AC68U occasionally unresponsive with AiMesh enabled

[OzarkEdge]

Since it's currently set up as a Repeater it was easy to do a factory reset and get it up again. I repeated this 3 times. I did a factory reset by holding the reset button. In each case it sent me to the initial router setup. At this point I checked the wifi networks my laptop could see. These showed up:

RT_AC66U_B1_F0_2G
RT_AC66U_B1_F0_5G

The status showed both as "Secured". All attempts to connect fail saying bad password. I then use WPS to log in to RT_AC66U_B1_F0_2G which works. Using a procedure I found on the internet I am able to display the current wifi password and it is "review_9245". Without WPS I never would have gotten in.

When I google for review_9245 I get zero hits. Apparently no one else has discovered it so far. It may be the chosen password is different for every router, or the change is so recent only I have found it so far. I'm also on the most recent 32738, so it might have changed for that release. And I've personally never seen an Asus router default to 192.168.50.1 before, so that might be a recent change too.

Bruce.

You could be right. I've never bothered to use default WiFi since the router always prompts to change it, and I always want to. Perhaps the default WiFi is for WPS users only... folks who can't or don't want to manage their router.

If you would follow the ASUS Setup Guide that comes with your router instead of doing your own thing, you'd save yourself a lot of grief, like trying to determine someone else's WiFi passphrase.

OE

 

[bachastain]

The setup requires me to use a cable which I've explained why it will never work. I'm not using wifi and WPS because I want to.

 

[OzarkEdge]

The setup requires me to use a cable which I've explained why it will never work. I'm not using wifi and WPS because I want to.

Set your PC LAN adapter IP to Auto/DHCP and wire it to the router and it should work like it works for everyone else.

OE

 

[bachastain]

It doesn't but thanks for your help.

 

[Grisu]

It doesn't but thanks for your help.

could you try a factory reset with WPS-button pressed while power on and release it 20s later.
Then wait 5 min, power cycle, connect with your ethernet, dont do any initial setting, directly go to the page: 192.168.50.1/Advanced_Wireless_Content.asp or 192.168.50.1/index.asp

 

[bachastain]

That helped, but not the final solution. The cable worked ok, as it did before, and set my laptop to 192.168.50.*, so Device Discovery was able to find the 192.168.50.1 node.

It seems VERY important NOT have the wifi connected to the router at the same time as the cable. That's due to the Asus change of the default IP to 192.168.50.1, different lan segment. That seems to what screws up my laptop. The cable is telling the laptop to be 192.168.50.* while the wifi is telling the laptop to be 192.168.1.*. Since stuff gets rebooted trying to make all this work, the laptop needs to be set to NOT auto connect to the wifi on reboot.

Anyway, pressing the Config button on Device Discovery 192.168.50.1 launches the setup, but I ignored that and went to 192.168.50.1/Advanced_Wireless_Content.aps and that took me to the "set router password" screen. I set the router password and then it took me to the main router screen/menu. At this point the box type is still set to router. Since I bypassed the setup nothing was set correctly so I selected the Administration menu pick and changed the box type to Mesh node. It changed it but it didn't tell me what to do next. I probably could have changed the box IP, SSIDs, and whatever else it needs to be a mesh node on my network.

At this point the node was still functioning at 192.168.50.1. Since I just changed it to a mesh node I did a node power cycle hoping that would fix the IP. It didn't. So I went back in using the cable, and accessing 192.168.50.1 just took me back to the main setup screen again. Nothing flagged the node to stop showing the setup screen. I can bypass the setup screen with your URL again, but I don't know how to permanently get rid of the setup screen. The last step of the setup must do that, but setup hangs on me near the end before the setup completes.

The only way I'm able to finish the node setup is to use the WPS method to get logged in. Then the setup completes and it gets properly setup as a mesh node.

So I'm back to a repeater again.

Bruce.

