XT8 AiMesh System Crashing

[epete]

Thanks all for helping me resolve my first AiMESH setup with my XT8's here XT8 Hardwired Backhaul issues | SmallNetBuilder Forums (snbforums.com)

I am now seeing another issue that has happened twice singe I got the system a couple weeks ago. The System seems to crash leaving me with no wired internet on the Router Unit and fast blinking LED's on the 3 XT8 Access Points. The fierst time this happened, I didnt think anything of it as I was still debugging the set-up. Now that I have my wired backhaul working, I have seen it happen again.

It seems there was an auto firmware upgrade, and I am wondering if that could be the cause?

1. Do folks recommend Turing off the Auto Update?
2. Are there any key words I should search for in the log file to help understand what actually happened?

Thanks

 

[epete]

OK, My ASUS XT8 System went down again today so that is 4 days after the last crash. Same symptons

Main Router stays on with white LED, Other three Access Points (XT8's) have the flashing blue LED and there is a Wifi Signal but no internet. My PC is connected to the XT8 Router Ethernet port. Internet becomes sluggish but works. It does not allow me to connect using http://router.asus.com/ or directly with the IP address. After rebooting the Router XT8, the system comes back and operates normally. Hopefully for longer than 4 days.

These are the log entries for the day before unplugging from power

Then I get these May 5 01:05:18 entries. In fact that same time stamp came up the last time. I dont know if this is normal after removing power and before the router syncs with the proper date and time or if this ocurred before removing power.

See attached May5Logs.txt

 

[Gustour]

On which firmware are you ? I recommand to stay on 3.0.0.4.386_48706, was the more stable for me

 

[epete]

Hmmm, given the product line is over a year old I had not considered I their latest (non beta) loads would still be unstable. I am using the latest 3.0.0.4.388_21099-g90a450c. Anyone else suggest that the latest load should not be used?

 

[tgl]

As for the May 5 timestamps --- yeah, I see that too whenever my XT8s reboot, up until they re-establish NTP time sync. Evidently there's no locally-powered clock in an XT8, and not even the ability to keep time over a non-power-loss reboot. Dunno why the clock restarts from May 5 rather than some other date, but it does.

As for the auto firmware update --- nope, nope, nope, turn it off. ASUS's software QA department seems to be unfathomably incompetent. In the year or so that I've owned these XT8s, ASUS have put out half a dozen firmware updates, of which only one has been acceptably stable in my use. Other people report different sets of updates as being stable; seems it depends a lot on exactly how you are using the gear. Keep a copy of whichever firmware version works well for you, and be ready to revert to that whenever you try an update.

More lore in this area: be prepared to do a factory reset and reconfigure from scratch after any firmware update or reversion to a prior firmware, because another thing ASUS have not figured out is cross-firmware-version compatibility of settings files. Some people in these forums have been burnt often enough that they just automatically hard-reset after any firmware change. IME it's not quite that bad, but I'd sure do a reset upon noticing any squirrelly behavior.

 

[Gustour]

Release - ASUS ZenWiFi XT8 Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388.21099 (2022/10/03 )

Version 3.0.0.4.388.21099 2022/10/03 46.66 MBytes ASUS ZenWiFi AX (XT8) Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388.21099 Try more on ASUSWRT 2022 with new features at https://asus.click/ASUSWRT2022 1. Supported WireGuard VPN server and client. 2. Supported VPN fusion. It can...

www.snbforums.com

 

[epete]

thanks, guys, for the help.

 

[wags1]

Here is my take on the XT8’s and of corse this is JMO. I spent about 2 years messing with a 2 node (main router and 1 node) XT8 setup. It was never 100% stable, the way I wanted it to be… basically set it and forget it. And yes I did all the usual, factory resets etc.. Finally I had enough. I bought a RT-AX86U as my main router, Ebayed one of the XT8’s, and setup the one XT8 I had left as an aimesh node. That setup has been 100% rock solid, set it and forget it, ever since. I honestly wish I would have done this from the start. IMO, the XT8 makes a great aimesh node but fails as a main router. Don’t know why, don’t care, maybe it’s just me…but that is my experience. Take it for what it’s worth and YMMV.

 

[epete]

Interesting. I had in my mind that having all the same units would work better than a mix. My Previous system was a mix of RT-AC5300 as the main router and two RT-AC68U's as nodes. This system worked well for several years and then all of a sudden, devices would drop and reconnect such as Alexa devices and more frequently Google Nest Hubs. The XT8's seem to have resolved that problem. Good to know I could try another RT-XTxxx and potentially solve the problem. I almost switched to one of those TP-Link Deco systems instead of the XT8's but I am familiar with ASUS routers and like the interface. These also kept getting good reviews.

 

[epete]

By the way, before going to a stable load as described here, I did want to get ASUS's recommendations and try them first. They said...

1. Make sure you have the latest FW
2. under Wireless Disable smart connect
3. on 2.4 GHz, set BW to 40MHz and set Control Channel to 11
4. on 5GHz set BW to 80MHz and set Control Channel to 48
5. I mentioned I had aa wired backhaul and asked what to do with 5GHz-2. He said leave it alone
6. In the Professional tab I was to make sure Airtime Fairness was disabled on both 2.4 GHz and 5GHz-1

These were their recommended settings but some sound a bit strange to me. I would think Auto would be better for C-Ch, but I guess they wanted to select a Ch that they assumed most people didnt use. I also think I threw him offf a bit when I said my sustem used wired backhaul and what should I do with 5GHz-2. Do nothing with is doesn't sound quite right. Anyway, I will see how it goes with support , in case they have some new information that might work.

