About to pull my hair out - RT-AX88U Pro 2.4 Wireless clients dropping

[The_Bishop]

I've seen other messages about this but never a resolution. Just got an RT-AX88U Pro, running the latest Asus firmware. Completely fresh reset, configured from scratch.

At random times, I'll have an issue with the 2.4 network. I have three devices that will drop off and lose connection, with repetitive messages in the log file:

Jan 26 13:39:42 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(695): eth6: ReAssoc [DEVICE 1], status: Successful (0), rssi:-45
Jan 26 13:39:46 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(645): eth6: Deauth_ind [DEVICE 1], status: 0, reason: Unspecified reason (1), rssi:-43
Jan 26 13:39:46 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(685): eth6: Auth [DEVICE 1], status: Successful (0), rssi:-43
Jan 26 13:39:46 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(695): eth6: ReAssoc [DEVICE 1], status: Successful (0), rssi:-43
Jan 26 13:39:46 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(645): eth6: Deauth_ind [DEVICE 2], status: 0, reason: Unspecified reason (1), rssi:-52
Jan 26 13:39:46 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(685): eth6: Auth [DEVICE 2], status: Successful (0), rssi:-52
Jan 26 13:39:46 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(695): eth6: ReAssoc [DEVICE 2], status: Successful (0), rssi:-52
Jan 26 13:39:50 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(645): eth6: Deauth_ind [DEVICE 1], status: 0, reason: Unspecified reason (1), rssi:-42
Jan 26 13:39:50 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(685): eth6: Auth [DEVICE 1], status: Successful (0), rssi:-42
Jan 26 13:39:50 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(695): eth6: ReAssoc [DEVICE 1], status: Successful (0), rssi:-42

If I power the router off then back on, the devices connect and all will be OK for a random amount of time. Could be 3-4 hours or 15 minutes.
The devices are pretty varied; My pixel 3 phone, my Epson printer and a Honeywell wifi thermostat.

I've tried everything I could find about it, and I'm about to give up and return the router. If it's not stable then it's essentially useless to me.

Has anyone ever actually fixed this problem?

Settings on 2.4 General page:

Smart Connect - Off

Band - 2.4

Network Name - My SSID

Hide SSD - No

Wireless Mode - Auto - bg/Protect grey checkmark, Disable 11b unchecked

802.11ax/Wifi6 Mode - Disable

Wifi Agile Multiband - Disable

Target Wake Time - Disable

Channel Bandwidth - 20/40MHZ

Control Channel - Auto - Current 6

Extension Channel - Auto

Authentication - WPA2 Personal

WPA Encryption - AES

WPA Pre-Shared Key - (My Key)

Protected Management Frames - Disable

Group Key Rotation - 3600



Wireless - Professional

Band - 2.4 GHz

Enable Radio - Yes

Enable wireless scheduler - No

Set AP Isolated - No

Roaming assistant - Disable

Bluetooth Coexistence - Disable

Enable IGMP Snooping - Enable

Multicast Rate(Mbps) - Auto

Preamble Type - Long

AMPDU RTS - Enable

RTS Threshold - 2347

DTIM Interval - 1

Beacon Interval - 100

Enable TX Bursting - Enable

Enable WMM - Enable

Enable WMM No-Acknowledgement - Disable

Enable WMM APSD - Enable

Optimize AMPDU aggregation - Disable

Modulation Scheme - Up to MCS 11 (NitroQAM/1024-QAM)

Airtime Fairness - Disable

Multi-User MIMO - Disable

OFDMA/802.11ax MU-MIMO - Disable *Need to enable 802.11ax / WiFi 6 mode

Explicit Beamforming - Disable

Universal Beamforming - Enable

Tx power adjustment - Performance

 

[KevTech]

Channel Bandwidth 20
Change channel from auto to either 1, 6 or 11

 

[The_Bishop]

Trying that now. Still having issues getting my thermostat to connect. Same repetitive log entries.

 

[dave14305]

Universal Beamforming - Enable

Disable this.

Modulation Scheme - Up to MCS 11 (NitroQAM/1024-QAM)

Consider setting this to MCS 7.

 

[The_Bishop]

Made the change. Still having a hard time getting my thermostat to connect. Really not looking forward to another wipe/reconfig, which seems to fix the issue.

 

[PureSpeed]

Have to tried disabling airtime fairness and Mimo yet?

 

[The_Bishop]

Have to tried disabling airtime fairness and Mimo yet?

It is disabled.

 

[bbunge]

Trying that now. Still having issues getting my thermostat to connect. Same repetitive log entries.

