RT-AC66U Media Bridge Stability

[RMerlin]

I installed the latest build of RMerlin's FW (3.0.0.4.374.32) on the media bridge earlier today and even w/ the 2.4GHz radio enabled it has been stable. Could this be the cause:

Various bugfixes (like the crash on VPN/NAT Loopback access of LAN devices)

That fix was related to GRO support which caused router reboots in these scenarios. Asus has since also disabled GRO support on the RT-AC66U in the original firmware, to match my configuration.

 

[Junky321]

So in other words, we are still waiting for Asus to come out with a fix. correct? I am not sure if my MB restarts at all. It just drops my LAN devices randomly and evenly stop to communicate with the Router.

That fix was related to GRO support which caused router reboots in these scenarios. Asus has since also disabled GRO support on the RT-AC66U in the original firmware, to match my configuration.

 

[babgvant]

That fix was related to GRO support which caused router reboots in these scenarios. Asus has since also disabled GRO support on the RT-AC66U in the original firmware, to match my configuration.

Hmm.. so probably just that whatever causes it to reboot for me hasn't occurred yet.

Any ideas what could be causing the problem? Is there a way to log to USB (or some other persistent storage) so at least the state of the device when it fails can be captured?

 

[babgvant]

So in other words, we are still waiting for Asus to come out with a fix. correct? I am not sure if my MB restarts at all. It just drops my LAN devices randomly and evenly stop to communicate with the Router.

How do you recover from it when this happens, or does the device "self-recover"?

I've observed two problems:

1) Random reboots. W/ the stock FW somewhere b/w 30 min and 3 hours the MB would reboot. Disabling the 2.4GHz radio made this problem go away for me. After installing RMerlin's FW it's been up for ~7 hours w/ the 2.4GHz radio enabled, no weridness.

2) after a longer period (12 hours to 3 days) the MB stops "routing" traffic over the bridge. I have to manually reboot it to get it working again.

 

[Junky321]

I only have the same issue with #2 and need to manual reboot the MB every couple of days when it stops routing traffic. Perhaps because I have no clients connect to 2.4Ghz radio on the MB.

How do you recover from it when this happens, or does the device "self-recover"?

I've observed two problems:

1) Random reboots. W/ the stock FW somewhere b/w 30 min and 3 hours the MB would reboot. Disabling the 2.4GHz radio made this problem go away for me. After installing RMerlin's FW it's been up for ~7 hours w/ the 2.4GHz radio enabled, no weridness.

2) after a longer period (12 hours to 3 days) the MB stops "routing" traffic over the bridge. I have to manually reboot it to get it working again.

 

[RMerlin]

Hmm.. so probably just that whatever causes it to reboot for me hasn't occurred yet.

Any ideas what could be causing the problem? Is there a way to log to USB (or some other persistent storage) so at least the state of the device when it fails can be captured?

The only way to troubleshoot random reboots is to connect a serial cable to the router to view the console output.

Otherwise, Asus confirmed they were aware about the Media Bridge issues, and were working on a solution for a future firmware update.

 

[babgvant]

Hmm.. so probably just that whatever causes it to reboot for me hasn't occurred yet.

Confirmed. Just rebooted itself.

 

[babgvant]

The only way to troubleshoot random reboots is to connect a serial cable to the router to view the console output.

Thanks. Would that require opening the box?

BTW, thanks for maintaining the custom firmware. Have it running on both boxes now and it's the bit of polish that stock is missing.

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks. Would that require opening the box?

Yes, and plugging in either a TTL USB-to-serial adapter, or something similar.

 

[virtueme]

My Media bridge with 3.0.0.4.270 is very stable now: 4 days 10 hours 42 minutes 39 seconds since I downgraded to that release, and all seems better now.

I had to telnet in once to restart_wireless the last couple of days, but believe it's was the issue with my Intel centrino ultimate-n 6300. Because I have to disconnect and reconnect after I start my laptop to get the wireless to work after I downgradet. But my kids are not complaining about not being able to connect their iPad to the network anymore. My repeater looses connection on a regular bases, but that is an issue I can life with until Asus comes up with a fix. I'm running 3.0.0.4.374_130 on the router in AP mode.

Igb has provided me the repeater alternative firmware release, but as long as 270 is stable, I will not touch this configuration.

 

[babgvant]

2) after a longer period (12 hours to 3 days) the MB stops "routing" traffic over the bridge. I have to manually reboot it to get it working again.

2 appears to be client specific. For e.g. if I switch the Ethernet cable from one NIC port to the 2nd one in the box that isn't routing it works. If I plug another box into the MB's switch it works. Rebooting the PC has no affect, only rebooting the RT-AC66U makes a difference. When this happens it's only traffic over the bridge that won't "route". I can connect to other systems connected to the switch and traffic can traverse router -> MB. Bizarre.

Found a 3rd issue as well. The MB occasionally "forgets" its IP and reverts back to 192.168.1.1 (I can see it reporting this in ASUS's discovery tool). It will not respond to requests on 192.168.1.1, rebooting also fixes this issue. I've switched it over to a static IP to see if it is a DHCP renewal issue.

 

[babgvant]

Bizarrely Issue #2 may not be isolated to the RT-AC66U, I added a WUMC710 to the mix and after about a day it also exhibits this problem.

Could it be on the router side instead of a problem with the Media Bridge? I've been resolving it by rebooting the MB, next time I'll have to try rebooting the router and see if that does anything.

 

[babgvant]

Could it be on the router side instead of a problem with the Media Bridge? I've been resolving it by rebooting the MB, next time I'll have to try rebooting the router and see if that does anything.

Rebooting the router did resolve the issue. Any ideas what would cause the router to start ignoring bridged clients?

 

[Junky321]

Rebooting the router did resolve the issue. Any ideas what would cause the router to start ignoring bridged clients?

Interesting...I hope Asus would release a fix soon as this issue has become VERY annoying.

 

[KumquatOfPain]

Same issue here. It's not a sudden failure, but progressive. At that point I can get into the web interface of the bridge, but the router won't respond, or will prompt for login, but then time out.

PITA.n

 

[babgvant]

The new ASUS FW does not resolve the long term stability issues, only the reboots every few hours (probably because it disables the 2.4GHz radio). Very disappointing.

 

[RMerlin]

The new ASUS FW does not resolve the long term stability issues, only the reboots every few hours (probably because it disables the 2.4GHz radio). Very disappointing.

The new FW is probably not using the newer SDK yet that they plan to eventually switch to.

 

[Junky321]

Have anyone tried Repeater Mode to see if it is stablized?

Just curious.....

 

[babgvant]

The new FW is probably not using the newer SDK yet that they plan to eventually switch to.

Have they mentioned a time frame for doing this? As it stands the device is OK as a router, but use with a media bridge (despite impressive bandwidth performance) is unacceptably poor.

 

[Igb]

Repeater mode is fully stable in my case.

Only drawbacks I've seen are the lack of hardware acceleration and that you can't connect to the "repeated" 5ghz network. Note that this was not possible before either (the 5ghz band was only used for the link between the two routers)

Stability seems really good in my case, very far from the old reset-twice-a-day that 354+ firmwares had. Now my uptime on the client router is 4 days and counting (and that is because i upgraded to 374_726 firmware when it was available, asus beta release never crashed either in this mode)

Not tested media bridge mode, because i actually need the repeater feature for some old stuff. Performance even without HW acceleration seems sensibly better than with DD-WRT. Anyways, I can only suggest to try this or shibby tomato firmware if you can live with pings 5ms higher but want some advanced stuff (like as i said, repeating the 5ghz signal aswell)