ExpertWifi EBM68

[uiflorin]

I bought the mesh system few weeks ago and I am not satisfied with the performance. I use it at home, two stories building. The performance in terms of speed is fine. The problem is the instability of the software and the GUI display on phone screen.

1) It takes forever to reboot and I have to do it every few days. Sometimes it doesn't reboot correctly, it remains in a limbo state, without connecting to the ISP network (I have fiber modem in bridge mode, requires PPoE connection). Never has such issues with RT-AC68U and RT-AC86U, the routers that worked in mesh mode together and were replaced by this mesh system. They worked perfectly, but the 68U being only Wifi4 was not enough for me anymore. There is no issue with the fiber modem.

2) Some reboots are successful, but the led remains RED, as if not having internet connection, the app or GUI confirming is fine, it works fine. Also, from the app I cannot turn ON/OFF the led, a sign that something is not right.

3) The initial setup was a nightmare. I even considered returning the product. It went fine and I did a reboot after everything was setup. It did not reboot. I restored to factory settings, two times, redone the whole setting up process. After these two attempts I accepted the firmware update to latest version.

4) when changing some settings, the sync between the mesh nodes takes like 5 minutes. Why?

5) my gate automation doesn't reach anymore, it's 10 meters from the router. With older routers worked just fine, the signal strength was -65÷ -72dbm, now it's like -86dbm. I do have several IoT devices, gate automation, ACs, remote controlled TP-Link outlets, some wifi connected Xiaomi appliances. For these I have a separate self defined network with a specific SSID (the same I had with the older routers, because it's a pain to enroll again all these IoT devices).

6) GUI on Android phone doesn't display correctly the whole screen. I cannot pan to the right side and some buttons are not accessible. Do something with the GUI design. Has anyone even tried the GUI on an Android phone? I don't have iOhone to try it, but I use Firefox and Chrome, the same. Old version of AsusWrt works fine on AC68-86, you broke it on this new product.

I am really dissapointed. I bought this product specifically for its hardware performance, 1GB ram, quad core processor. It seems the software needs a lot of improvements.

[jzchen]

I'm sorry to read of your troubles this is supposed to be a stable business grade product.  One of the first things I like to do is to check/update to the latest firmware.  What issues remain after doing so?

[uiflorin]

It's the latest. My initial intention was to purchase a ZenWiFi XT8 system, buy this EBM68 appeared on local eMag (largest retailer) bellow the XT8 price and couldn't refuse the opportunity. It had no review by local customers, but I didn't care and just went for it. I'm telling you, there are issues with the software, needs some work. And that GUI, what's the deal with it? Why it doesn't show the whole page?

Just after I wrote the post I had another issue: the mesh nodes used different channels on 2.4GHz band for the two ssid I have, the regular and the self defined IoT, checked with a wifi monitoring app. In this mode there was no internet access for any device. Only on 5GHz band worked. I let the nodes exchange settings and they switched channels, but no access until I rebooted the whole thing. I am thinking, as an engineer working in chip design, that people taking care of the software don't take into consideration possible scenarios. These issues are a sign of unstable firmware. It behaves as windows, you reboot until works, when it works.

[uiflorin]

One more thing:

If the fiber signal drops, it happens every now and then, some local maintenance to some distribution nodes, the router doesn't reconnect ppoe until rebooted. All settings are default related to ppoe connection type. There is no "reconnect" button, to initiate a manual connection through the app or GUI.

[uiflorin]

Don't know what is going on, the system doesn't work. I reset it several times, both node and main router. The main router can be set fine, but:

- it doesn't even see the mesh node to select it in the process of adding a node. But the node is seen and added, because it reboots and bam, it's added.

- But it doesn't work. It's not taking the settings correctly from the main router. They stay on different channel width on 5GHz band1, but the band 2 has on both the same channel width.

- After the node is added, I can see for few minutes and rounds of sync that the node still has the default SSIDs, together with the ones I set.

- They communicate, but without success. It also takes forever to boot.

THE LATEST FIRMWARE 102.44384 IS NOT WORKING. How have you released it?

- I downgraded to previous revision, 102.31933, on both node and router. This one works. No problem at all. They both sync fast, every setting update is fast, find each other. Speed ok. The GUI is not quite right, sometimes doesn't appear completely, but panning left right get it right. What have you done that completely disabled the firmware?