[Fork] Asuswrt-Merlin 374.43 LTS releases (Archive)

[john9527]

John - N68U here.

Trying to get an Android USB tether connection (Verizon Android phone) as primary WAN.

On Merlin's most recent codebase, it is flip a couple of switches under GUI, then "plug and play" and it just works after toggling "USB Tethering" Android settings on the Android phone (but I lose the benefits of this fork's build (e.g., higher selectable RF power - still a benefit?)).

Under this fork, it looks like the GUI/build combines the Android USB tethering setting and the USB WWAN modem setting into one big setting, with lots of variables to fill-in. Very tough to navigate for just activating an Android USB tether.

Wondering if either (i) someone can point me to default variable fill-ins for Android USB tether connection (on Verizon) for this fork's build, or (ii) there are plans to backport into a later version of this build the very easy GUI Android USB tether functionality of Merlin's most recent codebase?

Thanks for any information.

I haven't touched anythjing in the supported modems for two reasons.....
(1) There are some modems which work on this fork, which have problems on the current releases
(2) I don't use any modem support

I'll take a look specifically for the Android tethering support and see if I can update just that one.

 

[alu]

I'm on an ancient build of Merlin that I installed when I first got my N66U (3.0.0.3.178.15 (Merlin build)). I assume I should factory reset before upgrading, install the firmware, factory reset again, and go from there?

When it comes to my routers, I'm usually in the "if it ain't broke..." side of things, but I'm probably due for the upgrade from a security perspective.

 

[punchsuckr]

Again, things that I regularly do that I'm pretty sure work correctly. One thing that can produce similar symptoms is some security suites, most notable ESET (and I believe AVAST as well). If using an addon suite, make sure the router address is whitelisted for network access.

I tried running the shields up port scan from my iphone and the router rebooted. It surely is not behaving well when the log dropped packets option is enabled and i run the scan. I will try again tomorrow to see if i missed something.

 

[L&LD]

I'm on an ancient build of Merlin that I installed when I first got my N66U (3.0.0.3.178.15 (Merlin build)). I assume I should factory reset before upgrading, install the firmware, factory reset again, and go from there?

When it comes to my routers, I'm usually in the "if it ain't broke..." side of things, but I'm probably due for the upgrade from a security perspective.

You're running an over 3 year old firmware version!

You may have to flash an interim build before you can flash the latest, but a reset to factory defaults before you do so is not required. You should remove all USB devices and reboot the router though.

But after flashing, a full reset to factory defaults is mandatory.

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/no...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac66u-slow-wan-to-lan.12973/page-3#post-269410

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/faq-nvram-and-factory-default-reset.22822/

 

[john9527]

I tried running the shields up port scan from my iphone and the router rebooted. It surely is not behaving well when the log dropped packets option is enabled and i run the scan. I will try again tomorrow to see if i missed something.

I turned things on and tried to run the GRC scan with dropped packets logging enabled. My AC68U didn't like it either, although it didn't reboot. It timed out the scan in the web browser and the router gui stopped responding for a few seconds. Looking at what it did actually log, the GRC scan is acting like a DoS attack and just overwhelming the syslog with dropped packet logging. If it does this on ARM, it probably really hurts on the MIPS based routers.
I tested a fix for the next release that puts a rate limit on the packet logging if DoS protection is enabled, which fixed the problem.

 

[punchsuckr]

I turned things on and tried to run the GRC scan with dropped packets logging enabled. My AC68U didn't like it either, although it didn't reboot. It timed out the scan in the web browser and the router gui stopped responding for a few seconds. Looking at what it did actually log, the GRC scan is acting like a DoS attack and just overwhelming the syslog with dropped packet logging. If it does this on ARM, it probably really hurts on the MIPS based routers.
I tested a fix for the next release that puts a rate limit on the packet logging if DoS protection is enabled, which fixed the problem.

So it wasn't just me this time . Thanks a lot John. By the way the wan timers are working really well and are quite useful.

EDIT: Also I want to know what can cause certain devices to repeatedly push dhcp requests every ~30 seconds? My log just fills up with these messages for certain devices, one is my laptop and another a guest android phone.

 

[dfkinca]

I'll take a look specifically for the Android tethering support and see if I can update just that one.

Thank you; looking forward to what you put together!

 

[Trebuin]

Has anyone noticed the current firmware crashing quite frequently? I'm about to start rolling back to find one that does not crash. I tried a factory reset and the crashes still happen. The only special thing is that it is running a SMB only with an external NTFS.

