Release ASUS ZenWiFi XT8 Firmware version 3.0.0.4.386.46061 (2022/01/14)

[PeterZ]

One conclusion that I have drawn since buying ASUS is that you need to be very open-minded and worry free to sudden outages whether during work hours or when enjoying a movie late at night but most of all able to spend some +30 minutes per day tinkering with the ASUS stuff. As the software reliability is so low one must always be ready to fail search when your company VPN suddenly drops etc.

Well not all Asus routers. I've been struggling with XT8. I returned it and got the lower-end XD6, 0 problem so far. Stable connection, fast performance, great range.

 

[Bobdobolina]

I have these two XT8 since April of this year. I, too, 1-2-3 or 4 days a week work from home, on vpn. There were different firmware for this router, but there was never a problem with vpn to communicate with the corporate network. Perhaps you need to configure the router settings correctly, or there are problems with the provider's channel... Or is it such an unsuccessful vpn ...

I am sorry if I was unclear. The problem is that I can't trust the system to stay up. For example it reboots itself without there should be any reason to do so (despite backhaul rssi -49dbm) causing all connections to drop of course. In addition unless using the privacy invasive QoS service Teams calls have infrequent drops, issues to answer inbound calls and to make outbound calls. VPN is split tunnel to Teams so is nothing to do with my employer or the VPN.

 

[Bobdobolina]

Well not all Asus routers. I've been struggling with XT8. I returned it and got the lower-end XD6, 0 problem so far. Stable connection, fast performance, great range.

Those are great news! I am really happy for you. I am not sure I can return these any more. Will give it a try though.

 

[Ironlake]

As promised reporting back:

On wireless backhaul AP mode 46061 fw on main device and node. Again timeouts in the logs and one new msg stating misc error. Clients disconnecting and unstable internet from the node. I am tired of this so I put the node back to 42095. The main device I will leave at 46061 for now. Because last time this configuration was stable as far as I know. Node was stuck at blue light as well.

Regarding the clients, iphone losing connection during whatsapp call and nvidia shield stuck at loading during playback online. The server itself connected via lan cable on the node, did not generate any disconnect logs. But I believe that there was still a problem with the connection of the server, because playing plex remotely was sometimes stuck in a continuous loading loop as well.

Don't understand why Asus can't fix these problems yet. If it wasn't for 42095 I would have get rid of these already. Once it is working, it is great. But having a product with an old firmware is not really ideal for security fixes. Anyways I will report back if I downgrade the main device as well. All the problems seem to be linked with the node and backhaul connection, wifi in my case.

I will try again in the future with another firmware.

PS: The node dropped all wifi devices as well. Now on the 42095 everything is connecting back regarding wifi on the node.

 

[Bobdobolina]

As promised reporting back:

On wireless backhaul AP mode 46061 fw on main device and node. Again timeouts in the logs and one new msg stating misc error. Clients disconnecting and unstable internet from the node. I am tired of this so I put the node back to 42095. The main device I will leave at 46061 for now. Because last time this configuration was stable as far as I know. Node was stuck at blue light as well.

Regarding the clients, iphone losing connection during whatsapp call and nvidia shield stuck at loading during playback online. The server itself connected via lan cable on the node, did not generate any disconnect logs. But I believe that there was still a problem with the connection of the server, because playing plex remotely was sometimes stuck in a continuous loading loop as well.

Don't understand why Asus can't fix these problems yet. If it wasn't for 42095 I would have get rid of these already. Once it is working, it is great. But having a product with an old firmware is not really ideal for security fixes. Anyways I will report back if I downgrade the main device as well. All the problems seem to be linked with the node and backhaul connection, wifi in my case.

I will try again in the future with another firmware.

PS: The node dropped all wifi devices as well. Now on the 42095 everything is connecting back regarding wifi on the node.

Thanks for sharing.

Did anyone notice that ASUS have modified the XT8 as of 2022 and onward!? Is this change of chipset due shortage or design change due to issues?

 

[PeterZ]

Thanks for sharing.

Did anyone notice that ASUS have modified the XT8 as of 2022 and onward!? Is this change of chipset due shortage or design change due to issues?

How do you tell the difference?

 

[Bobdobolina]

How do you tell the difference?

Looking at the statement on their firmware release notice for all firmwares prior the 46061 they tell us that “If your router's production year is 2022 or above, DO NOT downgrade to this version. Please check the back label for the production year.”

It is clear that they have changed something - I am interested in what and why.

 

[PeterZ]

Looking at the statement on their firmware release notice for all firmwares prior the 46061 they tell us that “If your router's production year is 2022 or above, DO NOT downgrade to this version. Please check the back label for the production year.”

It is clear that they have changed something - I am interested in what and why.

hmm... that does sound like hardware changes. I hope someone knows more about it.

 

[Ironlake]

Asus removed firmware 42095 from their website?

 

[PeterZ]

Asus removed firmware 42095 from their website?

