Anyone Using an Asus DSL-AC68U

[Willsb3]

Hi All,

I've literally just purchased the DSL-AC68U (still in box, unopened..). Since purchasing I've just seen this 50 page thread of issues...

We have BT Broadband, although unfortunately not fibre at the moment as it's not available in our area but is coming this year (or so we are told...). Is the DSL-AC68U a complete waste of time? Should I return it and try and find an RT-AC68U instead?

I was really hoping we could use this router both now and when we get BT Infinity. I was originally going to purchase the RT-AC68U but the high street PC retailer (Yeah, that one, I know that shop is hilarious) in it's infinite wisdom didn't have the RT-AC68U in stock, and the RT-AC68U was actually £6 more expensive than the DSL-AC68U which they had in stock (which I thought was pretty silly of them?). So, on that basis I purchased the DSL-AC68U.

Have I let myself in for a world of issues ? Should I return it? I didn't want to spend the extra money for the newer AC87U.

If you recommend that we keep the DSL-AC68U should I run any form of tests on the line to ensure everything's working properly? I'm techy, but know barely anything when it comes to networking (No idea what DLM is as discusses in this thread...).

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[cuke2u]

Its fine on adsl....

 

[Evil Shubunkin]

When it comes to it, the DSL-AC68U can perform well as a router. However the firmwares are out of sync with the RT-AC68U ones (presumably due to the xDSL component) and is slower to get the new features - such as the new QoS for example. Also no Merlin firmware support, which does tend to improve the stock ASUS firmwares.

That said, if I had bought the DSL-AC68U first I wouldn't be disappointed if I had to use it in router mode, as the wifi performance is great and it's so customisable in terms of settings.

Sounds like you would be OK on ADSL and, once fibre is available, you find it's not great on your line then the worst case is buying a OR modem off of ebay and using the DSL connected to that.

 

[Ygravic]

It is not fine on ADSL IMO.

My ADSL2+ LLU line can be held at 3-4 db using a Billion or Netgear combo and achieve 20% more downstream bandwidth than the Asus. With those combo's at around 6db; uptimes of months/years were achievable on my line. Even sacrificing about 20% of the downstream achieved with a 6db SNRM the modem will still fall over periodically and the best ever achieved has been 6 days. I can also reliably cause the combo to fall over within half a day by maxing out the downstream bandwidth. This will happen even though it is reporting fewer than one CRC per hour.

I can't say for sure if you are letting yourself into a world of pain, but if your attenuation is high you probably are. Plus point though it is a decent router, maybe if it's flaky as a combo, you could bridge it to whatever you had before.

 

[netlegs]

It is not fine on ADSL IMO.

My ADSL2+ LLU line can be held at 3-4 db using a Billion or Netgear combo and achieve 20% more downstream bandwidth than the Asus. With those combo's at around 6db; uptimes of months/years were achievable on my line. Even sacrificing about 20% of the downstream achieved with a 6db SNRM the modem will still fall over periodically and the best ever achieved has been 6 days. I can also reliably cause the combo to fall over within half a day by maxing out the downstream bandwidth. This will happen even though it is reporting fewer than one CRC per hour.

I can't say for sure if you are letting yourself into a world of pain, but if your attenuation is high you probably are. Plus point though it is a decent router, maybe if it's flaky as a combo, you could bridge it to whatever you had before.

My experience exactly on ADSL2+ , except the half a day is a bit on the generous side. By maxing out the downstream, I can guarantee disconnection within the hour with low or even no CRCs.

 

[Tyke]

Well mine was showing attainable approx. 15Mbps higher than what my line is capable of and what all other devices I've used report. I call that a quirk.

If I run the BT Wholesale Speed Test and then run Further Diagnostics, it says maximum achievable speed is 65.09 Mbps. My HH5 reports maximum achievable speed as 80.55 Mbps. So it is not quirky, just looking at the numbers differently.

 

[Dynamonexu]

Has anyone considered that the issue with this device is not the firmware or the chipset but the fact that the modem gets very hot.

