Asus BT10 - How to get it Stable?

[jkaero]

I recently upgraded from an old RBR50 setup for a decently large sprawling house. I picked up 3x BT10s and a BD5 (Far node that isnt going to get 6ghz anyways). Unfortunately i need to do wireless backhaul at least for now. The speeds are awesome when its working but Im frequently having devices disconnect (especially 2.4ghz) and my Pixel 8 seems to constantly be between networks or with “connected by no internet”. I have tried resetting and re-doing the network but its not better. Also have devices that suddenly wont get authenticated by the network when nothing has changed in settings - Im finding myself rebooting everything pretty much daily. Its running the most current FW.

I see a lot of posts about issues with BT10 / BQ16 but have people got these working well? Any tips to get it stable? Im about to return it and go with something else maybe Ubiquiti UDR7 + nodes but the lack of MLO scares me. Any ideas / recommendations?

 

[degrub]

Make sure your 2.4GHz radios are set to a fixed channel, 20 MHz, WPA2 as a start for your IOTs

 

[jkaero]

Make sure your 2.4GHz radios are set to a fixed channel, 20 MHz, WPA2 as a start for your IOTs

Thanks - will try and report - was set to 20/40 and auto channel

 

[degrub]

You should do wifi survey to see what channels are using less bandwidth if you are in a crowded wifi area.

 

[degrub]

Thanks - will try and report - was set to 20/40 and auto channel

Let it pick the channel at first. Then set to manual and use that channel.

here is another tip from another thread in AX subforum for the 5 GHz and higher bands

Poor WiFi Signal RT-Ax82U

Hi, I bought a brand new Asus RT-Ax82U, it came with Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388_25004, everything was setup and wifi signals were great around my house. I updated the fimrware ( fro 25004 to 25017 , then from 25017 to 25024, and from 25024 to 25029, and then lastly from 25029 to 25035) . Now i...

www.snbforums.com

 

[Justinh]

lack of MLO scares me

Really?

 

[jkaero]

Really?

Just because it seems like it really helps with the wireless backhaul - or so the reviews say

 

[RogerSC]

Yes, MLO really does help with wireless backhaul. My two-node BT10 mesh is totally stable. Just looked, and it's been up for over two weeks now, with no problems. Don't know what settings you're using there, but my Samsung S25+ and iPhone 16 get over 900Mbps across our house on gigabit fiber, never had anywhere close to that before. Our main network has MLO enabled, like the backhaul. All of our IoT devices stay connected, they're using the 2.4GHz WPA2 IoT network, and are doing fine. I do choose channels on all radios, don't go with automatic. On the other hand, I'm not using VLANs or VPNs, or AiProtection. Pretty vanilla home network. We do have a "media bridge" mode router that I use to provide a wired port for the HDhomerun upstairs in the bedroom where the OTA antenna is...that one runs uses the 5GHz. band on the IoT network.

All working great, stable, and best wireless performance I've had. Some odd messages in the system log, but they look like Asus development debug messages. My signature has the firmware version that I'm using, the latest that I'm aware of. I wish that I had some magic things to tell the OP...I configured it pretty much the same way that I configured the previous ZenWiFi XT8, using the Asus router app for initial setup, and then went to the web admin GUI for specific final setup after the mesh was up.

 

[jkaero]

Thanks - I wish it was that easy. This AM I woke up with my Pixel8 in "Connected by no internet" state and the light on my BD5 blinking blue. Log is attached - there are a ton of things like this:
Aug 2 06:50:46 kernel: WLC_SCB_DEAUTHENTICATE_FOR_REASON err -30
Aug 2 06:50:46 roamast: wl2.2: remove client [54:14:f3:57:27:b8] from monitor list
Aug 2 06:50:47 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(673): wl2.2: Disassoc 54:14:F3:57:27:B8, status: 0, reason: Disassociated because sending station is leaving (or has left) BSS (8), rssi:0

Is this normal?

 

[RogerSC]

Thanks - I wish it was that easy. This AM I woke up with my Pixel8 in "Connected by no internet" state and the light on my BD5 blinking blue. Log is attached - there are a ton of things like this:
Aug 2 06:50:46 kernel: WLC_SCB_DEAUTHENTICATE_FOR_REASON err -30
Aug 2 06:50:46 roamast: wl2.2: remove client [54:14:f3:57:27:b8] from monitor list
Aug 2 06:50:47 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(673): wl2.2: Disassoc 54:14:F3:57:27:B8, status: 0, reason: Disassociated because sending station is leaving (or has left) BSS (8), rssi:0

Is this normal?

Yes, I see those DEAUTH messages as well, associated with mobile devices. Not a problem here, my mobile devices never disconnect when I'm using them. I think that this must be done while the devices are idle.

And I have the roaming assistant thing disabled, it was causing me problems with previous routers, so I've continued to disable it. Don't need it. That setting is on the WIreless -> Professional page, and you need to do this for each radio.

The "wlceventd" messages seem to also be normal, low level messages that Asus includes for debugging in case you report a problem and they get your log with your problem report.

You can do what I do for getting rid of a lot of the noise messages, it'll make it a lot easier to look at your log and see the more significant messages. The messages that I see in your log are pretty much the same ones that I see, but there's just too many of them to make any sense of it. Set up ssh to your router in Administration -> System -> Services in the web admin GUI. Then ssh into your router using something like putty...on my mac I just use a terminal window to run ssh. Then issue these commands via your ssh window:

nvram get log_level
nvram set log_level=5
nvram commit
reboot

The first "get log_level" is simply to see what your current log_level variable value is. Most likely this command will return "6". Setting that variable to "5" cuts out a bunch of messages. After doing this, you'll only see the more significant messages.

Hope this helps.

 

[jkaero]

Thanks - I havent attempted disabling Roaming Assistant, will try that now to see if that helps. Good call on the log level - will adjust that

 

[Poul Bak]

Thanks - I wish it was that easy. This AM I woke up with my Pixel8 in "Connected by no internet" state and the light on my BD5 blinking blue. Log is attached - there are a ton of things like this:
Aug 2 06:50:46 kernel: WLC_SCB_DEAUTHENTICATE_FOR_REASON err -30
Aug 2 06:50:46 roamast: wl2.2: remove client [54:14:f3:57:27:b8] from monitor list
Aug 2 06:50:47 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(673): wl2.2: Disassoc 54:14:F3:57:27:B8, status: 0, reason: Disassociated because sending station is leaving (or has left) BSS (8), rssi:0

Is this normal?

Take a good look of the time these messages are logged.
I bet you left home with your phone at 6.50 that day.
That makes the router sad, so it cries: "Oh no, I have lost connection to that phone".