Asus RT-AX88U packet drops

[Arny]

Hello

I am seeing the following issue with my brand new Asus RT-AX88U router

When I connect my laptop to Ethernet port, my connection drops intermittently - for couple of seconds. This results in my video calls freezing and then getting back to normal. On further investigation I found that this happens only for the uplink traffic - downlink traffic does not seem to be affected. I notice that the problem seems to happen much more frequently when my 4 TB USB drive is connected - the drive being formatted as Ext3.

I can reproduce this problem on 2 separate computers, with 2 separate cables - so I have ruled out my computer/setup.

This problem happens much less frequently if I am connected instead with my 5 GHz Wifi network

QoS is turned off and I have a 200/10 WAN connection, but the problem also happens when I turn on Qos

I am using Merlin 384.19 but the problem also happens with stock 3.0.0.4.384.9566 firmware as well.

Are there any utilities/scripts that can be turned on to debug this issue ?

Otherwise I like the router due to Merlin and Ax support and the added range on 5GHz which was the main reason for my upgrade - though I can still return in.

Thank you

Arny

 

[L&LD]

Welcome to the forums.

Jumping back and forth from stock Asus to RMerlin firmware (normally) requires a full reset to factory defaults and followed by a minimal and manual configuration (see the M&M Config guide in the link in my signature below).

More than likely, your attached 4TB USB drive is also a cause of your issues too.

The issues you are reporting are not normal or common. I would perform an M&M Config and use the recommended defaults while introducing any changes one at a time into your network to identify what is the root cause. With the M&M Config performed fully, you may find there are no more symptoms afterward too.

 

[Arny]

Thank you for the advice. I have tried out M&M config.

A question about the M&M config - which I did today. Can I get back to the old SSIDs that were being used by all the devices ?

Also, it already seems to me that the 4TB hard drive is causing issues. What are the next steps - especially since I can't see anything else wrong with the hard drive

 

[L&LD]

Some steps with the HDD you can try are checking it for errors on a PC. Formatting it to Ext4. Or ideally, just getting a true NAS. You can also try using it in USB 2.0 mode too as a test.

The idea of a new SSID is presented by RMerlin in the link here. Thank you @thiggins for the exponentially improved advanced search!

You can use the old SSIDs, but ideally, you will want to 'forget' them on each client device and then re-associate each device too. Easier to just use new SSIDs.

 

[Arny]

Thank you L&D. I will give these a try.