Flint2 MT6000 Reboots under load on 5Ghz

Technical Support for Routers
1

Hi

MT6000 running v4.6.2 currently.
I had previously used a Flint AX1800 (now an extender)
and I also have a BerylAX MT3000.
I've been using Openwrt from the early days, and run an IOT LAN
similar to the guest network config.

I've been battling a crash problem since upgrading from v4.5.6.
When I first upgraded to v4.5.7, the router would boot loop every 2 minutes.
I reverted to v4.5.6. When v4.5.8 came out, I had the same behaviour, and reverted to v4.5.6.
I saw comments in the forum saying v4.5.8 was stable for a lot of people, and
when v.4.6.2 came out I tried again. Similar behaviour, reboots with minutes of the WiFi
being availble to clients.

I had tried factory resets and wiping all config and doing the minimum config to try
and work out what might at fault, and eventually got things mostly stable by using the uboot
method to get a factory default clean install. After a lot more testing of combinations, I've
narrowed down the issue to using 5Ghz.

I have had 14 days of stability when using 2.4Ghz only.
I have also had 24hrs of enabling 5GHz, but not letting any clients connect (unique ssid).

I can get the router to crash in seconds by connecting one phone to 5GHz
and kicking off a smb file transfer (phone <-> nas).

I don't see a crash.log after the reboot, but I set up a separate syslog server
to try and see what's going on at the point of the crash.
I have some kern.log entries but I suspect the event that crashes is not making it over.

Any suggestions on what to look for or how to preserve the crash.log ?

2

can you open one terminal window and check with htop what is happening?

my issue is the way you try to replicate it, does this also happen without the smb transfer on 5ghz?

the difficulty with SMB is that it is utilising alot of cpu but can also cache ram, maybe it need to be priortized lower or there need to be a limit set how many resources that process can have otherwise indeed normal process on the router can get halted, but that is also kind of expected.

would been nice if you can show the output of htop :wink:

3

Well, the same smb transfer works fine over 2.4Ghz.
I should say the smb server is a freebsd nas box on the wired lan,
not samba on the router.

I just had the router crash with only a single client connected to 5Ghz.

I had left my phone connected as the only client on 5Ghz, with everything
else on 2.4Ghz, when the cry went out "Is the internet down?".
The router was rebooting. It's a bit more unpredictable with only light traffic.
However, if I put multiple devices on 5Ghz, it will crash in a few minutes.

I switched 5Ghz off again, as I can't take everyone's internet down during
the day. I only get to experiment when no one is online.

I have htop installed as well as iftop.

This the config:

root@core:~# cat /etc/config/wireless

config wifi-device 'mt798611'
option type 'mtk'
option band '2g'
option htmode 'HE40'
option channel 'auto'
option random_bssid '1'
option legacy_rates '0'
option hwmode '11g'
option txpower '100'
option country 'GB'

config wifi-iface 'wifi2g'
option device 'mt798611'
option mode 'ap'
option network 'lan'
option ifname 'ra0'
option wds '1'
option ieee80211k '1'
option bss_transition '1'
option key 'mypw'
option ssid 'my2g'
option encryption 'sae-mixed'
option macaddr '46:90:54:50:5E:81'

config wifi-device 'mt798612'
option type 'mtk'
option band '5g'
option channel 'auto'
option htmode 'HE80'
option txpower '100'
option legacy_rates '0'
option hwmode '11a'
option country 'GB'
option random_bssid '0'

config wifi-iface 'wifi5g'
option device 'mt798612'
option network 'lan'
option mode 'ap'
option ifname 'rax0'
option wds '1'
option key 'mypw'
option encryption 'sae-mixed'
option ssid 'my5g'
option hidden '0'
option disabled '1'

config wifi-iface 'guest2g'
option device 'mt798611'
option network 'guest'
option mode 'ap'
option ifname 'ra1'
option encryption 'psk2'
option key 'goodlife'
option ssid 'GL-MT6000-cfb-Guest'
option guest '1'
option wds '1'
option isolate '1'
option disabled '1'
option macaddr 'EE:93:4D:34:85:86'

config wifi-iface 'guest5g'
option device 'mt798612'
option network 'guest'
option mode 'ap'
option ifname 'rax1'
option encryption 'psk2'
option key 'goodlife'
option ssid 'GL-MT6000-cfb-5G-Guest'
option guest '1'
option wds '1'
option isolate '1'
option disabled '1'

config wifi-iface 'smarthome'
option device 'mt798611'
option mode 'ap'
option ifname 'ra2'
option network 'smarthome'
option ssid 'iot'
option key 'mypw'
option isolate '1'
option encryption 'psk-mixed'
option hidden '0'
option macaddr 'B2:53:F0:xx:xx:xx'

4

May I know does the router use the attached power supply?

6

If you don't have problem in 4.5.6, which is using open source wifi driver, Pls try the op24 firmware

https://dl.gl-inet.com/router/mt6000/

7

May I know does the router use the attached power supply?

Actually, in this case no.
I use a 12V 4A "brick" switching PSU.
I have used this for several years, from when I had both a dsl modem and wifi router running in parallel from the same 12V source.

I also used the same combination for the last 3 main wifi routers, including the Flint AX1800.
The MT6000 was also using the same method, when I first got it.until I switched to a fibre
ONT on it's own PSU in January.

The MT6000 has the 4A PSU all to itself, but swapping to the OEM one should be an easy test
to replicate later.

8

I will try that once I can get a "maintenance window" :wink:

9

I switched the PSU to the OEM one, and while I've only been running for around 24hrs,
it seems more stable. However, I was able to cause a crash by doing the file copy from the
nas to the phone over 5GHz. I was able to leave 5G enabled with one device for a few
hours without a crash, which is why I think things might be more stable than before.

The power lead on the OEM plug is just slightly too short to reach the router, which I
think was part of the reason I started using the other PSU all these years ago.

I wonder is the later firmware causing a higher power drain than the earlier one?

I can't get much testing done at the minute due to everyone else in the household
kicking up a fuss everytime the router/internet goes down :frowning:

10

Probably the 5GHz devices is more than before, and the client devices distance is longer than before, so it consume more power.