For unavoidable reasons my home router is located in a small cupboard that is very warm. I've always had to run cooling fans to ensure my routers function reliably. After a recent spell of disconnects I added a second fan blowing air across the face of the router. I'd noticed that the top right hand corner was warmer than the rest of the unit. Since the new fan has been in place the router has held onto a connection for over 10 days.

BTW the router itself has been up and running for 50+ days, it is only the broadband connection that has been dropping out.

 

[cuke2u]

My netgear ran so hot they actually designed the mount as a heatsink and If you removed it the thing would occassionally lock. I am not sure if heat has anything to do with it as it doesn't seem as warm as the netgear got besides mine is very well ventilated.

 

[Dynamonexu]

Externally it felt warm rather than hot (before I added another fan).

The spot that gets warm is the top right hand corner (looking at it from the front).

 

[freebil]

OK, I've finally got through to the right people and had a lengthy discussion about the problems.

In short, they are aware of them, and are trying to correct any uncovered issues with firmware updates but right now they don't have enough data from affected users on up-to-date firmware to make improvements.

What they are hoping to do is to acquire some reports from affected users in the UK - there is a built-in feedback feature under Administration - DSL Feedback which should provide the engineers with info on the modem issues that you're having. If any of you are able to capture these issues and submit them it would be really helpful.

You should receive responses from our team - if there are issues either with the responses or you find yourself at a dead-end please let me know and I'll try to get things moving.

I sent Paul Lee many messages in the past but he stopped responding after 1 or 2 mails. So, I stopped sending feedback.

 

[cuke2u]

That was my experience too, plus the fact the advice given actually made the thing even slower and was the same as given months previous to other owners that didn't work. All in all the answers he gave made me feel less than confident not only about asus's willingness to attempt a proper solution but also their actual technical knowledge seemed poor. I also posted up queries in the official forum but again there was absolutely no input from them...

 

[bitsNbobs]

My HH5 TYpe B also reports a higher AR than the Billion and HG612, so perhaps the Asus is not doing anything quirky!?

Indeed attainable rate will vary device to device and dependant on line conditions. Broadcom chipsets (HG612 and Billion) will normally report higher attainable on short lines.

HomeHub 5, ECI modem and anything else with a Lantiq chipset will typically perform better on a longer line and report a higher attainable on those than what a Broadcom chipset device will.

In short as you say it is nothing out of the ordinary and as you have experienced rather than guessing all devices will have variations.

I'm still running mine on the latest firmware and it's been on interleaved since I set it up as a modem (about a week ago), so I'm submitting a report and including 24 hours of DSL logs. Hopefully that'll help.

PS: to the users debating, it's starting to clog up the thread a little! I'm guessing that other professionals browsing the thread will be able to distinguish uninformed ideas from the informed ones, so let's just focus on getting ASUS the info they need!

I think its gone beyond that and rather than send Asus info and actually be informed and educated its now just decayed into a anger filled IT DON'T WORK rant fest.

Externally it felt warm rather than hot (before I added another fan).

The spot that gets warm is the top right hand corner (looking at it from the front).

Thats the area of the internal power related components including capacitors, and an area which is heatshielded. Most of it will be to do with additional voltage regulation from the external PSU brick feeding it. It feeling warm to the touch is normal. Worry if it gets to the stage it is actually hot to the touch, which it should not.

 

[Ygravic]

Has anyone considered that the issue with this device is not the firmware or the chipset but the fact that the modem gets very hot.

It is not possible to discount localised overheating of one or more components. This has happened with other types of electrical equipment. That would not necessarily be noticeable as any significant area of the casing getting hot. Typically though failures occur catastrophically after some time, i.e the router would fail completely in some way. Having said that the only way to test if overheating is an issue is to see if active cooling reliably reduces the likelihood of connection drops. Even if this were the cause of some issues though I have seen it drop when it has been idle for hours as well as reliably failing under load.

 

[bitsNbobs]

It is not possible to discount localised overheating of one or more components. This has happened with other types of electrical equipment. That would not necessarily be noticeable as any significant area of the casing getting hot. Typically though failures occur catastrophically after some time, i.e the router would fail completely in some way. Having said that the only way to test if overheating is an issue is to see if active cooling reliably reduces the likelihood of connection drops. Even if this were the cause of some issues though I have seen it drop when it has been idle for hours as well as reliably failing under load.

