Not strange at all. 128 MB for that SoC and wireless hardware is insufficient for stable operation under load, no matter the firmware.
802.11ac in general and specifically the ath10k/ ath10k-ct driver needs more RAM to deal with packet handling than 802.11n. ath10k in OpenWrt is patched to assign less RAM for buffers, ath10k-ct is not, but you really want 256+ MB for a ipq40xx device. Sadly the rt-ac58u is one of the few (only?) devices that doesn't follow this strong recommendation, as a result you're having problems.
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Is not a problem of 5g wifi. Is the whole router, under any heavy load can crash. I deactivate 5g and still have problems. And as stated above, it always happens becouse the ram is filled.
I don't consider this router stable, i tried lot of combinations and always crash.
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i guess you are right. but how the hell the original firmware can handle these problems? under openwrt a simple constant 10MB/s download can crash the system.
I've been having these same issues with this router. Any instructions on how to debug properly would be appreciated. At the moment it appears to crash at random. Sometimes it's not a complete crash, as I can access via ssh. Sometimes it's only the wifi that dies. Sometimes it goes completely offline and only a power cycle will fix it.
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Also are there any instructions or pointers on how to perform the below?
Reference: https://openwrt.org/toh/asus/rt-ac58u
Using the “non-CT” ath10k drivers and firmware may improve stability.
You should be able to uninstall the existing drivers and kernel module and replace with
opkg list installed | fgrep ath10k # to get list of installed
opkg remove kmod-ath10k-ct ath10k-firmware-qcaNNNN-ct # Change to the one(s) installed
opkg install kmod-ath10k ath10k-firmware-qcaNNNN
or the like
Thanks @jeff
Interestingly, I'm running the non-ct version already. Unless this was a change from 18.06.4 to 18.06.5.
~# opkg list-installed | fgrep ath10k
ath10k-firmware-qca4019 - 2018-05-12-952afa49-1
kmod-ath10k - 4.14.151+2017-11-01-10
I also found this recent commit: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/commit/1ac627024de916eb157659caf49f93fa89d3b19a
It suggests that this may be fixed in the latest snapshot.
Yes, most of the time some parts of the system still working and other directly dissapear.
Some user said that adding a swap memory fix the problems. You can try that and tell us something.
Since upgrading to 19.07 I haven't had this issue reoccur. Fingers crossed it's now sorted
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19.07.2 is available and its working stably for me. I am using it as my daily driver for past 4 days.
Can someone update the Wiki page with the new code ?
http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/19.07.2/targets/ipq40xx/generic/
Can someone clarify if the notice in the wiki There have been multiple reports of instability of this device under load. is still relevant with openwrt 19.07.x?
I have been using code 19.07.1 for more than a month, with ISP speed of 150-up/ 50-down.
We have 10 wireless devices at home simultaneously accessing wifi on 2.4 and 5ghz. The router has been very stable for me.
openwrt-19.07 is using kmod-ath10k-ct-smallbuffers, which reduces the memory pressure a bit (however, the same patches to reduce ath10k's buffer sizes was already present in openwrt-18.06). Despite these mitigation patches to reduce the memory pressure, 128 MB RAM is very limiting for devices with two ath10k based wireless cards and can be considered insufficient. If you're looking to buy a rt-ac58u, don't (look for devices with 256 MB RAM or more instead) - if you already own one, give it a try, but be prepared for OOM conditions and crashes.
fwiw, do you use IPv6?
There is a known issue where ethernet controller stops working in other devices using IPQ401x, such as: EA6350, EA8300, Fritzbox when IPv6 is enabled.
https://bugs.openwrt.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=2741
Yes, I have disable IPv6 DHCP6 as I donot need it in my home network. Though link-local address FE80::/10 are assigned automatically.
Maybe you have this problem OpenWRT 18.06.5-18.06.7 and IPv6 , if yes , you need double autorize with 5 seconds delay. If so , please say here and in my theme.
do you have any transmission/p2p experiences? or constant http downloads or steam/origin/epic? cause mine died with recent releases when i did "heavy" downloads.
What's your ISP speed and how many concurrent live sessions do you have on your network ?
P-2-P does not crash my router, however its possible I am running P2P on single client there is no impact.
I have ran 4-5 live HD streaming sessions on Youtube, and Netflix and they dont seem to affect my network.