Asus RT-AC88U (HW: A6) broken in 22.03.3?

Installing and Using OpenWrt
121

I think you meant 22.03.2. If so, I did try that in January. It was even less reliable. that’s why I waited for 23.5.x with hopes to finally use it.

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122

Hello together,

my Asus RT-AC88U Routers are working absolutely fine with 23.05.02.
Many thanks to Rafal @rmilecki milecki :slight_smile:
Both Broadcom wifi devices, also 5Ghz, are working properly. I have been tested already 2 devices and now using them regularly as my default routers. (ASUS RT-AC88U hardware-version 6)

@MacPaOnGit
There is probably something wrong with your config or your hardware. I would suggest resetting everything and making a clean flash.
My dmesg has got similar errors but than just msg that some channels are not available.


[  11.415911] pci 0001:00:00.0: enabling device (0140 -> 0142)
[   11.421626] brcmfmac 0001:01:00.0: enabling device (0140 -> 0142)
[   11.428212] brcmfmac 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4366c-pcie.asus,rt-ac88u.bin failed with error -2
[   11.556959] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac4366c-pcie for chip BCM43664/4
[   11.565971] brcmfmac 0001:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4366c-pcie.asus,rt-ac88u.bin failed with error -2
[   11.583748] kmodloader: done loading kernel modules from /etc/modules.d/*
[   11.684065] brcmfmac 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4366c-pcie.txt failed with error -2
[   11.694640] brcmfmac 0001:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4366c-pcie.clm_blob failed with error -2
[   11.961580] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_process_clm_blob: no clm_blob available (err=-2), device may have limited channels available
[   11.972962] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM43664/4 wl0: Nov  5 2018 03:19:56 version 10.28.2 (r769115) FWID 01-d2cbb8fd
[   11.985242] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_process_clm_blob: no clm_blob available (err=-2), device may have limited channels available
[   11.996696] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM43664/4 wl0: Nov  5 2018 03:19:56 version 10.28.2 (r769115) FWID 01-d2cbb8fd
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123

I had been dealing with multiple problems actually:
#1. My other APs (2x Fritzboxes 4040) were configured with "Auto" Cipher settings for Wifi. This worked just fine for years. Adding Asus to the network changed that. I had to manually select the cipher from "Auto" to "Force CCMP AES" for all APs.
This helped endpoints to get associatied with APs.
#2. however :wink: some of the endpoints did not get IPs assigned. I've been testing different options for few days and it turns out that the only reliable way to get IPs was to restart the br-lan interface via luci. i could not find a proper uci command for that even thou i tried a few. People seems to report similar issues before.
#3 I've been also reading that having Wireguard configured on the main router (in my case RPi ) can cause such weird lack of IPs being assigned to APs. I've disabled the wireguard interface on RPi and voila!. IPs started to get assigned to endpoints connected to the ASUS without issues. Interestingly, i had no connectivity issues on my FritzBoxes 4040 even thou i use them since years.
#4 looks like AC88U does not support 802.11r Fast Transition (with FT over DS especially as it's faster than the AIR option).. again, mine Fritzboxes do that perfectly and it's useful feature for me.. This is my bad as i should have checked if AC88U supports that feature before i bought it.

Finally, after all those issues been addressed, I sat down and tested for stability and throuput 5 different devices (phones: samsung, apple and few laptops with different Wifi cards). They all work great and stable while being next to the ASUS and running tests with speedtest.net and speed.cloudflare.com.
Unfortunately, as soon as i set up SQM for Wifi 5g and used the same devices via two wooden walls, iPhone 12 started to get randomly disconnected from the Wifi. Disabling wi-fi interfaces in it did not allow to reconnect to network.. Something, which has not happened to me while on Fritzboxes. i did try to re-test with different SQM options and this was re-producable. ;-/

Summing up, as i could deal with other technical difficulties, such a reliability issue is a no-go for me. Strongly considering buying a third Fritzbox 4040 and sell that AC88U. Don't get me wrong, it may work just fine with simple, default settings (kudos to the devs again to make it work in 23.05.02) but my overall user experience is not that great considering the features that i need.

Thanks again for all your replies and suggestions :wink:

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