Asus RT-AC86U - 2.4ghz reliability

[foosion]

The AC86U is very popular here. When I look at Amazon reviews, there are a lot of people complaining that 2.4ghz stops working or is otherwise unreliable.

Are the people reporting problems unlucky, clueless, the victims of a bad batch, or the like? Or is there a problem with router?

 

[L&LD]

Yes!

Seriously though, some people have network setups or requirements that bring these issues to light. Most people that buy this router have no problems and therefore do not post online singing its praises.

The best you can do is try one (or two) in your specific configuration and see if the issues are real or effectively moot, for you.

 

[foosion]

Good advice, although there are lots of reports of issues that only show up beyond the return period.

I'd note that there are many people singing the praises of that router, on Amazon, here and elsewhere.

 

[L&LD]

That is why you want to extensively test within the return period for all your possible network usage and expectations.

Considering how many RT-AC86U's have been sold, the online praising is a rather small percentage.

 

[Dave Parker]

Too old to sing but 1vote of praise here for the 86U. Going on 4 months and no problems. Using Merlins 384.9.

 

[sfx2000]

Are the people reporting problems unlucky, clueless, the victims of a bad batch, or the like? Or is there a problem with router?

I've been kind of watching this - I'm suspecting a firmware bug in the upstream Broadcom stuff - the wireless driver is all closed source (Broadcom-WL) and seems like a lot of issues related to client connectivity across the board here, esp with 2.4GHz on the current Asus tip.

Concern here is that folks are seeing issues, assuming the Asus device is somehow "bad" hardware - that's hard to accept, as most reports I've seen are on the updated firmware.

@RMerlin - care to comment here?

 

[st3v3n]

foosion, As with every product made, with each production run, a few units may slip past casual QC instpection. Asus routers usually don't have problems. We had to request replacement of two 86Us by Amazon during the 30-day return periods, and the third 86U was a charm, with no issues. We upgraded/configured it to run two concurrent OpenVPN tunnels and it's performed extremely well, with WiFi faults. It was odd but the two returns were a fluke. Others have reported similar problems, but percentage-wise, it only takes a few reports to make it seem as if a model has wide-spread defects in a router, which is usually quite rare.

While It's not for everyone, for the units sold by Amazon, the square trade hazard/replacement policy has developed a good rep, and is something we buy for all our electronics. The one area where Asus doesn't shine, (from personal experience) is their warranty service, which is a modern Achilles heel for most major manufacturers. If you buy the policy, it doesn't add much to the per unit cost. If a unit fails several months later, the policy beats the pants off of the warranty/service (always read policy terms before buying). We sent a different product through factory warranty service and finally, two months later received a different beat up refurb, which had worse problems. The manufacturer wasn't responsive, so we filed a consumer report and stopped buying their products. We only used square trade process once but it beat the warranty by light years; the process was was fast, shipping was pre-paid, and when the item couldn't be repaire within the time frame, we received full credit for the price paid, so we could purchase the replacement. Like house hazard/loss policy, you don't want to use it but are glad it's in place if you need it.

With the Asus routers we've owned, sold, installed/setup/or configured, never had a radio fail. Ran into several customers who were inept in configuring/admin their routers, who thought it was all plug and play. There are many different aspects which can affect each/every installation, so it's easy for some to place blame on a router. Electronics sometimes fail due to age so always have a plan 'B' for a backup/standby router. The 86U radio has good reach for us; we don't need AiMesh so install Asuswrt-Merlin for the benefits the FW adds. We're still partial to the three radios in the AC3200.

As for router reviews on the web, Amazon reviews are a mixed bag. Amazon has been better over the past year at weeding out one-time 'verified-fakes' but some folks are whiners, others are misleading or disingenuous. The third party sellers exercise a great deal of control over what appears in their reviews so we always purchase directly from Amazon. If one discounts 50% of what is posted to the web, that's a decent starting point to dig in, to find accurate info. SNB forums is a good repository of information, and a favorite of Asus aficionados. The answers most people needed have already been asked and answered from many angles and searching the threads will reveal them. Good luck with your 86U.

 

[Chiny91]

The 2.4 GHz radio on my home AC86U died yesterday (after 7 months) causing panic in the house. I've tacked on an old N66 via ethernet to the AC86U for now to restore calm but am now left with a "replace or go for something else" problem. Other documented bugs for the AC86U don't help (principally snmp for me). Still, I'm tending towards another just to make config easy and the price/performance point seems much the same as when I purchased. Mutter.

 

[Dave Parker]

The 2.4 GHz radio on my home AC86U died yesterday (after 7 months) causing panic in the house. I've tacked on an old N66 via ethernet to the AC86U for now to restore calm but am now left with a "replace or go for something else" problem. Other documented bugs for the AC86U don't help (principally snmp for me). Still, I'm tending towards another just to make config easy and the price/performance point seems much the same as when I purchased. Mutter.

