Router appears to be affecting iCloud connection

[JCRoswell]

A few months ago I bought the ASUS ZenWiFi XD6 (AX5400) system, and it works great except I have an issue with the iCloud service. iCloud constantly gives me the error "An error occurred during authentication."

This only happens on my home network. It happens for both my desktop (Win10) and my laptop (Win11). It does not happen to my laptop at work, or to either computer if I use my phone's hotspot. So, it appears there is something in my router setup that is causing this issue.

Any ideas of where to look or what could be causing this?

Things I've tried that did not help:

• Turning off the router's firewall
• Turning off AiProtection

Any direction would be appreciated.

John

[Aureliannn_ASUS]

Hi @heldersimoes ,

based on your issue, may I ask have you try to reset your Zenwifi XT8?

Could you provide the screenshot of the error messege?

Please provide all device that cannot connect to the iCloud using Zenwifi XT8 MAC adress and product model.

Whether all device is wired or wireless connected?

Thank you.

[heldersimoes]

Hi Aureliannn

I will try to understand the issue before reseting the router.

Some configs (like device images) are not saved in exporting settings and I want to avoid reconfigure everything again.

In my house I have all the apple devices with the same symptoms (iPhone 15, iPhone SE2, Apple TV 4K, iMac). I will try to do some wireshark analysis to understand what may be blocked and drop packets analysis.

With iCloud services I am not receiving any error message but it is not sync anymore (stays in Sync forever, no upload/download from iCloud). The Apple TV now is requiring the iCloud accounts to be updateds by iPhone and then the iPhone provides the message in attach (the error message is in Portuguese but translated is something like"Try Again - Apple TV was unable to update the definitions. Wait for some time and try gain").

I already disable firewall and AiProtect but the same is still happening. Also changed the DNS settings to the original ones without any success.

[Aureliannn_ASUS]

Hi @heldersimoes ,

based on your issue, may I ask could you provide all the device's MAC adress?

If you use the hotspot on the phone (not the router) to update iCloud account, will you be able to use the Apple TV?

It is still suggest that you reset the router then do ot change any setting, then confirm whether the iCloud can sync again.

If the issue still occur after you reset the router, it is suggest that you record a feedback log.

If you have any issues/ questions/suggestions when using ASUS router, you can submit a feedback form Web GUI (http://www.asusrouter.com).
1. Connect your device to your router and log in to Web GUI(http://www.asusrouter.com)
2. Find “Administration,” and tap “Feedback”
3. Fill in your region, email (required field), ASUS Service No./Case No.(not required),Select the feedback problem and description.You can also write down comments/suggestions. More details might help us to analyze the issue you have encountered in a faster and more efficient way.
4. Read the agreement and click “I agree.”
5. Tap “Send” to submit your feedback.
Then provide the product serial number, the time of submitting the issue report, the email used for filling out the issue report, and the time when the issue occurred via private message.

Thank you.

[heldersimoes]

Hi Aureliannn_ASUS

Meanwhile, the issue was solved. Thank you for your support.
I just want to share here if it may help other persons.

I start to log the dropped packets in the firewall and changed the "Prevent client auto DoH" from "yes" to "auto" in the "WAN DNS Settings" and then it stops dropping those specific packets related with iCloud service.

Strange that it seems that this was the only service affected by the option "yes" since begining of August since I am using that option for some time together with the "DNS-over-TLS Server List" and other services like Onedrive were working fine.

I am sharing the current WAN configurations that works now in attach.

[Wayneg]

Thank you heldersimoes.  You put me on the right track with my Asus RT-AC68U.  Same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago and very frustrating.   Only iCloud web and iCloud Windows app didn't work on our computers.  Here are my settings:  

The DNS Privacy Protocol was set to 'None'.  I changed it to 'DNS-over-TLS' and added the cloudfare server from the Preset server list.