Forced to reboot router to allow my laptop to connect to wifi and some other devices to work properly

[jacoscar]

If you've set a static IP that won't change automatically, static is static.

ok, but the fact that they keep working despite having static ip means they're not on a different subnet, right?

 

[drinkingbird]

ok, but the fact that they keep working despite having static ip means they're not on a different subnet, right?

Correct with intranet access enabled it keeps the same subnet, it only creates the separate one if you disable that.

 

[jacoscar]

In fact, I'm still having the issue.

If I return this router, what other router can I buy that doesn't suffer issues like this?
I paid £60 on ebay for it, WeBuy (Cex) has it for £80; I was tempted to buy another one from them, but maybe it's not worth the hassle.
I just want a router that supports 30-50 WiFi devices and VPN clients only for selected devices; Asus Merlin software seemed to work fine with that.
Budget is around £100 if second hand

 

[drinkingbird]

In fact, I'm still having the issue.

If I return this router, what other router can I buy that doesn't suffer issues like this?
I paid £60 on ebay for it, WeBuy (Cex) has it for £80; I was tempted to buy another one from them, but maybe it's not worth the hassle.
I just want a router that supports 30-50 WiFi devices and VPN clients only for selected devices; Asus Merlin software seemed to work fine with that.
Budget is around £100 if second hand

You'll need to find a router with VLAN support and inter-vlan routing. If it is as I suspect and you're suffering from broadcast and MDNS overload, you may need to get into the semi-pro stuff and potentially even something that supports throttling of broadcasts.

30-50 wifi devices is not necessarily a tall order. 30-50 cheap IOT chipsets is another story. Regardless of what you do, you need to look into isolating and segmenting your network. A second Asus router could certainly help you do that, creating a totally isolated IOT network (or more than one ideally). Then using the routing, port forwarding, and firewall features to restrict how much traffic can get between the networks.

It is entirely possible for an Asus or other home router to handle it, a higher end one with faster processor and newer wifi chipset might do it. Or maybe the used router you purchased has a radio/chipset that is already dying, it used to be able to support what you're looking for, but now it gets too hot from the load and crashes (as suggested previously as a possibility).

Maybe try buying a brand new one (one of the recommended ones like AX86U) and see if it works as expected and is stable. If not, you can return it, if so, you either have your solution or at least have identified your problem (an underpowered and/or failing used router).

 

[jacoscar]

I was using my isp router until 2 weeks ago, and have always used isp routers and never had a problem

 

[drinkingbird]

I was using my isp router until 2 weeks ago, and have always used isp routers and never had a problem

There are two possibilities I can think of:

ISP router did not participate in MDNS, so the load on it was much less (Asus does have MDNS and will try to communicate with those 30-40 devices and maintain status of them all).
The used router you got is bad, a replacement may be worth a try.