 

[punchsuckr]

Came across a weird issue, if I turn off upnp my wan goes down. I tried it 3 times and the same result.
The final messages in the log are pasted below from the moment I disable upnp:

EDIT: For some reason the forum is not allowing me to post any log messages.

More weirdness, on the 5th or so time of toggling upnp off, wan did come up but now it goes down when i toggle it back on.
Final message in the log each time wan is down and stay down is ntpd simple time server started. No other message is seen after a few minutes.

 

[john9527]

Came across a weird issue, if I turn off upnp my wan goes down. I tried it 3 times and the same result.

Can't recreate this one. Changing the upnp state will cause the WAN interface to need to be restarted, along with any other associated services. It can take 30+ secs to complete (the gui will return before it's complete).

What type of WAN connection do you have? If it's 'Automatic IP' make sure the DHCP query freq is set to Normal. If PPPoE, try Enable VPN + DHCP Connection set to No

 

[punchsuckr]

Can't recreate this one. Changing the upnp state will cause the WAN interface to need to be restarted, along with any other associated services. It can take 30+ secs to complete (the gui will return before it's complete).

What type of WAN connection do you have? If it's 'Automatic IP' make sure the DHCP query freq is set to Normal. If PPPoE, try Enable VPN + DHCP Connection set to No

Yep it's automatic IP on normal mode. Guess it was jut delayed. It took more than 4 minutes to restore.

 

[john9527]

Yep it's automatic IP on normal mode. Guess it was jut delayed. It took more than 4 minutes to restore.

4 minutes seems a bit excessive.....if you get a chance upload your syslog to a file sharing site and send me a PM with the link.

 

[Chrysalis]

Has anyone noticed the current firmware crashing quite frequently? I'm about to start rolling back to find one that does not crash. I tried a factory reset and the crashes still happen. The only special thing is that it is running a SMB only with an external NTFS.

no crashes here.

 

[Gravityz]

no crashes here either

maybe some logfiles start to fill up or your jffs partition needs formatting
also if you have special scripts this might be the problem

in the early days i experienced this behavior
turned out that i needed to change dhcp query settings to normal mode instead of aggresive mode(in WAN settings)

since that nos problemos

 

[Sonicmojo]

Just an update - I went from John's first release to the latest - without a hitch of any kind. Simply update firmware, reboot and off I went.

Just want to say well done!

Cheers

Sonic.

 

[john9527]

Man, the jump from 06 to 20E was flawless on my AC68U. It picked all my settings and the new stuff seem to have good default values.

Just an update - I went from John's first release to the latest - without a hitch of any kind. Simply update firmware, reboot and off I went.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[cowst]

0 issues on N66U since using the fork, v17.
Recently I needed to reboot because it lost Internet connection, so I decided to move on to latest v20.
All good except now it happens very often that most pictures in emails won't load at first try.
I need to reload gmail on the phone in order to see them.

I cannot say it is for sure the update, but it never happened before.

 

[YasharF]

Not sure if it is a fork issue, Asus issue or a config issue from my end, but I just realized writes to mounted a USB drive over SCP is fairly slow, specially when using SCP from WAN.

For SCP write of large files to the USB drive from the LAN, I get about 1.2-1.5MB/s. For SCP from WAN I get about 270KB/s.

Using a RT-N16. In may case, the LAN is a gigabit link, the WAN is 15Mbps, and if I plug in the USB HDD to a USB 2.0 port of a PC I think I was getting 10-20MB/s writes. So the bottleneck is somewhere in the router.

 

[Nullity]

Not sure if it is a fork issue, Asus issue or a config issue from my end, but I just realized writes to mounted a USB drive over SCP is fairly slow, specially when using SCP from WAN.

For SCP write of large files to the USB drive from the LAN, I get about 1.2-1.5MB/s. For SCP from WAN I get about 270KB/s.

Using a RT-N16. In may case, the LAN is a gigabit link, the WAN is 15Mbps, and if I plug in the USB HDD to a USB 2.0 port of a PC I think I was getting 10-20MB/s writes. So the bottleneck is somewhere in the router.

scp encrypts all traffic, so devices with slow processors will struggle, which may be part of the problem. Maybe try some unencrypted protocols like FTP or NFS?

 

[john9527]

scp encrypts all traffic, so devices with slow processors will struggle, which may be part of the problem. Maybe try some unencrypted protocols like FTP or NFS?

+1 on this....I just ran a test across the local lan copying from PC to USB3 key, AC68P, 4GB file, NTFS....
Using SCP (via WINSCP) write ~6MB/s
Using SMB (via Windows Copy) write ~40MB/s

If you do a google search, you'll find multiple references to slow SCP performance.