jan 23 2018 at 21:02:22

tomato:~# wl ver
7.14 RC43.40
wl1: Jan 23 2018 20:52:47 version 7.10.274.33 (r527132) FWID 01-1805fbaf

Edit2: Attached log showing symptoms- this is syslog output showing weird errors when a client is attempting to join. Stuff like:

wl0: wlc_recvfilter: scb is null, dont resend deauth
wl0: wlc_userscb_alloc: no SCBs available to reclaim
wl0: wlc_ap_authresp: out of scbs for 5c:cf:7f:3a:a1:97

And at the end you can see one of the clients got de-authed (60:01:94:1e:e4:a6), and then (5c:cf:7f:3a:a1:97) was able to join.

Update 3:

Recompiled with dhd.o + dhd from 2015 (eg, 380.70 bin/object) and viola- 12+ clients on 2.4ghz.

tomato:/opt/var/log# dhd -a eth2 version
(null): 1.366 RC5.0
Dongle Host Driver, version 1.194.33 (r526004)
Compiled in drivers/net/wireless/bcmdhd on Aug 5 2015 at 14:38:50

So sounds like the newer GPL binaries have some serious regressions. Either that or API is broken somewhere.

 

[Aaron Preslin]

Thanks so much for diving into this and figuring out a fix! This problem was driving me nuts. I had the same issue on FreshTomato, and by letting them know about your resolution, the developers were able to issue a beta build with an updated wireless driver that fixed the 10 device limit for me.

Check out:
https://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/fork-freshtomato-arm.74117/page-6#post-298103
http://freshtomato.org/test
https://bitbucket.org/kille72/freshtomato-arm/commits/e84c5920b60735d509ad8272129c3194bdb61ed6

Been a lurker of these forums + linksysinfo for a while and have been compiling my own flavor of tomato for a while. But seems like there are more AC3200 owners over here so here's my report.

I've also been having issues with 2.4GHz- I can only connect up to 10 devices. After that, you have to boot one off for another to join- so same exact as what others in this thread are describing.

So it appears this is not just Merlin, or tomato, there is a problem lower down. Given that I have (3) AC-3200s, and 2 different HW revisions between them, and a multitude of wireless clients (I have the routers for my job), I will test Merlin @ 380.70 to see if that results in 10+ clients working. And I'll also check to make sure the latest merlin does have the limitation.

I suspect this bug could be causing problems/other bugs, like this one: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/ac3200-and-2-4ghz-issues.47365/ Since this results in clients repeatedly attempting to connect to the router and failing. And in syslog there are dhd errors. Usually weird errors are not good for stability

Edit: More info on my build




Edit2: Attached log showing symptoms- this is syslog output showing weird errors when a client is attempting to join. Stuff like:



And at the end you can see one of the clients got de-authed (60:01:94:1e:e4:a6), and then (5c:cf:7f:3a:a1:97) was able to join.

Update 3:

Recompiled with dhd.o + dhd from 2015 (eg, 380.70 bin/object) and viola- 12+ clients on 2.4ghz.



So sounds like the newer GPL binaries have some serious regressions. Either that or API is broken somewhere.

 

[Tekneek]

I had been having a recurring issue with 2.4 GHz only devices periodically not being able to connect. I have been too busy with other work to really dive into the details, but this appears to very likely be what I was experiencing. Reverting the firmware is going to be a real pain.

Thank you for your efforts to bottom out this bug!

 

[kfp]

Recompiled with dhd.o + dhd from 2015 (eg, 380.70 bin/object) and viola- 12+ clients on 2.4ghz. So sounds like the newer GPL binaries have some serious regressions. Either that or API is broken somewhere.

I don't have 10+ 2.4Ghz clients to test with but the Merlin alpha2 includes updated dhd drivers so maybe some of you that has hit the device limits can give it a try?

ASUSWRT-Merlin RT-AC3200 384.6-alpha2-gd75ce9a46 Sun Jun 24 17:03:42 UTC 2018
admin@AC3200:/tmp/home/root# wl ver
7.14 RC43.40
wl1: Apr 27 2018 21:28:28 version 7.10.274.33 (r527132) FWID 01-73bbedff
admin@AC3200:/tmp/home/root# dhd -a eth2 version
(null): 1.194 RC33.0
Dongle Host Driver, version 1.194.33 (r526004)
Compiled in drivers/net/wireless/bcmdhd on Apr 27 2018 at 21:36:34

Is the 10 device limit the same for everyone? Or have others been capped at a different number?

 

[someburner]

I don't have 10+ 2.4Ghz to test with but the Merlin alpha2 includes updated dhd drivers so maybe some of you that has hit the device limits can give it a try?

ASUSWRT-Merlin RT-AC3200 384.6-alpha2-gd75ce9a46 Sun Jun 24 17:03:42 UTC 2018
admin@AC3200:/tmp/home/root# wl ver
7.14 RC43.40
wl1: Apr 27 2018 21:28:28 version 7.10.274.33 (r527132) FWID 01-73bbedff
admin@AC3200:/tmp/home/root# dhd -a eth2 version
(null): 1.194 RC33.0
Dongle Host Driver, version 1.194.33 (r526004)
Compiled in drivers/net/wireless/bcmdhd on Apr 27 2018 at 21:36:34

Is the 10 device limit the same for everyone? Or have others been capped at a different number?

