Swapping Faulty Router

[TheLyppardMan]

I have only had my RT-AC87U for a few days, but it seems to have developed a couple of problems, which may or not be related, so Amazon are sending me a replacement tomorrow. The first problem is the led for LAN 1 is exhibiting odd characteristics. Rather than flickering like all the other lights, it keeps cycling on and off approximately every second. So it goes off, flickering on, off, flickering on, etc. The other thing I have noticed is that LAN1 port in Tools/Sysinfo just reports the connected device as unknown (see uploaded image). I have tried swapping over the Ethernet cables for ports 1 & 2, but it doesn't make any difference to how the router behaves, i.e., it still shows whatever is connected to LAN 1 as unknown, so it's clearly not the connected devices causing this.

My question is, when the new router arrives, will it allow me to restore the configuration from my current router, provided I flash it with the same (latest) version of Merlin's firmware?

One other thing not related to this, but something I have noticed in user comments elsewhere (sorry, I can't remember the source) and I'm getting the same behaviour is that quite often, when I try to open a web page, I have to click the link twice to get the page to load. Has anyone else come across this and if so, is there a solution?

 

[joegreat]

LAN port 1 is shared with the 5 GHz wireless networking and can cause some problems - I suggest to not use it if you see issues.

In my case the AC87U works well - even if I use LAN Port 1 - but there is not much traffic on it.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

The led was working OK for the first day or so, but not sure about the "unknown" problem. I need to use all 4 ports though, so perhaps the replacement router will work without any problems. I still need to find out if I will be able to reload the current configuration file. If not, I'll have to laboriously make screenshots of everything I have configured before I reflash the router to the stock firmware, which will be a pain.

 

[joegreat]

..., I'll have to laboriously make screenshots of everything I have configured before I reflash the router to the stock firmware, which will be a pain.

You can use John's User NVRAM Save/Restore Utility to save and reload the user entered configuration.
This is also the only way after changing firmware:
Do not forget to load the latest firmware AND do a factory reset AFTER the load of the new firmware to avoid issues which are already solved!

 

[TheLyppardMan]

Can you point me to the instructions for using John's tool as it's been ages since I've used it and I've forgotten the procedure? Thanks.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

Can you point me to the instructions for using John's tool as it's been ages since I've used it and I've forgotten the procedure? Thanks.

Actually, it's coming back to me now - I remember that the instructions are contained in the zip file, so I'll just work my way through them to prepare for swapover day.

 

[RMerlin]

it still shows whatever is connected to LAN 1 as unknown, so it's clearly not the connected devices causing this.

This is normal. Port 1 is a Realtek switch (while the three other ports are Broadcom). I don't have the necessary documentation to know how to retrieve the last seen MAC from a Realtek switch (assuming it's even possible).

 

[sfx2000]

This is normal. Port 1 is a Realtek switch (while the three other ports are Broadcom). I don't have the necessary documentation to know how to retrieve the last seen MAC from a Realtek switch (assuming it's even possible).

OpenWRT has a lightweight util that might talk to the Realtek switch - might be worth consideration, however, I don't think it'll pull the MAC table itself (address:switch port).

https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/techref/swconfig

The info is definitely there, otherwise the switch wouldn't work - and since they do support managed functions, there has to be a way to query it, but my guess is they keep that under NDA...

 

[TheLyppardMan]

I just typed the following while offline, so I hadn't read post #7 above, which seems to have answered one of my queries...

My replacement RT-AC87U router arrived from Amazon yesterday and guess what, it has the same or similar behaviour with the leds, as well as reporting as “unknown” anything connected to LAN 1. I say same or similar, because I only had the first router a couple of days and during that time, the led cycling on and off only affected the LAN 1 led, whereas the replacement that I’m now using also had this happening on the 5GHz led yesterday evening (but today, it’s back to just affecting LAN 1).

I spoke to ASUS support this morning about this and they said that this was unlikely to be a hardware issue as the flash on and off was too regular and for two units to exhibit the same behaviour made that even more unlikely. So they are going to pass this matter back to the firmware development team to check for possible bugs. It would be interesting to know if anyone else who has this model of router has also noticed these issues. Fortunately, the router seems to be doing its job properly, so these are only relatively minor problems.

 

[TheLyppardMan]

Could anyone who has an RT-AC87U check to see if any of their leds are behaving like mine please? I've just had a message back from ASUS and they have simply suggested resetting via the button at the rear and reconfiguring, but I've already done all that as part of the reflashing with Merlin's firmware process, so that seems like a waste of time.