Hi,
How do I determine if my RT-AC68u is failing and should be replaced?

Making any changes to the wifi settings( main, guest network) would cause the router to reboot/crash. Sometimes it would reboot/crash right after the applying setting go to 100% sometimes it would do it later randomly(e.g.5mins, 20mins later)



Current troubleshooting that I have done so far
1. Update the router firmware to the latest firmware
2. Perform a hard factory reset on the router and manually set up the router again

This is quite an old router already.

1) How long do you have it?

2) Is it too hot? Check the temp.

Maybe a lot of dust, need to service. You can also disable unused services and add a usb fan to manage the heat.

Check your power adapter and router heat. Usually this 2 is the caused if you had done factory reset or fresh firmware.

Change password for prevention incase your router current password is breached.

You can also try to install DD-WRT or OpenWRT to underclock the CPU before spending money to buy a new router.

1. Got it since March 2016
2. Currently having a usb fan drawing the heat away from the router


1.Is there a specific way to test the power adapter?

2. I have usb fan drawing heat away from the router

Could consider installing AsusWRT-Merlin firmware for more info/tools/trying a different firmware to see if its a firmware issue

2016 router is worth to upgrade now.

, so far been running the router a week with nat acceleration disabled and I don't see any crashes when making any changes to the wifi settings

When the issue occured, nat acceleration was enabled


But I belive, disabling nat acceleration wouldn't be counted as a permanent solution?

It is all about cooling. Personally I think it has something to do with the degradation of thermal pad used between the heatsink and soc. The same happened with my old Huawei WS880. When it first start to hang pretty often, I mod the case to allow a case fan to blow through it. Work fine until a year or two later when it would still hang with a fan cooling it. Took everything apart and the first thing I noticed is how the thermal pad looks. It was dry and breaking up. I didnt bought thermal pad and instead bought some cheapo Tenda AC18 since Huawei WS880 is kinda old and do not have any sort of support.

This post has been edited by andrekua2: Jan 5 2023, 09:11 AM

The eMMC storage chip is failing, time to retire the old guy