I have seen at least 4 separate reports of 10 being the magic number. But I suspect that something similar is causing the "bad password" error. Since when I hit the 10-device limit, my phone would say bad password. But if you watch the router syslog while the association attempt happens, you can see those weird errors.

Tomato project just uploaded the dhd.o for May 27 2018, and that seems to work very well. The Jan 2018 one was definitely bad- but I had not tried April 2018. The .o's are part of the GPL releases I'm assuming? Seems that they are not updating the version number - Dongle Host Driver, version 1.194.33 (r526004) is the same despite different .o files. I suppose that can happen if build params change but not code.

In any case- sounds like April or later they fixed something.

 

[kfp]

Tomato project just uploaded the dhd.o for May 27 2018, and that seems to work very well. The Jan 2018 one was definitely bad- but I had not tried April 2018. The .o's are part of the GPL releases I'm assuming? Seems that they are not updating the version number - Dongle Host Driver, version 1.194.33 (r526004) is the same despite different .o files. I suppose that can happen if build params change but not code.

In any case- sounds like April or later they fixed something.

Cool, yeah I have the same impression that they fixed something very recently as well.

They are indeed part of the GPL archives.

 

[Tekneek]

I decided to give the alpha2 firmware a try, since that would be easier than rolling back. I have confirmed being able to have > 10 clients on 2.4 and that band appears to be more stable than it had been.

I look forward to finding out if @Carnbroe and @someburner have the same experience.

 

[jerry6]

I decided to give the alpha2 firmware a try, since that would be easier than rolling back. I have confirmed being able to have > 10 clients on 2.4 and that band appears to be more stable than it had been.

I look forward to finding out if @Carnbroe and @someburner have the same experience.

Yes , working well on my remaining 2 3200 , speed is back to normal on 2.4 and no more dropping of connection . Been 4 days no trouble . Can't wait to get #3 back from the rma service

 

[Carnbroe]

I'm working away this week but back on Friday so will give it a go this weekend. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[penguin22]

I have the 384.6 Alpha2 build on three routers now, AC86U (router), AC68P (media bridge), and AC3200 (AP) across a large network span with >30 devices connected and was having nothing but problems with 384.5, especially when my son's iOS devices came home from school (all Android/Windows otherwise). With this build and a reset of the main router to give a clean slate setup, it has been rock solid all day, and that is with all kids home for the summer today.

 

[Saurabh]

I am still having the same issue on alpha2. Only in my case the number of devices on 2.4GHz seems to be limited to 24.

I found the following settings in the nvram:

wl_maxassoc
wl0_bss_maxassoc
wl1_bss_maxassoc
wl2_bss_maxassoc
wl0_maxassoc
wl1_maxassoc
wl2_maxassoc

Each is set to 32 and even after I increase it to something like 64 or 128, it resets back to 32 whenever wifi restarts (like on saving wifi settings).
The following commands seem to be related:

wl -i eth1 bss_maxassoc
wl -i eth1 maxassoc

Both are also set to 32 and if I try to change it to something above 32, I get the error:

wl: Not In Range

I am not sure this is even related to my problem, as I seem to be actually limited to 24 clients and not 32.

 

[Carnbroe]

I've uploaded beta 2 and have noticed that there does appear to be a speed improvement on 2.4GB however its still limited to 10 devices. Not sure if it would make any difference with a complete wipe and starting from scratch or not. ios phones connect fine and its stable I just cant get more than 10 to connect at the same time.

 

[Tekneek]

I've uploaded beta 2 and have noticed that there does appear to be a speed improvement on 2.4GB however its still limited to 10 devices. Not sure if it would make any difference with a complete wipe and starting from scratch or not. ios phones connect fine and its stable I just cant get more than 10 to connect at the same time.

I did do a factory reset within the web interface and, even though I restored my settings and JFFS partitions (I tried that first, rather than manually rebuilding) from backup, 2.4 has been more stable and was not capped at 10.

 

[Brian Long]

I just ran into this issue today. Upgrading to Rmerlin beta1 of 384.6 solved it for me.

 

[Liquidzero]

I'm running 384.5 firmware and I cant get more than 10 clients connected to the 2.4GHz SSID. If I turn one off then I can then connect an other device so I know that the devices are set up ok. It doesn't matter which device is trying to connect, if its No 11 it wont work. I've got both 5Ghz SSID's running as well but they don't appear to be affected in that I can still connect new devices to each one irrespective of the number of 2.4Ghz devices (which I would expect) Its a new router which I bought to replace a previous AC66U so that I could move over to the new firmware thread and and I didn't have the same problem with the AC66U with all clients running quite happily on 2.4Ghz.

Have i misconfigured the settings or is there something else not quite right ? Any suggestions?

Hi. same issue here. Asus confirmed via email that the ac3200 has a chipset limitation of 25 2.4 GHz devices. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. I feel ripped off as I paid 200 for this router and it’s basically useless for me now.