RT-AX86S versus AX86U for Merlin or ?

[eastavin]

I happened across what looked like a low price for an AX86S and picked one up to have a look at. One thing that struck me right away is that with 388.1 firmware it is sitting at 466MB Ram used of 512MB. (with stock asus its no better at 460MB). Thats not a lot of headroom for the future. So should I deduce from this that the device is slated for a very short update life by ASUS? (for anyone interested the nvram was 74426 used of 13072 and the JFFS 2.5 out of 47 without my adding anything.)

If I am spending any money on new routers I am hoping for a longer runway... say at least 4-5 years. Wondering what your thoughts are on this? What is in the center of the ASUS roadmap for a longer lasting device nowadays with Merlin support? I could go with AX86Us. That would leave over 50% of the ram free with Merlin firmware. I could also go with the GT-AX11000 types but that seems to be a lot of $. Plus wifi 7 is not that far off, for yet another product iteration that might just kill Asus interest in updating for odd balls like the AX86S, and thus no Merlin updates. What's the safe bet? I have multiple locations where the devices are used standalone with Flex QOS add ons for normal day to day home or business enviro.

Many thanks

Edward

 

[bbunge]

RAM is to be used. If you are uncomfortable add a swap file or partition to a thumb drive.

 

[Deleted member 84281]

There is a memory leak in both Merlin and Stock using 388 code. Many are waiting a fix.

 

[bbunge]

There is a memory leak in both Merlin and Stock using 388 code. Many are waiting a fix.

No memory leal here. On current Asus 388.22068 and working very well!

 

[Deleted member 84281]

There is on the ax86S. Memory goes up 2 to 3 mb per day until it becomes slow and needs a reboot after that rinse and repeat.

 

[BreakingDad]

466MB Ram used of 512MB

Normal, if you use sc merlin you can probably see that most (probably 1/4+) of this is cache.

 

[eastavin]

After scanning a multitude of posts on snb and watching my ax86s go up a percent of two every day I too am now pretty sure there is a memory leak in the ax86 Asus code or h/w. The only things I have added are flexqos, half a dozen reserved DHCP addresses and an openvpn server... So it's not overloaded.

Is there any Asus AX device that does not suffer from this problem at this time? I am open to buying any hardware model and using any code - stock or Merlin if it avoids this issue.

 

[RMerlin]

After scanning a multitude of posts on snb and watching my ax86s go up a percent of two every day I too am now pretty sure there is a memory leak in the ax86 Asus code or h/w.

It's not a memory leak. See the discussions in this thread where one users did some actual investigation, and noticed it was a database created by the router that kept growing up in size:

Out of Memory Errors 388.1 / No space left on device [SOLUTIONS]

Update 3/23/2023 - FW 388.2 B1 So far it looks like 388.2 B1 has fixed the issue with networkmap. I have turned off my cron job and its going on 2 days now, the mem use from networkmap is stable. Highlights of tips from this tread: - Script to restart networkmap and sysstate every night. I...

www.snbforums.com

I currently have 22 days of uptime on my GT-AXE16000, and memory usage is still as stable as before.

 

[John Fitzgerald]

It's not a memory leak. See the discussions in this thread where one users did some actual investigation, and noticed it was a database created by the router that kept growing up in size:

Out of Memory Errors 388.1 / No space left on device [SOLUTIONS]

Update 3/23/2023 - FW 388.2 B1 So far it looks like 388.2 B1 has fixed the issue with networkmap. I have turned off my cron job and its going on 2 days now, the mem use from networkmap is stable. Highlights of tips from this tread: - Script to restart networkmap and sysstate every night. I...

www.snbforums.com

I currently have 22 days of uptime on my GT-AXE16000, and memory usage is still as stable as before.

Do you think the 512MB Ram will scale the same way as your 2GB?

 

[RMerlin]

Do you think the 512MB Ram will scale the same way as your 2GB?

I see no measurable change in memory usage, probably because conn_diag is currently broken on that model and crashes soon after boot.