Looking for Feedback: RT-BE92U stability issues

[RMerlin]

Makes perfect sense considering everything that is known about TM issues on BE routers.

asd is an Asus service, not a TrendMicro service.

As your second crash, it's the networkmap service that crashed.

 

[jamesnmandy]

Sorry that's still an issue. Documentation suggests that latest firmware resolves issues on the 2.4ghz band mostly. What HW version are you using?

HW ver 5.1

I never had a WAN connectivity issue before, there was something specific about that beta firmware that was causing it, because I just installed the latest Asus firmware for it and it reboots and reestablishes WAN immediately just fine without me needing to reboot my modem.

I'll go back to monitoring this latest version for a while.

How is the latest Merlin firmware comparing to the official Asus versions these days?

 

[thestarsarehigh]

Previously had a TP-Link AX4400 that did not have any issues besides the awful interface. Finally got fed up with the interface. After some research, even with seeing this thread and the similar concerns on this unit, I bought a RT-BE92U on Amazon last weekend. Mostly because a Unifi would have taken several more days to receive and I wanted to play with something new and move on from the TP-Link.

This BE92U is HW v5.1. Immediately flashed asuswrt-merlin v3006.102.7_2 and factory reset, then configured. No mesh setup, only ~1000 sq. ft apartment. Connection is Spectrum cable, 1 Gb down/40 Mb up as per regular speedtests.

Running a 5/6GHz main network (wifi 7 mode), the 2.4GHz/5GHz "Default IOT Network" (not isolated), a 2.4 GHz guest network (isolated, IPv4 only), and a 2.4 GHz kid's guest network (not isolated, IPv6 enabled).

We have ~35 IOT devices (bulbs, plugs), HP LaserJet Pro printer and raspberry pi 4b running pi-hole with both devices on ethernet connections, usual assortment of laptops/consoles/smartphones. Devices with wifi 6E/7 support: two iPhone 16s, an iPhone 17 Pro, Lenovo Legion 5 16IRX9 with an "Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 160MHz" adapter, ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 with an "Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE201 320MHz" adapter.

Once I got the BE92U configured and settled in, once a day or so we'd notice extra buffering in video streaming, lag spikes in MP gaming. Suspect it happened more on due to my son's mentions of some sporadic issues while gaming on the Xbox, but didn't have the spoons to investigate more until today.

Finally got around to checking the syslog today after an occurrence and it seems like MLO was the culprit the most recent time. I have Wireless>MLO enabled. For the 5/6 GHz main network, at the time of the event I also had "MLO Fronthaul for Clients" enabled.

Since symptoms matched previous events, I disabled "MLO Fronthaul for Clients" on this network and I'll see how things go here. There are now no networks with "MLO Fronthaul for Clients" enabled.

Unless I can back up my asuswrt-merlin settings and restore on stock firmware so I don't have to configure everything again, I don't have the spoons to flash stock firmware and set up everything again... unless we continue to experience issues. If so and if I experience same instability on stock firmware, I'll post an update here.

Log with MLO event attached, from asuswrt-merlin v3006.102.7_2.

EDIT to add: I WFH and over the last week, 2-3 times I also noticed my laptop (X1 Carbon) would disconnect and reconnect pretty quickly. I can see the router from where I work and lights were all normal the one time I looked. In the future I will try to check logs if and when it happens. This did not happen with the previous router and nothing else changed with network/hardware. Will try to check logs if and when it happens again.

 

[original-birdman]

Many folks around don’t have old RT-AC86U routers because many of them died young.

I have 2, which ran fine for ~4 years.
One of them is still active, in my Mesh along with 2xRT-BE92U. All running the latest Merlin software.

I have no particular problems with this 3-system set-up.
I have switched off Wifi7, as that enables WPA3 whihc my phone uses and then can't talk to the RT-AC86U, as that doesn't support it.

One thing I do see is that [SIZE=4]dcd[/SIZE] (something to to with the Trend Micro part?) keeps crashing on the parent node

Apr 5 12:00:25 kernel: potentially unexpected fatal signal 11.
Apr 5 12:00:25 kernel: ===DDD===
Apr 5 12:00:25 kernel: 00010000 - 00092000, [dcd]
Apr 5 12:00:25 kernel: f6cd0000 - f6cd9000, [libnss_files.so.2]
Apr 5 12:00:25 kernel: f75f5000 - f7725000, [libc.so.6]

but it doesn't seem to cause any issue.
And I've just noticed that [SIZE=4]asd[/SIZE] has (just once) done that same thing on the secondary RT-AC86U.

 

[RMerlin]

MLO seems to be a can of worms so far, regardless of the router model. Since so far that technology seem to underdeliver on its initial promises, I recommend just keeping it disabled. It's probably one of those features that would be nice if all clients played nicely with it. I suspect many older clients won't.

 

[Mazz]

I have a question, since MLO is really no good, i don't have anything Wifi 7...so it network settings i have the 3 bands, click on 1 and it says Wifi 7 Mode and it's enabled, anything happen if i should disable it since i don't use MLO?

 

[RMerlin]

I have a question, since MLO is really no good, i don't have anything Wifi 7...so it network settings i have the 3 bands, click on 1 and it says Wifi 7 Mode and it's enabled, anything happen if i should disable it since i don't use MLO?

You could disable it, but clients on the 5 GHz and especially 6 GHz band should be able to deal just fine with Wifi 7 support being enabled, as these clients will have a fairly modern networking stack. It's largely stuff that deals with the 2.4 GHz band that might have issues with any modern feature.

If you don't experience any issue, leave it enabled. That way the day you add a Wifi 7 client to your network, you won't have to remember to re-enable Wifi 7 support to benefit from the speed improvements.