DHCP Failures on Asus GT-AX6000

[chrismsales]

My ASUS GT-AX6000 router has been experiencing persistent DHCP failures since a recent firmware update on Saturday to version 3006.102.5, preventing devices from obtaining IP addresses consistently. I started noticing on Sunday that my network has was losing internet connection a couple of times a day even though they show connected to the network for devices running both on Wifi and ethernet so a reboot is needed to get internet going again. This has been constant every day now and then some devices like an Xbox will no longer connect to the network as it says it "cannot connect to your DHCP server" even though it's connected via ethernet and has a reserved IP through the DHCP on the router.

The logs (see below) point to a corrupted Trend Micro AI Protection database file, which is causing critical services like mastiff, fw_daemon, and dcd to fail or restart. At least that's what Chat GPT told me, not sure how correct that is though.

I successfully SSH’d into the router and attempted to manually reset the corrupted .db file. I also disabled AI Protection via the admin interface, rebooted multiple times, and checked for interference from other services like Traffic Analyzer and Parental Controls. Despite these steps, the DHCP error persists and the AI Protection service appears to still be trying to restart every 30 seconds or so. Last night I rolled back to the last firmware I was on (3006.102.4), but I'm having the same issues still.

Does anyone have any idea what may be happening or how to resolve? I'm in over my head already here.

Thanks in advance.

 

[ColinTaylor]

My apologies, I thought this was the same issue as the watchdog restarting every 30 seconds. I created a separate thread to see what's going on.

I did try to look to disable the Asusnat tunnel, but I do not have that option available on myGT-AX6000.

Thanks for your help though.

You should have the option to disable Asusnat tunnel somewhere. It was originally in Tools - Other Settings but it got moved to be under the Administration tab. Not 100% sure where exactly so have a hunt around for it in a section called Advanced Tweaks and Hacks. Try www.asusrouter.com/Tools_OtherSettings.asp

 

[chrismsales]

You should have the option to disable Asusnat tunnel somewhere. It was originally in Tools - Other Settings but it got moved to be under the Administration tab. Not 100% sure where exactly so have a hunt around for it in a section called Advanced Tweaks and Hacks. Try www.asusrouter.com/Tools_OtherSettings.asp

Found it - was under Administration/Tweaks

Do I need to do a reboot after setting this?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Do I need to do a reboot after setting this?

I don't know. Probably.

 

[chrismsales]

That seems to have resolved the issues I was seeing, at least the logs do not show the mastiff service trying to re-reload every 30 seconds. I will try to upgrade to the most recent version now that I know what seems to be the resolution.

Thank you very much for your help!

 

[chrismsales]

So I'm still experiencing high packet losses and what might NAT issues since updating to the latest version of 3006.102.5. While turning off Asusnat Tunnel resolved the Mastif errors, I'm now having issues with high (65-90%) packet losses on some devices and very inconsistent connections on certain devices on the network, whether they're hardwired or Wi-Fi.

My current network is running off of a 2GB ATTfFiber connection with the ATT BGW720-600 router in IP Passthrough mode with wifi radios turned off, and then an Asus GT-AX6000 router connected via a public IP with another Asus RT-AX88U running in AI Mesh mode with an ethernet backhaul connection. I've had this set up now for about six months when I got the new AT&T router upgrade, and I had changed no except for updating the Merlin firmware last Saturday from 102.4 to 102.5. I even tried to roll back to 102.4 yesterday after a factory reset but had the same issues.

Some devices run just fine, but others are suffering massive lag. An Xbox connected via ethernet that has always had a reserved ip via DHCp has become unusable due to the packet losses and DHCP errors it has been showing.

I'm at a lost here on what the issue is but Google searches are showing that there may be a DHCP conflict. Wow, speed test show expected speed some times, other times you can see dramatic losses, which fall line with what we're seeing from some devices. Some websites are almost unusable at times due to the lag, but my Internet speed throughput shows normal.

• AT&T BGW620-700 is in IP Passthrough mode but DHCP is on - should this be turned off?
• Asus GT-AX6000 is receiving a public IP and is running a different IP range than the ATT router.
• GT-AX6000 is managing LAN DHCP correctly.
• I've updated firmware and even factory reset both Asus devices since the initial firmware update last Saturday.

Is there anything else I should be checking or thinking about here?

Thanks