Asus RT-AC88U Messing up network

[marklang]

I just purchased a new Asus RT-AC88U wireless router to replace a older Cisco one for a small home office. When I tried to install, I had very strange behavior. First, the router took more than 5 minutes to communicate with my modem and set up the Internet, even after bootup (the WAN light flashed red for more than 4 minutes after all the other lights came on). After that, I had many issues. While I could access the router itself from a wired connection, and the router showed all my devices linked on the local network, I could not access any of my NAS drives. My main computer, a new Windows 10 high end laptop, could not map the drives because it could not find them. When I tried to access them directly by typing the device name into the Network field of file manager, I was taken to a login screen for the device, not to the file tree itself. After more than 4 hours with Asus support, I finally removed the RT-AC88U and put my old Cisco router back. Even then I had similar problems until I rebooted by laptop a couple of times and unmapped and remapped the NAS drives. Somehow the Asus router was messing up the routing on my network even outside the router. I had already upgraded to the latest firmware and reset the router. Of course, everything was working fine before I inserted the RT-AC88U, and I did reboot the modem before booting the router. I made no other changes.

I assume this is just a defective router. I returned it to Newegg and asked for a replacement. However, it makes me nervous. Has anyone seen anything like this? My network is unmanaged, e.g. no server to manage the domain. For that reason, the Windows 10 laptop establishes itself as the network master when I boot it up. It seems like the router must have been not just malfunctioning but sending out defective messages that caused the network management tables in the laptop to be corrupted, also. This is a very highly rated router, which is why I decided to spring for it. I just want to make sure that what I saw was defective rather than some way the RT-AC88U handles its routing functions that is non-standard. Thanks for any advice.

 

[pete y testing]

so first up what is the rt-ac88u connected to for its internet connection eg modem or ethernet fiber etc

all asus have a feature that upon bootup if the router see's a private ip address at its wan port and it conflicts with its own lan port ip addressing it will then restart and change the lan ip addressing so as to avoid IP conflicts and from reading what you have posted certainly sounds the case

this may also be why your nas devices cant communicate as they may have static ip addresses on the wrong subnet

I assume this is just a defective router. I returned it to Newegg and asked for a replacement.

i doubt it , it does sound like the above and it might just be you need to look at what is infront of the router and change its ip address and make the asus the same subnet as the old cisco ( which i assume is actually a linksys )

what is the actual make and model number of that cisco

and what is on the wan side of the router and how is it setup

pete

 

[marklang]

Thanks for your input. I did not know about the feature you mentioned, but I don't think it applies in my situation. The WAN port is connected to an Arris cable modem. It is set to use DHCP to get the WAN address, gateway, and DNS server from the cable provider. That address for me is actually 216.xxx.xxx.xxx. My local LAN is on the subnet 192.168.1.x as is used by most routers. Both the Cisco RV220W router (old) and the Asus RT-AC88U have an address of 192.168.1.1 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0. As I noted, I could access the router. When I looked at its table of connected devices, I saw all of my own. They all had been given addresses in the range of 192.168.1.10 to 192.168.1.99 as I specified. The Asus clearly found all those devices, and listed their IP and MAC addresses. My NAS drives and a few other local devices have fixed IP addresses that are also on that subnet but in the range of 192.168.1.100 and above. Fortunately, since the Cisco router used the same subnet, there was no need for me to change any of my local IP addresses.

While the Asus did take a long time to resolve the Internet connection (much longer than the Cisco), it did finally come online--but only after updating the BIOS and resetting the Asus router. Asus actually tried to tell me I needed to set up the Samba service in the USB devices section. Of course, that is intended to access a disk attached through one of the USB ports on the router, which I did not have. So the router grayed out all the commands the Asus agent told me to try. After several hours with Asus, I tried Dell Pro Support which I have on my laptop. They are very good, and tried to help me figure it out by logging into my computer and testing it directly. The agent was also baffled by what we were seeing. If I opened the Network Center for Windows, I could see the two NAS devices listed in attached devices. However, they did not appear in the left column listing of all storage in file manager under Network where they normally appear. In fact, my computer, which has always appeared there, was also missing. Further, if we typed the name of the device, e.g. \\n7700pro, into the search bar, Windows said it could not find anything. At one point, we got one folder on one of the NAS drives to be mapped in Windows by rebooting the NAS device. However, even then the dropdown under Network in file manager did not show the device as available storage. This time when we typed the name into the file manager search bar, it opened the browser and took us to the device's login screen. Somehow it interpreted our command, which would have used Windows file protocol (I forget the name), for an HTTPS call. We kept getting strange things happening like that and more.

As I noted, we finally gave up, and I reinstalled the Cisco router, and Dell reconnected to help me. The Cisco router connected to the Internet with no delay. However, we still had issues trying to access the NAS devices. In the end, we again unmapped both NAS drives on the laptop, rebooted both NAS drives, rebooted the computer, remapped the drives, and rebooted the computer again. It has been working normally since then. The fact that the Cisco going back into the same network had issues until we rebooted and remapped drives suggests that the Asus router had somehow messed up the network interface software on my laptop and perhaps also on both NAS drives.

Even if the RT-AC88U is malfunctioning, this seems like very strange behavior. That is why it worries me. Pete, again thanks for your insight. However, it seems like what you suggest is not my issue. If I misunderstand your suggestion, please let me know. Or perhaps my new information will suggest something else to you. It was a very frustrating day. Thanks.

 

[SoCalReviews]

Thanks for your input. I did not know about the feature you mentioned, but I don't think it applies in my situation. The WAN port is connected to an Arris cable modem. It is set to use DHCP to get the WAN address, gateway, and DNS server from the cable provider. That address for me is actually 216.xxx.xx.xxx.

Just a suggestion.... Edit your posted reply for your address to what I posted above. You will be ok and it's up to you but for privacy and security generally it's not a good idea to post your personal router's complete WAN address even though it usually changes dynamically for most people. Posting complete subnet LAN addresses like 192.168.x.x doesn't really matter though.

 

[marklang]

Just a suggestion.... Edit your posted reply for your address to what I posted above. You will be ok and it's up to you but for privacy and security generally it's not a good idea to post your personal router's complete WAN address even though it usually changes dynamically for most people. Posting complete subnet LAN addresses like 192.168.x.x doesn't really matter though.

Thanks. I thought about that briefly when I made the post but should have been more careful.

 

[SoCalReviews]

Thanks. I thought about that briefly when I made the post but should have been more careful.

Your good now.