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Asus-Merlin FW vs Tomato or DD-WRT for RT-AC66 or RTAC68 Routers

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Hi,
Please OP, only one who can decide on this subject is you. By trying them out you'll learn all the pros and cons on each of them.

Every one has different environment with their routers. One for utmost stability, speed, ease of use, etc. There is no free lunch. If you want some thing, you have to give up some thing. Ever heard of passive knowledge vs. active knowledge? You have to get your feet wet to gain some real knowledge. Try them out.
 
Hello,

I bought asus ac68u. 4g usb use for my connection.
First with a huawei hg566 everything was correct.

Now with Ac68u I have many problems.
The nevagacion by google is frozen.
The youtube videos on forums, appear all white.

Several Teamspeak servers not connected correctly, enter the server, but do not see any user. : -S

What's going on?
What I have in stock, and have tried to merlin firmware.

dd-wrt could fix it? or TOMATO? Anyone know what happens?

Thanks

Edit: all ports is open
 
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Having used all 3 FW over the years I can say if you want STABLE , up to date security , easy to use with lots of easy to find online help Merlin FW is the way to go .
Unless there are features you need that are only on DDWRT or Tomato , Merlin is worth giving a try .
 
Earlier for my rt-n66u i use Tomato by shibby, but i have problem with wifi...dropping connection, poor wifi range etc. I flash Merlin and problems with wifi is gone. I have better stability, better range and performace.
Tomato by shibby have old wifi drivers, and ctf is not supported.

thx. RMerlin.
 
Having used all 3 FW over the years I can say if you want STABLE , up to date security , easy to use with lots of easy to find online help Merlin FW is the way to go .
Unless there are features you need that are only on DDWRT or Tomato , Merlin is worth giving a try .

Earlier for my rt-n66u i use Tomato by shibby, but i have problem with wifi...dropping connection, poor wifi range etc. I flash Merlin and problems with wifi is gone. I have better stability, better range and performace.
Tomato by shibby have old wifi drivers, and ctf is not supported.

thx. RMerlin.

If, as I said, use firmware Merlin, but the result is the same.
The usb 4g I use is Huawei E3372. Again, with router huawei hg566 all right.

But with asus ac68u, stock firmware and Merlin, is exactly the same.
All ports are closed, I can not play games than before if I could, I have to open the specific ports.
Problems with Teamspeak.
Problems with embedded videos youtube forums.
:-(

My USB 4g huawei 3372 uses HiLink.
I tried during this day, dd-wrt and Tomato, and not get it to work the usb 4g: -S

Firmware stock and MERLIN Asus, creates a DUAL WAN to run the usb4g.
But with firmware dd-wrt and tomato I can not create.

What I can do?
 
If, as I said, use firmware Merlin, but the result is the same.
The usb 4g I use is Huawei E3372. Again, with router huawei hg566 all right.

But with asus ac68u, stock firmware and Merlin, is exactly the same.
All ports are closed, I can not play games than before if I could, I have to open the specific ports.
Problems with Teamspeak.
Problems with embedded videos youtube forums.
:-(

My USB 4g huawei 3372 uses HiLink.
I tried during this day, dd-wrt and Tomato, and not get it to work the usb 4g: -S

Firmware stock and MERLIN Asus, creates a DUAL WAN to run the usb4g.
But with firmware dd-wrt and tomato I can not create.

What I can do?
I think you should start a new thread with all the details , better chance of finding a solution
 
My unapologetic opinion on the state of software for current crop of high performance consumer routers (that is, AC capable ones) is that it is a mess. I spent a lot of time researching this before I bought my RT-AC66U, and more time thinking about it since then. I've been in IP networking since the mid-eighties and involved in some open source projects off and on since then as well so I somewhat familiar with the terrain.

Your choices for non-vendor supplied router software boil down to these. I'm currently using all of these except Tomato. Note: in the descriptions below when I say that the development process is open I mean that people are welcome to contribute to it and the how to go about doing so is documented somewhere.

DD-WRT: closed development process, not easily buildable from source, documentation is a soup sandwich, security, performance and stability iffy.

OpenWRT: open development process, easily buildable from source, pretty good documentation, almost no support (or none at all?) for AC routers due to their hardline position on closed source components. Please correct me if I am wrong here. Security is as good as you want to make it.

Tomato: WTF? Everything I said about DD-WRT plus you get to depend on one guy. At least DD-WRT seems to have a couple of guys working on it. Some of the time.

asuswrt-merlin: closed development process (please correct me if I am wrong!), easily buildable from source, great documentation, great support from the developer and this forum, great performance and stability (at least with 376.49). Great response to disclosed vulnerabilities, however, the attack surface of asuswrt is huge (this applies to DD-WRT and Tomato equally though). In fact the RT-AC66U was chosen as the target system for a "pwn to own" contest at a black hat conference because it is such a target rich environment.

