RT-AX88U Pro Dropping WAN Connection

[Daniel Skupien]

Who is your ISP? I'm thinking this may be an issue between Comcast and some ASUS routers. I've had the same problem with my RT-AX86U that started two or three weeks ago, out of the blue. I was already running the current Merlin firmware. I found few conversations regarding this issue online at the time, but more seem to be popping up. Everyone I've talked to seems to have Comcast, though that could just be due to their market share. Have you observed real-time traffic in the ASUS router app when this happens? A common theme is that there are these blasts of outgoing WAN traffic and the LAN has nothing going on. Mine pegs at near gigabit throughput, though my upload speed to Comcast is only around 24 mbps. After 10, 20, or 30 seconds or so, it stops, and everything starts working again. This screamed botnet exploit, so I factory reset my router, manually set it back up, and all was good until it returned a day later. In trying to resolve the issue, I first replaced my modem, which needed to be upgraded anyway. The problem still came back. I then bought a new RT-AX86U Pro (what can I say, I like this router), updated it to the latest factory firmware, manually set it up, kept all WAN access turned off, including AI Cloud, and everything worked for several days. Then the problem returned with a vengeance. Nothing in the logs could explain it, but the same blast was going from router to WAN, and nothing on the LAN side until it would stop. I called the ASUS tech support number, and they have a recording that they are aware of intermittent internet disconnects with some of their routers and say it is due to some server misconfiguration on their end, and they're working on it. I had a lot going on so I didn't go any further. I ended up hooking up a Nighthawk router, and my internet has been solid ever since. I figure I'll just keep an eye out for a new firmware release, and give it another try. That seems to be what others are doing as well. There's really nothing else I can think of to try.

Maybe you're on to something then, I also have Comcast. Now, so far I have not had any disconnections since changing my 2.4Ghz channel bandwidth and doing what ColinTaylor has suggested concerning AiCloud2.0 settings. It's been a little over 6 hours with no issues thus far. (I'll laugh if it disconnects after posting this.)

 

[Lucas Brasi]

Maybe you're on to something then, I also have Comcast. Now, so far I have not had any disconnections since changing my 2.4Ghz channel bandwidth and doing what ColinTaylor has suggested concerning AiCloud2.0 settings. It's been a little over 6 hours with no issues thus far. (I'll laugh if it disconnects after posting this.)

If it's the problem I've had, and the other folks I've been talking to, unfortunately, that's not going to work for very long because it's nothing on the LAN side. But maybe you're having a different issue. Are your wired devices affected too? In my case, everything on the LAN stays connected to the network, but internet is basically choked off until it stops. If it does come back, try to observe the real-time traffic in the ASUS router app while its happening, and see if it's just blasting traffic to the WAN side, with nothing on the LAN side. It's unmistakable.

 

[Daniel Skupien]

If it's the problem I've had, and the other folks I've been talking to, unfortunately, that's not going to work for very long because it's nothing on the LAN side. But maybe you're having a different issue. Are your wired devices affected too? In my case, everything on the LAN stays connected to the network, but internet is basically choked off until it stops. If it does come back, try to observe the real-time traffic in the ASUS router app while its happening, and see if it's just blasting traffic to the WAN side, with nothing on the LAN side. It's unmistakable.

My issue would have everything stop working, whether it was Wi-Fi or LAN, I could be on my wired PC and I'd know when it'd happen because YouTube would start buffering, opening new tab and trying google.com resulted in just a frozen page, nothing would load. Thus far it's been 7 hours and 16 minutes without issue, but like you said it could start up again, yesterday after doing the firmware update it was good for several hours. I've been trying to stream YouTube through my phone constantly, just waiting to see if I ever hear it stop playing, I'll try downloading large files trying to put heavy usage on the router to see if it triggers something. I'll be more confident something has really worked if it goes a good 24+ hours without a single disconnection.