info needed: ASUS RT-AC66U B1 and old fw compatibility

[Pila]

If I order the RT-AC66U B1 today, and when I receive it, will I be able to flash into it:

1) old fw v380.59
2) latest v380 legacy (currently 380.69_2)
3) only ng v384

Please, be absolutely specific for each.

Background: I am thinking of buying a new router to replace one irrelevant AP at one location so I will have a spare router nearby, should the need occur. This is related to where I live and possibility that I may have to wait for a week or more to get a new router. I do not tolerate any downtime over several minutes.

Now I use ASUS RT-AC68U, among others. I like RT-AC66U B1 for the fact it is the same as 68 but cheaper. I would prefer for RT-AC66U B1 to have the same fw as all my other routers: Asuswrt-Merlin - build 380.59.

I do not care about discussing later fw verions as being better or more secure or whatever. I want the same features and versions of everything everywhere, if possible. This particular 68 is in a network with 15-20 computers and is currently 177 days up. So, it works good enough for me.

 

[Pila]

while waiting for a quite simple answer, the shop lifted the price almost 40%. And not a single answer in days.

 

[bbunge]

1 yes
2 yes
3 yes
But with that said you should try the current Asus firmware for the AC66U B1. I am running it on my router after trying all the above and feel I het the best performance with the official Asus.
You should also stick with the latest firmware as there are nasties out there that will get you if your router has a vulnerability!
Sent from my P01M using Tapatalk

 

[ColinTaylor]

while waiting for a quite simple answer,

Maybe it's not as simple as you think. v380.59 was obsolete before the RT-AC66U_B1 was released so it's quite possible that nobody has ever used that firmware on that router. And you said "be absolutely specific".

And not a single answer in days.

"days" actually being 22 hours. Patience is a virtue.

 

[RMerlin]

A lot of us won't answer simply because we don't want to be the ones suggesting that you flash an older, unsupported firmware with a number of known security issues.

 

[Pila]

1 yes
2 yes
3 yes
But with that said you should try the current Asus firmware for the AC66U B1.
...
You should also stick with the latest firmware as there are nasties out there that will get you if your router has a vulnerability!

Luckily, they did got it back again. So many thanks for the answer! Often vulnerabilities are theoretical (if someone is within my network they can explore....).

I do analyse vunerabilites before deciding. As I have several devices to maintain, I am more concerned about me working around their bugs to make them work 24/7 unateneded. For the last 30 years I never had any virus (and similar) on any of computers under my care and nobody ever had an anti-virus installed, so I am doing something right With me, everything is heavily and very restrictive firewalled in both directions.

 

[Pila]

A lot of us won't answer simply because we don't want to be the ones suggesting that you flash an older, unsupported firmware with a number of known security issues.

Every firmware has many of security issues. If they are not known, they will be soon. It is a never ending story.

E.g. After how many years we had to kill the blowfish and switch to AES for OpenVPN? That is a change I will do. DirtyCOW - not afraid of it.

Something changing every week - I mostly ignore if I do not have a problem with that particular issue. E.g. with later implemetnation of VPN, I am afraid I may have to change my VPNs. I will have to take a look at it in details and try to switch, but not now. Such change means changing all master backup images for all computers which are using VPN. If I can avoid that, I will. I prefer not to learn new issues every few weeks or months. On every device I have to. If my car would break every week or so, I would not drive it.

That being said: it is great what you did for the Asus routers regarding sw. But, there will never be sw with no faults and issues. When I started using Asus routers, I had to write my own DDNS script. in 2016 - probably some 10 lines of code. In the meantime, script had to do some other things, checking memory, temperature, checking if my Internet is actually alive, reboot stuff... Current version is v91 with 1300 lines. Mostly new features, quite rarely bug fixes. I know there is a memory leak in Asus Merlin fw v59 with networkmap, but my script now handles it automatically as evidenced by my uptime of 181 days - it could not survive 80 days prior to that. So I prefer that than having to find out why somehting does not work.

btw: for unknown reasons I do not receive notification about replies, so that caused my tardines in replaying to you all.

I do not claim to be an example which anyone should follow! Absolutley no one should do so unless they know exactly what they are doing, how and why.

 

[RMerlin]

Every firmware has many of security issues. If they are not known, they will be soon. It is a never ending story.

Correct, and so keeping your firmware up-to-date is an ongoing task, not a fire-and-forget thing. As security issues are discovered and patched, end-users must update, otherwise an increasing number of malicious users will start trying to exploit those issues. This is especially true for a security device such as a router, which acts as your first line of defense between the Internet and your LAN.

People often think of their router as just a box to provide Wifi access. They need to start looking at it as the security device that it really is.