Wireless-N Issues ASUS RT-N56U

[LaithMelias]

I've become extremely frustrated over the past 48 hours and have decided to reach out to the community in general for help. I recently bought a new desktop and there was an option to include the ASUS RT-N56U Wireless-N router with the purchase. I've done a lot of research and the vast majority of the reviews were positive. I received the product and replaced my outdated Linksys BEFW11S4 Wireless-B router. I walked through the steps for the quick setup and entered a SSID, selected the encryption method and the key. As usual, I had connected my laptop directly via ethernet to do the configurations. That is when the problems started. My laptop is running Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit. My wireless in the laptop, an Atheros AR5007 Wireless B/G adapter, connected to the network and authenticated. It would not, however, resolve the internet. I could connect internally to the home network, but no internet access. It always came up "Unidentified Network" and listed it as a public network with local access. My wife's laptop, an identical build was doing the same thing. My daughter's laptop, running Windows 7 had no issues. Neither did my wife's new desktop running Windows 7. The second issue reared it's ugly head shortly thereafter. The router's WAN IP from my cable modem, a Ubee U10C035 provided by Charter, would reset to 0.0.0.0 after about 6 hours of use. Nothing I could do would renew or change this address short of resetting the router to the factory settings and starting over with the setup. I tried to update the firmware and another issue appeared. After downloading a recommended rollback and the most recent firmware, the router refused to update or rollback to any other version other than the one provided by the factory. I'm starting to think that I was sold a bum router. Any info would be helpful at this point. Thanks.

 

[Pinky]

I would agree it appears the router might be having some hardware or other issue you may never get to the bottom of. There are some means of doing hard resets (like holding down the reset button, reconnecting power, and keeping the reset pressed for a bit after power is reconnected to force a full restore). Check for a DD-WRT firmware for the device and follow the instructions on their site carefully. I revived a customer returned router with this firmware when the standard Linksys firmware didn't seem to function well at all with the device, for whatever reason.

 

[LaithMelias]

@Pinky

Thanks for the commiseration. Problem is, I tried to load DD-WRT. That gave me the "Update failed." error message as well. I've heard from co-workers that it's possible I may have to set the SSID to broadcast, but that answer sounds a lot like the others that I've encountered. Now to complicate matters, my laptop started doing the same "Unidentified Network" thing with only local access on my Linksys now too. I had to reconfigure the wireless network on my laptop to get it to work again.

 

[Pinky]

Have you tried the hard reset as I described?

...are some means of doing hard resets (like holding down the reset button, reconnecting power, and keeping the reset pressed for a bit after power is reconnected to force a full restore).

On the dd-wrt wikipedia page they have instructions for doing hard resets, it works for most routers. Worth a try to flush EVERYTHING and start fresh with the current firmware. I'd even reapply your current firmware just to be sure it's not somehow corrupted (I've seen this as well).

 

[DreamerBrian]

If you need to hard reset your router you can just google "how to reset (model #)."

As far as your laptop with the Atheros drivers: It may seem far'fetched, but those drivers notoriously fail for me. A fresh install of the Atheros drivers might help your situation.

Brian