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RT-AC87U keeps locking up

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stinkybum

Occasional Visitor
I'm running Merlin 378.55_0

I have a fan under the unit to keep it cool (ambient temps are high here)

A few times a day, randomly it seems, my RT-AC87U seems to lock up. The lights continue to blink but it no longer responds to pings on LAN/WIFI, cannot surf the internet, cannot access the admin panel etc.

I have my ISPs DSL modem set to bridge mode and the RT-AC87U grabs a public IP through that. It only gets a 1 hour lease it seems.

I've been having a lot of problems with my ISP lately and keep losing connection or having other strange issues. It seems that when this happens, the whole ASUS router just locks up and the only way to get it going again is to turn it off and on.

I've checked the system log but can't see anything obvious. I tried the 30/30/30 thing and did a completely fresh setup, it made no difference.

Does anyone have any ideas?
 
i have similar problem with my 87u on fw .55. Now i test latest beta asus fw, and still no crash.
 
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i test on Asus stock RT-AC87U_3.0.0.4_378_8715-gd67697c.trx
but today asus relase new version and i will test also this build.
 
So I've been running on Merlin 378.55_beta2 since last night.

I thought the problem was fixed cos I went nearly the whole day without a reboot. But about 10 minutes ago it just locked up again. New clients cannot connect to WIFI, existing clients on WIFI/LAN cannot ping the router, cannot access the admin panel etc.

I regret buying this router. The wifi is nowhere near as fast as I expected and doesn't offer much better coverage than my old Apple Timecapsule. My timecapsule would be rebooted every few months. Even when this Asus was working properly, it still had to be rebooted every 3-5 days because wifi would stop accepting new clients or it would just run super slow.
 
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So I've been running on Merlin 378.55_beta2 since last night.

I thought the problem was fixed cos I went nearly the whole day without a reboot. But about 10 minutes ago it just locked up again. New clients cannot connect to WIFI, existing clients on WIFI/LAN cannot ping the router, cannot access the admin panel etc.

I regret buying this router. The wifi is nowhere near as fast as I expected and doesn't offer any better coverage than my old Apple Timecapsule. My timecapsule would be rebooted every few months. Even when this Asus was working properly, it still had to be rebooted every 3-5 days because wifi would stop accepting new clients or it would just run super slow.

I guess you are aware that 378.55_beta2 is older than 378.55..
 
I guess you are aware that 378.55_beta2 is older than 378.55..

Actually, yes. I was running 378.55_beta1 and then checked the upload dates and saw 378.55 is newer. So I figured that might solve the problem. It didn't so I then tried 378.55_beta2. Bottom line, they all give me the same problem.

Thank you though.

On a side note, I'm starting to wonder if it's related to my use of VPNs. I use an openvpn client on my laptop to connect to a remote server. It seems that the router crashes more often when I use my VPN. I cannot be sure though.

For anyone thinking it might be my computer having the issue instead of the router, I test it from various devices and believe me, it really just stops responding to everything.
 
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Flash one of the latest stock beta firmwares and see if this fixes your problem. There have been a lot of changes to the firmware as the last stable on came out a couple of months ago.

Also make sure that you properly reset all of your settings.

By the way, the router shouldn't crash only because you're using a VPN from your client computer. Neither do the temperatures have anything to do with this, as this is a software and not a hardware issue; I would say that most likely this is a network issue. Therefore, try to play with the DHCP options and in case any bridges are involved make sure spanning tree protocol is enabled (which should be the default). In general, it would make sense to revert everything to default and only make those adjustments that you absolutely need while leaving the rest untouched.
 
Welcome to the club of the ac87u locking up, actually had my own thread going with the same problem. Seems so many people are reporting this same issue but no one knows why it is. I am on my 2nd ac87u as I sent the 1st one back due to the same problem, was really debating on sending this one back too, but am hanging on just in case there is a fix in the form of a new firmware, as when it works, it works really well for me.



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Welcome to the club of the ac87u locking up, actually had my own thread going with the same problem. Seems so many people are reporting this same issue but no one knows why it is. I am on my 2nd ac87u as I sent the 1st one back due to the same problem, was really debating on sending this one back too, but am hanging on just in case there is a fix in the form of a new firmware, as when it works, it works really well for me.

Unfortunately I'm in the Philippines and returning stuff here is pretty much impossible. If it turns on and blinks then it's working. End of story.

@Haggster I'll try your suggestion, thank you. I also tried putting my ISPs DSL modem into router mode so my Asus uses 192.168.1.x and grabs a 10.0.0.x IP from the DSL modem. It didn't seem to make any difference over leaving the DSL modem in bridge mode. Except that internet browsing is a tiny bit slower.
 
I had a very similar issue, and found that a big part of the issue was the Traffic Analyser. Reboot and clear the JFFS partition sorted my issues out.
 
I had a very similar issue, and found that a big part of the issue was the Traffic Analyser. Reboot and clear the JFFS partition sorted my issues out.
Interesting, the traffic analyser can be turned of if my memory serves me right. Shall be trying this later as I have not tried this yet, and see what happens. Will report back


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
SImilar issue, the same firmware, different router: RT-N66U. It does not work in router mode (1xAP + 4xmedia brdge). Since then it has traffic analyzer disabled. JFFS partitions disabled too. I think, since then, that it is rather specific to a bug in the firmware ...
 
before .55 fw i had no problem, now i test latest beta and still no problem, but my test now is to shotr for any conclusions.
I had never used traffic analyzer, but now i enable this feature.
 
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SImilar issue, the same firmware, different router: RT-N66U. It does not work in router mode (1xAP + 4xmedia brdge). Since then it has traffic analyzer disabled. JFFS partitions disabled too. I think, since then, that it is rather specific to a bug in the firmware ...

There's no Traffic Analyzer on the RT-N66U, as it doesn't support the Trend Micro engine.
 
I had a very similar issue, and found that a big part of the issue was the Traffic Analyser. Reboot and clear the JFFS partition sorted my issues out.

Tried this earlier today and it's locked up again. I already had traffic analyser (stats) turned off but I've now also turned off apps analysis and turned off QoS. We'll see if that fixes the issue.
 
I know that "me too" posts are not really helpful, but I too have been having my 87U lock up on me every couple of days on firmware 378.55. The lights appear normal and the PC still reports an internet connection but no traffic passes and web pages fail to load.

I have good airflow under the 87U and my temps were the first thing I checked... 43C, 69C, 70C for the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and CPU respectively.

My usage of the router is light with no drives/printers attached, nothing fancy. It only has three wired devices attached, two 2.4GHz and one 5GHz client doing simple browsing. It is a little frustrating given the time the 87U takes to reboot.
 
Where's this new official ASUS beta that people are talking about? Maybe I'm blind but I can't find it on their official site or on the forum.. unless it's not as "official" as I'm thinking?
 

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