rt-ac68u Horrible Connection

[Royal2000H]

rt-ac68u Horrible Connection [SOLVED]

Hi I bought an rt-ac68r from Best Buy and just set it up connected to a Motorola SB6141 modem.

I set it up via lan/ethernet through my HP laptop running Windows 7. Connected to 192.168.1.1 / router.asus.com. The issue is that getting that page to load took *forever* and each page thereafter took a long time and some timeouts until they loaded. Finally got the router set up, disconnected from ethernet and connected through wifi.

My main laptop right now has an Intel Wifi 1000 BGN (2.4 GHz only). I connected to the wifi and ran a speed test and it went okay.. then suddenly it disconnected/reconnected.. ran a speed test and everything was slow. Windows connection status itself was even showing only 9-11 Mbps. inSSIDer showed that I was on channels 6+10, before only being on one channel.

I forced the router into 20 MHz only on 2.4 GHz and now Windows wireless connection status shows 144 Mbps. However pages don't really load. I'll refresh google 20 times and maybe finally one time it'll load. Good luck actually searching anything though in one try. Loading router.asus.com or 192.168.1.1 has the same issue. Pinging from cmd also times out when pages don't load. Windows switches off between saying connected to internet or saying connected to network but no internet. To note -- it always says it's connected to the router even though I can't reach the router's web interface.

My android phone seems fine on the wifi the whole time while connected to 2.4 GHz to test that band despite it supporting 5 GHz. My laptop connects to the wifi at work without a hitch. I've rebooted the computer several times by the way.

Any ideas? Router defective??

EDIT: SOLVED. At least it seems solved so far. See post about Synology NAS.

 

[Royal2000H]

I disabled IPv6 on my laptop (it was getting a IPv4 + IPv6 address despite IPv6 being off in the router). It seemed to possibly help a little.

But this is an example what I'm still dealing with.

It could go on for a long time WITHOUT timing out ever, or it can timeout for a long time. When the pings timeout, none of the internet works on this computer. Keep in mind, the wireless connection seems fine still on the computer and there's no hint it was disconnected from the router (other than pages/pings not loading).

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[6Burgh]

I just got my RT-AC68R at Best Buy on Sunday since online they are out of stock everywhere.

I am having the same issue. One minute it is fast and the next it takes forever to load a page. Speed test shows .23mb. LOL

I have a mixture of N and G devices so I don't want to change alot of settings. My old Linksys was running better then this that I replaced. Pretty sad for a $200 router. I guess I will be researching firmwares.

 

[Royal2000H]

This morning, I thought my phone wasn't connecting either. Then I realized it's the WAN it wouldn't connect to, while it could still connect to the ASUS interface. A restart of the router from the interface fixed the WAN from the phone. The computer connection is intermittent still.

Any ideas?

 

[SoCalReviews]

It's been only a few weeks since the AC68U/AC68R release. You may be simply experiencing bugs but like any computer or networking device ever made there will be some bugs that need to be worked out. Before automatically blaming all the problems you are experiencing on the device itself check your settings first before assuming the router or router firmware is at fault. I know you already know about some of these but here are the recommendations I would start with...

- Under In the router settings under ... WAN > Internet Connection > MAC Address ... Make sure the space for MAC Clone is blank (disabled).

- In the 2.4Ghz settings choose 20 Mhz bandwidth only. Try setting it to an open, unused or uncrowded fixed channel... preferably 1, 6 or 11. Even if channels appear to be uncrowded or open... if you are experiencing inconsistent wireless performance then try using other channels such as 3, 9, 10, etc. if necessary.

- Use Cat 6 or better interconnect Ethernet cable between the router and the modem.

- My experience with cable internet connections is that changing devices back and forth that are connected to the cable modem itself (in your case the SB6141) can result in connection problems since the cable company servers record and use the MAC addresses of the different devices and lease the WAN IP for a particular device. I have seen connection problems linger for days that are related to this issue. This is why the cable company support usually recommends you disconnect the power to the modem and router for up to ten minutes or longer when switching devices that are connected to the cable modem. They recommend you power up the cable modem first and then the device connected to it (router, etc.). This allows the dynamic IP address that is leased to the MAC address of the current device connected to the cable modem to properly reset.

- If you used a public DNS server in your router or device settings such as Google DNS then try going back to allowing your router and devices to automatically acquire your ISP's DNS. While there are reported advantages to using a public DNS it can also cause latency issues.

 

[Royal2000H]

Thank you for your response.

I'd say it's more than just a "new device" bug because I'm unable to access the internet or the router itself 25%+ of the time - despite it showing a good wireless connection.

MAC clone is blank.

As mentioned, I did set it already to 20 MHz. I also forced it to channel 11 instead of auto, which I've had best luck with (and inssider shows to be best) on my previous router.

I used the cable that comes with the asus to connect the modem and router. Keep in mind, my primary issue is communication between the computer and router, so this part is less relevant.

I had a sbg6580 that I swapped to the sb6141 (had to call time warner to do the MAC swap). Nothing has been plugged into the sb6141 in months, so it shouldn't be tied to another WAN IP. That being said, I followed the modem-first then router boot procedure.

