RMerlin
Asuswrt-Merlin dev
Hi everyone,
I have been working on the 3006 integration for a couple of weeks now, and I am finally at a point where I am able to confirm that Asuswrt-Merlin will proceed with integrating the 3006 code in the future. That will include the full VLAN and SDN integration (which has been the biggest obstacle during that 3006 integration, and there is still plenty of work left to do to finalize that integration). There are still a significant number of issues to be resolved at this time, but it's working well enough that I can expect to be able to address most of the remaining issues.
For those unfamiliar with Guest Networking Pro/SDN, this means you can, for example, create a new Guest Network on a separate VLAN, assign an OpenVPN client to it, and every wireless clients that connect to that Guest Network will automatically be routed through that VPN. I have that part (mostly) working by now. One of the big problems was that Asus' own OpenVPN code is closed source, so I had to reimplement the integration between the two, by reusing pieces of the VPN Fusion code.
I am not able to provide any timetable at this point as a lot of work is still required to finalize things. My ToDo list keeps growing faster than the rate at which I am ticking completed tasks off it. How long it will take will depend on the issues encountered, how much time I will be able to devote to it, etc...
Also, I don't want to announce yet which models will be supported (either old or new ones). The latter will depend on Asus' own timetable in providing GPLs for these models. That means I don't know either which Wifi 6 models will be moved to the 3006 codebase, or what would be the timetable for these migrations. Again, that will depend on Asus' own timetable. For now, I am working on only one specific model, with other GPLs to be expected from Asus "in the future". All I can say at this time is that it's highly likely that there will be Wifi 7 models supported by Asuswrt-Merlin. These will be announced at a later time. As usual, I don't want to announce any model being supported until I actually have it running myself.
The original plan remains: 386 will be in limited support until the end of 2024, while 3004.388 will remain fully supported. 3006.102 will be developped in parallel, for the models that will be supported by that specific codebase. Also, I don't intend to support a model on two different codebases. That means once I migrate a model to 3006, I will no longer support it on the 3004 codebase. It's unknown yet if I will fully match Asus' own migration there, or if I will keep Wifi 6 models longer than them on the 3004 codebase. This will be decided once we get there, based on how stable the 3006 codebase will be at that point.
The 3006 integration is the hardest one I've had to do so far. It's a lot more work than even the 370 migration where Asus added their first ARM-based devices, and introduced Trend Micro's BWDPI engine. The overall codebase was much smaller and much simpler back then. The SDN functionality alone is made of multiple thousands of lines of code, which I had to figure out at least well enough to be able to interface with it. At least at this point it's now advanced enough for me to be confident that what's left to do is in the realm of the doable. But it's going to take more time.
I have been working on the 3006 integration for a couple of weeks now, and I am finally at a point where I am able to confirm that Asuswrt-Merlin will proceed with integrating the 3006 code in the future. That will include the full VLAN and SDN integration (which has been the biggest obstacle during that 3006 integration, and there is still plenty of work left to do to finalize that integration). There are still a significant number of issues to be resolved at this time, but it's working well enough that I can expect to be able to address most of the remaining issues.
For those unfamiliar with Guest Networking Pro/SDN, this means you can, for example, create a new Guest Network on a separate VLAN, assign an OpenVPN client to it, and every wireless clients that connect to that Guest Network will automatically be routed through that VPN. I have that part (mostly) working by now. One of the big problems was that Asus' own OpenVPN code is closed source, so I had to reimplement the integration between the two, by reusing pieces of the VPN Fusion code.
I am not able to provide any timetable at this point as a lot of work is still required to finalize things. My ToDo list keeps growing faster than the rate at which I am ticking completed tasks off it. How long it will take will depend on the issues encountered, how much time I will be able to devote to it, etc...
Also, I don't want to announce yet which models will be supported (either old or new ones). The latter will depend on Asus' own timetable in providing GPLs for these models. That means I don't know either which Wifi 6 models will be moved to the 3006 codebase, or what would be the timetable for these migrations. Again, that will depend on Asus' own timetable. For now, I am working on only one specific model, with other GPLs to be expected from Asus "in the future". All I can say at this time is that it's highly likely that there will be Wifi 7 models supported by Asuswrt-Merlin. These will be announced at a later time. As usual, I don't want to announce any model being supported until I actually have it running myself.
The original plan remains: 386 will be in limited support until the end of 2024, while 3004.388 will remain fully supported. 3006.102 will be developped in parallel, for the models that will be supported by that specific codebase. Also, I don't intend to support a model on two different codebases. That means once I migrate a model to 3006, I will no longer support it on the 3004 codebase. It's unknown yet if I will fully match Asus' own migration there, or if I will keep Wifi 6 models longer than them on the 3004 codebase. This will be decided once we get there, based on how stable the 3006 codebase will be at that point.
The 3006 integration is the hardest one I've had to do so far. It's a lot more work than even the 370 migration where Asus added their first ARM-based devices, and introduced Trend Micro's BWDPI engine. The overall codebase was much smaller and much simpler back then. The SDN functionality alone is made of multiple thousands of lines of code, which I had to figure out at least well enough to be able to interface with it. At least at this point it's now advanced enough for me to be confident that what's left to do is in the realm of the doable. But it's going to take more time.
