Asus RT-AC3200 issues and impressions

[wsarahan]

Wow, looks like Asus is really dropping the ball by not fixing Smart Connect in latest FW. No such problems I can see with DLINK or NETGEAR's 3200 routers. People will be staying away. Hope Merlin doesn't !

Well ley`s see how long will be to Asus release a new firmware, i think it won`t take long as we can see here at the topic a couple of people with some issue

 

[RMerlin]

There's already a (non-public) beta firmware which has an upgraded Broadcom SDK.

Also if you updated to 3.0.0.4.378_412x, make sure you do either a factory default reset, or at least go to the Smart Connect page, and click on the button at the bottom to reset rules to default values. I know some steering values were adjusted in the latest firmware.

Netgear does not have any issue because their band steering is dumbed down to an extreme - they use their own very basic band steering daemon rather than use Broadcom's full-featured one. The sweet spot however probably lies somewhere in the middle between these two extreme approaches.

I suspect that, over time, users will experiment with these settings, and start posting their own recommended settrings to use instead of those set by Asus.

 

[wsarahan]

There's already a (non-public) beta firmware which has an upgraded Broadcom SDK.

Also if you updated to 3.0.0.4.378_412x, make sure you do either a factory default reset, or at least go to the Smart Connect page, and click on the button at the bottom to reset rules to default values. I know some steering values were adjusted in the latest firmware.

Netgear does not have any issue because their band steering is dumbed down to an extreme - they use their own very basic band steering daemon rather than use Broadcom's full-featured one. The sweet spot however probably lies somewhere in the middle between these two extreme approaches.

I suspect that, over time, users will experiment with these settings, and start posting their own recommended settrings to use instead of those set by Asus.

Thanks Merlin

I Made the factory reset and the reset default values, no sucess

 

[jerry6]

Wow hope Asus picks up on this dropping connection problem . That or Melrin FW as it has not had this problem .
Is there away to find this magic beta FW ?

 

[RMerlin]

Wow hope Asus picks up on this dropping connection problem . That or Melrin FW as it has not had this problem .
Is there away to find this magic beta FW ?

It's not public, it was sent to me just for testing purposes.

I doubt my firmware will change much, as I suspect a lot of the problems people experience is caused by clients having trouble dealing with Smart Connect's dynamic move between radios. The best one could do at the router's level is to adjust the criteria by which it decides to move clients around. This is already fully configurable by the end user on the Smart Connect page.

 

[wsarahan]

It's not public, it was sent to me just for testing purposes.

I doubt my firmware will change much, as I suspect a lot of the problems people experience is caused by clients having trouble dealing with Smart Connect's dynamic move between radios. The best one could do at the router's level is to adjust the criteria by which it decides to move clients around. This is already fully configurable by the end user on the Smart Connect page.

Agree

But the problem is like me that do not know very much about to configure the criteria by myself

When you release a firmware Merlin is that possible to add some pre profiles or the Asus structure will not allow that? It will be awesome if it`s possible

 

[jerry6]

so what should I do , for now I have clients set to 5.1 5.2 and 2.4 , no smart stuff , yet it still disconnects every few minutes , a real pain streaming video or large file transfers . Plus seems android phones here are not connecting , will keep trying ,, but it don't look like I'll be keeping this router

 

[ixiom]

I have the same issue as jerry6. Turned off smart connect and it's still disconnecting every hour or less.


-
Hideo Shinohara

 

[RMerlin]

Agree

But the problem is like me that do not know very much about to configure the criteria by myself

I doubt much of us do either. I'm sure over time people will start experimenting with them, and post their own recommendation.

One thing I'd recommend people experiment with for starter is the VHT setting. This is what should (in theory) determine if AC clients are allowed to connect or not to a specific band.

When you release a firmware Merlin is that possible to add some pre profiles or the Asus structure will not allow that? It will be awesome if it`s possible

That would require for me to understand how all those settings actually work - which I don't. Only Broadcom (and their partners with access to the SDK's documentation) probbably do.

 

[NightOwl326]

There's already a (non-public) beta firmware which has an upgraded Broadcom SDK.

Will you be including this upgraded SDK in your rt-ac3200 merlin release?

 

[RMerlin]

Will you be including this upgraded SDK in your rt-ac3200 merlin release?

