High memory usage in GT-AXE16000

[sanxion]

Hello!

This is my first post on this forum. I hope you can help me.

I was using an RT-AC88U with Merlin software as a router node. I was using the router as a SAMBA or DLNA server to stream music and occasionally movies. I recently bought a GT-AXE16000 router. This router uses the latest non-beta stock firmware. The new device is now the main router and the RT-AC88U is now an AiMesh node. I connected the SSD to the main router to test the performance of the SSD while streaming music and movies. I have seen that after streaming, memory usage on the GT-AXE1600 is very high (95% or even more).
Memory usage before streaming is much lower, around 40%. It does not decrease once streaming is finished.

Unfortunately I didn't do the same check when I was only using the RT-AC88U.

Is this memory usage normal? Is this memory behavior normal?

Thanks!

 

[ColinTaylor]

Yes this is normal. There are numerous posts in this forum asking this question.

 

[sanxion]

Thanks for your answer.

Do you know if the problem is related to the use of original firmware or if the problem also exists with the Merlin variant?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Do you know if the problem is related to the use of original firmware or if the problem also exists with the Merlin variant?

It's not a "problem". It's the intended behaviour of the Linux memory management system.

 

[bennor]

Is this memory usage normal? Is this memory behavior normal?

Yes its normal when you have a USB drive attached to the router and are using that storage as a file server/media streamer. Plenty of past discussions and posts about people asking similar questions when the memory usage is at 95% or higher. For example this recent discussion:

Anomaly RAM Usage 97%

Hello community, i m a little bit afraid about my Asus Router (with merlin firmware)... I m actually using about the 97% of the RAM. How could i understand what is using all these RAM? Is it possible that could be done by the DNS DIrector feature? RT-AX88U Pro Current Version : 3004.388.6_2

www.snbforums.com

If one is worried about it, they can periodically clear (drop) the cache on the router which should drop the memory usage back down for a time before it rises again due to the external hard drive usage. Example post explaining how to clear the router cache using SSH.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/anomaly-ram-usage-97.89532/#post-901692