RT-AC68U with RMerlin 378.55_0 Firmware does not connect to WAN

[L&LD]

I was at a customer early today and had issues upgrading his RT-AC68U router to the RMerlin 378.55_0 firmware.

The issue is simply; WAN will not connect at all and therefore, no internet.

Plugging the ISP's modem directly to the computer gets an internet connection instantly and when bridged, it gives the computer an external IP address as expected (did not leave it like this for long, of course).

Using the GUI to restore to factory defaults, rebooting and pulling the power plug after another firmware update did not solve the issue. Neither did powering off all equipment (including the modem) for half an hour work either. Nor flashing the firmware again (and comparing the hash to determine the quality of the download).

The modem / router the ISP provides is working as expected, so the issue has to be with the RT-AC68U.

Could the WAN port have gone bad with a simple flash of newer firmware? Is there something else I could try?

Looking for some additional things to try after I have some brunch (been at this for a few hours already).

 

[L&LD]

I am still having issues with this.

I left the whole network down (off and unplugged) for over an hour and still have the same issue.

I will now try installing previous firmware, other than what was installed previous to this upgrade, and see if it fixes it.

Is it worth to also clear the nvram via ssh too even after resetting to factory defaults?

 

[mattiL]

Any chance of the modem doing some kind of MAC adress locking?

 

[L&LD]

No. Even when the MAC is cloned, no joy.

Any chance of the modem doing some kind of MAC adress locking?

 

[mattiL]

Did you try to change DHCP query frequency (WAN settings) to Normal instead of Aggressive?

 

[L&LD]

Yes, tried that too, even though many other customers on the same ISP do not need that changed.

It's not that WAN connects and then disconnects sometime later. It doesn't connect at all, including right at the initial setup screen after a reset to factory defaults.

Thanks for trying though! Any other suggestions?

Did you try to change DHCP query frequency (WAN settings) to Normal instead of Aggressive?

 

[acale75]

Did you see something strange in the logs?

 

[toast]

I know that mac cloning did not work on the beta (for me on ac87u) in case you are using that on your wan port....

 

[L&LD]

Did you see something strange in the logs?

I know that mac cloning did not work on the beta (for me on ac87u) in case you are using that on your wan port....

Thanks, but so far, same issue. I think the router's WAN port is done for?

Nothing different in the logs. MAC cloning or not makes no difference.

Seems like there are other posts that are slightly similar to my issues, but I am going to continue testing older firmware again later today.

 

[mattiL]

Can you try, or have you already tried, with a switch in between (between modem and router WAN port that is)?

 

[Zirescu]

Could double-check that the Internet Connection switch is set to ON (Network Map, then click on Globe button). I would have expected it to get set to ON after factory default change though.

 

[L&LD]

Can you try, or have you already tried, with a switch in between (between modem and router WAN port that is)?

Good suggestion! But I did think of that yesterday (forgot to mention it before).

Could double-check that the Internet Connection switch is set to ON (Network Map, then click on Globe button). I would have expected it to get set to ON after factory default change though.

Yes, I tried this multiple times - On, Off, reboot and try again in all combinations.

The weird thing is that the router works normally (it seems) except for connecting to the ISP.

 

[admiral2145]

Mine is doing the same thing also... I went back down to .54

 

[john9527]

Seems like there are other posts that are slightly similar to my issues, but I am going to continue testing older firmware again later today.

Simply from a diagnostics standpoint....did you try loading a copy of my 374 fork? The startup sequence is a bit different, and might help to rule out or in a hardware problem.

 

[bluepoint]

No. Even when the MAC is cloned, no joy.

I think MAC cloning is broken in this release. Do not clone but release the WAN IP from the last hardware that got an IP then try to connect the router.

 

[mattiL]

Do you know if the router connects (should connect) at 100 MBit or 1GBit?

I was thinking that autonegotiation on the NIC can be an issue, perhaps playing with the ip command in an ssh session can help getting a proper link?
Is it for example possible to set 100Mbit Full duplex and override autonegotioation?

This is not something I have tried, but perhaps someone else here have some input?

Example:
ip a show eth0 results in the following on my RT-AC87

2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UNKNOWN qlen 1000
link/ether 38:2c:4a:xx:xx:xx brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet yyy.yyy.yyy.yy/21 brd yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy scope global eth0

 

[L&LD]

First off, thanks to all who provided me with their suggestions.

Second, the router is now working again! I didn't do anything specifically to fix it, but I did install hggomes fork 378.55.2 which specifically states that a WAN DHCP issue was fixed. Maybe the code can be shared with RMerlin so his fork works properly too?

I didn't want to test RMerlin's firmware again after the WAN port was working again as I had spent too much time on this already (and the customer was fine with the firmware installed). But the RT-AC68U is now working better than ever.

I told the customer that he will be receiving in the mail the most 'reset to factory defaults' award for a router ever; soon.


What was interesting in the time I was fighting with this issue, is that after I lent him a temporary router so his business could keep running, I had the chance (after it was finally working) to compare the RT-AC68U directly with my RT-N66U which is also running hggomes RMerlin fork on my own network.

While the performance differences may be subtle for some, they easily favor the RT-AC68U and is well worth the ~$200 price point for me to upgrade at this point. If newer Asus models were not expected soon, I would be upgrading today (and at least compare the RT-AC68U to the RT-AC3200 too before I bought one for keeps).

The features that the RT-AC68U has over the RT-N66U are impressive. I can only hope that the next batch of Asus routers have even higher performing hardware (cpu, ram and even higher optimized radios) than this generation from two years ago. Otherwise, the RT-AC3200 may be my next router (and the one I recommend to everyone too).

I was initially hoping for a quick answer to my seemingly simple question, but I am glad that I got to see firsthand the results I did, even if it took a few days to finally solve it.

Btw, even after flashing the hggomes 378.55.2 firmware, I followed a full and proper reset to factory defaults to make sure that no further user inflicted glitches happened with this router again in the near future, as is recommended in the hggomes readme file.