[Cozak]

Ha! Not a chance after the nightmare of the Dsl-Ac88u. What a joke that thing was. I switched to a rmerlin supported router after it became obvious Asus were incapable of releasing decent firmware for that joke of a router. Thankfully I managed to get rid of it on ebay (sorry to that person lol).

Rmerlin firmware is so much better that you’d have to be nuts to buy one of these dsl models over a rmerlin supported model.

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[Cozak]

It was the same in the 384.15 alpha too. The wifi driver in anything beyond 384.14 is trash, which as you correctly point out, is closed source and therefore beyond rmerlin’s control. Judging by the comments on the official firmware thread on smallnetbuilder.com its not any better with the later gpl either so I’ll probably be stuck on 384.14 for a while.

I wouldn’t waste time resetting your router and trying it, you’ll only achieve an evening of wasted time for your efforts. I’ve already confirmed the fault is there for other users anyway, so not just my router affected.

The crippling of the 2.4ghz band so that only a single antenna transmits reduces the overall signal strength a fair bit. This is especially bad for me with the ring cameras as I rely on an external WiFi cable running from the router to an outside antenna to provide the signal. With this change I can either have a good signal inside, or one outside, but not both.

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[Cozak]

The problem with the latest 384.15 is it massively degrades 2.4ghz performance. Only a single antenna (the rear left closest to switch port 8) transmits the 2.4ghz signal after flashing this firmware. No good if you have a ton on IoT devices like me that only work on the 2.4ghz band (such as ring cameras).

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[Cozak]

Well if anyone else is thinking of giving up on this router but still wants to stick with Asus then I can recommend the new RT-AX88U flashed with rmerlin firmware and coupled with a Draytek vigor 130 modem.

This thing is an utter beast. I can’t stress enough how much better this thing is over the dsl-ac88u. It sh*ts all over it in every conceivable way.

No memory leaks.

No problems with dhcp.

No random wifi disconnect problems.

The beast of a cpu doesn’t even care if I turn on every option. It never went above 10% usage.

With ai enabled on the dsl-ac88u wifi speeds would sink to almost unusable levels and max out the cpu. With the rt-ax88u the cpu use didn’t even hit 5% on the same test.

Honestly guys ditch this crappy dsl-ac88u, stick it on ebay, and swap to an rt model that supports rmerlin. I’m literally blown away by the difference and how much better this router is.

Why did I not do this months ago?!?

 

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[Cozak]

I would strongly advise against exposing any router login page directly to the WAN. It’s just crying out to get hacked. Instead enable a secure open vpn service and connect to the router via that which will then allow management without exposing it to being hacked. Remember this is a consumer grade device, I doubt its Web interface is free from vulnerabilities.

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[Cozak]

KitsuneDave wrote:

Went very well indeed, with ai on and off achieved full download speeds with low cpu usage, no stutter etc So to confirm speeds over 100Mbps and ai protection on this cpu is too weak to handle the demand of inspecting packets. Other than that and the IPV6 issue the firmware is fine for me as long as ai is off. @cozak Yes we already know about the Nat being disabled when ai is on, i was just merely stating since i see no other user other than myself on G.Fast which is affected more by this. That’s why i asked if other users on lower speeds experienced what i did when ai is enabled, and as above my friend who is on 80/20 not affected in anyway when ai is on with Nat being disabled.

They won’t be on the wan bandwidth as the cpu only maxes out when you have in excess of approximately 130mbps on the downstream. I have vdsl, 80 down 20 up and there is no reduction in speed (although cpu use is very high).

However as stated before this is all a moot point when ai protection brings local lan traffic to a crawl making it completely useless regardless of wan bandwidth.

Wan speeds also fall to snails pace if you start a local file copy whilst downloading. Try this for yourself with ai on, start a file download and note speed. Then start a file transfer from a wireless device (eg laptop) to an ether net connected device (eg NAS) and watch as the file download speed drops to pitiful levels.

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[Cozak]

UK Sentinel wrote:

That is a credible theory and I have already put this to ASUS a few weeks back, it would be handy if we had a user whom was on IPV6, just to validate no other issues (bugs) exist, as IPv6 does not require NAT. (i.e. if AiP with IPv6 still is throttled to 130Mbps, then we know issue is CPU and /or Content Inspection related etc.) A major part of this (feature) is the way SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) works. Edit1: just looked at my notes, I did not mention to ASUS why LAN to LAN traffic was/may also being inspected via AiP, so will add this also. Edit2: AiProtection does have the option for Infected Device Prevention and Blocking, which stops/identifies LAN based clients infecting others, so if this option is enabled, LAN speed could be impacted by AiProtection? (ignore Edit1)

I previously attempted to narrow it down by disabling each of the AI features one at a time, but even with them all off (but AI enabled at the top) it still does it.

