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.

 

[Daniel Skupien]

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.)

Well, it's been over 24 hours since I did those things and I've literally not had a single drop in my internet connection, so apparently doing the AiCloud change is an actual fix for this or just some incredible coincidence or fixed itself somehow through all the resets and such, either way I'm glad, and too paranoid to even dare change a setting now.

 

[Don Draper]

Disabling AiCloud 2.0 has "so far" fixed all issues. I have had a solid connection for 24hrs now.

 

[Lynxorz]

Hey all, I made an account to say thanks for helping with this issue, I had the exact thing Lucas is describing, massive outgoing data from the router to the WAN that choked the internet connection, at first I hadn't realized the issue and I did the usual thinking of it's the ISP causing this and had them change their bridge router but that didn't fix anything really, then changed cables, even enabled dual WAN to use LAN ports as WAN connection in case the WAN port was causing the issue but the issue was continuing, after reading a couple of other posts here and there I tried the suggestion for switching from ping to DNS query as network connectivity but it didn't make any difference, and after reading Luca's description I verified that that was the cause of my internet outages, I had outgoing traffic of the size of 600GB/day and then I did what Colin suggested, disabling AIcloud and that has solved the issue for 48h now, the only AICloud I had enabled was the Smart Access and disabling that sorted the massive upload the router was doing!

 

[Daniel Skupien]

Hey all, I made an account to say thanks for helping with this issue, I had the exact thing Lucas is describing, massive outgoing data from the router to the WAN that choked the internet connection, at first I hadn't realized the issue and I did the usual thinking of it's the ISP causing this and had them change their bridge router but that didn't fix anything really, then changed cables, even enabled dual WAN to use LAN ports as WAN connection in case the WAN port was causing the issue but the issue was continuing, after reading a couple of other posts here and there I tried the suggestion for switching from ping to DNS query as network connectivity but it didn't make any difference, and after reading Luca's description I verified that that was the cause of my internet outages, I had outgoing traffic of the size of 600GB/day and then I did what Colin suggested, disabling AIcloud and that has solved the issue for 48h now, the only AICloud I had enabled was the Smart Access and disabling that sorted the massive upload the router was doing!

I knew it! I remember looking at the upload and thinking that has to be a glitch. Is there a way you could check your total bandwidth usage through your ISP's account page? Because I wonder if it was actually uploading anything, and what would it be sending? My total data usage has been ridiculously huge this month (thankfully I have unlimited data with Comcast), I mean I have been downloading a ton of big files, but I just thought something is off with the amount of data it was saying I actually used, so perhaps the router was actually sending something.

 

[Lynxorz]

I knew it! I remember looking at the upload and thinking that has to be a glitch. Is there a way you could check your total bandwidth usage through your ISP's account page? Because I wonder if it was actually uploading anything, and what would it be sending? My total data usage has been ridiculously huge this month (thankfully I have unlimited data with Comcast), I mean I have been downloading a ton of big files, but I just thought something is off with the amount of data it was saying I actually used, so perhaps the router was actually sending something.

No, I don't have such an option from my ISP, but I was curious about where and if it's uploading as well! I don't know a way to track that though, if anyone knows is a way to view real-time traffic, let's say from the terminal over SSH, I could enable smart access again and see what it does!

 

[virus_59]

I also had problems with constant WAN disconnection. But the reason was different - https://www.snbforums.com/threads/b...g-network-with-upload-flood.92242/post-931970

 

[Don Draper]

Disabling AiCloud 2.0 has "so far" fixed all issues. I have had a solid connection for 24hrs now.

Confirming this fixed the issue for me. Things are working smoothly now.