Verizon 5G Home with modern ASUS routers (DHCP issue)

[leonftw]

Greetings,

I have Verizon 5G Home Internet with the LV65 receiver. This is the window mount receiver that receives the Verizon 5G signal and connects to a router via ethernet where it passes the WAN IP. I want to use an ASUS router (instead of the Verizon router) due to all the cool features of ASUS routers (and from the forums many people do this with other branded routers). When I connect the LV65 to my GT-AX6000, within a few hours (or less), I get the infamous "Your ISP’s DHCP Does Not Function Properly" and all traffic stops. I've tried all the various modes (Aggressive, Normal, and Continuous). I've tried the most recent two official firmwares (May 2023 and June 2023) for the GT-AX6000 (with factory resets after installing). I've also tried the latest Merlin firmware -- 388.2_2 (which Cake seems to be awesome for this setup as my bufferbloat scores have been an 'A' rating when testing). Again, I've performed factory resets and I still keep getting the DHCP error.

So I hooked up an old RT-AC68P running the latest Merlin firmware (386.11) and I've had rock stable stability for the past 3 weeks.

Some observations/questions:

- the WAN lease time is set to 2 minutes on the Verizon LV65 (yes, 2 minutes!) but this doesn't seem to be a problem for the RT-AC68P. My WAN IP typically stays constant (and it looks to still be the same even on the GT-AX6000 when the DHCP error happens). I've had 2 weeks straight uptime on the RT-AC68P with the same WAN IP.

- Could this be a hardware bug with the GT-AX6000? Should I try to get it replaced? I've had this GT-AX6000 for about 7 months, which that time it was on Cox cable and I've had zero WAN DHCP issues (BTW, Cox does a 24 hour lease on the WAN DHCP)

I've reverted back to using the RT-AC68P with the Verizon LV65 as it's been rock stable (knock on wood) but I want to use my new GT-AX6000.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

EDIT: I bought a RT-AX58U (since I want at least WI-FI 6) and running 388.2_2 Merlin. This model has 100% uptime for the past two weeks being connected to the Verizon LV65 (same configurations). So this seems to be an obscure WAN DHCP bug with newer hardware (such as my GT-AX6000 but also replies below show other newer models being affected too - GT-AXE16000).

 

[drinkingbird]

Greetings,

I have Verizon 5G Home Internet with the LV65 receiver. This is the window mount receiver that receives the Verizon 5G signal and connects to a router via ethernet where it passes the WAN IP. I want to use an ASUS router (instead of the Verizon router) due to all the cool features of ASUS routers (and from the forums many people do this with other branded routers). When I connect the LV65 to my GT-AX6000, within a few hours (or less), I get the infamous "Your ISP’s DHCP Does Not Function Properly" and all traffic stops. I've tried all the various modes (Aggressive, Normal, and Continuous). I've tried the most recent two official firmwares (May 2023 and June 2023) for the GT-AX6000 (with factory resets after installing). I've also tried the latest Merlin firmware -- 388.2_2 (which Cake seems to be awesome for this setup as my bufferbloat scores have been an 'A' rating when testing). Again, I've performed factory resets and I still keep getting the DHCP error.

So I hooked up an old RT-AC68P running the latest Merlin firmware (386.11) and I've have rock stable stability for the past 3 weeks.

Some observations/questions:

- the WAN lease time is set to 2 minutes on the Verizon LV65 (yes, 2 minutes!) but this doesn't seem to be a problem for the RT-AC68P. My WAN IP typically stays constant (and it looks to still be the same even on the GT-AX6000 when the DHCP error happens). I've had 2 weeks straight uptime on the RT-AC68P with the same WAN IP.

- Could this be a hardware bug with the GT-AX6000? Should I try to get it replaced? I've had this GT-AX6000 for about 7 months, which that time it was on Cox cable and I've had zero WAN DHCP issues (BTW, Cox does a 24 hour lease on the WAN DHCP)

I've reverted back to using the RT-AC68P with the Verizon LV65 as it's been rock stable (knock on wood) but I want to use my new GT-AX6000.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

I've seen posts here of various issues with lease times of 1 hour or less.

Both Asus routers get a 2 minute lease time? On FIOS, that means you are on their testing network and not fully provisioned yet, but that may be different for 5G.

Best I can suggest is to check the log and make sure your AX is renewing its IP every minute (half the lease time). If not it is probably a software/firmware bug. Doubtful it is a hardware bug.

As a test, you could connect the AX WAN to the AC LAN and set the lease time on the AC to 120 (2 min) and see if the AX has the same issue there.

 

[leonftw]

I've seen posts here of various issues with lease times of 1 hour or less.

Both Asus routers get a 2 minute lease time? On FIOS, that means you are on their testing network and not fully provisioned yet, but that may be different for 5G.

Best I can suggest is to check the log and make sure your AX is renewing its IP every minute (half the lease time). If not it is probably a software/firmware bug. Doubtful it is a hardware bug.

As a test, you could connect the AX WAN to the AC LAN and set the lease time on the AC to 120 (2 min) and see if the AX has the same issue there.

Thank you for the tips. I will give the AX WAN to AC LAN a shot (good idea). Also, I wanted to report that I installed 386.7_2 on the GT-AX6000 thinking maybe the 386 firmware would be more stable (since the RT-AC68P is on 386). Unfortunately, the GT-AX6000 still froze with the DHCP error within a couple hours of running.

What’s the best way to report this to the devs?

 

[drinkingbird]

Thank you for the tips. I will give the AX WAN to AC LAN a shot (good idea). Also, I wanted to report that I installed 386.7_2 on the GT-AX6000 thinking maybe the 386 firmware would be more stable (since the RT-AC68P is on 386). Unfortunately, the GT-AX6000 still froze with the DHCP error within a couple hours of running.

What’s the best way to report this to the devs?

Better first to isolate the issue and get some logs/more details. I'm curious if for some reason the AC68 might be getting a longer lease time or something, and whether the AX works correctly when behind the AC (and thus getting a longer lease time).

 

[leonftw]

I’m also having issues with my WAN dropping every few hours, after some research it appears it may be an obscure dhcp bug which is occurring on ASUS routers running newer firmware? There are many posts about this issue.

Here is a thread which I believe explains the issue:

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/have-fios-wan-dhcp-issues-been-resolved-in-386-4.77477/post-753331

I have an axe16000 and running latest merlin 3004.388.4

@RMerlin would you be able to take a look?

Yes, all of my testing on my GT-AX6000 leads to this being an obscure WAN DHCP bug with newer hardware running ASUS official firmware as well as Merlin (I’ve tried 388 and even 386 firmwares).

In fact, I bought a RT-AX58U and running 388.2_2 Merlin and that has been fully stable with 100% uptime for the past two weeks connected to the Verizon LV65. So the RT-AX58U and the RT-AC68U have been unaffected.

@RMerlin Any thoughts?

 

[leonftw]

Good news. This looks to be fixed. I've been running a Verizon 5G Home ASK-NCM1100 gateway with IP Passthrough to a GT-AX6000 router. Using the latest Asus official firmware -- 3.0.0.6.102_34810 -- and things have been super stable with only a 1 min WAN DHCP lease time. The past two Asus firmware releases for the GT-AX6000 seem to focus on stability and memory issues, so it looks like they fixed the bug with super short WAN lease times!