Anyone Using an Asus DSL-AC68U

Whilst everyone appreciates the efforts being made by OC staff the whole technical support from Asus does seem 'patchy' at best. Enough of us have been giving feedback to them that this hardware has issues with a fibre connection that other hardware doesn't since it was first released and although I am amongst one of the lucky ones where mine seems to be relatively stable I'm still feeling that at some point it is going to have a connection issue and it concerns me that Asus are only suggesting tweaks when what we is a once only fix for us all. The other thing is that my speed is nowhere near what it used to be, after daily testing it seems to be averaging out at about 26mbps not the 37 I was getting with the OR modem. However any help is good and hopefully asus will find a solution soon...
 
I just received some email from Asus regarding my feedback on the beta firmware. They have asked that I collect additional logs for 24 hours via a test tool and feedback to them. At least they are still looking into this...

Before I run the test though I've asked them to reconfirm the recommended settings. Its not clear from Abarrass's post if the Bitswap bug is fixed in the 2073 firmware, and also the "Rx AGC GAIN Adjustment (VDSL)" now seems to be required to be Stable, whereas when the beta firmware was released this was asked to be set to Disabled.

Once I've got a list of the latest recommended settings Ill give it a whirl and hope that DLM doesn't condemn me too much for it.

EDIT They just got back to me and the settings I had were fine for the beta firmware. The bitswap disable is for the 2072 firmware only.
 
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Just adding my story - Had the router for a while and tried a few different settings as suggested by Asus support. Some helped slightly, but at the expense of losing 20mb downstream. Because of the previous issues I've been whacked by DLM and put on a heavily interleaved connection.

I'm now on the beta firmware distributed last week and it has made a significant difference. Im averaging about 1 CRC error every 15 mins (Instead of hundred or even thousands), although my FEC error count still seems pretty high.

Does anybody know how to access the errored seconds count on this? Looked in the log files and its not obvious.
 
andyfitter2 said:
Just adding my story - Had the router for a while and tried a few different settings as suggested by Asus support. Some helped slightly, but at the expense of losing 20mb downstream. Because of the previous issues I've been whacked by DLM and put on a heavily interleaved connection.

I'm now on the beta firmware distributed last week and it has made a significant difference. Im averaging about 1 CRC error every 15 mins (Instead of hundred or even thousands), although my FEC error count still seems pretty high.

Does anybody know how to access the errored seconds count on this? Looked in the log files and its not obvious.
Click to expand...

As far as I know it's currently impossible to get the ES or SES counts. While the text file only updates every 10 seconds, I've been trying to roughly monitor the CRC delta and record an ES accordingly, then graph it. I will likely release the app soon, I should be able to post some graph previews tomorrow from my own connection.
 
Recommendation

Hi guys,

I am looking for an xDSL all-in-one router to replace the D-Link that my ISP supplied, in order to gain some wireless (and wired LAN - 1Gbps) performance, USB3 support, and many other management features which are missing in my custom-made D-Link.

This all-in-one router really caught my attention, and I am quite keen to get my hands on one, even though it is not officially sold and/or supported here in Israel.

I was wondering how you would sum up your experience with this router - is it worth it? Would you buy it if you were the first user to try it in your country (Israeli VDSL2 infrastructure in my case)?

* My ISP currently provides 100Mbit down/10Mbit up, and the customized D-Link is getting about 70Mbit down/10Mbit up (testing from a PC with a wired connection to the router).

Thanks a lot for your advice.
 
I couldn't honestly recommend this product at this point in time - If you read back on this thread there are many people with issues.

There's a new beta UK firmware, which helped me, but still doesn't fix the problems others are seeing.

If you really want this product I would sit a while to see what firmware revisions are released first.
 
Thank you for your responses.

So how about this - I'll keep my existing D-Link DSL-6740U (supplied with factory settings preconfigured by the ISP) as a modem only, disabling its routing & wireless capabilities, and connect it to the DSL-AC68U in case its modem fails as miserably as described in this thread?

