On Wednesday, Asus router users from all over the world took to the internet reporting that their device suddenly freezes for no apparent reason and then stops working every few minutes as the device runs out of memory after multiple restarts.
Two days later, the Taiwan-based equipment manufacturer finally responded to calls for help. Massive outage, company he said, was the result of “an error in the configuration of our server settings file”. After troubleshooting, most users only had to reboot their device. In case it didn’t fix the problem, the company’s support team advised users to save the current configuration settings and perform a factory reset. The company also apologized.
It’s been a frustrating day or two for many users as they try to resolve the outages. Asus’ silence during this period only added to the frustration.
“That’s a bunch of BS. Why doesn’t Asus make a statement explaining what happened? one user complained.
Asus has yet to elaborate on the configuration error. Various users online have offered explanations that seem correct.
“On the 16th, Asus pushed a broken definition file for ASD, the built-in security daemon available on a wide range of its routers,” it said. he wrote. “As the routers automatically updated and removed the corrupted definition file, the file system began to run out of space and memory and crash.”
The explanation answered the question of what caused the routers to crash, but it raised a new one: Why were routers so affected when they were configured not to update automatically and no manual updates were performed? Asus hasn’t addressed this yet, but the likely answer is that the definitions file for ASD, which resides in memory and scans devices for security threats, is updated whether or not automatic updates are enabled.
The long and short of it is that the 48-hour mystery of faulty Asus routers is now solved and a fix is in the works. We are now returning you to your normal scheduled Internet usage.