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Turning off wireless in Merlin

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cobra_shipwreck

Occasional Visitor
You have to telnet or ssh into your device.

Run the following command:
Radio off

It will turn off all wireless radios on the device.

Command options are as follows:
Usage: radio on|off|toggle|switch|join [N]

This is just an FYI for you folks that only want to use your device as a dedicated linux based router.
 
You have to telnet or ssh into your device.

Run the following command:
Radio off

It will turn off all wireless radios on the device.

Command options are as follows:
Usage: radio on|off|toggle|switch|join [N]

This is just an FYI for you folks that only want to use your device as a dedicated linux based router.

Wifi will turn back on once you reboot the router.

Proper method to disable it is the same as with the stock firmware: Wireless -> Professional, disable wifi for each band there.
 
Why not just log into the router UI and go to the professional tab under wireless and disable each radio.

EDIT: Sorry for the echo Merlin we posted at the same time.
 
You have to telnet or ssh into your device.

Run the following command:
Radio off

It will turn off all wireless radios on the device.

Command options are as follows:
Usage: radio on|off|toggle|switch|join [N]

This is just an FYI for you folks that only want to use your device as a dedicated linux based router.

Why not just disable the radios in the GUI?

Edit: Merlin beat me to it.
 

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Wifi will turn back on once you reboot the router.

Proper method to disable it is the same as with the stock firmware: Wireless -> Professional, disable wifi for each band there.

It was not an option. I looked for at least 15 minutes on two separate occasions. The option and functionality did not exist to turn off the wireless via the web interface on my 68w with the firmware 3.0.0.4.374.38_2
 
It was not an option. I looked for at least 15 minutes on two separate occasions. The option and functionality did not exist to turn off the wireless via the web interface on my 68w with the firmware 3.0.0.4.374.38_2

It's been there since all the way back to the old 3.0.0.3.90 days, although I admit it's not in the most intuitive of location.
 
It's been there since all the way back to the old 3.0.0.3.90 days, although I admit it's not in the most intuitive of location.

Under wireless in the Professional tab? Honestly with the amount of options I am not sure that there is even a better place to put the wireless on/off switch either.
 
Sorry for resurrecting this thread... but I have a related issue.

My AC68 router boots up with Wifi disabled (both 2.4G & 5G).
To correct this, I have to use a lan cable and re-eanble wifi through "Wireless -> Professional".

When I connected vis SSH and tried "radio on" command, it only works after I already enabled wifi, so placing it as startup script isn't helping.
(in other words "radio off/on" commands are working after I enabled wifi through the web interface).

Is there an additional way to simulate the command?

Appreciate any help

* I'm uisng Merlin asuswrt btw
** The wifi issue also exist on original Asus firmware.
*** DD-wrt doesn't seem to have the wifi issue at all.
 
For the settings to stick you have to do it through the web interface.

Doing it through the command shell will not persist setting wise after the unit is rebooted.

As far as I can find/figure out the web interface has some additional commands embedded that permanently turn on or off the wireless that are not accessible via CLI.

I don't have that many issues with things being that way especially in light of the IOT DDOS attacks we have been observing of late. The last thing we need is some botnet trying to take over our routers via command line weak points. At least with the GUI you have to have a human factor to change things.
 
Sorry for resurrecting this thread... but I have a related issue.

My AC68 router boots up with Wifi disabled (both 2.4G & 5G).
To correct this, I have to use a lan cable and re-eanble wifi through "Wireless -> Professional".

Have you tried using the button on the side that can turn the wifi on/off?



wps.jpg
 
I recently added a "radio off" and "radio on" script to my RT-AC68U, activated by a cron job. I did this to set up wifi on/off scheduling that isn't cancelled/disabled by adhoc manual toggling via the physical switch on the side of the router.

This works well, however the enable/disable selectors in the gui for the respective 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands dont change to reflect the state of the wifi when it is turned on or off by the cron scheduled script.
This doesn't bother me too much, but if there is something I can do to rectify it and make the operation more complete and polished, that would be great...
Anybody got any ideas?
 
I enable/disable selectors in the gui for the respective 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands dont change to reflect the state of the wifi when it is turned on or off by the cron scheduled script....if there is something I can do to rectify it and make the operation more complete and polished
Anybody got any ideas?

Try setting the 2.4GHz/5Ghz NVRAM variables

e.g. When 'Radio off'....
Code:
nvram set wl_radio=0

nvram set wl1_radio=0
 
Bumping this thread as this is most relevant to what I am trying to accomplish.

I want to use a cronjob to turn off the 5ghz radio on a AC68U on a set schedule. The scheduler through the GUI is terrible for me (merlin fw 384.5) and regularly misses when it turns off and on.

I have a shell script that generally works, but occasionally will cause the radio to be set to channel 0 and the network does not become available. When this happens, I can disable/enable it through the GUI and it works fine. I have been able to get around this by hard setting the 5ghz channel but I would like to have it do exactly what the gui does from my shell script.

The shell scripts are as follows:

#turn off 5ghz
wl -i eth2 down
wl -i eth2 radio off #so that the gui will show the radio is off
nvram set wl1_radio=0
nvram set acs_ifnames="eth1"
nvram commit

#turn on 5ghz
wl -i eth2 radio on
nvram set wl1_radio=1
nvram set acs_ifnames="eth1 eth2"
nvram commit
wl -i eth2 up

Like I said previously, it usually works great, it's just that if I leave the channel on auto it occasionally comes up on channel 0. It would appear that the gui does some sort of global reset as my 2.4ghz radio is briefly affected as well and often changes channels. I haven't been able to pin down the wl command(s) if there is.
 
Last edited:
@jhxetc You seem to be using a strange mixture of commands. Why not try something like this:

#turn off 5ghz
nvram set wl1_radio=0
nvram commit
service restart_wireless

#turn on 5ghz
nvram set wl1_radio=1
nvram commit
service restart_wireless
 
Thank you! service restart_wireless seems to do the trick and I believe that is what the web gui calls in the background. I am able to leave the 5ghz channel on auto and after several tests, it hasn't landed on channel 0.

I swear I tried this before lol, but may have had it wrong in the past.

The acs_ifnames var does change when enabling/disabling through the web interface. For now, I've left those settings as is in my script, but will test without them later. Thanks again.
 
Hello there. I am a newbie here so apologies for any dumb question. :))
What is the best way to verify if the router wi-fi is on or off?
Is reading wl1_radio (wl_radio) a good method? should I read something else? Thank you.
(It seems that radio switch has no effect on wl_radio?)

Mikii
 
Last edited:
And How can I pull it out with ssh?
What is your ultimate objective here, is it that you don't trust the NVRAM variables in post #15? Or is there a specific piece of information you are trying to retrieve?

You could issue the following commands and check the output for a particular string (but interface names might be different depending on the model of router you have):

wl -i eth1 status
wl -i eth2 status
 

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