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Losing connection on Asus AC86U (Merlin-WRT)

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Rockel83

Occasional Visitor
I've used an AC68U for a while without problems. I had Merlin-WRT installed on it. And before this I had the AC66U_b1, also with Merlin-WRT.
This all worked pretty well and stable all the time, and this was also the reason why I became such a big fan of Asus Routers.
All my devices in my private network are setup with MAC reservation, and so every device has it's own IP.

My network is quite big at the moment, since I've configured a lot of automations. I'm running an PI with Home Assisstant and a lot of temperature sensors en smart plugs (flashed with Tasmota).
So a stable network is verry import for me these days.

Because I've connected this manny devices into my network now, my old AC68U needed to be upgraden, because I was running out of NVRAM.

So I recently bought myself the AC86U and also flashed it with Merlin-WRT. I always keep track of my network settings and everything is organised. So all the previous routers I just mentioned had the same settings. Same IP-range, same MAC-reservation just everything.

But this router is causing quite some problems and it's really notacible with the powerplugs (Tasmota) I've around the house. The Led of these powerplugs begins to blink blue when they don't have anny connection with the host, the raspberry pi running HASS in this case.

I've tried several things already. But I still not able to fix it and make my network work stable again. I probably have to reset things 2 á 3 times a day.

Things I've tried:

- When my smartplugs loose connection then I can still log into my router. Seeing that there're devices missing in the connection overview.
- When I reboot the Home Assisstant host (raspberry pi), this gives no results.
- Everything works again when I reboot the router. But just for a couple of hours.
- I recently noticed that when the connection is lost, I can also disconnect the WIFI on my mobile phone. When I connect it after this, all other connections suddenly seem to work again. I have this phone a couple of years now. And it worked without problems on a few mentioned routers with the same setup.
- I've asked for info at an Tasmota forum, because it seemed that this was the problem before. And people here told me that Tasmota devices could have had some problems with ASUS routers. But all my previous ASUS routers worked without problems.

I'm not sure, because it's router related, seems like somekind of memory gets full or that "connection tables" or so not getting refreshed or getting full. Just some directions where I'm thinking in. BUt I really don't know annymore. Tried to change some settings, but without resuts.
Like I said, when I reboot the router, the problem is over. And it also seems to working fine again when some other devices (like phone for instance) get reconnected with the network.

Hope someone can guide me into the right direction.
 
I've used an AC68U for a while without problems. I had Merlin-WRT installed on it. And before this I had the AC66U_b1, also with Merlin-WRT.
This all worked pretty well and stable all the time, and this was also the reason why I became such a big fan of Asus Routers.
All my devices in my private network are setup with MAC reservation, and so every device has it's own IP.

My network is quite big at the moment, since I've configured a lot of automations. I'm running an PI with Home Assisstant and a lot of temperature sensors en smart plugs (flashed with Tasmota).
So a stable network is verry import for me these days.

Because I've connected this manny devices into my network now, my old AC68U needed to be upgraden, because I was running out of NVRAM.

So I recently bought myself the AC86U and also flashed it with Merlin-WRT. I always keep track of my network settings and everything is organised. So all the previous routers I just mentioned had the same settings. Same IP-range, same MAC-reservation just everything.

But this router is causing quite some problems and it's really notacible with the powerplugs (Tasmota) I've around the house. The Led of these powerplugs begins to blink blue when they don't have anny connection with the host, the raspberry pi running HASS in this case.

I've tried several things already. But I still not able to fix it and make my network work stable again. I probably have to reset things 2 á 3 times a day.

Things I've tried:

- When my smartplugs loose connection then I can still log into my router. Seeing that there're devices missing in the connection overview.
- When I reboot the Home Assisstant host (raspberry pi), this gives no results.
- Everything works again when I reboot the router. But just for a couple of hours.
- I recently noticed that when the connection is lost, I can also disconnect the WIFI on my mobile phone. When I connect it after this, all other connections suddenly seem to work again. I have this phone a couple of years now. And it worked without problems on a few mentioned routers with the same setup.
- I've asked for info at an Tasmota forum, because it seemed that this was the problem before. And people here told me that Tasmota devices could have had some problems with ASUS routers. But all my previous ASUS routers worked without problems.