 

[wags1]

By the way, before going to a stable load as described here, I did want to get ASUS's recommendations and try them first. They said...

1. Make sure you have the latest FW
2. under Wireless Disable smart connect
3. on 2.4 GHz, set BW to 40MHz and set Control Channel to 11
4. on 5GHz set BW to 80MHz and set Control Channel to 48
5. I mentioned I had aa wired backhaul and asked what to do with 5GHz-2. He said leave it alone
6. In the Professional tab I was to make sure Airtime Fairness was disabled on both 2.4 GHz and 5GHz-1

These were their recommended settings but some sound a bit strange to me. I would think Auto would be better for C-Ch, but I guess they wanted to select a Ch that they assumed most people didnt use. I also think I threw him offf a bit when I said my sustem used wired backhaul and what should I do with 5GHz-2. Do nothing with is doesn't sound quite right. Anyway, I will see how it goes with support , in case they have some new information that might work.

I use wired backhaul, but then I used wired backhaul when I was using both XT8’s. And as for the rest of it, honestly, again JMO, you shouldn’t have to fiddle around to have it work well. I am running with all defaults, including using Smart Connect, and it works great, unlike when I was using both XT8’s.

 

[tgl]

By the way, before going to a stable load as described here, I did want to get ASUS's recommendations and try them first. They said...

1. Make sure you have the latest FW

Fair, although there is plenty of experience to show that latest is not always greatest in ASUS firmware. Take this one with a grain of salt.

1. under Wireless Disable smart connect

Check ...

1. on 2.4 GHz, set BW to 40MHz and set Control Channel to 11

Egad. Unless you live all alone in the boonies, trying to use a 40MHz channel in 2.4GHz is seriously unfriendly to your neighbors, and not great for you either. Basically that doubles your opportunities for airtime conflict against neighboring systems. There are only three clear 20MHz channels in the 2.4GHz spectrum, and now you're trying to use two of them not one. Boo ASUS.

The notion that channel 11 is guaranteed better than the other two sane options (1, 6) is not a lot better. It all depends on what your neighbors are using, which means that what ASUS really ought to be recommending as best practice is "auto". Or at least "get a wireless scanner app and choose whichever one seems least busy where you are".

1. on 5GHz set BW to 80MHz and set Control Channel to 48

At least that's a sane bandwidth choice. But again, blindly locking your AP to a channel without regard for what your neighbors are using isn't the path to success.

 

[epete]

...and none of these Ch BW settings or C-CH assignments should have anything to do with the system crashing every 3 to 4 days, but I figured I should follow their guidance first. And, by the way, I live in a Townhome community, so the spectrum is very crowded as it is.

 

[kildare]

I bought a RT-AX86U as my main router

I had some experience with RT-AX86U as main router and AiMesh with XT8's.
Specifically, if somebody is using a wireless backhaul, then the RT-AX86U as default reserves the 5GHz-2 band for backhaul, but its 5GHz-1 band doesn't support AX standard (wifi6). Only the 5GHz-2 is AX.
So he can't connect any wifi6 devices to the router (unless he let them connect to the backhaul network).
In my case for this reason I sent back the RT-AX86U.
But if you are using a wired ethernet backhaul then this is not a problem for you.

 

[wags1]

I had some experience with RT-AX86U as main router and AiMesh with XT8's.
Specifically, if somebody is using a wireless backhaul, then the RT-AX86U as default reserves the 5GHz-2 band for backhaul, but its 5GHz-1 band doesn't support AX standard (wifi6). Only the 5GHz-2 is AX.
So he can't connect any wifi6 devices to the router (unless he let them connect to the backhaul network).
In my case for this reason I sent back the RT-AX86U.
But if you are using a wired ethernet backhaul then this is not a problem for you.

Thankfully since I'm using wired backhaul it's not something I have to worry about.

Again my experience has been that using the RT-AX86U as the main router with an XT8 as a aimesh node (using wired backhaul) has been literally plug and play, set it and forget it. My network has now just melted into the background and I don't have to think about it or worry about, just like I want infrastructure to be. That unfortunately was not the case when I was using two XT8's. Don't know why, maybe it was just me, but that was my experience.

 

[kildare]

I've 6 XT8s in AP mode, and tested almost all the firmware releases up to the latest beta available.
IoT devices stability has shown many troubles with all the firmware I tested, along with backhaul instability.
Overall, at the end I choose to install the firmware that in my experience has proven the best stability for both the wireless backhaul and the wifi IoT devices:
v. 3.0.0.4.386_42095
Thanks also to replacing my IoT Gen1 Shelly devices with the new Gen2 version, after 6 days I haven't got any problem in both backhaul and IoT connections.

Anyway, it's to be mentioned that this version lacks all the security fixes released successively, so possible security risks are to be taken into consideration, but as in my case I'm using the AiMesh in AP mode behind a prosumer router/firewall these risks for me are almost nonexistent.

 

[epete]

It has been a while since I posted in this thread. I figured I should post a follow up on how things went with ASUS Customer Service. I had two systems of two routers each. Asus had me return one of the two systems that seemed to sit there for a couple weeks without any action, then they decided to ship me replacement remanufactured routers to replace the ones I returned. I wasn't confident that this would resolve my issue, but it is now 4 or five months later and I have had no problems with the remanufactured units.

 

[Smokey613]

I had a pair of CT8 and still have a pair of XT8. Wireless mesh worked better than wired on them but even then, it was not stable long term. I have given up on those Asus dedicated mesh systems. I actually threw the two CT8 in the garbage but kept the power supplies.