AC87U stock or Merlin

[Carnagerover]

Hi all,

I received this router today and I am going to install it for a friend of mine, it has the latest Asus firmware installed, how stable is the Merlin firmware for this router, should I put it on yet or stick with default?

Just wondered for anyone that has one if they can suggest which way to go

Thanks

 

[Ronv42]

It all depends on what you want to do besides providing access to the internet. Do you plan to setup a VPN into the local network, be a NAS with access internally and externally? Read up on some of the features of Merlin here:

http://www.lostrealm.ca/tower/node/79

 

[Carnagerover]

Well,

I put merlin on using the latest build to give it a try, after installing I reset to factory defaults and put my settings it. However now my Internet no longer works, I noticed the problem on the DNS page where it says;

The wireless router currently uses a private wan ip address
This router may be in the multiple nat environment

Not sure why this is happening?

That was weird, managed to fix it, checked my Internet username and it was fine, deleted it and re-inputter the same and then saved and I'm back

 

[Carnagerover]

I'm liking Merlin so far, it has some nice extra information as well as services, also what I like is that it is based on the current firmware more so than my R7000 running DDWRT so you know you are keeping things like HWNat and the like.

Are there any performance related effects when using this firmware? Looks to me like there aren't many cons at this point.

 

[Ronv42]

Are there any performance related effects when using this firmware? Looks to me like there aren't many cons at this point.

None that I am aware of unless you start to get really into adding additional services to the router though customization.

 

[Carnagerover]

None that I am aware of unless you start to get really into adding additional services to the router though customization.

Thanks again,

Do you use UPNP on your AC87? I have it running well now but UPNP appears not to be working correctly for me, on my Xbox One it says I have a moderate NAT and on the WDMyCloud is says the following;

Connected (Relay connection established)
For best performance, enable UPnP on your router to establish a direct connection.

I have checked under WAN and UPNP is set to Yes with the default settings so I'm not sure what the problem is, I did not test this on the default firmware but I am assuming that it should be no different.

Also I have the LEDs switched off via the Tool/Other LED option but they have come back on for some reason

I have turned off UPnP and forwarded the ports manually and they are fine.

 

[Ronv42]

Yes I use UPnP and it seems to be working fine. I have a Xbox One and Xbox 360 along with a Windows Home Server that have no issues opening up the ports for their services. You may want to check the system log on the router for any issues with UPnP opening ports.

I did have issues in the past with turning off the LEDs on this router. I found it to be some type of timing issue when I had IPv6 turned on. Two LEDs would always stay on. When I disabled the IPv6 they stayed off. This article on Merlin's Wiki may help you there:

https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Scheduled-LED-control

Thanks again,

Do you use UPNP on your AC87? I have it running well now but UPNP appears not to be working correctly for me, on my Xbox One it says I have a moderate NAT and on the WDMyCloud is says the following;

Connected (Relay connection established)
For best performance, enable UPnP on your router to establish a direct connection.

I have checked under WAN and UPNP is set to Yes with the default settings so I'm not sure what the problem is, I did not test this on the default firmware but I am assuming that it should be no different.

Also I have the LEDs switched off via the Tool/Other LED option but they have come back on for some reason

I have turned off UPnP and forwarded the ports manually and they are fine.

 

[Carnagerover]

Yes I use UPnP and it seems to be working fine. I have a Xbox One and Xbox 360 along with a Windows Home Server that have no issues opening up the ports for their services. You may want to check the system log on the router for any issues with UPnP opening ports.

I did have issues in the past with turning off the LEDs on this router. I found it to be some type of timing issue when I had IPv6 turned on. Two LEDs would always stay on. When I disabled the IPv6 they stayed off. This article on Merlin's Wiki may help you there:

https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Scheduled-LED-control

I have three LEDs that come back on after about 30 mins after I set the LEDs to off, I could not get UPNP to work so I just turned it off and forwarded the ports manually and all seems to be working now, I had looked in the logs but couldn't see anything that pointed to a problem.

Not sure why it wasn't doing it

 

[Carnagerover]

To try and figure out if it was working I enabled UPNP, installed Transmission and told it to forward the port using UPNP. I looked in the port forwarding log and I could see the entry and the port opened. However both the Xbox one and MyCloud will not open the ports they need, the log just stays blank and the ports don't get forwarded.