RT-AC68U

[Ian Manning]

I have an Asus RT-AC68U which was unplugged for a few hours yesterday. When I reconnected it, I started having the following problems:
- No devices (e.g. laptops and Android devices) are able to connect to wireless on the Asus (on 2.4 and 5GHz bands). On Windows 10 I get "Can't connect to this network". On Android devices it attempts to connect for a few seconds then stops trying.
- Laptops and PC's connected either wired or wirelessly (via my BT Whole Home Wifi mesh network or a TP-Link 24-port switch - see below) are unable to see some of the other devices on the LAN. Sometimes a ping will work once or twice, but nothing after that. Some devices can see each other, some not.
- Some wired devices (e.g. Ubuntu machines) can ping the Asus router, but the Asus router can't ping those devices back. These are wired via the TP-Link switch.
- Most, but not all devices previously connected to my BT Whole Home Wifi mesh network have one of the following problems:
- Unable to obtain an IP address (the Asus router is the sole DHCP server on the LAN)
- Able to connect, but with no internet access.

The Asus router uplinks to a TP-Link TL-SG2424 switch, which most of the wired devices on the LAN are connected to. The only devices connected directly to the Asus router are:
- Virgin media hub
- BT Whole Home wifi disc
- Uplink to TP-Link SG2424.

I have tried powering down the router several times (and also the TP-Link switch). I haven't changed any of the config on the router - just unplugged it for a few hours. The only thing I can think of is that, a few weeks ago we had a lightning strike which damaged some devices (e.g. I lost a TV). After the strike I lost the use of one of the LAN ports on the Asus router (but apart from that it seemed to be working fine). Could it be that I'm seeing long-terms effects of this?

There could of course be problems with the TP-Link switch, but the inability of devices to connect to the Asus wireless makes me think that the problem lies with the Asus. I've also tried a test with a different, 12-port TP-Link switch. I connected the Asus router plus one other device to it. The Asus router could not see that device.
I'm running AsusWRT-Merlin 384.19.

Any ideas?

 

[Adooni]

try to do firmware reset and flash one more time RMerlin
I would upgrade to 386.3_2 - just be patient after upgrade sometimes you need to wait up to 1h before you can log/ use router.

 

[Ian Manning]

try to do firmware reset and flash one more time RMerlin
I would upgrade to 386.3_2 - just be patient after upgrade sometimes you need to wait up to 1h before you can log/ use router.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've just upgraded to 386.3_2. Unfortunately the same problems still seem to be there. I can still connect nothing to either of the two wifi connections.

 

[L&LD]

Try the following link to see if the hardware is really at fault. With any luck, it may just be a storm of coincidences that you're observing now, and the link below brings the router back to a good/known state.

Fully Reset Router and Network

But with a known lightning strike, you should be looking/considering not only for a replacement router but also a good UPS to put in front of it too.

 

[Ian Manning]

OK I followed the instructions at that link to do a reset /initialise. When the router booted up after the reset I was taken to the "Welcome to RT-AC-AC68U" screen, with "Create a new network" and "Advanced Settings" options. I was expecting to see some sort of setup wizard.
Anyway I followed this URL to take me to the factory reset part of the GUI:
http://router.asus.com/Advanced_SettingBackup_Content.asp
This URL wasn't recognised, but when I substituted 192.168.1.1 for router.asus.com I was taken to a page where I was prompted to change the router password.
The router was REALLY slow moving between pages - e.g. something like 2 minutes to go from the WAN page to the Virtual Server/Port Forwarding page. When I finally got there I could see that all of my port forwarding rules were gone, so assume that the reset had worked.

I followed the “Create a new network” link and set up SSIDs and passwords for the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands. I still couldn’t connect to wifi from my phone (it tried and gave up, as usual), so I rebooted the router (from the UI). Still no luck

So I went to the Administration page, and selected the Factory default Restore option, selecting the option to initialise all settings. The process hung with the "Applying Settings" message and the spinning wheel for 40 minutes before I refreshed the page.

I was then prompted to change the router login password again. I tried connecting to the wireless network again, but again could not connect.
???

 

[L&LD]

When it takes you to the 'factory reset part' of the GUI, did you check the box to 'Initialize all settings...' and then click restore?

There is no need to set up the router first. You are trying to get it to respond normally, right now.

 

[Ian Manning]

When it takes you to the 'factory reset part' of the GUI, did you check the box to 'Initialize all settings...' and then click restore?

There is no need to set up the router first. You are trying to get it to respond normally, right now.

Yes I ticked the "initialise all settings" checkbox, then clicked Restore. Does that fact that it was taking so long to respond indicate a problem? (i.e. >2 minutes to respond to pretty much any request)

 

[L&LD]

After checking the Initialize box and clicking restore, it should have rebooted.

 

[Ian Manning]

After checking the Initialize box and clicking restore, it should have rebooted.

It didn't as far as I know - it just displayed the Applying Cnanges message for 40 minutes before I refreshed the browser to get rid of it

 

[L&LD]

I would keep repeating those steps in post 4 until it does reboot after clicking Restore from the GUI. If it does.

 

[Ian Manning]

I decided to give up trying it, after several attempts.
I got my hands on a second-hand Netgear R7800 today and it's resolved the problems.
Thanks for all the feedback.