Release XT8 New Firmware 3.0.0.4.386_25790

[KingBravery]

I upgraded last night and all was good. Woke up this morning and the node had reverted to 2.4ghz for backhaul. Speed on anything connected to the node was down to about 60 megs as opposed to the usual 500 (I'm on a 1gig connection). Rebooted, twice, no difference. Did a factory reset on the node and when set up again, it then went back to 5ghz backhaul and over 500 megs. That was about 6 hours ago so I'm keeping my fingers crossed it stays that way.

I don't know what was going on with others' unit. But my 5GHz backhaul connected more than 72 hours with 160MHz and stable. Below is the stat:

 

[wags1]

After my two XT8's went unresponsive twice at approximately 5 hour intervals yesterday after updating the FW I reverted back to the previous FW version (3.0.0.4.386_25524) and it has been running fine since, over 9 hours now. I'll run it for a day or two to make sure it's back to the way it was and then try the new FW again at some point. This should not be this hard.

So earlier today I decided to give the new FW another shot. This time I manually upgraded the FW on the main router and the aimesh node. Everything has been running great for about 11 hours now. So far so good.

 

[JoWa]

I don't know what was going on with others' unit. But my 5GHz backhaul connected more than 72 hours with 160MHz and stable. Below is the stat:

View attachment 26479

Mine was also up for about 72h before they dropped. But I didn't have ch 149-165, why?

 

[Chippy_boy]

Did your backhaul drop from 5ghz to 2,4ghz with the previous fw? And now its not?

I never saw it do that with the previous fw. It's on 5GHz/160Mhz right now... but it was before the upgrade.

 

[wags1]

So earlier today I decided to give the new FW another shot. This time I manually upgraded the FW on the main router and the aimesh node. Everything has been running great for about 11 hours now. So far so good.

Running for about 24 hours now with no issues. When I updated before it would not stay up for more than 5 hours in a row. Not sure what the difference is but this time I did update my 2 XT8 devices manually rather than let the GUI do it automatically.

 

[TechGodfather]

If have had issues since day one with aimesh nodes and not being able to add them. I will say that I had originally tried adding with my iPhone and the app. Today after resetting, re-flashing, rebooting, factory resetting thru GUI, bringing up both as routers, etc. I finally thought what if the ble was the culprit?....? So I turned off Bluetooth on my phone, reset both one last time (factory), setup router default mode, and viola second node added and downloaded config without issues. I was one happy camper. Now I can’t be 100% sure that was it but I will say I’ve worked on these for HOURS without success. SO, if you are unable to add your aimesh for some unknown reason, try turning off all ble interference devices close by. It SEEMED to work for me. I’ve spent so much time on these I didn’t have the mindset to experiment more. Just saying, turn off all Bluetooth stuff nearby when you try to add. Cheers and I hope this works for you.
P.S. I cannot find any ble logs on the router. I’ve been digging via ssh.

Tech

 

[Vipermk2]

I had to do a hard restart after the update due to my mobile loosing connectivity to the wifi, just wondering how long it will last before I have to do it again.

 

[Mahesh J Kalwani]

HI Everyone! At my residences we have ASUS ZenWiFi XT8. A total of 1 router and 13 nodes. I have split 1 router and 9 nodes into one network operating as mesh with Ethernet backhaul and the rest of the other 4 nodes are setup into a 2nd network operating as access points with Ethernet backhaul. We have 1 Gbps Fibre to Home. On an average we get WIFI speeds 500 Mbps - 700 Mbps (I have disabled the smart connect option as it was drastically slowing down the WiFi speeds). I just didn’t understand how to fine tune the smart connect properly to achieve faster speeds. I have also enabled the 5 GHz - 2, which works fine. The previous version 25525-g9977a2e, I found to be the most stable. The latest release 25790-gd414187 completely crashed the entire network. So today I rolled back. I find the Zenwifi xt8 an excellent system when connected via Ethernet Backhaul, the wireless backhaul doesn’t work at my residences as we have thicker walls. I really don’t recommend this update.

 

[Chippy_boy]

13 nodes? What do you live in a hotel???

 

[Mahesh J Kalwani]

13 nodes? What do you live in a hotel???

No but a really big house

 

[KingBravery]

Mine was also up for about 72h before they dropped. But I didn't have ch 149-165, why?

maybe you're in the country that restrict those channels

 

[digits n bits]

I decided to break the XT8 out of the closet and check out the latest firmware. Manually downloaded and manually setup through the web GUI. Reset both nodes, changed DNS server, SSD and enabled aiprotection. Left everything else alone. So far after 10 hours it’s working great, best since I got it. Backhaul is running 160 MHz, clients all running at full speed and switch between nodes like they should, wired clients all run with no issues. I’ll post back if it falls apart again, but I’m hopeful.

 

[Xeio]

Just installed this, not having any issues with the WiFi/LAN connection itself, but the router config page is essentially dead. I can bring up the login page, but as soon as I try to login it will freeze (I got it once, then it froze about 30 seconds later). It stops responding to any further HTTP requests and won't even show login page.

