AC66U Reboot Issues with HW Acceleration

[Wysie]

Hi all,

I've seen a couple of reboot issues being mentioned with regards to AC66U, and so far here are my findings.

I'm using StarHub (Singapore) Fibre 200Mbps.

1. With any firmware (I've tried just about all of them), the connection is stable with HW acceleration turned off.

2. HW acceleration works great on 3.0.0.4.270.26 and below.

3. After firmware 3.0.0.4.270.26, HW acceleration causes the router to reboot intermittently. Sometimes it reboots within 5 minutes, but I've seen it go for 2 hours before rebooting as well.

Apparently, this issue only started happening after StarHub did a maintenance update, but users are able to confirm that it does not happen with AC68 or other routers (seems to be specific to AC66 HW acceleration module which RMerlin has said is close sourced )

I have not tested with official Asus firmwares but from what I've read in http://community.starhub.com/t5/Max...tarhub-maxinfinity/td-p/53981/highlight/false it seems to be giving the same results as what I just tested.

As of now I'm using .374, reason being it has all the functions I need (OpenVPN, iptables, etc.), although I'm losing the HW acceleration in the process .

Update #1: I'm successfully running .270.26 using wan-start instead of openvpn-event for selective routing ! Had to change "Redirect Internet Traffic" under the VPN settings to no and all is working great now (http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=95172&postcount=31). With that said, it'd still be nice to be able to run on the latest firmware with HW acceleration set to on...

 

[RMerlin]

If you have the time, could you test out 354.26 Beta 1? Since that was also the last FW for which HW acceleration worked correctly with PPPoE, I'm curious to see if that's the precise moment where all those things broke with HW acceleration.

 

[Wysie]

Hi RMerlin, sure thing, happy to help, but I only see a .354.29 beta here: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/bkfq2a6aebq68//Asuswrt-Merlin#vv78zn861np36

Can you point me to the .26 beta? Thanks!

 

[wouterv]

I do see various posts here and in the Asus forum regarding router reboots, while for sure many other users do not notice those reboots.
Is it suspected these are related to the combination of PPPoE and HW acceleration in certain firmware?

 

[chercm]

If you have the time, could you test out 354.26 Beta 1? Since that was also the last FW for which HW acceleration worked correctly with PPPoE, I'm curious to see if that's the precise moment where all those things broke with HW acceleration.

can the beta firmware be used on the AC66U?

 

[RMerlin]

Hi RMerlin, sure thing, happy to help, but I only see a .354.29 beta here: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/bkfq2a6aebq68//Asuswrt-Merlin#vv78zn861np36

Can you point me to the .26 beta? Thanks!

That's a typo, sorry. I meant 354.29.

 

[RMerlin]

I do see various posts here and in the Asus forum regarding router reboots, while for sure many other users do not notice those reboots.
Is it suspected these are related to the combination of PPPoE and HW acceleration in certain firmware?

Most of the reboot issues are from Singapore users. At least one ISP there changed something in the recent weeks, causing the router to crash when HW acceleration is enabled.

 

[RMerlin]

can the beta firmware be used on the AC66U?

As long you download it from the RT-AC66U/Beta folder, sure.

 

[FLA NL]

I also can confirm that after 270.26 for me all firmwares suffer of random reboots on my rt-ac66u if its in router mode (subnet) behind a fritzbox 7360 modem. I have to choose between hw acceleration or using ipv6, and even with ipv6 turned off it did suffer of other issues like the 2,4 Ghz connection completely disappeared after 21 days. Now with hw acceleration turned off and using ipv6 again things look more stable using the latest official firmware. I must say that this is the most unstable router that I ever had and kinda regret it that I have chosen this one to replace my previous router which could function for months without any issues.

 

[chercm]

just installed 354.29. with hw accelerator on. will monitor

Merlin .it is still rebooting

 

[RMerlin]

just installed 354.29. with hw accelerator on. will monitor

Merlin .it is still rebooting

Ok, thanks for testing it.

At this point there is nothing that can be done beside waiting for Asus/Broadcom to fix it.

 

[Wysie]

Thanks chercm !

RMerlin: Apologies for the delay as I hadn't had time till the weekends, I can also confirm that it reboots with 354.29

 

[Wysie]

Thanks chercm !

RMerlin: Apologies for the delay as I hadn't had time till the weekends, I can also confirm that it reboots with 354.29

 

[-KS-Silence[AU]]

Router Crashing when flinging files at high Speeds

Merlin, im also having my RT-AC66U running 3.0.0.4.374.32 Crash and reboot when trying to send files at high speed between my Rig that is on 5Ghz + 2.4Ghz (2x Lan Nics into a Gbit Switch into a EA-N66 for 5Ghz and a PCI-E Wifi card for 2.4ghz) and a server down stairs that is Gbit Etherneted into the RT-AC66U.

The transfer will hit and stabilize at about 150mbit/s Cumulative thruput (disconnecting from 2.4ghz on the rig makes no difference so the server must be the bottleneck) then about 10-20 seconds later EVERYTHING just drops dead. All wireless clients disconnect and the router reboots, confirmed by looking at the syslog and uptime values.

HW Accelleration is on.

Earlier firmwares did not have this issue and on those earlier ones with a different server i could push close to 1gbit/s over wireless without ever having issues!


Should i try a later firmware?
Try without HW Accel?

The Router (well the radios anyway) dont show as overheating, (2.4ghz sits at about 45c and 5ghz sits at about 54c and for the whole time until the device crashes they stay pretty much FLAT)

- Alex.

 

[RMerlin]

Merlin, im also having my RT-AC66U running 3.0.0.4.374.32 Crash and reboot when trying to send files at high speed between my Rig that is on 5Ghz + 2.4Ghz (2x Lan Nics into a Gbit Switch into a EA-N66 for 5Ghz and a PCI-E Wifi card for 2.4ghz) and a server down stairs that is Gbit Etherneted into the RT-AC66U.

The transfer will hit and stabilize at about 150mbit/s Cumulative thruput (disconnecting from 2.4ghz on the rig makes no difference so the server must be the bottleneck) then about 10-20 seconds later EVERYTHING just drops dead. All wireless clients disconnect and the router reboots, confirmed by looking at the syslog and uptime values.

HW Accelleration is on.

Earlier firmwares did not have this issue and on those earlier ones with a different server i could push close to 1gbit/s over wireless without ever having issues!


Should i try a later firmware?
Try without HW Accel?

The Router (well the radios anyway) dont show as overheating, (2.4ghz sits at about 45c and 5ghz sits at about 54c and for the whole time until the device crashes they stay pretty much FLAT)

- Alex.

The issue reported in the thread had to do with a compatibility issue between the WAN and some ISPs. Your case is different, as you are strictly transfering over LAN.

Updating the FW would probably be a good idea, as well as a factory default reset in case one of your low level settings might be outdated/invalid.

Disabling HW acceleration might be worth a try, tho it shouldn't in theory affect LAN transfer. Might be different when it's between wifi and wired however - hard to know for sure with this closed source code.

Beyond that, a serial cable would be required to intercept any kernel error message causing the reboot.

 

[-KS-Silence[AU]]

Is it possible to configure the device to save a highly verbose log to either JFFS or the attached USB HDD on crash or frequently enough for testing purposes in the hope that we can catch the issue? id rather not have to open the thing to plug a serial cable to it...

EDIT:
after a FW upgrade to 374.35_4 the crashing seems to have stopped for now though there are often huge dips in speed during large transfers, the cause of which i havent worked out yet....

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