AX55 firmware with aimesh

[Locoxella]

I have an Aimesh setup with a GT-AX11000 as the main router of the mesh and two RT-AX55 as nodes. The latest week, I started to have some weird behaviours with the IoT devices in my house (of which I have several, that's the reason why I set up a mesh).

And this weekend, most of my IoT devices stopped working. After several tests, which involved (feel free to skip this paragraph if you don't want to feel my pain or read my rant): doing factory resets on the 3 devices. Removing merlin-wrt from the GT-AX11000 and reverting to stock (always resetting and reconfiguring everything from scratch), reconfiguring my IoT devices (lights, relays, vacuums, contact, presence, and motion sensors, etc). Disabling wifi 6 on the 2.4GHz wifi, along with trying different other compatibility features on/off, and lots of other stuff...

I can confirm that the problem is that RT-AX55 with firmware version 3.0.0.4.386_53244 simply won't allow any wifi devices to connect to it as a node of the mesh.

I tried moving back and forth from version 3.0.0.4.386_52332 to 3.0.0.4.386_53244 (I am skipping 3.0.0.4.386_53119) because some devices seem to take longer to connect or work properly, but I cannot confirm that. And 3.0.0.4.386_53244 is simply a no-go for Aimesh. Specially, IoT devices using 2.4GHz. I focused my diagnosis on those. The AX55 nodes are added successfully (allegedly) to the mesh, but the devices are not able to connect to the nodes... they can only connect to the main router. 3.0.0.4.386_52332 DOES work.

Please... remove the broken version from the servers and do consider adding functional tests for aimesh to every new version released of the firmware for your routers.

In the meantime, I will be back on using MerlinWRT on the GT-AX11000 and Asus vanilla 3.0.0.4.386_52332 on both RT-AX55.

[Locoxella]

Update: 3.0.0.4.386_53119 is also working fine as a node for the RT-AX55. However, 3.0.0.4.386_53244 is broken, either on its own or when using the GT-AX11000 as a mesh router.

[Saltgrass]

What is the AX55, exactly?  I cannot find a download page on the US website, but when I search, I see an AX1800 which does show the AX55 designation.

You stated you did a full factory reset on your devices, which is the one using the WPA button, possibly.

I don't have one of those routers, so I cannot verify your situation.  When I test, I like to make things as simple as possible.  Break the system down to one AX11000, one AX55, and one device.  Move the device around to see if you can get it to connect to the node and if it does, make note of the signal strength numbers.  Maybe even turning the transmit power on the AX11000 to see if a device will switch to the closet node.

[NuckinFutz]

It's this:

ASUS RT-AX55 AX1800 Dual Band WiFi 6 (802.11ax) Router | WiFi Router | ASUS UK

I've no idea why you want OP to play around with his setup, he's already stated the fix was to downgrade the firmware - the same solution has been proved by others (including me).  

If it really helps I did what you suggested when trying to find out what the problem was - I have 2 nodes so wasn't sure if one was broken.  Both nodes behaved the same way when used individually, with the other turned off, with only one client attempting to connect.

The firmware is broken, simple as that.  It needs taking down before other start stressing and pulling apart their setups in the same way

[jzchen]

Curious as this firmware enforces a 10 character minimum for login password, do all your (referencing all experiencing the node problem) primary router passwords meet this minimum requirement?  (I just checked mine and it is meets the 10 character minimum).  Worth a shot to increase if yours doesn't, and retest.

(Certain functions require logging into a node, such as manual firmware updates IIRC, or switch control for jumbo frames).

[NuckinFutz]

I won't be upgrading the firmware again to play around with anything to be honest. 

If there is a 10 character limit on passwords enforced with this firmware, it's not referenced in the release notes.  Additionally I would still consider it broken.  It auto updated on both nodes which resulted in them not working via Wifi.  If it could prompt you to update the password length then that would be fine, but it does not.

I'm only here to give kudos to OP, as their post helped me out, and to help others who may search the internet for a solution.  That solution is to revert the firmware.

[jzchen]

10 character minimum is on the first line of the release notes, one of many lines for this particular release.  Typically there are a few items that an update addresses.

It's unfortunate that (what appears to be) much effort go to waste on a buggy firmware.  I hope someone is able to get it to work on their network.

[NuckinFutz]

Yep in fairness you are right, somehow didn't see that.  Not sure how it would cause that behavior and still stand by my statement that's it's broken to allow auto update with that requirement in it.  But worth highlighting here as may be an easier fix for someone else rather than reverting firmware (if it works).

[NuckinFutz]

I have the same problem using the AX57 and the 3.0.0.4.386_53244 firmware.  I'm using two AX57 units for AI Mesh and they both would not connect to any Wifi clients.  Additionally, I'm using them in a daisy chain so the furthest unit would not connect to the other node at all.

Reverting back to 3.0.0.4.386_52332 as OP suggested has worked and everything is back to normal.

I'm using RT-AX82U as the router.

ASUS, 3.0.0.4.386_53244 is broken, please remove!

[Saltgrass]

All I might suggest is for you to check if all of your IoT devices are WPA2 security compatible.  If you have some which are not, disconnect those for testing.