RT-AC86U AiMesh with RT-AC66U bridge

[mymatenige]

Hi,

I have the following set up:

RT-AC86U AiMesh Router (Merlin 384.15)
RT-AC86U AiMesh Node (Merlin 384.15)

connected over wireless.

Then two RT-AC66U connected to the mesh via wifi acting as media bridges. Merlin LTS 374.43 41EA.

I'm finding that AiMesh is stable for all clients, but occasionally the RT-AC66U bridges become unstable. If they lose connection to the mesh they sometimes don't reconnect at all, and when they do I often find that the data flow only works one way. I suspect that they are bouncing across the mesh devices. I've had a dig on the forums and found a number of suggestions around Beaming, MIMO, RSSI and Roaming Block List but nothing seems to fix the instabilbity. The problem still reappears, sometimes after hours and sometimes days.

Does anyone have any other ideas / pointers of things that I can explore ...

Thanks.

 

[markus987]

I am also using the RT-AC66U in media bridge mode. In my opinion the media bridge mode has some bugs. For example it is running a dnsmasq service for reasons unknown to me. I have observed with wireshark that after a while the media bridge responds to dhcp queries form clients connected via ethernet. The dhcp responses include the ip of the media bridge for both dns and default route. These dhcp responses disconnect connected ethernet devices form the internet (until i rebooted the media bridge).

At the moment I use the following settings:
- media bridge connected via 5ghz band, channel 36, 5ghz band with default settings
- static ip and dns server on media bridge
- dhcp lease time set to 7days on my main router
- newest asus firmware on media bridge

It works stable at the moment. I think the increased dhcp lease time fixed some of the disconnect problems that I had before.

 

[mymatenige]

Thanks for this. I'll give what you suggest a go and see if it improves. I'll update the thread with my findings.

 

[mymatenige]

In the end I found that the static IP and DHCP changes made no difference to the reliability the bridge connection (but I didn't expect them to really). However, replacing the Asusrt-Merlin firmware with the stock Asus firmware seems to have resolved it. I don't need to use that firmware now as the features I was using are now on the AC86Us.

 

[markus987]

Same for me. I am having stability issues with the stock asus firmware connecting on the 5Ghz band. Sometimes the media bridge is unable to connect to the wlan network. I have switched to the 2.4Ghz now. Seems to be more stable an reliable. But of course the speed is not so great.

 

[mymatenige]

Increasingly lost patience with this. Couldn't get any particular combination to work. In the end I removed the bridges and AiMesh now seems solid on Asuswrt-Merlin 384.19.