Digression on attack surface: back when I was a lad, and the whole idea of network security was just forming, some of the folks around then espoused a philosophy that a firewall should contain only the software necessary to for the device to perform its security function. Clearly this philosophy has disappeared in the din of marketing noise from all the hardware vendors: Its a router! Its a firewall! It downloads random files from random systems all over the internet! It plays music and video! It shares files! Well, OK, but now you have to ensure that every one of those pieces of software are secure. But they are open source you say. I say, can you spell openssl? You say, well, thats fixed. I say, well OK, but I got this in my inbox this morning

Code:
Title: Samba Server Uninitialized Pointer Use Flaw
Description: A critical vulnerability has been disclosed, affecting
certain versions of Samba server.  CVE-2015-0240 is a vulnerability
within the Netlogon server implementation in Samba where the service
attempts to perform a free operation on an uninitialized stack pointer.
This could potentially allowing remote attackers to execute arbitrary
code via maliciously crafted packets.
Reference:
https://securityblog.redhat.com/2015/02/23/samba-vulnerability-cve-2015-0240/

Are you running Samba on your router? You might want to make sure none of its ports are accessible from your guest network. I'd hope that would be the case but to a marketdroid sharing files with guests is probably a feature.

end digression.

In my perfect world, there would exist something that would incorporate the closed source components required to make the hardware work into the modular structure of OpenWRT. I suspect that there aren't enough people like me to make the effort worthwhile. I'm also unclear whether or not the license of some of the necessary open source components would allow them to be distributed with closed source stuff.

Since its not my perfect world, I'm running RMerlin's software on my Asus router, tweaked to get rid of the most egregious potential security vulnerabilities, OpenWRT on my other modern non-AC routers, and as much as it pains me, I am still running the mini builds of DD-WRT on my routers with 4MB flash.
 
asuswrt-merlin: closed development process (please correct me if I am wrong!)

I push my commits to Github as they happen throughout development of a new release, so I'm not sure how much more open it can be. This is a one-man project, so there no "internal" interaction for me to expose. I also occasionally post some previews or info as to things that are coming.

And even if I were schizophrenic, I ain't sharing what me, myself and I are discussing, sorry. ;)
 
BTW, I already committed Samba 3.6.25 to Github. The Asus build that is used by AiCloud isn't patched yet, I'd have to see if there's a manual patch available, otherwise most likely Asus will have a patch available by the time their next GPL comes out.
 
This is a one-man project, so there no "internal" interaction for me to expose.

I think we agree on this - we're just using different terms. I tried to explain what I meant by open and I was afraid I didn't do a good job, and now I know I didn't :)

Using my terms I would say your development process is completely transparent, and that's wonderful. I can't say enough about what a great job you are doing, in every way, but especially with security. On the day I got the announcement about the infosvr vulnerability, by the time I got around to checking this forum you already had a mitigation posted.

What I was trying to say is, I think correctly, you aren't looking for any help. That's OK, especially considering how easy you have made it for others to take your work and do their own thing. And I don't blame you for not wanting to manage a bunch of software developers. I do that for a living and I'm not sure I would want to do that for free :)
 
What I was trying to say is, I think correctly, you aren't looking for any help. That's OK, especially considering how easy you have made it for others to take your work and do their own thing. And I don't blame you for not wanting to manage a bunch of software developers. I do that for a living and I'm not sure I would want to do that for free :)

I'm always open for user-contributed patches or Pull requests on Github, as long they follow the philosophy behind the project. I've had numerous IPv6-related contributions fron Pinwing over the months, as he's far more familiar than me with IPv6. There just isn't a lot of skilled people willing to contribute, not enough to develop an actual development team.
 
As a new RT-AC68U user I found this a very educative thread.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I understood well then Asuswrt-Merlin offers/retains

- HW acceleration (for my 100mb fibre glass, with an option to 500mb)
- Paragon drivers for fastest NTFS access to USB disks

Is that right? That sounds good, among many other things I read.

One thing that is not working for me, at all, is a VPN client connection to my workplace, which I've understood is a rather vanilla Windows RRAS server offering PPTP, with SSL?

I'm pretty convinced I'll stay with Merlin, but I might just have a peek at Tomato/Shibby...
 
As a new RT-AC68U user I found this a very educative thread.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I understood well then Asuswrt-Merlin offers/retains

- HW acceleration (for my 100mb fibre glass, with an option to 500mb)
- Paragon drivers for fastest NTFS access to USB disks

Is that right? That sounds good, among many other things I read.

One thing that is not working for me, at all, is a VPN client connection to my workplace, which I've understood is a rather vanilla Windows RRAS server offering PPTP, with SSL?