What thermostat? I've run Ecobee and York thermostats with no issues. But I do not mess with the WIFI settings other than to use fixed channels and 20 MHz bandwidth on the 2,4 GHz. The more you mess with the settings the more problems you will have. May be time for a factory reset and reconfigure. Might give Merlin firmware a try...

 

[Tech9]

Enable TX Bursting - Enable

Enable WMM APSD - Enable

Universal Beamforming - Enable

Disable also the above.

 

[Logi]

AX88U Pro + Merlin with ecobee on 2.4GHz default configuration (only change is that I enabled client isolation), I have another 20 IoT devices (Ring, myQ, etc.) all running flawlessly.

 

[The_Bishop]

What thermostat? I've run Ecobee and York thermostats with no issues. But I do not mess with the WIFI settings other than to use fixed channels and 20 MHz bandwidth on the 2,4 GHz. The more you mess with the settings the more problems you will have. May be time for a factory reset and reconfigure. Might give Merlin firmware a try...

It's a Honeywell Wifi, not one of the 'smart' ones.

 

[The_Bishop]

AX88U Pro + Merlin with ecobee on 2.4GHz default configuration (only change is that I enabled client isolation), I have another 20 IoT devices (Ring, myQ, etc.) all running flawlessly.

About to give the Merlin firmware a shot. Really wanted to use the Vlan setup to isolate my IoT stuff, and a big part of me wants to return the router because it's just not working right. How the hell can wireless networking be this broken? I have spare routers that are 4-5 years old that don't have issues like this.

 

[dave14305]

I think @Tech9 peaked a year ago today with this post.

AX86U Check my settings please

Can anyone chime in on these settings AX86U Merlin 388.1_0

www.snbforums.com

 

[Quoc Huynh]

- Is your router near a strong 2.4Ghz sources, such as a microwave, cordless phone system...? If yes, you can try to move it to a different position.
- Are you living in a crowded unit, apartment...? If yes, maybe you should download a Wifi channel analyzer software, and set the Control channel to the least crowded/interfered one.
- According to the syslog, your devices seemed to disconnect with rssi -40 to -50, suggesting they are quite far from the router. Probably you should borrow/setup a wifi extender to see whether your devices would be more stable.

 

[Logi]

About to give the Merlin firmware a shot. Really wanted to use the Vlan setup to isolate my IoT stuff, and a big part of me wants to return the router because it's just not working right. How the hell can wireless networking be this broken? I have spare routers that are 4-5 years old that don't have issues like this.

I had the same unreliable experience with the Asus FW (V5.0) I agree that the new functionality is nice in "theory", when it works, I think that FW version is green, I was going to return mine as well, but I decided to use Merlin in the meantime (V4.0), sooner rather than later we will have Merlin 5.0

 

[The_Bishop]

- Is your router near a strong 2.4Ghz sources, such as a microwave, cordless phone system...? If yes, you can try to move it to a different position.
- Are you living in a crowded unit, apartment...? If yes, maybe you should download a Wifi channel analyzer software, and set the Control channel to the least crowded/interfered one.
- According to the syslog, your devices seemed to disconnect with rssi -40 to -50, suggesting they are quite far from the router. Probably you should borrow/setup a wifi extender to see whether your devices would be more stable.

-No. It's in the same position the previous router was in, that worked perfectly fine except for not having the capacity to accomodate my connection speed. (RT-AX58U)
-No, rural home
-None of the devices are more than 10-15 feet away from the router.

 

[Tech9]

About to give the Merlin firmware a shot.

It may make a difference only if the wireless drivers are different version.

I think @Tech9 peaked a year ago today with this post.

Perhaps still valid, but I don't have experience with newer BCM6715 radios.

 

[The_Bishop]

Just flashed in Merlin, did a hard factory reset and started configuring things in manually. Thermostat is connected without changing any of the 2.4 settings so far, but the real test is to see if it's stable.

Stilled miffed about the vlan loss though.

 

[The_Bishop]

Well, so far so good. Haven't changed anything in the wireless settings yet but everything is staying connected so far. Probably going to disable wifi 6 on the 2.4 network, because I remember that giving my recteq grill issues, and I guess I'll go from there.

AX88U Pro + Merlin with ecobee on 2.4GHz default configuration (only change is that I enabled client isolation), I have another 20 IoT devices (Ring, myQ, etc.) all running flawlessly.

How did you set that up? Do you mean for the whole 2.4 network?

 

[Logi]

Well, so far so good. Haven't changed anything in the wireless settings yet but everything is staying connected so far. Probably going to disable wifi 6 on the 2.4 network, because I remember that giving my recteq grill issues, and I guess I'll go from there.


How did you set that up? Do you mean for the whole 2.4 network?

Option #3: