What's the current "best" firmware for BT8/BE14000?

[CptCrackers]

I go these three BT8's (BE14000 specifically) this week, and yes it's early days, but man, ASUS needs to get it together on the firmware. They are going to get so many returns from casual users not willing to troubleshoot. My main question is which firmware (and wifi settings) are you using, and what issues are oustanding with the one you are on?

I switched off of XT8's that recently started having serious issues - including endless deauths for iphones, and many IoT devices dropping out for long periods.

After battling these things through 2 days of resets, multiple firmware regressions, and trying settings I settled in at:

• Firmware 3.0.0.6.102_56746
• MLO off
• TWO SSID's
  • 1) IoT default SSID- 2.4 and 5 both on (displays as wifi6)
  • 2) Main SSID - 2.4 OFF, 5 & 6 on (displays as wifi 7)
• Wired backhaul

This is the first time in MONTHS that I've had all my IoT (I have a lot of them) connect easily and stay connected - particularly ring cameras, alexa/echos, and certain smartlife connected light bulbs.

However, with this firmware there are still some odd things ranked from worst down:

1. (actual problem) iPhones and iPads cannot connect AT ALL to the wifi
2. (security issue??) Even though the setting "AiMesh node Ethernet auto setup" is off, the nodes self connect - no matter how many times or which method I use to default them - past models retained their association until you reset them deeply enough - for these, can't seem to do it.
3. (Possible security issue??) A random long Heaxdecimal SSID for wach of my SSID's is being broadcast - the security key isn't the same, so this make me nervous since I don't know what it is - this doesn't show up when the units are defaulted and their SSID is the ASUS_xxxxx one for setup.
4. (nuisance, or problem?) When I tried changing a couple of the DHCP settings, one of my nodes flipped itself from aimesh node to accesspoint/repeater. It was giving out 33.x.x.x IP addresses, with no internet connection. My phone app thought this was the main router and once I got the node back to being a ode, it was areally difficult getting the app to understand.

For #1, and #3, these SEEM to be addressed specifically in the 3.0.0.6.102_56747 BETA firmware. This is the only firmware I haven't tried. I don't know if the iphone issue persists in newer firmware, because the 813, and 839 firmwares were VERY unstable so I reverted off them. Also, I can tell you the weird long SSID's have been there for every firmware I've tried. Not sure on the iphone issue.

So I guess my general question is what firmware are you using, what problems does it have?

And more specific: has anyone tried the 747 firmware, and if so do iPhones connect? do your IoT things stay connected (bonus if it's ring cams or older echo/Alexas)? Does it introduce any other issues? I'm only hesitating trying it because I'm stable, I don't personally use iphone myself, those that do can use data, and I'm nervous about beta firmwares - but it's interesting it's still posted there with newer firmware available.

 

[CptCrackers]

Little update. I just discovered the node that did the weird switchover to an AP/repeater also went rogue and upgraded itself to the new firmware "somehow".

 

[bbunge]

Your best firmware is the newest. With your WIFI 7 beta devices the firmware is continuously being improved

 

[Tech9]

many returns from casual users not willing to troubleshoot

No one is willing to troubleshoot a new device. If it causes trouble - send it back.

 

[CptCrackers]

Your best firmware is the newest. With your WIFI 7 beta devices the firmware is continuously being improved

Not on these. The two newest cause lots of problems.

 

[bbunge]

Not on these. The two newest cause lots of problems.

Well, as I said... beta devices... @Tech9 said it best "send it (or them all) back"

 

[Duckbill9611]

I go these three BT8's (BE14000 specifically) this week, and yes it's early days, but man, ASUS needs to get it together on the firmware. They are going to get so many returns from casual users not willing to troubleshoot. My main question is which firmware (and wifi settings) are you using, and what issues are oustanding with the one you are on?

I switched off of XT8's that recently started having serious issues - including endless deauths for iphones, and many IoT devices dropping out for long periods.