Or am I wasting my time and would be better off with the RT-AC68U (the version without the built-in modem) or even the monster RT-AC87U?
 
As far as I've heard, the DSL-AC68U has better wireless than the RT-AC68U. Don't hold me to that though. Other than that (if that's true), if you can make do with one LAN port less than you'd have on the RT version then go for the DSL version. Hopefully ASUS will get things right eventually.

Can't comment on the AC87U as I've not owned one.
 
alexans said:
Thank you for your responses.

So how about this - I'll keep my existing D-Link DSL-6740U (supplied with factory settings preconfigured by the ISP) as a modem only, disabling its routing & wireless capabilities, and connect it to the DSL-AC68U in case its modem fails as miserably as described in this thread?

Or am I wasting my time and would be better off with the RT-AC68U (the version without the built-in modem) or even the monster RT-AC87U?
Click to expand...

What ISP are you with?
 
I've uploaded some graphs/charts from yesterday at http://imgur.com/a/jHtL2

I've noticed there's a pattern to the CRC's, during daylight there's a lot more CRC's than there are when it's dark. For some reason the SNR glitched with the device reporting a 51dB DS SNR at one point. Waiting for the MK3 SSFP and toroid ferrite to arrive, hopefully this week. The error seconds aren't likely to be completely accurate as the statistics from the device only update every 10 seconds.

I think I might soon plug in the HG612 I have and take a look at the hlog and qln to see if much has changed since some months ago, perhaps use it for a couple of days and also compare CRC's and see if that follows a similar pattern to the ASUS DSL-AC68U. DLM hasn't lifted the 49/15 banding yet, though if it's like my 60/20 banding last time (a while ago) then that took several months before 80/20 returned.
 
Not new beta firmware

It is the same beta firmware that came out last week - I did the reset of the device again once the firmware had been applied and made sure I'd disabled the noise protection (I hadn't before).
 
Ixel said:
I've uploaded some graphs/charts from yesterday at http://imgur.com/a/jHtL2

I've noticed there's a pattern to the CRC's, during daylight there's a lot more CRC's than there are when it's dark. For some reason the SNR glitched with the device reporting a 51dB DS SNR at one point. Waiting for the MK3 SSFP and toroid ferrite to arrive, hopefully this week. The error seconds aren't likely to be completely accurate as the statistics from the device only update every 10 seconds.

I think I might soon plug in the HG612 I have and take a look at the hlog and qln to see if much has changed since some months ago, perhaps use it for a couple of days and also compare CRC's and see if that follows a similar pattern to the ASUS DSL-AC68U. DLM hasn't lifted the 49/15 banding yet, though if it's like my 60/20 banding last time (a while ago) then that took several months before 80/20 returned.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting these charts, it'll be interesting to see if they give any insight into what happens around the time that the modem disconnects. The first chart shows a spike in CRC errors around 5pm and midnight, does this correspond to a disconnection or do you know if your phone line was being used for a call at these points?

After my elation a couple of weeks ago at getting a 10day stable connection from the ASUS albeit at lowish data rates, my stability problems have returned :-( I got a connection rate of 32/5.5M for 10 days vs BT OR of 37/6.5M, but on the 11th day the DLM started to increase my speeds and reduce my line interleaving and the ASUS started disconnecting again.

I've been wrestling with the settings since then including trying settings suggested directly by ASUS support. I managed to find some settings for my line that dramatically reduced the reported CRC errors, but stability hasn't improved. I'm currently getting 2 disconnections per day neither of which are in the 12am-5am DLM adjustment window.

I'm looking at changing the faceplate to BT's latest and greatest too, has anyone had any success with this? Are you putting the ferrite on the VDSL cable or the power cable?
 
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alexans said:
I'm in Israel. The ISP is an Israeli ISP, Bezeq Ltd.

