AX86U Pro Router Dropping Connections on VPN

[Steve543]

Recently bought and setup an AX86U Pro router at my home. It is fed from a DSL modem, so not running at very high end speeds. I am fairly new at this, but it seemed fairly straightforward. The main 5G and 2.4G bands seems to be working normally. I also created a couple "guest" VPNs, one of which is used for a couple of IoT devices. The problem is with this IoT VPN. The two IoT devices connect and work initially just fine. But at some point, a few hours to a few days from the original connect, the devices stop working. No traffic thru them. It appears (at least on one device) it thinks it is still attached. When I look at the router, the devices show up on the Client List, but the attach time and data counters no longer move. These are all DHCP devices (no choice), but the connections are failing way sooner than the lease timeout, so I don't think that is it. When these devices stop working, my usual fix is to power cycle the router, which always seems to fix it. Sometimes (but not always) fiddling with the antennas will allow them to reconnect.

I am fairly new to routers and configuring them, and I am pretty much at my limit with this problem. Can anyone suggest what is going on here and a potential fix?

Thanks in advance.

 

[bennor]

Does the System Log show anything unusual around the time the VPN connection drops?

What VPN provider/service including OpenVPN, WireGuard or other is being used and exhibiting the problem?

 

[Steve543]

It is a bit hard to say the exact time the devices dropped their connection, but judging from the gap in one of the device's data graph, it happened around 4:45AM.

Took a look at the log. Unfortunately it starts ~7AM so can't see anything around the 4:45 time. Bunch of log entries in the middle with timestamps of 12-31, which in looking at them are likely when I power cycled the router, timestamps get "normal" after what I assume is that boot sequence. No obvious errors (although as a newbie it would have to be pretty glaring for me to catch it).

One thing I did notice is a log entry at 8:00A to turn on the radio. I did have time controls on the other "guest network" VPN which started at 8:00. So that was likely that. I would not think that timed start/stops on one VPN would effect the other, but I suppose (I have now turned the timed stuff off to see if that makes a diff). And the "off" time for that other network was 23:59, and the devices seemed to keep working until 4:45 or so.

No other VPN services, just the "guest networks" created on the ASUS router.

Next time this happens, I will take a look at the logs before power cycling the router, and see if I can narrow the exact time of failure down better.

Any other thoughts?