Rebooting and stability?

[Carnagerover]

Hi all,

I have Merlin installed on my AC86U, I have a split tunnel setup but currently I am not using the vpn so there are no clients in it and the vpn is not active. I also have FreshJR QOS installed, that is it for custom stuff, after around 30 days wireless devices start to drop and not be able to make a connection to the router.

So I decided to use the restart functionality and set the router to reboot every Sunday morning at 4am, however the router does not restart. It shuts down but doesn’t come back up, the LEDs are still off and the router is unavailable. Any ideas what the issues may be?

I also noticed that my available Ram was only 25MBs free, after 30 days the router was sluggish on the UI also.

 

[Martineau]

I decided to use the restart functionality and set the router to reboot every Sunday morning at 4am, however the router does not restart. It shuts down but doesn’t come back up, the LEDs are still off and the router is unavailable.

Any ideas what the issues may be?

AC86U sometimes powers completely off during reboot

 

[StuartNC]

Hi all,

I have Merlin installed on my AC86U, I have a split tunnel setup but currently I am not using the vpn so there are no clients in it and the vpn is not active. I also have FreshJR QOS installed, that is it for custom stuff, after around 30 days wireless devices start to drop and not be able to make a connection to the router.

So I decided to use the restart functionality and set the router to reboot every Sunday morning at 4am, however the router does not restart. It shuts down but doesn’t come back up, the LEDs are still off and the router is unavailable. Any ideas what the issues may be?

I also noticed that my available Ram was only 25MBs free, after 30 days the router was sluggish on the UI also.

Same here. Reboot via the GUI is like a power off. 86U with Merlin 384.14.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[dosborne]

Reboot via the GUI is like a power off.

Known issue. See the link posted above.

AC86U sometimes powers completely off during reboot

 

[Val D.]

Same here. Reboot via the GUI is like a power off. 86U with Merlin 384.14.

It happens on all firmware versions, probably hardware related issue. ASUS never managed to fix it with software updates. This router doesn't reboot properly, never use scheduled reboot and never reboot it remotely. Physical access to the router is needed during reboots.

I also noticed that my available Ram was only 25MBs free, after 30 days the router was sluggish on the UI also.

And this is a software issue with all firmware versions. You actually managed to go quite long with no reboot. If you enable all TrendMicro components a reboot is needed every 10 days. It all depends how much data the router processed. The more data processed, the more often reboot is needed.

This is the first ASUS router I use that requires reboot in order to work properly and too make things worse it doesn't reboot properly every time. Over 2 years of software updates and all the same issues. Very disappointing.

 

[L&LD]

And the counterpoint: on my own RT-AC86U I purchased and set up at the beginning of this year, I did see this issue initially too (not starting up after a 'reboot' command). However, since then, I flash the firmware twice on those routers as a matter of course, with a full reset to factory defaults and formatting the JFFS partition too, in-between and after the final flash.

I have only experienced this failed reboot issue for my customers' installed RT-AC86U's following the above maybe once or twice when initially placed into their network. Nobody else has called back for this issue and there are many dozens of RT-AC86U's running issue-free that I have set up myself.

How did I fix the small handful of problem RT-AC86U's? I simply repeated the steps outlined above.

If this was a hardware issue, I would not have kept my RT-AC86U this past year. Nor would I have recommended and successfully upgraded many customers older routers (mainly RT-AC68U's) who had their ISP service increased either.

 

[Val D.]

on my own RT-AC86U I purchased and set up at the beginning of this year

The interesting observation is that the one I have purchased in 2017 does reboot properly most of the time. I've seen it going blank few times only in 2 years period. It has upgraded 4A power supply though, modified laptop 19V adapter. The new ones manufactured in 2019 with original supplied power adapters both went blank during reboots while installing Asuswrt-Merlin 384.13 and 384.14. All routers are the same hardware version.

 

[Carnagerover]

Thanks for the replies guys, I will give it a manual reboot once a week, high maintenance this router. I have to change my QOS priorities each time as well, first world problems ahoy.

 

[Andy1932]

Thanks for the replies guys, I will give it a manual reboot once a week, high maintenance this router. I have to change my QOS priorities each time as well, first world problems ahoy.

You shouldn't have to now with 384.14.

 

[htismaqe]

Glad I found this thread. Looks like I may have at least 2 issues mentioned here.

 

[htismaqe]

And this is a software issue with all firmware versions. You actually managed to go quite long with no reboot. If you enable all TrendMicro components a reboot is needed every 10 days. It all depends how much data the router processed. The more data processed, the more often reboot is needed.

This is the first ASUS router I use that requires reboot in order to work properly and too make things worse it doesn't reboot properly every time. Over 2 years of software updates and all the same issues. Very disappointing.

If you disable the TrendMicro stuff, does this router stop having to be rebooted all the time? After upgrading to Merlin's 384.14 release, I've seen the web UI start lagging and locking up after just a few hours.

 

[htismaqe]

Sorry for the cross post but wanted to make sure people saw it.

