Spontaneous reboot. Should I be worried?

[Ojee]

I have an Asus RT-AC87U, running the latest merlin firmware. It has served me well for over a year now, with no problems. Yesterday night it spontaneously rebooted itself. It has never done that before. I have it setup to automatically reboot every week, but this was not one of those instances. I looked in the logs, but I can't figure out why it might have done so. I also looked at the IPS logs, and there were no registered attacks around that time. Can you guys help me out? Should I be worried?

 

[degrub]

power or thermal overload likely. Is it on a UPS ?
Check the vents for obstructions, excessive dust.

 

[Ojee]

No there seems to be no excessive dust around the vents. I'm trying to copy a part of the log in this thread but I get an error saying i'm blocked by cloudflare every time I try?

 

[Ojee]

Ok this morning I woke up and the 5ghz network was off. When I tried to log in to the router to see what was up, I got to the login page, but beyond that, it timed out. I could not find anything in the logs either (I remotely backup the logs to a server). I did a hard reset, and nothing happened. Only when I shut it off completely, turned it back on again, and then did a hard reset did the router become responsive again.

At first I thought it was foul play (I have some ports open for VPN etc), but I could find no evidence of it on either the NAS or the router. What could be going on?

This exact sequence of events happened one year ago too, and I suspected it was foul play then (because I was a noob at running a NAS and had way too many ports open and generally crap security) but this time is different. Everything is locked down with multiple passwords and authentications.

Might there be something wrong with my router?

I tried looking for similar stories like mine, but I couldn't find any.

 

[System Error Message]

the AC87U was a total flop, even its internal design has bottlenecks too. I've been against the AC87U since it was launched. Your router is basically gone (hardware degradation).

My AC68U is still in use working fine and i got it since it was released.

 

[RMerlin]

Try a complete electrical reset.

1) Turn it off
2) Unplug the power
3) Turn it back on for 5 secs, to drain any residual charge
4) Turn back off
5) Plug back the power
6) Turn it on and let it boot normally

 

[Ojee]

Thank you guys for the responses. I contacted ASUS and they told me they suspect a hardware problem, and that I should try flashing back to factory standard firmware and see if the problem persists. I am really reluctant to do so, because I really like the merlin firmware. However, I saw my machine was idling at 75C, so I read up on some cooling options on the forum and decided to buy a Cooler Master laptop cooler and put it under the router. My temps have now dropped to 62C. Hopefully this'll solve my stability issues. I'll keep you guys posted.

 

[degrub]

Return it. It has an issue. It should not be running that hot. Get the replacement asap.