After battling these things through 2 days of resets, multiple firmware regressions, and trying settings I settled in at:

• Firmware 3.0.0.6.102_56746
• MLO off
• TWO SSID's
  • 1) IoT default SSID- 2.4 and 5 both on (displays as wifi6)
  • 2) Main SSID - 2.4 OFF, 5 & 6 on (displays as wifi 7)
• Wired backhaul

This is the first time in MONTHS that I've had all my IoT (I have a lot of them) connect easily and stay connected - particularly ring cameras, alexa/echos, and certain smartlife connected light bulbs.

However, with this firmware there are still some odd things ranked from worst down:

1. (actual problem) iPhones and iPads cannot connect AT ALL to the wifi
2. (security issue??) Even though the setting "AiMesh node Ethernet auto setup" is off, the nodes self connect - no matter how many times or which method I use to default them - past models retained their association until you reset them deeply enough - for these, can't seem to do it.
3. (Possible security issue??) A random long Heaxdecimal SSID for wach of my SSID's is being broadcast - the security key isn't the same, so this make me nervous since I don't know what it is - this doesn't show up when the units are defaulted and their SSID is the ASUS_xxxxx one for setup.
4. (nuisance, or problem?) When I tried changing a couple of the DHCP settings, one of my nodes flipped itself from aimesh node to accesspoint/repeater. It was giving out 33.x.x.x IP addresses, with no internet connection. My phone app thought this was the main router and once I got the node back to being a ode, it was areally difficult getting the app to understand.

For #1, and #3, these SEEM to be addressed specifically in the 3.0.0.6.102_56747 BETA firmware. This is the only firmware I haven't tried. I don't know if the iphone issue persists in newer firmware, because the 813, and 839 firmwares were VERY unstable so I reverted off them. Also, I can tell you the weird long SSID's have been there for every firmware I've tried. Not sure on the iphone issue.

So I guess my general question is what firmware are you using, what problems does it have?

And more specific: has anyone tried the 747 firmware, and if so do iPhones connect? do your IoT things stay connected (bonus if it's ring cams or older echo/Alexas)? Does it introduce any other issues? I'm only hesitating trying it because I'm stable, I don't personally use iphone myself, those that do can use data, and I'm nervous about beta firmwares - but it's interesting it's still posted there with newer firmware available.

I'm having the exact same issues as you (#1-3, haven't seen any problems with DHCP). I turned off 6GHz and Wifi 7 mode, and things seem better, but still nowhere near ideal.

If you try the beta firmware, please reply. I'm hoping Asus gets their crap together and fixes this.

 

[CptCrackers]

I'm having the exact same issues as you (#1-3, haven't seen any problems with DHCP). I turned off 6GHz and Wifi 7 mode, and things seem better, but still nowhere near ideal.

If you try the beta firmware, please reply. I'm hoping Asus gets their crap together and fixes this.

I had some time this week and weekend so I was able to get them up 813, mostly stable.

Some things I found:

