Something has happened to my AC5300 router...

[Crazy]

I found all versions after 384.18 unstable on my RT-AC5300. I notice it the most on my security cameras (Swann), which will always drop out after a short period of time.

I tried everything including a hot or cold reset as well as a lot of help on the forum here. Never a problem with 384.18 hence why I will stick with it for now.

Have you turned off airtime fairness for 2.4ghz? Before turning this off my printer and my smart switches had connection issues. Been fine for over 3-4 years now. Also turn off aiprotect, it makes my router hang and reboot randomly.

 

[ComputerSteve]

Yeah so something is not working right with AiMesh 2.0 & the RT-AC5300. Everything initially works. I notice that all my RT-AC3100's will loose connection if I change settings such as Wifi Channel / Roaming Blocklist/ Wireless Mac Filter/ or any Professional settings. Once I make this change they all change to Detecting AiMesh Router & never do. I notice that AiMesh works correctly if they are all on Wireless Backhaul. I have all but 1 node configured on ethernet backhaul. This seems to happen because the Wifi service is restarted & the devices never recover picking back up the AiMesh router until you manually reboot the RT-AC5300.

 

[David Wolfe]

Maybe there are slight differences in the AC5300 depending on the age. Mine is at least 3 years old. Not sure how to query component specs on it such as cpu model and other chip versions to compare against others. If someone knows how to collect that info, I'd be happy to post the info here for comparison.

 

[Svenskmat]

I have 2 RT-5300's - Router and Node - and they are both running 386.2 with no issues. Dirty upgrade to both of them. Running just under 50 devices and they have been stable since 386.2 was installed.

 

[ComputerSteve]

I have 2 RT-5300's - Router and Node - and they are both running 386.2 with no issues. Dirty upgrade to both of them. Running just under 50 devices and they have been stable since 386.2 was installed.

So mine works fine also.. Its when I keep adding or removing things from the Wifi Block list or if I try to make changes in professional. The issue happens.. Also is your node connected through Ethernet or Wireless? Wireless this problem doesn't happen.. Only through ethernet backhaul does it happen.

 

[Svenskmat]

So mine works fine also.. Its when I keep adding or removing things from the Wifi Block list or if I try to make changes in professional. The issue happens.. Also is your node connected through Ethernet or Wireless? Wireless this problem doesn't happen.. Only through ethernet backhaul does it happen.

Wifi backhaul

 

[ComputerSteve]

Wifi backhaul

Exactly, mine works fine on WiFi backhaul. As soon as I connect it from the lan port of the 5300 to the wan of the 3100 it works till I make any changes.

 

[IshWishDish]

I'm running the 5300 and had a ton of problems on the 386 line. No issues with the 384.x line.

My issues sounded similar to OPs. I tried all the 386 betas and performed a lot of factory resets and kept tweaking options and reading suggestions, but kept seeing deterioration from my clients and repeated dropouts til I rebooted the router (multiple times a day!).

I am now successfully-ish on 386.2. I ultimately had to set static bandwidth/channels for 2.4GHz and both 5GHz radios, and disable all beamforming options. I was ALWAYS able to leave these settings on auto/enabled in the past, but not in the 386 line. After making those changes, things have been stable for several days straight with no serious deterioration in performance or random dropouts. I will say I seem to be getting SLIGHTLY lower speeds over wifi internally than the 384.x line, but it's nothing major and doesn't affect my day-to-day.

 

[sevenalive]

I have a AC5300 and I always dirty update the firmware, haven't had many issues. I usually update every release within a few days of release. I been experiencing frequent wifi drops on both 2.4 and 5ghz. I have been experiencing this for a few months now but since I updated to 386.2_4, it's been so frequent that's its happening at least once every 45 minutes where one of my smart devices will be offline or I'll notice my chromecast lose connection.

I was thinking a factory reset and a hard hardware reset would fix it but others reported that they went through that and it didn't help.

I will have to downgrade to the last 384.xx until the issue is tracked down and fixed. I'm going to ssh in the router and pull any logs or crash files that might assist with the effort to solving this issue.

