[Jonathan Morris]

UK Sentinel wrote:

Strong possibility it is RADAR (DFS) related, a lot more going on in UK airspace due to the war in Ukraine. In the logs (Primary / Node) look for “time elapsed” value next to the DFS state, it will tell you when the last DFS channel monitoring occurred. Maybe AiMesh node is located upstairs / by window etc. and this is the trigger ?

I’ve forced 160MHz and will see what happens since the new firmware.

Update: It does nothing. As in a Wi-Fi scanner shows no signal at all. And the mesh node cannot connect, or connects at 2.4GHz.

The wireless log shows what channel it is supposed to be on – but it simply doesn’t appear. The SSID is hidden, but a scanner can still see it – and doesn’t.

No mention of Radar detection.

I’ll try unhiding the SSID and see if I can toggle this or anything else that might fix the issue.

Update: Nope!

 

Wireless log:

SSID: “TyrellCorporation_5G-2”
noise: -85 dBm Channel: 128/160
BSSID: F0:2F:74:8D:C3:88 Capability: ESS RRM
Supported Rates: [ 6(b) 9 12(b) 18 24(b) 36 48 54 ]
HE Capable:
Chanspec: 5GHz channel 114 160MHz (0xef72)
Primary channel: 128
HT Capabilities: 40Mhz SGI20 SGI40
Supported HT MCS : 0-31
Supported VHT MCS:
NSS1 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
NSS2 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
NSS3 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
NSS4 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
Supported HE MCS:
80 Mhz:
NSS1 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
NSS2 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
NSS3 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
NSS4 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
160 Mhz:
NSS1 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
NSS2 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
NSS3 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11
NSS4 Tx: 0-11 Rx: 0-11

Interference Level: Acceptable
Mode : AP Only

DFS status: state PRE-ISM Channel Availability Check(CAC) time elapsed 49650ms radar channel cleared by DFS none

Channel Information
—————————————-
Channel 100 A Band, RADAR Sensitive
Channel 104 A Band, RADAR Sensitive
Channel 108 A Band, RADAR Sensitive
Channel 112 A Band, RADAR Sensitive
Channel 116 A Band, RADAR Sensitive, Passive
Channel 120 A Band, RADAR Sensitive, Passive
Channel 124 A Band, RADAR Sensitive, Passive
Channel 128 A Band, RADAR Sensitive, Passive
Channel 132 A Band, RADAR Sensitive, Passive
Channel 136 A Band, RADAR Sensitive, Passive
Channel 140 A Band, RADAR Sensitive, Passive

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[Jonathan Morris]

dodgydrains wrote:

I will also wait till Wi-Fi 7 ZenWifi is released as my current units work really well now. Asus FW on the XT8 have worked amazingly for me since Jan/Feb 22 releases. Not sure why your mesh does not connect to 160MHz. I just set channel bandwidth to 160MHz and it it finds and connects to channel 100. Haven’t noticed it change at all for a long time. Might be worth you trying a factory reset over the weekend?

I don’t know why it doesn’t work. Maybe it is down to radar detection, and perhaps I can try again and see if I have any more luck – but even when I’ve managed to see it on 160MHz for a while and thought ‘success!’ it has dropped back later on by itself.

I am loathe to force it to 160MHz as that will probably also cause it to drop to 2.4GHz or lose connection entirely.

The one thing I wish it would do is attempt to ‘retrain’ at regular intervals. Previously I just set the system to reboot every morning, but that causes my USB connected flash drive to disconnect.

Nevertheless, I am happy enough with the overall performance and stability.

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[Jonathan Morris]

dodgydrains wrote:

UK Sentinel wrote:

Indeed, 2 out of 2 positive feedbacks, sounds like ASUS are still working there magic with there latest firmware offering for the ASUS ZenWiFi AX (XT8) <noscript></noscript>

Asus seem to have upped their game with the new FW releases on the XT8. Refreshing to see after all the previous issues. Well done to you all that sent their logs with their Teams issues.

Can’t say I’ve noticed any issues with the latest update, and it seems that for a while now things have settled down. That isn’t to say I don’t still get the odd occasion where the mesh node drops to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and sticks there. No amount of optimising or even rebooting fixes – but usually a physical flick of the power switch solves it.

That’s, thankfully, rare. I have no idea why it does it – or if Asus could ever fix it, but I’ll live with it.

What does seem to be more of a problem is that when I’ve forced 160MHz, it can sometimes not connect at all. I’ve tried 160MHz only, which can cause it not to work. So I then do 20/40/80/160 which also seems to make it use just 80MHz.

Currently it’s on 80MHz but with the 160MHz box ticked, and I am not even sure that’s a valid setting – and in any case, it’s connected at 80MHz.

Basically, I’ve pretty much accepted that despite a near perfect signal, it doesn’t like using 160MHz on the backhaul. It’s not even showing as an issue with radar (I’m not a million miles away from an airport) and just decides to sync at 80MHz. I guess it will remain like the 2.4GHz problem – something that will always be there.

Perhaps doing another reset and restoring settings will fix it, but I can’t be bothered anymore as I think I just want stability. As I’m mostly near the main router, I still get the full speed and my wife/son who use the node (when she’s working from home, or my son is on his Xbox) aren’t so worried about max speed. My son’s Xbox rarely downloads any games at anywhere near my maximum Internet speed anyway – which seems a limitation of their servers.

