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[HELP] RT-AX86U has WiFi with spoofed MAC, no Ethernet

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shrent

New Around Here
So, unfortunately my first post on this forum will amount mostly to a long-winded description of me floundering to pump the life back into this router for the past 6 hours, but bear with me, because I’ve reached my wit’s end and I Really need the help at this point.

Disclaimer: I am fully aware that I know next to nothing about routers or their intricacies and it is not unlikely that I am horrible at troubleshooting, but that is why I have accepted defeat and come to beg for help! (Hopefully the router wizards won’t notice that I hardly know any forum etiquette either)

Earlier today, I received an ASUS RT-AX86U wireless router from my dad while I was visiting my parents’ house, he claimed he could not get it to connect to the internet at all, because it would not accept the connection from the modem. This started happening after my parents’ house was struck by lightning, which caused some funky issues with their 3D TV, as well as kicked off the story with this router that is now in my possession.

I took the router home and started tinkering with it at about midnight, and started getting some important answers to some important questions, which are as follows:

1. Q: Can I even get my Spectrum-provided modem (DOCSIS 3.1 eMTA) to play nice with a router that is not the Spectrum-provided SAX1V1R WiFi 6 Router?
A: With enough factory resets, apparently yes!

2. Q: Can I get my new ASUS router to accept a WAN connection through the blue default WAN port on the router?
A: Extensive research has proven inconclusive*

3. Q: Can I get my new ASUS router to accept a WAN connection through the green 2.5Gbit port on the router?
A: Yes! By connecting to the router’s gateway via WiFi on my phone and enabling 2.5Gbit WAN and setting it as the default.

4. Q: Okay, simple as that right?
A: Certainly not.**

Now we get into the (I think) DHCP issues that I’ve been facing.

If I plug the router into the modem completely unfettered with factory default settings on both devices, the router will recognize that it has been plugged in to what ought to be a WAN connection, but will not actually uplink, instead giving me a message that says “Your ISP’S DHCP does not function properly” at the very beginning of the network map.

**So far as I’ve found, the only way to get it to actually enter a connected state and distribute a connection to the internet is through spoofing its MAC address in the WAN settings. After doing this, unplugging the modem from the wall for 5-10 seconds, plugging it back in and allowing it to boot up, then the modem provides a connection to the router and it properly connects to the internet. I’ve used the MAC of my iPhone and the MAC of the previously installed spectrum router, both work to the same effect.
*The above mentioned method mysteriously only works when using the 2.5G WAN connection, I can’t get the default (presumably) 1Gbit port to do anything, it just always gives me the ISP DHCP error, I’m not super pressed about this though, because the spectrum modem has a 2.5G WAN port

Now that you have the backstory, The BIG MYSTERY of this adventure in act-of-god-damaged router revival is as follows:

The WiFi works perfectly fine, and is blazing fast, BUT THERES NO DAGGONE ETHERNET!

There is seemingly nothing within the bounds of my limited knowledge that can be done to get this thing pumping out a LAN connection to any device. I have fiddled with every setting that I even know the slightest bit about, fiddled with plenty of settings I don’t know anything about, and the one thing that I cannot get to budge for the life of me is the Ethernet ports. Only one of them gives any indication that it is alive in any capacity, and it’s the 3rd one (recognized in the logs as eth2, external switch port 1, or logic port 9.) when you plug something into it, the logs indicate as follows:
Aug 24 05:22:05 kernel: eth2 (Ext switch port: 1) (Logical Port: 9) (phyId: 9) Link Up at 10 mbps half duplex Aug 24 05:22:05 kernel: br0: port 3(eth2) entered listening state Aug 24 05:22:05 kernel: br0: port 3(eth2) entered listening state Aug 24 05:22:07 kernel: br0: port 3(eth2) entered learning state Aug 24 05:22:09 kernel: br0: topology change detected, propagating Aug 24 05:22:09 kernel: br0: port 3(eth2) entered forwarding state Aug 24 05:23:10 kernel: eth2 (Ext switch port: 1) (Logical Port: 9) (phyId: 9) Link DOWN. Aug 24 05:23:10 kernel: br0: port 3(eth2) entered disabled state

It does all this, and every 10 minutes or so it repeats the process and disables itself again, which indicates that it is aware something is plugged into it, but it doesn’t actually send anything along that path. There’s no network traffic going through it, and it is capped at 100mbps as indicated by the system status tab on the main router page.

Through half a dozen different Ethernet cables and 2 different computers, I have gotten nothing whatsoever in terms of internet on the PC end, and neither PC even indicates that there’s a cable plugged in.

I am completely, 100% verifiably stuck in this process and before I write it off as a total loss and chock it up to fried innards from the lightning, I figured I would turn to the help of kind forum-goers like yourselves to see if maybe there is a wizard out there who can at the very least give me some guidance in the right direction.

By all means, it is time for me to go to bed, as I have been at this tirelessly for nearly 6 hours now, and my brain has all but melted. I am praying to every god I can think of that I wake up to some discussion regarding the sleep deprived ramblings of a tired and defeated man.

Footnote: It is probably worth mentioning that at some point during this process, I changed the firmware to the latest stable build of Merlin for my router, which is 386.7_2. (It changed positively nothing whatsoever, but if I am able to get this stupid Ethernet port functioning I am excited to use its extra features, perhaps to set up a DNS adblocker!)
 
It's broken. Your dad was right.
Upsetting, but not unexpected reply. I suppose I have 3 paths I could take at this point. Should I

1: just write it off, go back to crappy spectrum router, perhaps buy a nice one like this in the future
2: run the WiFi in my house through the ASUS router by connecting it to a LAN port from the spectrum router and then turning spectrum WiFi off (this is very likely to result in unforeseen consequences, but I’m not sure of what nature)
3: do some research and figure out if I can convince my modem that my PC (only wired connection in my house) and the ASUS router are the same device so I can split the Ethernet cable coming out of the modem and have WiFi with the asus router but a direct wired connection to the modem on my PC (also likely to have unforeseen consequences)
 
2. Possible.
3. Not possible. You can only have one host device connected to the modem. That's why it's usually a router, so that the router can provide the connectivity for multiple hosts.
 
and it is capped at 100mbps as indicated by the system status tab on the main router page.
In this case the map page will not report the correct rate (here's why), to determine the correct rate you can check the Merlin firmware's Tools page, or directly from your computer.

I think it's out of 10Mbps right now. Your router's ethernet looks blown, try RMA it.
 
I received an ASUS RT-AX86U wireless router from my dad while I was visiting my parents’ house, he claimed he could not get it to connect to the internet at all, because it would not accept the connection from the modem. This started happening after my parents’ house was struck by lightning, which caused some funky issues with their 3D TV, as well as kicked off the story with this router that is now in my possession.

He's dead Jim...

 

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