RT-AC87U - AP mode - Quantenna weirdness

If you look at the system architecture block diagram of the RT-AC87U, the Quantenna SoC / 5GHz radio is basically a second router within the router. There were a few times in the past when the Quantenna SoC crashed on me, some times would try do reboot using BootP with the MAC address of 00:26:86:00:00:00 and fail miserably.

Anyhow, because ASUS broke WAN counts, I have switched my 87U to AP mode and use a new pfSense box to perform routing/firewall/DHCP duties. Here's the strange thing...

RT-AC87U - AP mode - Quantenna weirdness