 

Edit – Found this thread: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac88u-version-3-0-0-4-384-10007.43101/

It’s for a different router but this ai protection cpu issue has effected several other asus routers as well as this one. Looks like it was solved by ASUS in the end judging by the final comment in the thread. Perhaps this is a clue for them as to what is going wrong with this router.

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[Cozak]

UK Sentinel wrote:

Had a early email from ASUS and they (ASUS) confirm that using AiProtection, does indeed disable NAT Acceleration (CTF). Will post any updates regarding AiProtection (G.fast) when I hear again from ASUS.

Guys we already know it disables NAT acceleration…… it even says so on the main AI page ‘NAT acceleration will be disable for more precise packet inspection.’

The problem with reduced bandwidth is nothing to do with NAT acceleration, it is because the packet inspection maxes out the cpu and so it can’t physically cope with anything more than around 130mbps on the downstream. Hence also that local wireless to Ethernet traffic is effected and maxes out at around 13MB/s (which is approximately 130mbps) for the same reason, cpu maxed out. However this is clearly a bug as AI protection should only be inspecting packets destined for the WAN interface and not local network traffic. Can we have ASUS look into why AI protection is inspecting local lan packets causing loss of throughput? In firmware 503 this did not happen.

 

 

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[Cozak]

Yes happens with latest firmware, and pretty much every firmware after 503.

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[Cozak]

KitsuneDave wrote:

UK Sentinel wrote:

The processor is only a dual core 1GHz, so this is interesting, I will pass this back to ASUS to see if they have any comments, but do not worry, they will not contact you I am on a 50/10 service and previously not noticed any speed reduction Are you on IPV4 or IPV6?

So in that case ai protection is fine for connections below 100Mbps.. any speed above that and it struggles when enabled. IPV6 is not working for me, in fact it never has since i got the 88u. It was working fine on the 68u router but on this 88u it gives the wrong prefix like another user on here. But i saw recently you said Asus are looking into the issue?

Unfortunately it’s no good for any connection speed as it also kills WiFi throughput. Try copying a large file over WiFi to a device connected via ethernet. Without ai on copy speed is 60MB/s with ai on this falls to about 13MB/s. This is because both cpu go to 100%, it just can’t handle it. Plus why is it inspecting packets not destined for the wan interface?

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[Cozak]

Regarding the cpu spiking issue, I’m pretty sure this is Wi-Fi related.

I mentioned previously that I was going to get an orbi to replace the dsl-ac88u. I ended up keeping it and putting the orbi in ap mode with Wi-Fi of the router disabled.

Since then no more cpu spikes and can even use AI protection again without everything grinding to a halt. All other settings on my router remain as they were except for the disabled Wi-Fi.

Seems to point the finger at the Wi-Fi drivers as the source of the random cpu spikes.

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[Cozak]

Not upset anymore, just facing the truth. I’ve no confidence what so ever that this router will ever be as it was hyped up to be. Hopefully I am wrong but I just can’t see it being the case.

Sure I could maybe return it (with an associated amount of hassle no doubt) but to be honest I just can’t be bothered with the grief.

I’ve already ordered the Netgear Orbi so I’m going to roll with that and see what happens, I can always return it hassle free via Amazon if it doesn’t work out. If Asus do ever fix this router I can always just use the Orbi in AP mode along with it.

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[Cozak]

Well having thought long and hard about it I’ve decided to cut my losses and replace this router with a Netgear Orbi rbk23. After this poor experience I just couldn’t bring myself to ‘reward’ Asus with more of my money on another one of their routers.

As the Orbi does not have a modem I plan to still use the 88u in bridge mode, does anyone know if AI protection still works in this mode?

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[Cozak]

What do people think regarding replacing with an RT-AC88U with merlin firmware?

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[Cozak]

I had high hopes but sadly this router has been disappointing from start to finish. Unfortunately I don’t think asus are likely to improve the situation anytime soon.

Personally I’ll be looking for a decent black Friday deal and likely replacing this piece of junk.

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