Asus RT A68U DNS and connection issues

[m4dm0nk3y]

So you had the same issue of no data transmission while the connection stays up?

That's right. No traffic for 1-5mn. Then traffic is back. Quick fix which sometimes works is to disable/enable the wifi interface on the phone/tablet.

Also which brand of clients are you using? In my network only Sony devices are affected.

iPad 2 (iOS)
iPad Mini (iOS)
LG G4 (android)
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (android)

But thanks alot for the update, I'll install that firmware and see if it fixes my issue.

Fingers crossed!

 

[ShadowRaven]

Unfortunately there are no alpha or beta builds available for the RT-AC87U. So I guess I'm stuck with this until eventually there comes an update for it around. It's not even sure if it will get the 382 update I think.

 

[m4dm0nk3y]

Hi,

I've been on Merlin firmware for 3/4 years on my A68U and have always been very happy.
The device is running as a wireless router, with AiProtection (Parental Control / Time Scheduling, DNSFilter), firewall on, a bunch of IP adresses for my connected devices (wired & wireless), and one OpenVPN server from time to time. Nothing fancy really (no QoS, no IPTV, ...).

Everything has always been fine except the weird symptoms as the ones mentioned in this thread (don't remember when it started, maybe from day 1, I really can't tell anymore), on several devices: android mostly but also linux. It felt a lot to me like something was wrong with DNS. But nothing really stood out in logs. Another hicup I had was that the web interface was often very slow on some devices (android and iOS mostly, not linux). I applied official versions one after another up until 380.69, hoping that my issues would be fixed at some point, but unfortunately, they never did. So I concluded something was off in my network and stopped blaming the A68U or Merlin firmware for it.

And then AiMesh got my attention (I actually have two A68Us, the other one is mostly off, configured as a media bridge). As I had a few hours ahead, I took the plunge on my main router (clean install) hoping my issues would go away in the process. Nope, still same problems. After reading comments about AiMesh not being quite there yet, I switched back to a clean Merlin 380.69. Nope, same issues. Heck, I can give a shot at those alphas / betas out there. I tried all versions available at the time and the miracle happened with one of them: 382.3_alpha1-gb26683d. I don't know how or why, or it may just be a coincidence or something. But this version has been working flawlessly for a whole week. No more connection issues, web interface comes up instantly on all my devices. I also use the "Asus Router" app on android and iOS to grant/deny access to my children's devices. Everything works perfectly and is buttery smooth. For those wondering, there have been 0 changes in my network.

Hope this can help some of you guys out there (and that someone will be able to track down the issue).

tl;dr
I used to have such symptoms on my A68U. All fixed since I applied 382.3_alpha1-gb26683d.

A quick feedback on this.
First, the slow web interface is very likely to be a different issue than the DNS thing (i.e I think it has to do with the way some browsers handle SSL/TLS these days...)
Second, 382.3_alpha1-gb26683d was OK for 11 days straight and then the DNS issue stroke again... Same for 384.4_2.
I've been on 384.5 alpha 2 for a few days (it has updated blob for the 68U).
We'll see...

 

[ShadowRaven]

First of all thanks for the update. I have to say I kinda gave up on this issue. I'm now running 384.4_2 but the issue is still very persistent. To me this seems like a hardware issue, which isn't far fetched as I read about many people sending their asus routers back because of faulty hardware.
I don't even know why I'm still buying asus stuff as I had about 2/3 of their devices failing or dieing completely.

 

[m4dm0nk3y]

All the releases I have tried over the last few months exhibit the same problem.
One thing I know for sure though is that the issue is not specific to DNS. All traffic halts for some reason for a few minutes.
Anyway, I'm done. I give up. My home is getting FTTH next week. My future modem-router has limited features (WIFI hotspot, basic parental control, DNS, DHCP, FW, ... but no VPN, no "DNS Filter" ... ). I will setup some of these network services on my debian host running 24/7. Bye Bye 68U.
Was disappointed by my asus phone (failed miserably after a months), now disappointed by another piece of asus hardware... Won't buy asus anytime soon.

 

[salmon]

I've started getting DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NO_INTERNET recently on Ethernet, is this a hardware issue? It's bearable I only get it like 2/3 times a day.

 

[Pierre Nakashian]

I have this problem too, a temporary workaround, is to use chrome on my phone which has no issue to connect to my wifi, connect to the asus router use asus router network tools, portal http://192.168.1.1/Main_Analysis_Content.asp
put my windows 10 ip address in target, and ping it 15 times,
then suddenly windows 10 network problems go away, windows 10 chrome can access internet again. I've also had very similar behavior with my windows 10 accessing the raspberry pi linux box on the same wifi network, i have to ssh to the router 192.168.1.1, then ssh to the raspberry pi, then ping from the raspberry pi to my windows 10 for windows 10 to have tcp network access to it, raspberry pi has the firewall disabled. Strange thing is my wireless AP isolation is disabled on all bands. The router is almost acting like its blocking windows 10 network access, to be safe I turned off all AIProtection no difference, AIProtection was reporting a security alert for my windows 10 "RPC Novell Netware NFS Port Mapper RPC module Stack Overflow" even after I disabled the NFS media services. I have run full virus check on windows 10, nothing found.