Thanks again for your response! Any other recommendations, questions, or procedures, I'm all ears!

 

[SoCalReviews]

When I first set up my N66U router (firmware settings are similar to AC66U/R and AC68U/R) I experienced some strange problems with Windows applications that required internet access from my Windows PC until I properly adjusted the time, date and region settings in my router. Under Administration > System ... check to make sure your router's date and time settings (including the DST - Daylight Savings Time) are properly set up and synched for your region. You can also change the settings of your PC under it's time settings to synch with the same time server that the router uses. Instead of using the default of pool.ntp.org .... In your router and computer settings you may want to change your settings for a specific active time server for your region for example if you are in the U.S. ... you could use 0.us.pool.ntp.org or 0.north-america.pool.ntp.org . Refer to more information here...

http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/

 

[SoCalReviews]

"I'd say it's more than just a "new device" bug because I'm unable to access the internet or the router itself 25%+ of the time - despite it showing a good wireless connection. ...."

These still seem like possible wireless interference issues. You need to determine if the wireless connection issues are what are causing the problem because that would be unrelated to internet connection issues. Do you have the same internet connection problems when you plug your computer directly into the router with an Ethernet cable?


"As mentioned, I did set it already to 20 MHz. I also forced it to channel 11 instead of auto, which I've had best luck with (and inssider shows to be best) on my previous router. ...."

Do you have consistent wireless connections and good consistent throughput with your other devices besides your computer? Try to specify what wireless devices are having problems and which ones aren't. I still would try different channels or while keeping the 20Mhz bandwidth setting try setting the router back to auto channel and see what it chooses. I wouldn't rely only on what worked best for your previous wireless router settings. These Asus routers with external antennas seem to be much more sensitive at picking up 2.4Ghz signals from the neighborhood.

- Make sure you use different wireless broadcast SSIDs for 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. For example, use MYNET for 2.4Ghz and MYNET-5G for 5Ghz. This allows you to identify whether or not your devices that are both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz compatible are hopping back and forth between your wireless network SSIDs using the different broadcast frequencies.

"I used the cable that comes with the asus to connect the modem and router. Keep in mind, my primary issue is communication between the computer and router, so this part is less relevant."

I believe what Asus provides is Cat5e. It should be fine for normal use. Just to be safe I use Cat7 spec (shielded/shielded twisted pair) to help protect from interference. I run my interconnect next to numerous power strips and power cables.

- Since it is a very new router these may be early firmware related issues you are experiencing. Many new AC68U/R users who that have reported issues are also reporting different wireless and non-wireless results when they change the firmware. Continue to check the Asus site frequently for the latest firmware updates for the RT-AC68U/R.

 

[Andy24]

Bb rt-ac68r

I am on my second 68 from best buy. I set the first one up no issues. Then 2 days later the signal quality to all my devices was horrible and would connect at less than a 1Mbs. I reset the router to factory, same issue. I took it back and got another one. I have not had any issues with this one since 12 Oct 13.

Andy

 

[Royal2000H]

I don't want to speak too soon, but this may be SOLVED.

To answer an above question, my 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz are named differently.

Upon more research into the problem, I had 3 laptops sitting next to each other, all constantly pinging the router. At some point, each computer failed at pinging, so it's not just mine. Note this isn't just 1 dropped packet, it would be multiple timeouts in a row (and browsing doesn't work at this point). Oddly enough though, the failures between the computers weren't synched up or correlated in a way I could see. Seemed they each randomly had issues whenever they saw fit.

I called ASUS to try to fix it, in doing so, I had to get to my serial number, and to do that it was easiest to disconnect all ethernet cables (except the one that goes to the modem). While I was creating the case and was on hold waiting to speak to someone, I noticed I didn't have any drop outs. Immediately I suspected one of the ethernet devices. Hung up with Asus (they didn't help anyway, either telling me to swap it at bestbuy or issue me an rma).

After narrowing it down, it turns out the Synology NAS was the culprit. On the previous router, despite DHCP, I had the Synology give its own IP (for port forwarding) which was 192.168.0.x. The asus operates on 192.168.1.x.
Also the OpenVPN server on the synology was enabled. For whomever would connect to the openvpn server, it would hand the person an ip with 192.168.1.x. Either trying to hand itself an address in 192.168.0.x or trying to hand out addresses in 192.168.1.x (even though no one connected to vpn) seems to have caused some sort of issues that propagated through the network.

I reconnected the synology and a computer to the old router, logged into the synology and disabled the VPN server and also re-enabled DHCP, then reconnected the synology back to the ac68r.

All seems good now! I'll try returning 40 MHz and Auto channel later as well.

 

[waltersmith]

A couple weeks on ac68u and I have absolutely zero issues. Everything is faster and better from my experience. Using .217 firmware. One caveat is that my only Windows OS computer is connected to the router via LAN cable. The Macs, Androids and media devices are all connected wirelessly without issue.

If you named your wireless network the same as it was on the old router, make sure you delete the old wireless connection profiles on each client, if Windows then reboot before setting up the client wireless connection again.