2.4 GHz: 50°C - 5 GHz-1: 54°C - 5 GHz-2: 55°C - CPU: 71°C

CPU Model	BCM470x - Cortex A7 ARMv7 revision 0 (Cores: 2)
CPU Frequency	1400 MHz

NVRAM usage	86937 / 131072 bytes
JFFS	2.05 / 64.00 MB

 

[L&LD]

Welcome to the forums @sevenalive.

Downgrading to 384.xx firmware won't help fix 386.2_4 firmware issues.

If you really want to see if it is fixed on your router and specific network setup; do a full reset and then a minimal and manual configuration to check it. (It doesn't matter if it was fixed or not for anyone else).

The following suggestions may be helpful to get your router fully and properly reset too.

Fully Reset Router and Network

Best Practice Update/Setup Router/AiMesh Node(s) 2021

 

[David Wolfe]

Downgrading to 384.xx firmware won't help fix 386.2_4 firmware issues.

I have to disagree with the downgrading won't help. I downgraded my AC5300 back to 384.19 and all problems went away and I'm back to a very stable router. There is one persistent issue I have which I had prior to my upgrade attempt to 386 and that is the OpenVPN server will not start up fully on a reboot (hard or soft). It hangs in a state of "Please wait while initializing...." or some such wording. I turn it off and on manually after the reboot and it comes right up.

Note, this is the same behavior after a very fresh factory reset as well as months of steady-state config status.

 

[jellycow]

I was in the same situation as you. 384s were great....then with 386, I've had nothing but trouble -- AiMesh node being slow, wifi not seeing internet, guest network never really working, etc. With some suggestions from other forum members, I switched back to the official ASUS firmware that's in beta (9.0.0.4_386_41994) and all my problems went away.

I went from 384 to 386 with a dirty upgrade. I thought that might be a problem so I did a factory reset and did a complete setup from scratch twice - pain since I have static DHCP assignments. Nothing helped. Then I installed the stock ASUS and things were okay - guest wifi works and AiMesh is stable even when going from node to node. As a test I went BACK to Merlin 386.2_4 and guest wifi stopped working immediately. I didn't bother testing the AiMesh nodes after the guest failure. Now I'm back on ASUS firmware again and things are good. So weird... From what I understand of how Merlin is built, there shouldn't be this much difference between stock and merlin...

I've gone through many ASUS routers from ac68, ac88, now ac5300 and this is the first time I've ever ran stock ASUS firmware... I miss the VPN and DNS-over-TLS etc, but I can live without that until Merlin is stable again. It's better than getting murdered by wife and kids...

 

[David Wolfe]

It's better than getting murdered by wife and kids...

Hahahahaha. That was the worst part of it for me as well.

 

[jerry6]

well i've been running my 8 year old rt5300 on 386.2.4 with no problems ,in fact this is the only FW since 382 where i have no log entries reporting anything . so far it has been super stable . transfer rates have dropped but that could be due to other factors , not the FW . AM UPGRADING TO THE AX1100 THOUGH for the new spec clients i'm getting

 

[jellycow]

well i've been running my 8 year old rt5300 on 386.2.4 with no problems ,in fact this is the only FW since 382 where i have no log entries reporting anything . so far it has been super stable . transfer rates have dropped but that could be due to other factors , not the FW . AM UPGRADING TO THE AX1100 THOUGH for the new spec clients i'm getting

I think my AC5300 might work fine on the 386.2_4 as a single router - I just haven't isoloated and tested it on its own. All of my problem starts when I add my 2nd AC5300 as an AiMesh node. Node shows great connection and any ethernet clients on the node will work great, but the wifi clients will crawl or not work at all intermittently. Guest wifi doesn't work at all whether it's with or without it being distributed to the node. Only way around it was to bind the clients to the main router instead of the AiMesh node but that's hokey as well. Other than DHCP messages, I didn't see log entries that stand out either. One of my resets, I tried swapping devices (router <-> node) so I know it's not hardware. And somehow, the ASUS firmware is working for me. I hope to jettison is as soon as another update of merlin fw is released...