ASUS ZenWiFi AX Whole Home Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System

[robgbc]

I manually updated my XT8 v1s to 3.0.0.4.388_24688 this morning, on the one-year anniversary of switching them to AiMesh AP mode and moving them behind a MikroTik firewall.

The wireless connection remains stable, and the download speeds are excellent, 900+mbps. At this point, barring a hardware failure, I don’t see a need to replace them anytime soon.

Liked by:

You need to login in order to vote

[UK Sentinel]

Changelog for ASUS XT8 (HW Ver: 1.0) incase others have missed this latest release.

 

ASUS ZenWiFi XT8 Firmware version 3.0.0.4.388_24688 (HW Ver: 1.0)

Version 3.0.0.4.388_24688

2024/11/28

Release note:
1.Strengthened input validation and data processing workflows to further protect information security.
2.Enhanced AiCloud password protection mechanisms, safeguarding against unauthorized access attempts.
3.Enhanced device security through improved buffer handling in connection features.
4.Refined data handling processes, ensuring secure and accurate information management.
5. Enhanced file access control mechanisms, promoting a more secure operating environment.
6. Strengthened certificate protection, providing enhanced data security.

ASUS ZenWiFi AX (XT8) – Support

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

Liked by:

You need to login in order to vote

[dodgydrains]

Have Asus removed all the previous FW from the support page?  I can only see the latest November release.

You need to login in order to vote

[UK Sentinel]

Interesting, I wonder what ASUS are upto ?

I will check again in a couple of days to see if its just a server replication issue as it is Xmas and lots of server updates etc.  if not I will drop ASUS a message and see whats going on

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

Liked by:

You need to login in order to vote

[UK Sentinel]

@Dodgydrains: So I had a chat with ASUS and seems that for certain ASUS models,  they have removed all previous firmware releases, i.e. the XT8 which we know about.

ASUS say previous firmware’s have been removed due to Issues.

At least we now know the firmware removal was intentional

1

Share

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by UK Sentinel. Reason: added note

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

Liked by:

You need to login in order to vote

[LarryR]

Perhaps they felt that some of the security flaws that have been corrected were critical enough that they did not want people using firmware that still contained the flaws? Maybe their legal team was involved???

Liked by:

You need to login in order to vote

[UK Sentinel]

The XT8 has had an interesting firmware journey

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

Liked by:

You need to login in order to vote

[dodgydrains]

Liked by:

You need to login in order to vote

[dodgydrains]

Any ideas what this ‘error’ means?

It is repeated many times in the log:

 

Feb 24 09:45:05 kernel: ^[[0;33;41m[ERROR archer] archer_mcast_activate,577: ADD_PORT: WLAN SSID has already been added: egress_port 7, current 0x0006, new 0x0004^[[0m

You need to login in order to vote

[UK Sentinel]

From what I recall when I spoke with ASUS back in 2022, this was either associated with Broadcom’s NAT accelerator and/or Guest wifi.

Has guest wifi been enabled ?

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

You need to login in order to vote

[dodgydrains]

I do not use the guest wifi, it is always disabled.

Not had any issues for 43 days uptime.  I’ll just let it continue until something goes wrong and then do a reboot at some point

No issues in 43 days is amazing.

 

You need to login in order to vote

[UK Sentinel]

That killed that theory as I had hoped Guest Wifi was the culprit, 43 days is very impressive

Looking at the log message, nothing to worry about especially if you are not having any Wifi issues and seems as though the archer_mcast service (Broadcom related) is trying to add a new Port 7 to Wifi, but the Port 7 is already in existence hence the error reference.

(my initial thoughts at least) but happy to be corrected.

 

FWIW:

On an Asus router, a “port” is a virtual gateway that allows specific types of internet traffic to reach a particular device on your network, essentially acting as a designated entry point for data coming in or going out from your router.

An ingress port is the incoming port, the egress port is the exiting port.

• ingress – entering
• egress – exiting

Archer is related to Broadcom and is proprietary.

Multicast is a type of IP addressing.

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

Liked by:

You need to login in order to vote

[Oltex8]

To briefly summarize my XT8 experience  . . . Quantity 3 v1 units used in AP only mode purchased in Jan of 23.  It took nearly 18 months of firmware updates before the mesh would stay operational on the second 5Ghz band for more than a week between reboots.  I was concerned if I could ever leave the home for more than a week as with the automatic reboots there were instances where more than one reboot was required.   So I went through the effort and cost to install Ethernet backhaul.

Then just 2 weeks ago my primary unit completely “lights out” failed.  I tried multiple pin resets, swapped power adapters, etc., but nothing brought the unit back.

I ordered a new xt8 and received a v2.  Besides the different power adapter that appears more robust the v2 unit’s memory consumption is far less.  Even with the daily memory leak after 9 days of operation I am still at only 51% memory use.

I have reached out to ASUS regarding some type of replacement, gift card, credit, etc. regarding the failed v1 unit as it seems a 33% failure rate after less than 2 years is substandard for product quality these days.   In over twenty years of home operational 7/24 network gadgets from many brands I have never had such a failure.  So far my dialogue with ASUS has been disappointing for any kind of “customer satisfaction” actions regarding the failed unit.  I will update if that changes.

 

 

You need to login in order to vote

[UK Sentinel]

Two years is not ideal, you should be able to claim under ASUS Warranty in your part of the world.

https://www.asus.com/us/support/faq/1041323/

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

Liked by:

You need to login in order to vote

[Oltex8]

You need to login in order to vote

[Author]

Posts