Yep, it appears my issues may be related to AI Protection. In the system log prior to the last hang/reboot, I see dozens of entries of my daughter's iPhone associating and disassociating over and over again. In the AI Protection log, under Malicious Site Blocking, 1109 of the 1127 suspected spam/ad sites blocked were on my daughter's iPhone.

She's back at school today. My guess is I don't have any lockups at all while she's gone. Later today I'll nuke the AI Protection settings and re-flash 14 final and see what happens.

 

[Val D.]

If you disable the TrendMicro stuff, does this router stop having to be rebooted all the time?

Yes, no TrendMicro and no Samba file shares. This way it can go forever. This is how I was using mine, as a router only.

 

[htismaqe]

Yes, no TrendMicro and no Samba file shares. This way it can go forever. This is how I was using mine, as a router only.

Thanks1 I have SMB and all that stuff disabled but I do have a USB flash drive mounted to store the Traffic Analyzer data. Is that a problem?

 

[Val D.]

I do have a USB flash drive mounted to store the Traffic Analyzer data. Is that a problem?

No, for the router operation and Maybe for the USB drive. This router heats up the USB ports quite a bit plus some USB sticks generate more than usual heat. I’ve seen a SanDisk Nano USB stick with deformed plastic from overheating when connected to router’s USB. Also, use USB 2.0 mode to prevent interference with the 2.4GHz radio.

 

[htismaqe]

Yeah, the USB drive I have in there is only 2.0.

 

[PolarBear]

If you disable the TrendMicro stuff, does this router stop having to be rebooted all the time?

Running RT-AC86U with Merlin 384.13. 123 days uptime here.

TrendMicro things and QoS both switched off.

Edit:
Powered through a UPS. Not sure if that makes a difference.

 

[TNCS]

Wow, this post raise my question on my part... I haven't being properly tracking the times, but it didn't seem that bad? Initially I had to try a few different config so a reboot though wasn't frequent, but it was here and there. Before I had any fancy settings/script used I have never suffered such serious memory leak (25MB??). Even now with heavy service running, that I practically boot only with 40Mb free, despite I have swap it barely using it and the UI is fine and free RAM does between 38-32MB free. But:

1. Anything to back up the Trend Micro engine that require reboot every 10 days? The longest I paid attention to my up time with I think 42+ days, and that was with TrendMicro engine on (except one, can't remember now off by hand), QoS, DNSCrypt with lighttpd server. Not sure what happen, the router did reboot / power failure since I was away on holiday.

2. I've seen it mentioned few times regarding need to re-set the QoS priority - is this under specific condition? Because I have it on custom priority and it seems fine?

3. I have both Samba and mini DLNA that I'm using, though seems to me the DLNA part it pretty buggy, but my SMB performance has dipped from the initial 70+MB to 10MB. I've picked a 90% metal enclosure and a heavily shielded cable (according to specification) with metal connector, though I don't have any over-heating issue do you think it the Samba engine or USB design issue?

Lastly I didn't notice the UI was very sluggish and some times unresponsive if I use HTTPS instead of HTTP.

 

[Val D.]

1. Anything to back up the Trend Micro engine that require reboot every 10 days?

In my experience it depends on how much data goes through the router. The more data, the often the reboot is needed. Mine had to be rebooted at approximately 1TB data transferred. Otherwise something just stops working, in most cases first quits Web History, followed by Traffic Analyzer Statistic, sometimes WebUI becomes unresponsive or unavailable, etc. in random order. The problem is not enough RAM to keep everything working. Swap file on a dead slow USB stick doesn't help.

I've seen it mentioned few times regarding need to re-set the QoS priority - is this under specific condition?

Custom settings were lost after reboot on 384.12 and 384.13. After every reboot it had to be setup again.

I've picked a 90% metal enclosure and a heavily shielded cable (according to specification) with metal connector, though I don't have any over-heating issue do you think it the Samba engine or USB design issue?

Samba is unstable due to not enough RAM. It works for a while, then starts slowing down or transfers become choppy and inconsistent. The more data you push, the faster you'll see the issue. If you have an SSD drive attached to USB 3.0 port and you hit it hard with 20GB transfer in 20.000 files (for example, like I did in my experiments), the whole router goes down with TrendMicro components crashing, VPN crashing, WAN disconnects, unable to access WebUI, etc. This is a router, not a NAS.

 

[rgnldo]

In my experience it depends on how much data goes through the router. The more data, the often the reboot is needed. Mine had to be rebooted at approximately 1TB data transferred. Otherwise something just stops working, in most cases first quits Web History, followed by Traffic Analyzer Statistic, sometimes WebUI becomes unresponsive or unavailable, etc. in random order. The problem is not enough RAM to keep everything working. Swap file on a dead slow USB stick doesn't help.

Well, I don't have Samba problems or usb ssd sharing. I think it depends on the file system. NTFS consumes a lot of system. The difference is that the NAS storage devices are not plugged into USB. Of course, router's are not NAS, but it is usable, yes. I've never had a problem.