Solved 3 Asus Routers doing the same thing. About to drop ASUS. Help!!!!

[thiggins]

You may already have covered this, but I suspect Circle's ARP spoofing technique is the culprit.

Circle With Disney Reviewed - SmallNetBuilder

Updated - Circle with Disney provides suprisingly effective internet parental controls with no subscription fee.

www.smallnetbuilder.com

 

[jeffry51ne]

I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.

Hmmm... THREE different routers ALL exhibit the exact same behavior, and Asus couldn't find anything wrong with one of them. What are the odds of the exact same hardware failure occurring on all 3 routers? I think astronomical. So it seems like it HAS to be something in your specific environment that is causing your psycho mode. I'm thinking that it sounds as if the router is getting overwhelmed by something, making it unable to perform other duties - including running AI protection, or even handling normal routing duties.

What would overwhelm the router? I think you said that your psycho mode takes a while to manifest itself... Any chance that corresponds to your son's computer usage? Is your son running VPN, custom DNS, hosting Torrents? It's possible that something he's doing conflicts with your router settings. You are using DNS filtering so I'm guessing you're attempting to limit some type of internet content; maybe he's trying to "work around it". You could simply power off his system for a while and re-enable everything in the router and see if the problem returns.

I read that you have some static network addresses assigned. Do you really mean that you've created static addresses in the endpoint devices? If you really did create some hardcoded addresses in your end devices, then your DHCP range in the router needs to be setup to avoid those addresses otherwise conflicts could occur.
Or did you really mean to say that you are using DHCP address reservations?
Either way, what is your use case for having specific IP addresses? Are you also port forwarding? What is this being used for?

Thank you so much for taking the time to help investigate...
My son's PC had trouble connecting via DHCP so I statically assigned him an IP Address and he got on. I also have static addresses for the printer, thermostat and Water Heater.

It appears the problem may be solved. Since powering off the Disney Circle AND ANOTHER FACTORY RESET(psycho mode did appear with the Disney Circle powered off initially without factory resetting) it's been 3 days since psycho mode.

One user on this thread said there is a list of compatible routers for the Disney Circle and my routers aren't one of them.

To correct the person that said "Asus Support did not find anything wrong...". That is incorrect. Asus support could not fix the 1 router (AC88U) I sent to them so they replaced it.

But it's all starting to make sense. The Disney Circle's initial setup does something to the Asus routers OS that causes psycho mode.

I'll provide an update in a day or two.

THANK YOU ALL FOR TAKING THE TIME TO HELP. MY FAMILY GREATLY APPRECIATES IT. I'm so glad I don't have to throw away my Asus routers.

 

[jeffry51ne]

You may already have covered this, but I suspect Circle's ARP spoofing technique is the culprit.

Circle With Disney Reviewed - SmallNetBuilder

Updated - Circle with Disney provides suprisingly effective internet parental controls with no subscription fee.

www.smallnetbuilder.com

I think you are correct. Since I unplugged my Disney Circle... psycho mode still appeared... THEN ANOTHER FACTORY RESET... psycho mode has not reared his ugly face.

It all makes senses as the Asus routers are not on the Circle's "compatible router list" which I was not aware of.

THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME. As a Voice Engineer for Cisco I live on the forums. Forums are the key to great tech support. Hence, why I gave this forum a shot before throwing away hundreds of dollars of good Asus equipment.

 

[jeffry51ne]

You can add it to Home

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www.makeuseof.com

Could it be Disney Circle? - quite likely

Gonna give these a try. Thanks!

 

[jeffry51ne]

Still no psycho mode. Looking like the Disney Circle was the issue. Thanks guys!

 

[HTBruceM]

Did you enable any of the Asus AIProtection features for safe browsing and parental controls? Those features might give you some protection, since you're disconnecting your Disney Circle device.

 

[jeffry51ne]

Did you enable any of the Asus AIProtection features for safe browsing and parental controls? Those features might give you some protection, since you're disconnecting your Disney Circle device.

Yes I've enabled them all but none stop the Google or Edge VPN. I read an article on how to edit the registry to prevent him from installing the VPN but somehow he got around it. Microsoft Family seems to be working even if he has the VPN installed. I can't believe they allow this in browsers so easily. 1,000's of kids must be watching porn behind their parents backs. Shame on Mozilla and Microsoft.

 

[jeffry51ne]

Still no psycho mode since unplugging the Disney Circle AND THEN DOING A FACTORY RESET.

I guess we have our answer. My family is so grateful for normal internet again. Thank you all.

 

[jeffry51ne]

You may already have covered this, but I suspect Circle's ARP spoofing technique is the culprit.

Circle With Disney Reviewed - SmallNetBuilder

Updated - Circle with Disney provides suprisingly effective internet parental controls with no subscription fee.

www.smallnetbuilder.com

Still no psycho mode since unplugging the Disney Circle AND THEN DOING A FACTORY RESET.

I guess we have our answer. My family is so grateful for normal internet again. Thank you all.

Guys this is not solved. Took a few weeks but psycho mode returned. Disney Circle still unplugged and nothing new added.

I had all features turned on for those 3 weeks and all of a sudden my family informed me the internet is going up and down again.

I reformatted and have all features turned off except for DNS filtering and the router is running fine. I never even added my 2nd router to the equation. That's sitting unplugged still with the Disney Circle.

Any ideas?

 

[L&LD]

If it's not the hardware, it's (someone) in your family.

 

[SoCalReviews]

I've never heard of your so called "psycho mode" problem with Asus routers before this thread. I've heard of power fluctuation related problems, failing hardware, bad quality cabling, router settings problems, router setup problems, ISP service problems, firmware bugs and LAN topography problems (faulty switches, too many switches, using the wrong Ethernet ports connecting devices, device conflicts, device driver problems, etc.). If you have exhausted your own testing and are absolutely convinced it is the fault of all three of your Asus brand routers then there is nothing stopping you from trying another brand.

 

[RangerZ]

I have no plugged in my AC68U to put it in repeater mode. AiMesh just won't finish. Starts but fails so I have to use repeater mode. Which is fine. I actually like having a separate SSID to choose from.

Not directly related to your core issue, but there are some reported issues with the RT-AC68u on some of the latest Merlin firmware's. See this post. Also in this post Merlin himself suggests there is no reason to run Merlin on the node.

 

[anotherengineer]

Yes I've enabled them all but none stop the Google or Edge VPN. I read an article on how to edit the registry to prevent him from installing the VPN but somehow he got around it. Microsoft Family seems to be working even if he has the VPN installed. I can't believe they allow this in browsers so easily. 1,000's of kids must be watching porn behind their parents backs. Shame on Mozilla and Microsoft.

I find this dns good for that - I put it directly into my ac68u - i think it blocks vpns though also?

Setup Guide | OpenDNS

Thanks for choosing OpenDNS! To get started, you’ll need to set up one or more of your devices to use OpenDNS’s DNS nameservers. For instructions on how to do this, choose your device type from one of the categories below.

www.opendns.com