No WAN on/off button in 246.20

[Bagman]

I've think I've found a bug in Merlin 246.20. On the Network Map/WAN page the green on/off button flashes up and then disappears when you select the internet status button in the middle, but it is replaced by the right pane with the WAN information. The button is not accessible, but it is there somewhere.

This means you can disable your WAN from the small lit icons in the top right, but there is no way to get it back from the GUI. At best you can use the "internet status" button on the middle of the screen to get into the quick internet setup wizard, but it won't get far because the WAN is down and the internet connection cannot be detected.

I tried with both Firefox 17 and IE 9, and the behaviour above is the same.

With the latest Asus 260 firmware, the green on/off button is always available on the right information pane after selecting the Internet Status button.

 

[mossman]

I'm running the same build, using Firefox 18 (beta) and IE8, and the green Connection Status button is always there for me. And it works.

 

[RMerlin]

See what happens if you disable the Dual WAN option on the WAN -> Dual WAN page.

 

[Bagman]

See what happens if you disable the Dual WAN option on the WAN -> Dual WAN page.

This fixes it and the on/off button re-appears in the WAN connection status. I never enabled dual-WAN, it just automatically was on when I upgraded from Asus-WRT to Merlin-WRT.

Maybe there should be some sort of information in there, because after disabling the WAN from the icons, there nothing to indicate you have to disable Dual-WAN in order to get the button back to re-enable your internet. Or alternatively, prevent disabling of the Internet link from the small icons.

 

[RMerlin]

This fixes it and the on/off button re-appears in the WAN connection status. I never enabled dual-WAN, it just automatically was on when I upgraded from Asus-WRT to Merlin-WRT.

Maybe there should be some sort of information in there, because after disabling the WAN from the icons, there nothing to indicate you have to disable Dual-WAN in order to get the button back to re-enable your internet. Or alternatively, prevent disabling of the Internet link from the small icons.

It's actually a bug with the Dual WAN webui code, not intended behavior.

With every new release I'm tempted to toss a coin to determine whether I should release with DualWAN enabled or not. While the feature is barely working, last time I disabled it I got quite a few requests from users who were successfully using it.

Making two separate releases could be an option, but that would double the amount of work required for new releases (compile time + test time).

 

[Bagman]

It's actually a bug with the Dual WAN webui code, not intended behavior.

With every new release I'm tempted to toss a coin to determine whether I should release with DualWAN enabled or not. While the feature is barely working, last time I disabled it I got quite a few requests from users who were successfully using it.

Making two separate releases could be an option, but that would double the amount of work required for new releases (compile time + test time).

Given it's unfinished state and that it's not working correctly, I'd suggest it should be released, (more options are better), but disabled by default. For anyone that wants to use it in that state, they can go to the menu and enable it.

I'm a technically competent user, and I couldn't find how to re-enable my WAN after disabling it. I was expecting a different context-sensitive pop-up on the small icons because that's where I disabled it. I was looking for the same place with the "enable" option. There's no way I would have thought to disable the dual WAN on a different page of the router UI.

I ended up flashing back to Asus-WRT because it was quicker and simpler than finding how to bring it back over the telnet interface. If I didn't have the Asus firmware on my hard drive. I would have had to have done more messing about to reconnect directly to the modem just to google the problem or get the firmware. That sort of thing is beyond the casual user, so should be avoided.

 

[RMerlin]

It used to be disabled by default since I was getting questions back then on how to enable it. It must have changed at some point.

 

[Bagman]

Well enabling Dual-WAN is pretty easy. Figuring out you have to disable it to get your WAN connection UI back is pretty impossible.