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New owner of ASUS RT-AC86U

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Rockboy247

New Around Here
Afternoon guys,

So yesterday I decided to take the plunge and pick up a new router, this was the ASUS RT-AC86U.

After putting up with the Virgin Media Super Hub for 3-4 years now I thought it was time to put that into modem mode and try out a separate router to see what I have been missing out on.

So I started looking through these forums, and boy, there is a lot of information about these routers and the firmware you can put on them, in fact, its bloody well overwhelming.

One thing I have decided is that I am going load on Merlin to the router, that seems the go-to. My real question is though, once this is on, what sort of addons should i look into loading?

An area i am interested in is ad blocking, I was going to purchase a raspberry PI and set up PI hole but i believe the router itself should be okay at doing this.

I know this is probably asked all the time, i have looked and it seems overwhelming, so please, let me know what i should look at adding for my first steps.

any more information please let me know what i need to include
 
I would recommend Merlin 384.19, add a thumb drive, USB 2, format to EXT4 with a 1024 MB swap file, and add Diversion for add blocking. Be sure to check that the /JFFS is mounted after flashing Merlin and do a hard factory reset!
 
Afternoon guys,

So yesterday I decided to take the plunge and pick up a new router, this was the ASUS RT-AC86U.

After putting up with the Virgin Media Super Hub for 3-4 years now I thought it was time to put that into modem mode and try out a separate router to see what I have been missing out on.

So I started looking through these forums, and boy, there is a lot of information about these routers and the firmware you can put on them, in fact, its bloody well overwhelming.

One thing I have decided is that I am going load on Merlin to the router, that seems the go-to. My real question is though, once this is on, what sort of addons should i look into loading?

An area i am interested in is ad blocking, I was going to purchase a raspberry PI and set up PI hole but i believe the router itself should be okay at doing this.

I know this is probably asked all the time, i have looked and it seems overwhelming, so please, let me know what i should look at adding for my first steps.

any more information please let me know what i need to include

I suggest you commission your new router with current released Asuswrt firmware and use it for a few weeks to confirm it is healthy and to establish a working baseline network in your space with your clients. Once all is stable and your confidence is high, go nuts with add-ons.

OE
 
I would recommend Merlin 384.19, add a thumb drive, USB 2, format to EXT4 with a 1024 MB swap file, and add Diversion for add blocking. Be sure to check that the /JFFS is mounted after flashing Merlin and do a hard factory reset!

Its just arrived and i have flashed it with Merlin, already the speeds are much better in one of the rooms i struggle to get decent speeds in!

Going to look into getting diversion set up but need to find a pen drive and figure out how to get it to a Linux formatting and also sort out a swap file on it!

Thank you for the quick response, do you know anything about skynet for these routers at all?
 
Look in my signature below for the scripts I use.

The order of the scripts (I am not recommending you install all of them, of course) is in the link below.

Order of installing popular scripts | SmallNetBuilder Forums

The details of the scripts can be found here.

amtm - the Asuswrt-Merlin Terminal Menu - Diversion


If you want to have a guide to get this to work with best practices, see the link below for the amtm Step-by-Step Guide. Just note installing amtm is no longer required.

L&LD | SmallNetBuilder Forums


Before doing any of the above, you may want to look at the same link above and be sure you followed the steps for the M&M Config and ideally, the Nuclear Reset guides.

I think this will keep you on the straight and narrow for now. :)
 
Look in my signature below for the scripts I use.

The order of the scripts (I am not recommending you install all of them, of course) is in the link below.

Order of installing popular scripts | SmallNetBuilder Forums

The details of the scripts can be found here.

amtm - the Asuswrt-Merlin Terminal Menu - Diversion


If you want to have a guide to get this to work with best practices, see the link below for the amtm Step-by-Step Guide. Just note installing amtm is no longer required.

L&LD | SmallNetBuilder Forums


Before doing any of the above, you may want to look at the same link above and be sure you followed the steps for the M&M Config and ideally, the Nuclear Reset guides.

I think this will keep you on the straight and narrow for now. :)

Cheers for the links, managed to set everything up! Was having issues with the amazon app on my android device, had to disable pixelserve-tls
 

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