I always eventually update once the source code becomes available. Right now it isn't, since it's just a beta FW build. So, it will depend if I'm ready to release before Asus releases newer source code or not.

 

[NightOwl326]

so what should I do , for now I have clients set to 5.1 5.2 and 2.4 , no smart stuff , yet it still disconnects every few minutes , a real pain streaming video or large file transfers . Plus seems android phones here are not connecting , will keep trying ,, but it don't look like I'll be keeping this router

It's that whole bleeding edge technology thing that this forum always warns about. If you want perfection buy a product that has been on the market for a year. If you are patient, and can wait for updates that improve products go bleeding edge like the rt-ac3200. I love bleeding edge products and I adore my 3200. But then I expect some issues and will patiently wait for ASUS to sort it out. You are a 68u customer who bought a 3200.

 

[jsquaredz]

traffic statistics analyzer bug

Posted this as a separate thread but i think it belongs here.

When going into the traffic analyzer statistics, the Daily value will tell me some amount of gigabytes. If I change to a different client, the amount of client traffic gets added to the daily traffic and the number goes up. These should not be adding together.

An example is that the Daily traffic is showing 1 Gig of traffic. I then go to one of the clients to see its graph(lets say there are 10 clients each with 100Megs of usage to make the 1G total) and the daily total increments to 1.1G, then I go to the next client, and the total goes to 1.2G, then i go to the next, and now it shows 1.3G. If I go back to all clients, the total now goes to 2.3G.
Each client I go to should only be showing 100M, and the total for all clients should always be saying 1G. Something is adding together each time.

Using stock ASUS RT-AC3200 Firmware version 3.0.0.4.378.4129

 

[jerry6]

It's that whole bleeding edge technology thing that this forum always warns about. If you want perfection buy a product that has been on the market for a year. If you are patient, and can wait for updates that improve products go bleeding edge like the rt-ac3200. I love bleeding edge products and I adore my 3200. But then I expect some issues and will patiently wait for ASUS to sort it out. You are a 68u customer who bought a 3200.

no it's not bleeding edge , it's old edge with an extra radio , at least the way I'm using it , no smart apps running . Bleeding edge would be the 4x4 radio . Constant disconnects should not be happening .

 

[Deleted member 22229]

no it's not bleeding edge , it's old edge with an extra radio , at least the way I'm using it , no smart apps running . Bleeding edge would be the 4x4 radio . Constant disconnects should not be happening .

I have to agree with this post. It's one thing to expect a few firmware bugs and wait them out till there is a fix, it's a completely different story when you spend big money for a router and devices wont even stay connected. It's obvious Asus has done know real world testing with this router at all before releasing it to the masses and promoting it like it's the next best thing to sliced bread.

 

[microchip]

I have to agree with this post. It's one thing to expect a few firmware bugs and wait them out till there is a fix, it's a completely different story when you spend big money for a router and devices wont even stay connected. It's obvious Asus has done know real world testing with this router at all before releasing it to the masses and promoting it like it's the next best thing to sliced bread.

it's obvious. ASUS is behind NETGEAR and D-Link in AC3200 so they *had* to release this unit as fast as possible, regardless if everything works as it should or not.

 

[jsquaredz]

I'm a bit sad because I sent my netgear R8000 back (which looked awesome) for this disconnecting ac3200, for the betterr statistics and real time traffic info. Im a bit of a stat nerd, but i am bummed to not have a stable wireless platform.

 

[NightOwl326]

#1 complaint on netgear forum for R8000 is disconnects. I had an opportunity to play with a couple of these and watch when the disconnects occur one of the 5 ghz radios will drop off wifi analyzer. The signal just disappeared and then a few seconds would come back. So no the r8000 is not perfect but has been out longer with multiple firmware updates. Give Asus a little time with this new architecture. Netgear has had it out longer and people have less dropouts after updates, but still happening.

 

[NightOwl326]

no it's not bleeding edge , it's old edge with an extra radio , at least the way I'm using it , no smart apps running . Bleeding edge would be the 4x4 radio . Constant disconnects should not be happening .

Completely new architecture with new circuitry so 2 radios on the same band do not interfere with each other. Sounds new and bleeding edge to me. Its not like all the had to do was stick another radio in the case.

 

[shpankey]

Just ordered this thing from the egg. It arrives Tuesday. Boy oh boy, now I'm really worried.