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RT-AC86U log flood and Guest network down

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Giuse1977

Occasional Visitor
Hi all
I purchased an RT-AC86U a week ago, and almost immediately changed the original firmware with Merlin.
I had guest wlan clients disconnection on my first setup (that included diversion), so back I went to original firmware.
After a while with the stock I decided to give another try, so reset, installed Merlin, reset and manually configured everything. This time no Diversion, no QoS, no USB sticks connected,no VPN, no Aiprotection, all defaults except one Guest Network on the 2.4GHz band, 25 DHCP reserved address and 4 port forwarding rules. I left wifi as it was, with smart connect on, auto channel width and auto channel selection. My FW version is 384.18. After 15 hours of uptime I had all Guest Network clients disconnected. Looking at the logs I found thousands of rows stating

acsd: eth6 received event: MAC tx failures (exhaustion of 802.11 retries) exceeding threshold(s)

and thousands of

wlceventd: WLCEVENTD wlceventd_proc_event(500): wl0.1: Auth 38:83:9A:9D:F5:C2, status: Successful (0)
Jul 15 19:58:03 wlceventd: WLCEVENTD wlceventd_proc_event(500): eth5: Auth BC:DD:C2:13:9D:BA, status: Successful (0)
Jul 15 19:58:03 wlceventd: WLCEVENTD wlceventd_proc_event(466): wl0.1: Deauth_ind 38:83:9A:9D:F5:C2, status: 0, reason: Class 2 frame received from nonauthenticated station (6)
Jul 15 19:58:03 wlceventd: WLCEVENTD wlceventd_proc_event(500): wl0.1: Auth 38:83:9A:9D:F5:C2, status: Successful (0)
Jul 15 19:58:03 wlceventd: WLCEVENTD wlceventd_proc_event(466): wl0.1: Deauth_ind 38:83:9A:9D:F5:C2, status: 0, reason: Class 2 frame received from nonauthenticated station (6)
Jul 15 19:58:04 wlceventd: WLCEVENTD wlceventd_proc_event(500): wl0.1: Auth F0:85:C1:53:CC:45, status: Successful (0)
Jul 15 19:58:05 wlceventd: WLCEVENTD wlceventd_proc_event(466): wl0.1: Deauth_ind F0:85:C1:53:CC:45, status: 0, reason: Class 2 frame received from nonauthenticated station (6)
Jul 15 19:58:05 wlceventd: WLCEVENTD wlceventd_proc_event(500): wl0.1: Auth F0:85:C1:53:CC:45, status: Successful (0)

Furthermost, when rebooting I found that router has switched off itself and required a power off/on to revive (this one already found in another thread). So far this only happened with Merlin Firmware.
I'm happy with this firmare, I had it on the past 5 years on my previous AC56U, but never had any of those issues.
Is my router bad?? I'm the only one with those issues?
 
You may want to see the link in my signature below for the M&M Config and ideally, the Nuclear Reset guides to get your network and router to a good/known state.

What year is the router manufactured in? What country? After following the guides suggested above, I've rarely seen a reboot issue with the RT-AC86U for many months now (some did require a second, full reset, but that was from a year ago).

The defaults you are using are not usually recommended. See if the modified defaults in the M&M Config help first before doing a full reset.

HTH.
 
Furthermost, when rebooting I found that router has switched off itself and required a power off/on to revive (this one already found in another thread). So far this only happened with Merlin Firmware.

The bug is there in both Asuswrt and Asuswrt-Merlin.
 
What guest network instance are you using?

On both 384.17 & 384.18 on my AC86 while devices could connect to the third guest network on both the 2.4 Ghz radio and 5 Ghz radio they would disappear from the network map.

Same SSID works fine for either Guest 1 & 2. Tried a new simple SSID with no number or special characters for the third guest network and connected devices would still disappear from the network map.

If you are not using the third guest network then your issue is different.
 
What guest network instance are you using?
I only have 1 guest network on 2.4, none on 5 GHz. Guest clients disappeared from network map.. web interface was unreachable and no internet from my iPad on main SSID. I think wired clients were ok, as my Cisco SPA internet light was lit
 
What year is the router manufactured in? What country?

The defaults you are using are not usually recommended. See if the modified defaults in the M&M Config help first before doing a full reset.

HTH.

I will read carefully your guide, thanks!
How can I find year of manufacturing? About country do you mean country of manufacturing? The region is set to EU0 as far as I remember
 
How can I find year of manufacturing?

It should be in clear text on the label on the back of the router along with the company of manufacture.
 
Some of the AC86s that was built in 2018 were the ones that were very problematic for many people. No widespread reports of those built in 2019 and 2020 having more than normal issues.
 
Some of the AC86s that was built in 2018 were the ones that were very problematic for many people. No widespread reports of those built in 2019 and 2020 having more than normal issues.
So, that’s the first one
Very powerful, astonishing coverage, but not so reliable..
Disabling smart connect stopped so far log flooding.. let’s see what happens in the next hours
 
You do not have to stand on your head to reset an AC86U. Here is a link to the Asus reset method that works first time-every time: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1039078
Also, I recommend you set the 2.4 GHZ to 20 MHZ channel 1, 6 or 11. 5 GHZ to a fixed non-DFS channel ( I use ch 36) at 20-40-80 MHZ. I also use Dual Band Smart connect on either Merlin or stock Asus. If you do not need the service turn off Samba and the media server.
I have been switching between the Asus stock and Merlin. Currently back to Merlin using DoT and DNSSEC to Cloudflare. I was having issues with Quad9 likely due to my ISP sending the anycast address to resolvers over 1200 miles away. Cloudflare resolvers are just over 60 miles as the crow flies...
 
Not all client devices work nice with Smart Connect, as they might not like being forcibly bumped around.
 
Do yo think that those logs are related to Smart Connect? All my devices on guest are 2.4Ghz only, anyway

Those indicate that clients were disconnected and reconnected, without explaining the reason. So, could be from Smart Connect, could be from incompatible wifi settings.
 
Those indicate that clients were disconnected and reconnected, without explaining the reason. So, could be from Smart Connect, could be from incompatible wifi settings.

Those lines too?

acsd: eth6 received event: MAC tx failures (exhaustion of 802.11 retries) exceeding threshold(s)

Thanks
 
Those lines too?

acsd: eth6 received event: MAC tx failures (exhaustion of 802.11 retries) exceeding threshold(s)

Thanks

Why not disable Smart Connect and see if it makes a difference?
Easy enough.
 
Why not disable Smart Connect and see if it makes a difference?
Easy enough.
As I wrote a few post above, disabling Smart Connect prevents those logs lines to show. But after no more than 15 hours of uptime I had the 5GHz band with no clients and, actually, there was no 5GHz network as my Wi-Fi scanner shown.
Furthermore: is it possible that only me and another user saw those logs entry? Maybe is my 86U a faulty unit?
 
Last edited:
Those lines too?

acsd: eth6 received event: MAC tx failures (exhaustion of 802.11 retries) exceeding threshold(s)

Thanks

This is tied to automatic channel selection. No idea what it means, Broadcom proprietary code.
 
Not all client devices work nice with Smart Connect, as they might not like being forcibly bumped around.
The other one I've found is that not all devices play nice with Protected Management Frames....they think they're capable but not really. Check that setting and if set to Capable, try Disabled.
 

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