 

[OzarkEdge]

That helped, but not the final solution. The cable worked ok, as it did before, and set my laptop to 192.168.50.*, so Device Discovery was able to find the 192.168.50.1 node.

It seems VERY important NOT have the wifi connected to the router at the same time as the cable. That's due to the Asus change of the default IP to 192.168.50.1, different lan segment. That seems to what screws up my laptop. The cable is telling the laptop to be 192.168.50.* while the wifi is telling the laptop to be 192.168.1.*. Since stuff gets rebooted trying to make all this work, the laptop needs to be set to NOT auto connect to the wifi on reboot.

Anyway, pressing the Config button on Device Discovery 192.168.50.1 launches the setup, but I ignored that and went to 192.168.50.1/Advanced_Wireless_Content.aps and that took me to the "set router password" screen. I set the router password and then it took me to the main router screen/menu. At this point the box type is still set to router. Since I bypassed the setup nothing was set correctly so I selected the Administration menu pick and changed the box type to Mesh node. It changed it but it didn't tell me what to do next. I probably could have changed the box IP, SSIDs, and whatever else it needs to be a mesh node on my network.

At this point the node was still functioning at 192.168.50.1. Since I just changed it to a mesh node I did a node power cycle hoping that would fix the IP. It didn't. So I went back in using the cable, and accessing 192.168.50.1 just took me back to the main setup screen again. Nothing flagged the node to stop showing the setup screen. I can bypass the setup screen with your URL again, but I don't know how to permanently get rid of the setup screen. The last step of the setup must do that, but setup hangs on me near the end before the setup completes.

The only way I'm able to finish the node setup is to use the WPS method to get logged in. Then the setup completes and it gets properly setup as a mesh node.

So I'm back to a repeater again.

Bruce.

Point 1... some/newer PCs are smart enough to disable the WiFi connection when using the LAN connection. Otherwise, you have to manually disconnect/switch OFF the PC WiFi connection before using the LAN connection or else odd things can happen.

Point 2... directly configuring a node is not required... just reset it and add it to the AiMesh from the router GUI.

OE

 

[bachastain]

I'll definitely remember point 2 for my next attempt.

Ok, so just to make an update actually on topic to the thread title, my mesh pauses remain unresolved. To try and eliminate the possibility of hardware problems, I'm beating on the box as a repeater. It seems to me that should exercise and test most of the same functionality/hardware as a mesh node. So far in a couple of days of testing, no lengthy outages so far.

If I do see repeater outages I'll have to decide what my next step is.

If the repeater never stumbles, then it seems more likely there is a mesh software bug. In that case I'm on hold and back to repeater until the next software release.

I'll have a chance to do more mesh testing next week. The node is acting like it loses connection with the router. I can still ping the node but not the router. Within 2 minutes I'm able to ping the router again. My question is whether the pings of the router start to work again because the node starts working again, or because my client gives up on the node and switches my wifi connection back to the router. I should be able to watch my connection BSSID to see if I switch back to the router at the same time the pings return. If that is happening, then the node might be offline longer than I thought.

Bruce.

 

[Sinbios]

Ok, so just to make an update actually on topic to the thread title, my mesh pauses remain unresolved. To try and eliminate the possibility of hardware problems, I'm beating on the box as a repeater. It seems to me that should exercise and test most of the same functionality/hardware as a mesh node. So far in a couple of days of testing, no lengthy outages so far.

If I do see repeater outages I'll have to decide what my next step is.

If the repeater never stumbles, then it seems more likely there is a mesh software bug. In that case I'm on hold and back to repeater until the next software release.

Same, I gave up on AiMesh and switched to a repeater setup, connection has been solid and I haven't had to deal with any issues with dropouts since August. It's regrettable that the roaming's not as smooth in repeater mode and the bandwidth is lower, but the bizarre issues I've seen (e.g. node can't ping the main router but can access the internet??) suggest AiMesh is just not ready for prime time yet.