1. Starting with 746, then moving up one at a time, seems to be a good idea. I'm concerned that this will mean any time you reboot, you have to go back, set items then move up. But doing this seemed to clean up certain problems by going up in order through 747, then 813.
2. One specific Item I found caused lockups was if I put it in 813, or 839, and it's freshly reset, and then I go to the WPS page it freezes and the main router has to be power cycled. Meaning I couldn't turn off WPS after resetting the box in either of those firmwares, but it turned off just fine in 746, then stayed off after upgrading to 747 and 813.
3. Moving up from 746 to 747 did not fix either the iphone connection issues or the random SSID issue. Even thought it says it's specifically for those purposes.
4. Moving up to 813, I was able to get the iphones connected. I did have to do two things: 1. turn off my dual wan settings ( I use failover to a cellular modem), and 2. do a network reset on the iphones themselves - iphones seem to be particularly struggling with wifi 7 routers and possibly with 6ghz bands being grouped, and they don't seem to truly "forget" the network when you forget it until you reset. So I think part of the blame goes to apple at the moment - since they wouldn't connect to 813 until being network reset. I didn't try turning off the wan in 746 or 747 because I had no reason to think it was an issue, but in 813 one of the phone briefly connected with the wrong IP subnet, and looking at it I was able to identify the internal ip address of my cellular backup modem as the dns!! Which makes zero sense as when the wan is in failover, I cannot access that IP through the router. It might have been a coincidence, but it's what made me think to turn off the dual wan. Which is still off, so that's not my favorite, but I think they may possibly have a routing table bug with the dual wan settings.
5. Also moving up to 813 the random SSID's went away - but they seem to have become hidden SSID's which was something that irritated my with the XT8's, and I think is something that was not always there. I THINK but others may know better that at some point asus reimagined the backhaul options such that turning off the wifi backhaul in favor of ethernet USED to really turn off the wifi backhaul - but now possibly they are operating hidden ssids as a backup backhaul which I wish wasn't there - I could be wrong, but these zen routers didn't used to need so much babysitting a few years ago, and I wonder if this is why.
   And lastly on the random SSID's, after making some changes to which bands I had on whcih SSID's they came back - bummer - one of them went away again after a few hours, one hung around.

so right now there's a few bugs in there, all of which I can live with for now, and all seem to simply be firmware bloopers that should get resolved.

I'm not willing to go up to 839 as that one was the worst one I tried individually, and there are threads here and other places indicating that the march updates to multiple zenwiifi models caused a lot of similar issues to what my XT8's were having.

Again, I have the be14000 even though I ordered BT8's, but the internet tells me they should be identical.

 

[CptCrackers]

PS I have not had a repeat of the node updating itself or switching modes. Also, I can't rule out user error that I may have THOUGHT I regressed the firmware on that one but maybe didn't check it actually completed. When updating to 813 I did all three nodes, but then realized about 15 minutes later one hadn't completed the update.

 

[CptCrackers]

Oh one other nuisance is that these take forever to reboot, and when they first come up they start broadcasting their SSID's before they are actually ready for clients - this only causes an issue with our MYQ (which, do a search, are garbage to begin with). Basically I think the MYQ gives up on looking for wifi once it can't has a failed connection. We've noticed other times that if the internet goes out it will sometimes not come back on with everything else. So while that's a MyQ issue it already has, it's weird the routers start broadcasting ssid's before they are really all the way up - this also causes phones and computers to connect their way through any ssids that are set to autoconnect.

 

[CptCrackers]

I want to note that right now, on 813, for me, all the things that seem like bugs are merely nuisances. There's a few of them - like the app counting a different number of devices than the web console, one random ssid, and few other things that seem to be display errors.

My iot devices have never been more stable. Everything is getting great speeds. Far better than before. Where i live we can only get 400x10 stated speeds which are actually like ~500x10 at the router. On our xt8's I could never clock higher than ~350x8 on any wifi device, but now I'm getting 450-500x8.5-10.

 

[rsbrux]

I was considering getting a couple of BT8s to get 6GHz and future-proof my network for a few years, but your reporting here scares me. In particular, I want ethernet-only backhaul. The usual remedy for ASUS firmware problems is to install Merlin, but BT8 isn't supported (yet).

 

[Duckbill9611]

@CptCrackers Thanks for the update - I'll try doing the same dance you did and see if going from 746 to 813 gives better results. I too have the WPS problem you mentioned. Asus used to make really good stuff, but this set has left me very disappointed.

 

[Tech9]

Merlin, but BT8 isn't supported (yet)

This is a MediaTek hardware device, won't get Asuswrt-Merlin ever.

 

[CptCrackers]

I was considering getting a couple of BT8s to get 6GHz and future-proof my network for a few years, but your reporting here scares me. In particular, I want ethernet-only backhaul. The usual remedy for ASUS firmware problems is to install Merlin, but BT8 isn't supported (yet).

It probably never will be. I think I saw a main criteria for merlin is Broadcom chips.