Router malfunctioned during recent heatwave - bad news or something that can just happen?

[jaybird14]

Hi all,
We recently had a bit of an unusual heatwave over here where I am in the PNW and my RT-AX58U was acting up one day during it, so I rebooted to rule out any issues of the sort. When I rebooted however, the GUI wasn't reporting devices correctly, devices were connecting and then immediately disconnecting, and the network was just unstable. I ended up disconnecting it and falling back to my ISP provided router/modem combo and I've just reconnected the router today, although I had to get a factory reset going to actually set it back up.

Is this a bad sign of me needing a new router or is it just a consequence of the heat and can be mitigated with active cooling? For temperature context, I measured air and surface temperatures of around 34 degrees C in my place. I forgot to get a record of the measured temps at the router, but at the time it didn't seem like any of them were out of place (49 degrees C at the two radios, 64 degrees C at the CPU).

 

[Centrifuge]

near normal temps

Probably wasn't anything to do with the main component temperatures.

 

[jaybird14]

Probably wasn't anything to do with the main component temperatures.

So it was just a function of being in a hot environment?

 

[Centrifuge]

So it was just a function of being in a hot environment?

Those temps were in the acceptable range on the router side, that's not to say that the high temps didn't trigger something within your network chain. As far as the firmware I can't tell what your on, but your symptoms could be associated with many recent versions. Let your router settle, if it happens again get more serious about diagnosis.

 

[jaybird14]

Those temps were in the acceptable range on the router side, that's not to say that the high temps didn't trigger something within your network chain. As far as the firmware I can't tell what your on, but your symptoms could be associated with many recent versions. Let your router settle, if it happens again get more serious about diagnosis.

I'm on Merlin, version 386.2_6.

 

[Centrifuge]

I'm on Merlin, version 386.2_6

Depending on when you upgraded and from what, there is a database rebuild on first run that can cause the GUI to stall out and could have conceivably stressed your cpu to the point of spinning down a bit, esp. with the ambient heat (glad that's over heh?). It doesn't sound to me like this one-off is something to get overly concerned about. The thread for your firmware is <<here>>, and there have been some network stability issues discussed. They have limited tolerance for temperature issues in that thread, just an fyi, but here is a whole thread for router temp issues--> <<here>>.