Time to rollback...

 

[wags1]

I decided to break the XT8 out of the closet and check out the latest firmware. Manually downloaded and manually setup through the web GUI. Reset both nodes, changed DNS server, SSD and enabled aiprotection. Left everything else alone. So far after 10 hours it’s working great, best since I got it. Backhaul is running 160 MHz, clients all running at full speed and switch between nodes like they should, wired clients all run with no issues. I’ll post back if it falls apart again, but I’m hopeful.

It’s been solid for me since I updated my 2 nodes the same way. I’ve turned off the auto reboot schedule. If it makes it past 3 or 4 days without going offline I’ll declare victory...

 

[Curado Kev]

Downloaded and installed, no issues and my whole setup seems faster. Every time I buy a new ASUS product for last 5-6 years - it takes them 3-4 FW updates to iron things out. And since we can’t use Merlin, we wait on them to optimize. So far really happy with this FW update.

 

[mlai]

Oops. Celebrated too soon. I started having the 5G-2 radio go down on me yesterday and today, requiring a reboot of the XT8 node to bring them back up. On the wireless log page, it just looked like 5G-2 radio disappeared completely. In the system logs, I noticed below entries everytime when the 5G-2 went down:

Sep 27 03:08:26 kernel: dhdpcie_checkdied: console address : 0x001E5310
Sep 27 03:08:26 kernel: Assrt not built in dongle
Sep 27 03:08:26 kernel: TRAP type 0x4 @ epc 0xb2184, cpsr 0x88000193, spsr 0x88000033, sp 0x1561d0, lp 0xb2169, rpc 0xb2184
Sep 27 03:08:26 kernel: Trap offset 0x156178, r0 0x31, r1 0x427b7c, r2 0x10e2, r3 0x15, r4 0x26f2a4, r5 0x21aacc, r6 0x26f2bc, r7 0x1901801
Sep 27 03:08:27 kernel: osl_mfree NULL

Reported to Asus via the Feedback page on the Router UI.

 

[KingBravery]

Just installed this, not having any issues with the WiFi/LAN connection itself, but the router config page is essentially dead. I can bring up the login page, but as soon as I try to login it will freeze (I got it once, then it froze about 30 seconds later). It stops responding to any further HTTP requests and won't even show login page.

Time to rollback...

Oops. Celebrated too soon. I started having the 5G-2 radio go down on me yesterday and today, requiring a reboot of the XT8 node to bring them back up. On the wireless log page, it just looked like 5G-2 radio disappeared completely. In the system logs, I noticed below entries everytime when the 5G-2 went down:

Sep 27 03:08:26 kernel: dhdpcie_checkdied: console address : 0x001E5310
Sep 27 03:08:26 kernel: Assrt not built in dongle
Sep 27 03:08:26 kernel: TRAP type 0x4 @ epc 0xb2184, cpsr 0x88000193, spsr 0x88000033, sp 0x1561d0, lp 0xb2169, rpc 0xb2184
Sep 27 03:08:26 kernel: Trap offset 0x156178, r0 0x31, r1 0x427b7c, r2 0x10e2, r3 0x15, r4 0x26f2a4, r5 0x21aacc, r6 0x26f2bc, r7 0x1901801
Sep 27 03:08:27 kernel: osl_mfree NULL

Reported to Asus via the Feedback page on the Router UI.

Have you done factory reset (button) first? Sometimes the previous firmware not compatible with the latest. So, it will give errors.

 

[floids]

Having he same intermittent issues after updating to the latest firmware. Drops out after about ~ 5 hrs, but not everything, just 3-4 devices come back with no internet connection.
Rebooted and it seems to repeat itself. Will try a reset of the router and notes to see if that helps. Had not issues with prior FW version, running in AP mode. Anyone else experiencing intermittent selective device losses (iPad, laptop)?

 

[KingBravery]

Having he same intermittent issues after updating to the latest firmware. Drops out after about ~ 5 hrs, but not everything, just 3-4 devices come back with no internet connection.
Rebooted and it seems to repeat itself. Will try a reset of the router and notes to see if that helps. Had not issues with prior FW version, running in AP mode. Anyone else experiencing intermittent selective device losses (iPad, laptop)?

After reset it, you'll notice the fantastic XT8. My backhaul uptime is almost reach 130 hours without dropping.

 

[wags1]

Having he same intermittent issues after updating to the latest firmware. Drops out after about ~ 5 hrs, but not everything, just 3-4 devices come back with no internet connection.
Rebooted and it seems to repeat itself. Will try a reset of the router and notes to see if that helps. Had not issues with prior FW version, running in AP mode. Anyone else experiencing intermittent selective device losses (iPad, laptop)?

How did you do the update? I had an issue when I first updated mine that was similar but in my case all stations, wired and wifi, dropped but it was at 5 hour intervals. I reverted to previous FW. Then after a day or so after it ran fine using the previous FW I updated but this time when I updated the firmware I did it manually rather than by letting the GUI do it automatically. I have not had a problem since. It's been running solid now for several days.