I'm not sure, because it's router related, seems like somekind of memory gets full or that "connection tables" or so not getting refreshed or getting full. Just some directions where I'm thinking in. BUt I really don't know annymore. Tried to change some settings, but without resuts.
Like I said, when I reboot the router, the problem is over. And it also seems to working fine again when some other devices (like phone for instance) get reconnected with the network.

Hope someone can guide me into the right direction.


Some ad-hoc ideas:

o Be sure to reset the Asus firmware before configuring it.

o Try disabling Wireless\Professional\Airtime Fairness and Universal Beamforming per band.

o Is the Pi wired?... is the cable healthy? Are the IoT devices losing connection with the WLAN or with the PI?

o Try leaving the phone off the network to see if the issues stop?

o Are these 2.4 GHz clients? Are you using USB 3.0 Mode on the router?

o Are you using the old router, too?

o Maybe your earlier 'network issues' are still present with the new router. When building a new network, it can be helpful to step through it slowly to allow time for old and new issues to present themselves for resolution before adding to the pot.

OE
 
Some ad-hoc ideas:

o Be sure to reset the Asus firmware before configuring it.

o Try disabling Wireless\Professional\Airtime Fairness and Universal Beamforming per band.

o Is the Pi wired?... is the cable healthy? Are the IoT devices losing connection with the WLAN or with the PI?

o Try leaving the phone off the network to see if the issues stop?

o Are these 2.4 GHz clients? Are you using USB 3.0 Mode on the router?

o Are you using the old router, too?

o Maybe your earlier 'network issues' are still present with the new router. When building a new network, it can be helpful to step through it slowly to allow time for old and new issues to present themselves for resolution before adding to the pot.

OE

Thanks for your help! Appreciate it a lot!
1. It was a brand new router when I recieved it, I uploaded Merlin-WRT and gave it an extra reset after this. So I guess I've configured an "untouched" firmware here.

2. I'm going to give this a try.

3. The PI is wired yes, it's just standing next to my router with a short cable to it. Well other device seems to keep working with the pi after connection drops. While telephones or wall pannels seems to be still able to connect to Home Assisstant. Seems only wireless devices with Tasmota or the MiLight hubs having problem.

4. I'm going to give this a try.

5. Yes, these are all 2.4 GHZ clients. Yes USB 3.0 mode is turned on, but no USB devices are connected.

6. No, completely removed it out of the private network.

7. Well my old network ran for months without needed it to reboot. Even didn't looked after it. It was just running without problems So guess there were not that much issues pressent in the old configuration.
Just started with this router. Need to reboot 2 á 3 times a day. all the other devices stayed untouched. So that's why I thinking it's something with this router. Or something is conflicting with settings.
I've noticed that the AC86U has a few more settingsoptions then the AC68U had. But there are also several settings missing which the AC68U had.
 
You may want to look at the suggested steps in the links below and see where/what you did differently, if at all.

New M&M 2020
 
Thanks for all the help so far!

I could not find the problem, but it's necessary to have a stable network now, since my automations and IP cams running on it, and I will be away from home for quite a while soon. So I did not ha much time to experiment with things now. I've reset the router and just made the most needed changes to run my home network. Also turned off USB3, which was standard turned on on factory reset.
But so far it's keeping up quite well for about a few days already. I will narrow it down when I'm back home again and will have the time for it.

Then I will hold the checklist of L&LD next to it, which looks verry usefull so far :cool:
 
Did not see which version of Merlin you are using but, for now, the 384.19 is the most stable for me on the AC86U. Make sure the /jffs is mounted and do a hard factory reset: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1039078
Manually configure, use Dual Band Smart Connect, 2.4 GHZ at 20 MHZ on channel 1, 6, 0r 11, 5 GHZ at 80 MHZ on Channel 36 or 149. See Ozark Edge recommendations for professional WIFI settings and Roaming Assistant. I disable UPnP, do use DoT and DNSFilter set to router. Use AiProtect and QOS if you want.
The newer Asus firmware for the AC86U has some CPU heating issues. Merlin 386.1 beta 4b seems to have this fixed for some but I plan to try the beta 5 when it is released just because I can and with saved settings/jffs backup it is a snap to go back.
 
I recently started over, did a hard reset and started configuring the router again. Some things are essential for my network setup at home. Like:
- SSH
- router IP-address
- DHCP assignment
- Port forwarding
- VPN client

So I configured all the essential things first, and left it like that for a while. It seemed problems started when I changed some more settings. 1 of them was turning off WPS (I like to have this turned off). I think it's strange that this causes to loose connections. But still again started by scratch. Did a hard reset again, and started documenting all the steps and settings I've made or changed. So it will be more effective go back a step when problems occur.

