Last summer I replaced my aging Google WiFi home network with Asus XT9 mesh – a main router to cover the central part of the house, and 2 nodes for the more distant wings. It worked reasonably well – until it didn’t. Several days ago both nodes suddenly went offline and ignored my attempts to add them back to the mesh, leaving parts of the house (including kids’ TV corner) without adequate coverage. As you may guess, it was a disaster to be taken care of on the first occasion!
It took some time, but at the end of the day everything was up and running. I will spare you the whole story, but there are several important tips about XT9 that I learned today – both from my chat with the Asus support and from my own trial and error – that are worth writing down.
First of all, support recommended to (re-)add mesh notes via the web UI and not via the Android app. If for whatever reason the login information for the web UI is not in your password manager, but you have access to the smartphone app, you can find the username under Settings → Router Information → About My Router. However, the only way to reset the access password is the dreaded factory reset of the main router, even if you have access via the app and the router itself is registered in your Asus account.
As a side note, factory reset does not change the firmware version, which can be either good or bad, depending on the desired result. In my case it was good, since the firmware upgrade to the latest version is what ultimately resolved the problem, but I have no idea how would one recover from broken/interrupted firmware upgrade…
The most surprising revelation of the day was the fact the factory reset method with WPS button from Asus support site that appears as first result in Google and is listed as applicable to XT9 does not in fact perform hardware reset. The proper way is to use the actual Reset button, which is well-hidden on the bottom of the device on the opposite side of the WPS button. The sequence that works is:
- Wait for the router to fully boot – attempts to perform reset during blinking-green phase are ignored.
- Press the reset button and keep holding until the light turns to blinking yellow, then release.
- The light turns to solid yellow for a moment, then device goes into reboot.
- Wait for the router to fully boot again – it should boot into solid blue (“ready for setup”).
As it appears, connecting a future node to the main router with ethernet cable (LAN to WAN ports, of course) triggers automatic setup of the mesh node, and it may work even if the router is unable to detect the same node wirelessly during the “Add AiMesh Node” wizard.
Probably the most important tip: DO NOT touch the device after adding it to the mesh if it is not in the stable solid white (“running”) state. Until that, a node which already appears in web UI is not really part of the mesh yet. Do not change any configuration settings, unplug and move to different location, etc. It is pretty obvious in retrospective, but the blinking blue state (“communicating with the base”) can take pretty long time – up to 15-20 minutes – and this is somewhat confusing.
Once the node is fully added to the mesh, you can go to Administration → Firmware Upgrade, scroll down and verify that the newly added node runs the latest firmware version. You can find latest version of the firmware on the support page for XT9 under Driver & Tools → BIOS & Firmware (or just google for it). Note that the download is a ZIP file, while router will want it unpacked. At least, it is smart enough to recognize this and warn you before potentially bricking itself. The firmware upgrade process takes several minutes, followed by reboot.
If attaching a problematic node to the main router with a cable after the hardware reset did not work, you can attach it to your laptop/desktop instead and set it up as its own main router in a new temporary standalone WiFi network. At this point you can log in to the device via its own web UI and examine it closely – for example, check the firmware version and upgrade if needed. Note that this wired setup will likely break the internet connectivity on your laptop, so make sure to download the fresh firmware ahead of time. Once the device is on the latest version, you can run it through another factory reset and attempt to add it back to the main router as a node.
I hope I won’t need this information ever again.