Some people have issues (high error rates) from the moment they power on, others have the issue several days in. In both cases heat is unlikely an issue. Upon power on the device will be cold and if heat was an issue those lasting days would likely have the issue well before (typically an hour or there abouts after power on).

If people really want to waste there time they could open the device or place it next to a desktop fan, i frankly doubt it will make a jot of difference. Casing being warm to the touch is normal.

 

[cuke2u]

I think some do not realise, perhaps because they've only just come into this thread, that many of us have been here from the begining and have been giving asus more than enough technical feedback, it is they not us that have chosen to ignore it and broken off contact. Lets hope with Jim onboard this will change and we can all move on, possibly too late for me though.

 

[Jim99]

Hi Jim,

I think you might struggle with that - This has gone on for so long that most of the people that were having problems have had such a bad experience that they've given up on the device - After 4 months of being whacked by losing almost 15mb and going onto interleaved continuously, I recently went straight back to fast path within a few days of switching to a BT modem and gained all my lost speed back too.

Not sure what you'll be able to do to convince people to give it another try, but good luck!

Yes, I understand that Andy - it was a point I anticipated and made myself to the technical team but they've said there's very little they can do without further data. I do appreciate their point as well, because we have many people using it with Infinity without issue, but then also all of the people like yourself who are having issues, so without knowing exactly what's causing it, it's difficult to introduce improvements.

I'm still running mine on the latest firmware and it's been on interleaved since I set it up as a modem (about a week ago), so I'm submitting a report and including 24 hours of DSL logs. Hopefully that'll help.

PS: to the users debating, it's starting to clog up the thread a little! I'm guessing that other professionals browsing the thread will be able to distinguish uninformed ideas from the informed ones, so let's just focus on getting ASUS the info they need!

Thanks very much for your help Spoonbard, keep in touch and let me know how your report progresses.

I submitted report after report though the modem and the only answers I got back made my connection even slower. So beg me for thinking I don't have much confidence in the reporting method you've suggested. I also emailed Paul and really didn't get any help so I hope in here the support will be better. Thing is, now I have the OR modem reconnected everything is running the way it was before I started using the Asus however I will keep watching here and when(?) everyone can confirm there are no longer any issues with the Asus I might consider going back to it. But it would have to be performance on par with the OR modem..

Sorry about that Chris, I can imagine it was quite frustrating. As you said in your subsequent post, I'll be keeping an eye on this from now on to make sure that these reports and issues aren't ignored.

I sent Paul Lee many messages in the past but he stopped responding after 1 or 2 mails. So, I stopped sending feedback.

I'm sorry to hear that freebil - I can't speak for Paul but in the future I'll be keeping an eye on these so that I know they've been properly looked into.

 

[cuke2u]

Thanks Jim and I appreciate your efforts, however I am one of those who gave up and has gone back to the OR modem with almost immediate gains to my connection as andyfitter2 has written.

 

[sumowesley]

Hi Jim,

Thank you for coming back to us. I have a few questions:

• How long does the device need to run to provide useful data? You know that there are line penalties for running this device over extended periods of time so I want to know what a minimum usable time period would be.
• What version of firmware should we be running to provide the best possible information to you?
• What are the best settings to provide the stats submission you need? What needs to be changed?

 

[sumowesley]

Another suggestion for Jim

Hi Jim,

Back again.

It does strike me that you must surely need some form of baseline with which to compare data received from people who are having issues. Would data from working lines be useful?

The other point is one of getting the right number of samples. Many people must have submitted data through the device already as it prompts you to do so when line problems are encountered. Email addresses are requested as part of that submission. Perhaps emailing those users would provide access to a much larger pool of users than just those of us on this forum?

 

[andyfitter2]

Thanks Jim and I appreciate your efforts, however I am one of those who gave up and has gone back to the OR modem with almost immediate gains to my connection as andyfitter2 has written.

I've temporarily switched back to that Asus modem to give Jim some stats. DLM seemed to recover in a few days when I switched to the Openreach modem, so I'm happy to give the Asus another try, at least for a few days anyway knowing that if/when I have to disconnect it again then I wont have to wait too long.