Asus responds to mass router outage that customers experienced
Asus customers from around the world started to report that their Asus routers were having a issue on Wednesday. For most users, their routers appeared to be freezing every few minutes or so, making them unbearable to use.
Some users provided details on the issue, claiming that the routers memory was maxing out quickly whenever the device was running, and that this was causing the freezing issues.
It took Asus two days to release an official response. The Taiwan-based manufacturer of PC hardware and other devices published a news post on its website. There, Asus states that its technical team discovered a configuration issue in its server settings file. This error could then lead to network connectivity issues in the company's routers.
Asus writes: "During routine security maintenance, our technical team discovered an error in the configuration of our server settings file, which could potentially cause an interruption in network connectivity on part of the routers."
The company highlights that it has addressed the issue. Customers affected by the issue may resolve the issue in the following way:
- Reboot the Asus router.
- If rebooting does not fix the issue, Asus recommends saving the settings file and performing a hard reset of the router. Once the device has been reset, customers may upload the settings file to the router to restore their settings.
- If the interface of the device can't be accessed, Asus suggests to press the Reset button of the device until the "power LED indicator on the router starts to blink".
Asus' post lacks details. The company does not explain how a server configuration error can affect customer routers. While routers may be configured to download and install updates automatically, some customers, who disabled automatic updates on their devices, were also affected by the issue.
Some customers suspect that Asus may still push updates to their routers, even if automatic updates are disabled. One user suggested that Asus pushed a corrupt definition file to its routers to ASD, the security daemon that handles security on the route, ignoring the device's automatic update settings.
The corrupt file caused routers to run out memory, which caused the crashing or freezing issues.
Most Asus routers should have returned to normal operations by now. Devices still affected by the issue should be rebooted, which should resolve the issue in most cases.
Now You: which routers/ modems do you use?
probably too high soc voltage and useless oc protection :P
Add another FW issue… upgraded a machine late last year and the ME engine got an update in March 2023 and sort of another in April 2023. They were labeled as the same version…
… however ASUS tacked on a MD5 checksum to the comments of the ME FW which did NOT match what I downloaded direct from them in March of 2023. They did however change the date only which is how I knew to compare.
This is definitely a worsening experience to add to the pile. Board is TUF Gaming Z690-PLUS WiFi (D4 too). BIOS says it has the version they wanted but the securely archived file does not match that hash. :\
Thanks for the article Martin. :)
If you’re buying an Asus router make sure it is compatible with Asuswrt-Merlin firmware then you wont have to deal with this nonsense.
I read the ASUS-news-page, and it’s indeed strange.
My 13 year old Professionally-PiHole’d ‘Dark-Knight’ is workin just as it should…Never looked for, or allowed any ASUS Updates in 13 years.
PiHole updates are done manually…NO Issues.
Older is Better?
11r20 From TX
Now if anyone had a clue what that post is trying to tell us.
OK, without doing any Google searches, I believe he is saying that his old Asus Dark Knight router, which is really old as I had one like a decade ago and it’s an “N” router. Is running the DNS security (know very little about it) settings Pihole. And he hasn’t updated the Asus router but only allowed updates to the pihole dns database? Either way that combo would be like molasses compared to a AC router let alone an AX one. I have the Asus ROG 11 axgt11000 and I didn’t have any outages. But I disable everything from their game dns stuff and security features. How did I do? Lol
Another recent post on this issue suggested the problem was related to the optional TrendMicro AiProtection router features being enabled. I leave this option disabled and was not affected by the problem. Why would I want to share all of my Internet activity with ASUS and TrendMicro? Asus also offers a free DDNS option thru their servers, not sure how many people use this feature.
Brilliant response!!
In summary…
“Have you tried, switching it on and off”
Tech support FAQ number 1.
On another note ASUS has been slipping for at least the past 4 years now.
Whatever firmware you download you might wanna check the fine print because you may be voiding your warranty according to ASUS even if that firmware is directly from them.
As @John mentioned the motherboard/mainboard situation is extraordinary. MSI have their own problems right now with their security breach and then you have gigabyte that consistently miss the mark or sidestep the issues on their mainboards firmware.
This is all becoming like those cheap products you buy online that have just about the worst software that one could ever imagine which then makes the product completely worthless.
There are some heavy accusations being level against ASUS right now.
Seems like a common issue with Asus that has come to light is their firmware problems. Not only with the AMD motherboards but now their routers.
Also the RT-AX82U. I’ve seen reports of that thing having failing wifi. After owning one I can say that mine hasn’t had a physical failure the entire time I’ve had it. I can actually say that if you update the firmware it’s going to break 90% of the time. About a week or two after the firmware update devices will get randomly kicked off wifi and you’ll have to reboot the device or the router to get them connected again. So far the only way I’ve found to fix this is by doing a factory reset every time you update the router’s firmware. The dumbest part is ASUS has automatic updates enabled, so just imagine how many routers have this issue out of the box because of that feature.
This whole issue with the outage does raise other concerns. Imagine your router going down because something on their back end went down.. Why does that matter? It should be isolated from their stuff. The fact that their server going down caused an outage on routers tells me they could easily have planned obsolescence for all those routers. They don’t want to support it anymore and want you to buy a new router? Turn that service off for those routers and poof.. no more working router that you paid for.