They did. I kinda guessed they would do that at some point, so I saved a copy on my computer locally

And also, the actual download link is still available: https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/ZenWiFi_XT8/FW_ZENWIFI_XT8_300438642095.zip

 

[Ironlake]

They did. I kinda guessed they would do that at some point, so I saved a copy on my computer locally

And also, the actual download link is still available: https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/ZenWiFi_XT8/FW_ZENWIFI_XT8_300438642095.zip

Yes, I have it as well. But weird that they removed it. Knowing it is the most stable for alot of people. Thank you for sharing.

Update:
Main device back to 42095.

Also interested about this 2022 message written in red on asus website. Is our model flawed in some way that we can't get stable firmware updates? Such a pitty I can't get things stable for my scenario which is what it is made for. Someone wrote router mode does not generate problems. I was always in ap mode.

Can everybody here state there mode and experience. In short, router mode, number of devices, wireless or wired backhaul, number of lan devices, wifi devices stability from node with backhaul connection from main device and of course firmware number and days of usage and wps hard reset? Thank you in advance.

So for me:
wps hard reset after update
Ap mode
2 devices
2 lan from node, connection drops
Wifi devices from node unstable wifi connection
0 lan device on main device
Wireless backhaul
46061
8 days/ initial 2 to 3 days ok after that downhill.
Reverted everything back to 42095.

So within a week you should notice abnormalities.

 

[Dodgydrains]

I contacted the ASUS customer services person who helped me with Beta firmware to fix issues with Microsoft Teams. I asked about the 2022 router production message and did not get a response on the reply. Completely ignored my question.

 

[Ironlake]

I contacted the ASUS customer services person who helped me with Beta firmware to fix issues with Microsoft Teams. I asked about the 2022 router production message and did not get a response on the reply. Completely ignored my question.

Is that beta fw stable? And what is your usage scenario regarding the list I stated above. Thank you for your reply

 

[Dodgydrains]

It was stable for me but does not have any Parental Control on these beta fw.

My setup is similar to you but I have 4 x XT8's. My ISP provided modem/router does not have modem only mode.

For me, it was stable for 6/7 days and then got this error:


Jan 21 21:19:39 wlceventd: wlceventd_proc_event(508): eth4: Disassoc XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX, status: 0, reason: Disassociated because sending station is leaving (or has left) BSS (8), rssi:0

Got this:

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: LOG

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer

May 5 06:05:18 kernel: klogd started: BusyBox v1.24.1 (2022-01-05 16:07:57 CST)

May 5 06:05:18 crashlog: <6>protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer


And it carried on with similar logs

All the 3 nodes went down and had to be reset. Still on 46061 with uptime 5 days 7 hours. Teams is a lot more stable for me on 46061 than any stable fw after 42095. Not really sure what caused the errors.

 

[slikr]

Eventually rolled back to 42095, zoom kept on freezing and saying it was unstable on 46061. On 42095 it was rock solid and stable.

 

[tgl]

For me, 42095 has been plenty stable using 2 late-2021 XT8s in AP mode w/ wireless backhaul, once I got them configured to not use the DFS channels. In addition to disabling 160 MHz channel bandwidth, it appears you have to manually choose a safe control channel for the 5GHZ-2 radio --- leaving it on Auto with the "avoid DFS channels" checkbox *doesn't* reliably avoid those channels, at least not with 42095. There are some other minor bugs too, but I'm not seeing crashes or connection drops.

The firmware version that was current when I got them (45934 I think) was entirely NOT stable, and from what I'm reading on this thread, I'm not in much hurry to try 46061.

 

[shama_001]

Does anyone noticed a change in the Smart Connect rule in 46061? I'm on it, no big problem but at some place my phone seem to bounce between the 5GHz-1 and 5GHz-2 of the same node. I see the BSSID changing a lot of time and it cause issue of course. Checking this tab I try to understand the value but for all 3 bands I see everywhere RSSI "less -82dBm". Default values may change by model/firmware I guess but this documentation shows something really different https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1012132/

Did you notice anything there?

 

[rsnhakan]

I contacted the ASUS customer services person who helped me with Beta firmware to fix issues with Microsoft Teams. I asked about the 2022 router production message and did not get a response on the reply. Completely ignored my question.

I contacted Asus too and the person said it has to do with network profiles or something. Like the strength of the antenna's etc. Didn't really understand. He also told me that 2022 models can't downgrade. But if you have an older model and update to the latest firmware, you also shouldn't be able to downgrade. But this is not true (since I downgraded, after I upgraded).

But what I can tell is that my new set XT8's has another productcode. My 2020 XT8's = 90IG0590-MO3G40. My late 2021 XT8's = 90IG0590-MO3G80

Both H/W Ver.: 1.0. But I would like to know if there's anything different in comparison to the 2020's.

 

[rsnhakan]

Nobody?

 

[karma]

I'm guessing that this potential hardware revision is probably what caused the instabilities after 42095