The important thing is that my wife hasn’t had any issues relating to her work, my son can still play online games, and everything else ‘just works’. There are no ongoing monthly fees like other routers, so I’m sure when the time comes to upgrade (no obvious need anytime soon) I’d almost certainly buy another Asus product, most likely Wi-Fi 6E or more likely wait for Wi-Fi 7.

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[Jonathan Morris]

I’ve updated and will see how it goes, or more likely my wife will!

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[Jonathan Morris]

I took the plunge, and hope it has all the bug fixes that were in the beta. That seems to have been pretty rock solid (I always tempt fate when saying that) and I’d like to get back to the non-beta channel if I can.

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[Jonathan Morris]

dodgydrains wrote:

As this is now an official beta, all features are enabled like parental control. This is why I am continuing to use it. It is really good for me, there are many posts stating issues with IoT are mostly resolved on this beta. I cannot comment as I do not have any IoT connected to it.

Excellent. I’ll try it now.

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[Jonathan Morris]

As a beta, does this mean some features are disabled as with previous releases?

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[Jonathan Morris]

Grisu wrote:

Did you only make a reboot (by software) or turn off power for short time on ALL physically connected devices? First might not reset HW completely to remove failure. Do you use some kind of switch or PLC (PowerLine)?

I did the reset via software, which went back to the setup wizard (and then uploaded the config file to restore all my settings). I also turned off the power for a while. I have no Powerline devices in use either.

I doubt I’ll ever know what went wrong. I just hope it doesn’t happen again!

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[Jonathan Morris]

After around two weeks of uptime, I experienced a weird situation where all my LAN ports (but not the WAN port or I’d have had no Internet) stopped working. No Philips Hue bridge, no connection to my downstairs computer and no connection to our set top box. Reboots and power switching didn’t fix it, so I opted to do a full reset and restore (which then saw my mesh node disappear for ages, before returning at 2.4GHz!!).

Even that didn’t fix the issue, so I started to think I had a hardware fault – typical!

But, I then wondered if maybe one of the cables had somehow got damaged (how, I don’t know) and I disconnected them all – and then put them back in one at a time. And, bam, the Hue bridge reconnected to the Internet and all the other connections worked again too. None of them were loose, and even if one was – why did they all fail?

Anyone have any idea what the hell happened there?!

I could see nothing in the logs before the reset to hint at a problem, but it continued even after the reboot. And the mesh node has since gone back to 5GHz (by itself) so it’s like nothing ever happened.

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[Jonathan Morris]

I wouldn’t use QoS myself because it impacts the throughput far too much, but it seems another week has passed with no issues. The mesh node has remained on 5GHz throughout and I’ve had no complaints of a chat dropping.

As of right now, the uptime has been 10 days, 16 hours.

I have noticed also that when I go upstairs, my phone (or laptop) is now connecting to the other node quite a lot quicker and then changing again when I return downstairs. I don’t have smart connect enabled, just the roaming assistant on the standard settings.

I think before, even with 42095, it would cling on to one node unless I turned Wi-Fi off and on.

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[Jonathan Morris]

UK Sentinel wrote:

If you get a moment, check the logs for ((protocol 0000 is buggy, dev archer) much like the issue @dodgydrains experienced

Nothing in the log for that.

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[Jonathan Morris]

Right, couple of issues today. Nothing major, but my wife and son each reported some warnings about a poor connection – one on Teams and one on Zoom.

Of course it could be a genuine issue, but we have fibre and a 920Mbps connection so unless there was a backhaul issue, there really should have been no possibility of a poor connection. Latency is sub 3ms also!

I don’t know what time either had the issue well enough to read through the system log, but unless it becomes more of an issue (like actually losing the connection) then I’m not going to be too concerned.

The router has been up since I turned off the auto reboot last week.

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[Jonathan Morris]

Still no major issues. Wife mentioned one Teams chat where it said poor connection, but it didn’t drop and she can’t think of any other issues all week. The mesh is still connected on 5GHz and appears to have remained solid all week.

So, for me, I think this new firmware is working fine.

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[Jonathan Morris]

Likewise, no issues reported either.

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[Jonathan Morris]

I recall my old Asus Wi-Fi 5 (advanced at the time) DSL router having two chipset variations, and third-party ROMs only ever worked with the newer type. I wouldn’t have known with the official ones as they’d clearly just release two variants, possibly with the same revision number.

It isn’t uncommon to make slight changes in hardware through a production run of any product (sometimes even within a production run with multiple component suppliers) and it could be that Asus has used a new component to fix an issue, had to change due to a shortage, or even just to cut costs (in which case, it might actually make the newer models inferior).

It’s really hard to tell and without knowing, and Asus might not ever tell us the changes, we can’t know if it’s a good or bad thing. It might be insignificant, or it might be the ‘smoking gun’ that confirms there are issues with the original models that cannot be fixed through software alone.

I’m now waiting to hear of any further issues with Teams or connectivity issues in general, and so far at 1330 all seems good. I’ll continue to monitor until I return to work next Tuesday.

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