But now I noticed that my NAS (Asustor) started to give certificate errors, and this was related back to the time of when I've bought the router. It seemed that a few ports were not accasible and it seemed that the router was blocking internal UPNP ports to somewhere of 1024 or so. The NAS was in need for port 80 for this certificate renewall.
So I set this vallue back to 1. And all the NAS problems were gone. Also did some additional portforwarding into the router to another internal port range, since the router itself also uses port 80. So I was thinking that maybe all of this was a port conflict?

WPS is still turned on now and I still need to make some other settings aswell, but I don't have the time to check it because an upcomming holliday, and I need a stable network for my home automation. But it seems to work stable as it is for now. So I think I will leave it as it is for now and start changing the other settings after holliday.
 
Ok, maybe I was a little bit too fast with the statement made above.

The initial problem was that I had to restart my router about 2 times a day because some devices lost WIFI connection. But it seemed the WIFI connection was still there and I was able to reconnect with some devices.

Before activating the VPN client, it seemed to work pretty stable for about 2 days already. When I started over after doing an hard reset and configured things step by step and just made those changes which are essential for me now.

But now, when VPN client is ennabled. (and I need it to be able to get into my router outside of the homenetwork) it seems like it's taking out WIFI completely. I can't connect to anny device annymore and only use the network from my wired devices. Luckely I'm still able to reach my router from outside the network via VPN and doing a reboot this way. So VPN still works and I don't think this problem is related to the VPN setting. Guess it's only strange that this started to occur after ennabeling it. But the problem seems to be me severe now.

Just gave the router a reboot. So I'm currious how long it holds up now....
 
Just had to reboot another time again, and I really don't understand what's going on annymore. I went back to factory preset by doing a hard reset like i mentioned.
These are the steps I took so far from hard reset:

1. Hard reset router

--------------------------------------------------------

Guest Network
1. Setup Guest Network

LAN - LAN IP
1. Changed Host Name
2. Changed RT-AC86U's Domain Name
3. Changed IP Address

LAN - DHCP Server
1. Changed IP Pool Starting Address
2. Changed IP Pool Ending Address
3. Changed Lease time (43200)
4. Enable Manual Assignment (YES)

WAN - DDNS
1. Enable the DDNS Client (YES)
2. Setup Host Name

Administration - System
1. Enable JFFS custom scripts and configs (YES)
2. Changed USB Mode (USB 2.0)
3. Changed Enable SSH (LAN only)
4. Changed SSH Port (**)
5. Changed Enable SSH Brute Force Protection (YES)
6. Changed Authentication Method (BOTH)

WAN - Virtual Server / Port Forwarding
1. Enable Port Forwarding (ON)
2. Added portforwarding

-----------------------------------------------------------

LAN - DHCP Server
1. Added Manually Assigned IP's around the DHCP list

---------------------------------------------------------------

WAN - Internet Connection
1. Changed UPNP: Allowed internal port range (1)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

VPN Server - OpenVPN
1. OpenVPN server setup

-----------------------------------------------------------

It seemed work for a few days after I had configured the "LAN - DHCP Server". So I thougt these settings were valid so far.
Stranged thing is that I've used the same settings so far on my previous "AC66U_B1" and later on the "AC68U" for quite some time, and without problems. These routers ran for years with the same settings so far without the need of giving reboots all the time. Only had to reboot the Home Assistant server once in a while, but never the router itself. The AC86U is a more advanced and newer router as far as I know, so I think it's strange that the verry same settings worked on much older routers but causes problems on this one.
 
Just updated to the new firmware, which did not made anny diffrence.

But I also updated all my Tasmota devices. And I've noticed that when restarting after update, they did not reconnect to the router again. I had to reboot my router in order to reconnect them.

The same behaviour occured when plugging out the Tasmota device and power it on again.

I'm using quite some Tasmoto devices in my home automation and my home network.
My older Asus routers just worked fine with it. But seems this one seems to struggeling with it.

Putting "auto" to "legacy" in the wireless section seems to work so far.
When doing this, all Tasmota devices reconnect within in a seccond after powered on again. So looks promissing so far...
 

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