The ISP provides customized versions of xDSL+wireless routers from companies like D-Link & Netgear, but none of those are as fast as I had hoped.
Click to expand...

Might not have the same issues as we've had with Sky Fibre...
 
IronRod said:
Thanks for posting these charts, it'll be interesting to see if they give any insight into what happens around the time that the modem disconnects. The first chart shows a spike in CRC errors around 5pm and midnight, does this correspond to a disconnection or do you know if your phone line was being used for a call at these points?

After my elation a couple of weeks ago at getting a 10day stable connection from the ASUS albeit at lowish data rates, my stability problems have returned :-( I got a connection rate of 32/5.5M for 10 days vs BT OR of 37/6.5M, but on the 11th day the DLM started to increase my speeds and reduce my line interleaving and the ASUS started disconnecting again.

I've been wrestling with the settings since then including trying settings suggested directly by ASUS support. I managed to find some settings for my line that dramatically reduced the reported CRC errors, but stability hasn't improved. I'm currently getting 2 disconnections per day neither of which are in the 12am-5am DLM adjustment window.

I'm looking at changing the faceplate to BT's latest and greatest too, has anyone had any success with this? Are you putting the ferrite on the VDSL cable or the power cable?
Click to expand...

Well I'm not getting any modem disconnects on the beta firmware at the moment, but I'm still getting the regular daily pattern of CRC errors. During the major CRC spikes which rarely occur there's no phone call at the time or anything which I can believe could cause this. I've made great efforts to ensure all power cables and devices aren't near the master socket. I've made sure the device is plugged into a power conditioner. I've checked if my NTE5 has a 26A surge arrester in (it doesn't). I've tried various other filters and two different RJ11 cables (one is shielded and much shorter, the other is the standard flat cable). I've also tried various tweaks to improve downstream - none of which seem to have helped. That being to reduce the transmit power, disable UPBO with full transmit power, enable UPBO with higher transmit power, disable bitswap (this caused a disconnect after a few minutes with a massive burst of CRC's), disable G.INP, disable SRA, and finally adjust the SNRM target to a higher margin.

I will likely go back to the HG612 if after approximately 14 days of uptime DLM hasn't relented (if that can be achieved), once I've changed to the MK3 and added a ferrite toroid to my DSL cable (using 5 or 6 turns), to see if the Hlog and QLN are still reasonably as expected or whether a fault is actually causing this. I'm not far from the cabinet so I don't get what could be causing this.

I'll post some more graphs soon, and hopefully the application as well incase anyone else wishes to graph their connection with this device.
 
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If you're not getting any disconnects then, irrespective of the crc reports, what is wrong with keeping this hardware? Mine has now been up for 10 days, over 1000 crc's, but hasn't had one issue with the dlm. I'm also running bog standard out of the box settings and with what ever wiring, sockets and filters that OR installed for sky. Or maybe I am just a lucky bugger..
 
I finally switched back to this modem this morning in order to gather the debug logs as requested by ASUS. Inspired by "sumowesley" I performed a full factory reset before making the required settings change and this morning it seems a lot more stable. Accoring the the DSL log page it has been up for two hours 9 minutes with 0 CRC errors.

Interestingly the debug tool output they have given me is showing something else....

Code: 
Tx_CRC[0]  = 0
Tx_FEC[0]  = 0
Tx_ERR_SEC = 0
Tx_FEC_SEC = 0
Rx_CRC[0]  = 4
Rx_FEC[0]  = 12330715
Rx_ERR_SEC = 1
Rx_FEC_SEC = 6053
Near-end total: los=0, sef=0, lpr=0
Far-end  total: los=1, sef=1, lpr=0
VDSL2 Sync-Up Time:  0 Day(s)  1:45:21

The FEC count is increasing rapidly. But as yet Ive not noticed any kind of issus with using the connection.

I need to run this debug tool for 24 hours so lets see what happens!
 
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