You are still in warranty. I would try RMA.

 

[foosion]

The 2.4 GHz radio on my home AC86U died yesterday (after 7 months) causing panic in the house. I've tacked on an old N66 via ethernet to the AC86U for now to restore calm but am now left with a "replace or go for something else" problem. Other documented bugs for the AC86U don't help (principally snmp for me). Still, I'm tending towards another just to make config easy and the price/performance point seems much the same as when I purchased. Mutter.

I wonder what would be more reliable in the same general price/performance point

 

[Chiny91]

Recently had a chance to catch up on the dead 2.4 GHz radio in my AC86U. Tried a factory reset, latest Merlin s/w, more reboots, all to no avail. 7 minutes chat session with Amazon then 16 hours later, the replacement AC86U turned up. The 2.4 GHz radio works, of course; maybe I was unlucky. Fingers crossed this time

 

[binarymelon]

I guess I'll add to this. I'm on my 3rd dead 2.4 radio. The first unit was dead as soon as a I brought it back from the store (so was easy to get a replacement), which worked for a little over 5 months (worked great actually) and then was just dead when we woke up one morning. I opened up an RMA with Asus and had a replacement back in a little over a week and that unit died in 2 days. When these Asus routers are working they're fantastic devices, but I've had at least 1 failure for each generation of product I've bought from them (1 N56U, 1 AC68W and now 3 AC86U). I think I'm probably just going to get this unit replaced, disable the radios and get a Google Wifi or Orbi system and be done with it.

 

[st3v3n]

binarymelon; Bummer, some days you get the bear, but sounds like the bear bit you several times. Never had that much bad luck with any brand. This is Just an idea, but is your network (modem, router and a switch (if any) running on a capable UPS batter backup? Had a client a couple years ago who suffered repeated unit failures, which stopped after testing, found the majority of issues were due to multiple micro power hits. Good luck with your next one.

 

[binarymelon]

binarymelon; Bummer, some days you get the bear, but sounds like the bear bit you several times. Never had that much bad luck with any brand. This is Just an idea, but is your network (modem, router and a switch (if any) running on a capable UPS batter backup? Had a client a couple years ago who suffered repeated unit failures, which stopped after testing, found the majority of issues were due to multiple micro power hits. Good luck with your next one.

The ONT is plugged into a UPS provided by my ISP that doesn't have a battery, but no nothing else is on a UPS. We used to have power issues at our house (it may have been the cause of the N56 going down), but things have been pretty stable the last few years. Really not sure what to do about the 86U. I've already purchased a UniFi AP, but I don't really want to pay shipping for another RMA to ASUS. It's mostly functional, but I can't seem to change a bunch of settings right now because of whatever hardware failure there was. Can't even release the WAN IP lease to swap in my old 68W.

 

[L&LD]

The ONT is plugged into a UPS provided by my ISP that doesn't have a battery, but no nothing else is on a UPS. We used to have power issues at our house (it may have been the cause of the N56 going down), but things have been pretty stable the last few years. Really not sure what to do about the 86U. I've already purchased a UniFi AP, but I don't really want to pay shipping for another RMA to ASUS. It's mostly functional, but I can't seem to change a bunch of settings right now because of whatever hardware failure there was. Can't even release the WAN IP lease to swap in my old 68W.

Curious how a UPS can have no battery?

Also, what troubleshooting steps did you take to determine if the RT-AC86U's were actual hardware failures?

Seems a little suspicious that three all went belly up? Surely they were not all from the same batch, were they?

 

[binarymelon]

Curious how a UPS can have no battery?

Also, what troubleshooting steps did you take to determine if the RT-AC86U's were actual hardware failures?

Seems a little suspicious that three all went belly up? Surely they were not all from the same batch, were they?

I don't see how the 2.4 radio going on all 3 would be firmware related. The issue persists between firmware upgrade/downgrade/restore. No idea about batch but they were all the same hardware revision (R1.5, I think).

 

[L&LD]

I don't see how the 2.4 radio going on all 3 would be firmware related. The issue persists between firmware upgrade/downgrade/restore. No idea about batch but they were all the same hardware revision (R1.5, I think).

So, you were restoring a saved backup config file? To me, that is worrying and an obvious sign of self-inflicted bugs.

 

[binarymelon]

So, you were restoring a saved backup config file? To me, that is worrying and an obvious sign of self-inflicted bugs.

Restore to factory

 

[DarkKnight75]

Upgraded 2 months ago from my aging n66u to ac86u and it's been rock solid..no issues on Merlin firmware.

Build date Nov 2018..hw rev 1.5

 

[st3v3n]

L&LD, re #15, I've never seen a UPS that didn't have a battery, going back to the 1970s when we started buying multiple UPS units each year and stopped messing with 'surge protectors' that were (and still are) useless for computing purposes. A friend recently confused the term UPS (delivery carrier with brown trucks) with the Uninterruptible Power Supply type of UPS. Cheers.