I'm pretty convinced I'll stay with Merlin, but I might just have a peek at Tomato/Shibby...
I always like Shibby's USBTomato flavor. It always worked well on my AC68U. However I like Merlin's builds as he stays close to the stock firmware which allows cut through forwarding and flow acceleration to function. Also, I like having the option of disabling Spanning Tree Protocol as doing so after a reset to factory defaults allows FA to start and also allows my 2.4GHz clients to connect at 40MHz bandwidth (otherwise they will only connect at 20MHz regardless of settings).

Merlin also supports custom scripts. I like having the router reboot each night while we sleep. Perhaps that is why I never have disconnect issues on either band. That and the active cooling setup I have hit upon (lowered my CPU temp by 25°C, 78°C on average before cooling & 53°C afterwards). I also overclock the router to 1200/800MHz which is very stable but should produce more heat. The top of my AC87R is actually cool to the touch!

High rise router rack 2.jpg


It may look silly but not only does it work, it works phenomenally well. Having 2 small storage shelves directly beneath the router is an added benefit that is very convenient.
 
Merlin worked well for me, however when I switched over to Fedora 22, I could never get my Printer connected to the USB to work right with it. It worked well with Ubuntu though. I put Tomato on it and it works well and the printer works perfectly.
 
Sorry bumping an old thread, but it seemed better than rather creating a new thread.

I have been using Merlin WRT firmware for several years now. However I am thinking of going back to DD-WRT now (which I did actually use in the past). I also have experience with Tomato (old experiece, but still experince). DD-WRT can indeed be very, very overwhelming for the first time. This is not the case with Merlin WRT, nor with Tomato (at least when I used it).

However if you really do need some functions, like passing through WOL, this will not work with Merlin WRT. I have spend hours on this to make my simple WOL on Android (+ NFC) to work. Nada... Even forwarding ports don't help. For some reason it's always blocking my WOL commands. The only "solution" is to login on the router or use AiCloud, but both are not really options for me.

I created a NFC tag, so whenever I go over it with my phone it sends a WOL command to wake my computer. However this doesn't work with Merlin WRT (and most probably also not with Asus original firmware). I can forward ports like 7 and 9, however it will not wake my PC. Also tried numerous different applications, but all with the same result... Nothing.

Very early days, when I still had DD-WRT running, I never had these problems. So therefor I am thinking about going back to DD-WRT. Because I don't think it's fixable. I have seen several threads here and on other forums, stating the same. It's a shame actually because I actually do adore Merlin's firmware for stability and speed.
 
so i am wanting to get a new router to get some kind of CFW to allow me to manage individual mac addresses and put a label to them.... so i can easily block them, id like to limit the bandwidth using the same type of process.... i am having other people help pay for wireless but if they dont pay i want to be able to disable their devices connection... and limit the bandwidth they use... but i dont know what CFW nor what router i should get/use... any ideas?

plus having better connection speeds than the technicolor modem/router combo from century-link would be nice...

didnt mean to bump (i think im using that term correctly... for reactivating a thread) this thread...
 
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can you use any of the tomato on the ac1900p? i'm REALLY enjoying using merlin but i am a tinkerer and would just like to try all the compatible firmware.
 
I have used all 3 firmware and I would say that I do like Merlin and Tomato. While DD-WRT is good I find the menu a bit complex (just my idea)
Now something else on the HW acceleration. Soon I am going to install a gigabit (1Gbit up and 1 Gbit down) so do you really think the RT-AC68U would be
able to handle the traffic? I mean to handle 2 Gbits traffic (up/down) with HW acceleration on?
Has anyone tried something like that ? Also how much would the performance be if we have QoS enabled and few firewall rules?
While I have seen somewhere that the WAN to LAN routing performance is 940Mbits I have not actually understood if it is symmetrical which or without QoS enabled and firewall.
I guess this is a philosophical question because I dont think I will ever generate traffic 2Gbits and expect the router to handle it but
the reason of having Gbit speeds is the 1ms latency
 
I have used all 3 firmware and I would say that I do like Merlin and Tomato. While DD-WRT is good I find the menu a bit complex (just my idea)
Now something else on the HW acceleration. Soon I am going to install a gigabit (1Gbit up and 1 Gbit down) so do you really think the RT-AC68U would be
able to handle the traffic? I mean to handle 2 Gbits traffic (up/down) with HW acceleration on?
Has anyone tried something like that ? Also how much would the performance be if we have QoS enabled and few firewall rules?
While I have seen somewhere that the WAN to LAN routing performance is 940Mbits I have not actually understood if it is symmetrical which or without QoS enabled and firewall.
I guess this is a philosophical question because I dont think I will ever generate traffic 2Gbits and expect the router to handle it but
the reason of having Gbit speeds is the 1ms latency

Please do let us know what you find / experience. Thanks.
 
I was able to get 940 Mbps up/down on my 68U with CTF enabled. With no NAT acceleration I could get 380 down and 440 up. Note that my 68U is a B1 revision with the 1000 Mhz cpu.
 

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