Asuswrt-Merlin 380.59 is now available

[Thijs]

Hi people!
I just bought myself a 87U because my old router had a very low signalstrength. The new ASUS router is doing al lot better but still i have lack of signal oround the house. Reading about this problem i came at this forun and read about the merlin firmware. There is really a lot to read about this and i am not really good in computer stuff. So i assignd so i can ask two questions.
1, can i just download a file from the "merlin server", for example the .58 file, unpack it on my laptop and upload it from the router page after logging in to it?
2. Do i have the option to increase the TX signal? In the Original firmwate it only goes to 100%. I have seen pictures were is was set to 150mW?

Thanks in advance, greetings from Holland!

 

[Thijs]

Thanks for the reply!
The reason that i want to change the firmware is because then i could ramp up the signal strength. I just use the WiFi for internet connection with all mobile devices and our laptop. So for that the asus fw is suitable. Is there any way i can increase the signalstrength?

 

[jeff288]

Thanks for the reply!
The reason that i want to change the firmware is because then i could ramp up the signal strength. I just use the WiFi for internet connection with all mobile devices and our laptop. So for that the asus fw is suitable. Is there any way i can increase the signalstrength?

You can try flashing HGGHomes' firmware but if you ask me, it's no magic pill. Your router will shout louder but it won't hear any better, nor will it make your wifi devices shout louder. I've tried it and it didn't make any difference for me, then again my reception was fine before. Also not to mention that firmware doesn't abide by FCC nor GPL rules. Supposedly you can also get a bit better tx/rx rates by aftermarket antennas but I'd recommend buying a cheap used Merlin/Tomato/DDWRT capable router and using it as a repeater. That is unless your client is gaming, I can't say how much it'll increase your ping but likely not enough to matter.

Yes, you can flash by wireless. Merlin himself said he does it a lot, I do it all the time. Wifi is engineered for data redundancy.

 

[RMerlin]

Hoping someone can help me understand a default setting decision I noticed whilst tweaking the RT-AC87U running Asuswrt-Merlin 380.59:

Memory Management: Regularly flush caches (default: Yes)

Coming from a Linux background, I'm quite comfortable with having no memory "free" because I understand how buffers / cache work. The only time I've had to force flush in x86 Linux is under rare circumstances where something was badly broken. Is this different on ARM somehow?

Asus flushes buffers by default for some reason. When I added the option to disable that behavior, I got flooded by "OMG my router is running out of memory" complains. So I got tired of it and now default to Asus's behavior.

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

 

[RMerlin]

Me too, I know I had this working when I first got the router and flashed it with merlins.
I just flashed, cleared NVRAM, disabled QOS and Spanning tree, power off the router after turning off NAT acceleration turned back on , rebooted and still nothing.
Must be some setting doing it.....

FA is not supported on the RT-AC5300.

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks for the reply!
The reason that i want to change the firmware is because then i could ramp up the signal strength. I just use the WiFi for internet connection with all mobile devices and our laptop. So for that the asus fw is suitable. Is there any way i can increase the signalstrength?

No.

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

 

[Ryu Connor]

RT-AC88U 380.59 in Router mode. Factory reset was done after application of the firmware.

New Alpha(?) driver in the 380.59 code base causes a RT-AC88U in media bridge mode running Asus 380_2345 to suffer random disconnections. 380.58 doesn't have this issue.

These disconnects can only be resolved by rebooting the bridge. The bridge still believes and reports that it is connected to the Router.

I really wish 380.59 hadn't used this half baked Alpha driver. As I reported during the beta stage the 380.59 driver on a RT-AC88U in media bridge mode resulted in a kernel panic. If it does that in media bridge mode, it's undoubtedly got bugs in Router mode too.

 

[alabrand]

It would be cool if Merlin could add "Restart router every night at 3:00 AM" in Tweaks & Hacks.

 

[AndreiV]

It would be cool if Merlin could add "Restart router every night at 3:00 AM" in Tweaks & Hacks.

Why add it there ? Look in Administration > Enable Reboot Scheduler , the feature already exists.

 

[dfran1]

FA is not supported on the RT-AC5300.

Thank You!
I could have sworn I got it in the alpha 2 I used, oh well.
Thank You for the fact.

 

[z4r9]

Asus flushes buffers by default for some reason. When I added the option to disable that behavior, I got flooded by "OMG my router is running out of memory" complains. So I got tired of it and now default to Asus's behavior.

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

Hah! Completely understandable decision on your part. Thanks for adding the option. I've disabled forced buffer flushing so if I run into any issues I'll report them here.

 

[bodean]

Is SMB2 stable now to enable on this FW? Also, is SMB2 recommended if we have a NAS hooked up to our ASUS router, and it also uses SMB1/SMB2 protocols?

 

[rmilyard]

Upgraded my AC3200 from .58 to .59. Now the web interface to config the router is so SLOW to use. Takes like 45sec to 1 min to nav it. Anyone else seeing this? Roll back to .58 and it's fine.

 

[Trembler]

Well, I tried again with 380.59 and making the router master browser, even did a full factory reset and the problem is still the same. Also noted that Android phones were listed as part of the network, never seen that before, what was strange is that one of these phone only got used in the house @ 3 months ago and has never visited since. The phone listing was turning on and off at random.

Reverting to 380.58 and again the router is shown correctly in Windows.

I'm experiencing the same problem after the update to 59. I simply can't get the router to act as master browser anymore, reverting back to 58 fixes everything.

 

[alabrand]

Why add it there ? Look in Administration > Enable Reboot Scheduler , the feature already exists.

When did Asus add that option? I don't remember seeing it before.

 

[RMerlin]

Is SMB2 stable now to enable on this FW? Also, is SMB2 recommended if we have a NAS hooked up to our ASUS router, and it also uses SMB1/SMB2 protocols?

SMB2 tends to reduce performance, because the router's bottleneck is its CPU rather than the network.

Even weirder is that it seems Windows 10 will no longer negotiate an SMB2 protocol. My PC only does 1.5 or 3.0 now.

 

[bodean]

SMB2 tends to reduce performance, because the router's bottleneck is its CPU rather than the network.

Even weirder is that it seems Windows 10 will no longer negotiate an SMB2 protocol. My PC only does 1.5 or 3.0 now.

Thank you for the clarification. One more quick question, Adaptive QOS still stable/reliable on this build? Ive read that traditional is still broken and unreliable.

 

[RMerlin]

Thank you for the clarification. One more quick question, Adaptive QOS still stable/reliable on this build? Ive read that traditional is still broken and unreliable.

I'm not aware of any particular issues with Adaptive QoS. It's what I use, tho my network gets very little traffic, so I'm not a good test case.

Most people reported getting better latency when using Adaptive QoS. But that could be because they prioritize ICMP packets (one more reason NOT to rely on pings when trying to assert the efficiency of a QoS implementation, unless you make sure not to prioritize ping packets).

 

[AndreiV]

When did Asus add that option? I don't remember seeing it before.

I have no idea, I knew it was there, I've seen people talking about it on this forum.

Maybe it is Merlin's work ?

 

[RMerlin]

I have no idea, I knew it was there, I've seen people talking about it on this forum.

Maybe it is Merlin's work ?

Asus added it maybe 18-24 months ago. I forgot when exactly.