ASUS RT-AC87U - Time Settings

[Anirudha Kadam]

Hi there,

Today I noticed that my routers time was an hour behind. I noticed this because I use time scheduling to prevent access on some devices after 9pm.

So I did some digging and realized that the DST settings (I am in the UK BTW) is set to US Settings, which is the 2nd Sunday of October, and 2nd Sunday of March. In the UK the clocks change on the last Sunday of October and then again on the Last Sunday of March.

I only have option to selected 1st to 5th Sunday, but not last Sunday. Is this something that is known, and will it be fixed to add the option of Last Sunday of the Month? Or do you know if I set it to 5th Sunday and it will count as Last Sunday every time even if in some years its going have only 4 Sundays? i.e. next 3 years are going to be 4 Sundays in October, and next 3 years for March is 4, 5 and 5.

Thanks!!

 

[JDB]

I have mine set to 5th Sunday and it seems to work.
I remember messing with it some months ago and read that it works and so far so good!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ColinTaylor]

Yes this is a known issue, and no it can't be fixed.

This question comes up every year at this time. The router uses an ancient out of date time zone database that can't be updated.

 

[JDB]

Given it works when set to 5, maybe @RMerlin can just rename the option presented in the GUI from 5 to Last to avoid confusion?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ColinTaylor]

Given it works when set to 5, maybe @RMerlin can just rename the option presented in the GUI from 5 to Last to avoid confusion?

No that won't work and will just add to the confusion. The last Sunday in the month varies from the 4th week to the 5th week depending on the year. The only way around it is to manually set the correct weeks once a year (for the year ahead).

 

[JDB]

No that won't work and will just add to the confusion. The last Sunday in the month varies from the 4th week to the 5th week depending on the year. The only way around it is to manually set the correct weeks once a year.

It works when set to 5 even when only 4 Sunday’s in the month...
Clearly you missed that point!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ColinTaylor]

It works when set to 5 even when only 4 Sunday’s in the month...
Clearly you missed that point!

Yes I did miss that point. You said it "seems to work" which I assumed was just coincidence as there were 5 Sundays in October last year as there are this year.

So have you actually tested it in a year with 4 Sundays in October?

 

[JDB]

Yea tested it Oct 2016 and March 2017. Hence I said ‘seems’ as only had an end with 5 and start with 4 weeks. But based on that I assume an end with 4 and start with 5 weeks will work.
But also if you look around on this forum there are 5 or 6 posts also confirming it.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ColinTaylor]

Yea tested it Oct 2016 and March 2017. Hence I said ‘seems’ as only had an end with 5 and start with 4 weeks. But based on that I assume an end with 4 and start with 5 weeks will work.

I don't follow your logic. It worked because there were 5 Sundays in October and 4 in March.

But also if you look around on this forum there are 5 or 6 posts also confirming it.

If true it would indeed be very useful. Can you provide links to these posts because I don't remember seeing anything like that.

 

[cmkelley]

NB: The US switches back to 'Standard Time' the first Sunday in November this year. I'm hoping for a permanent change to DST 'soon'.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

[JDB]

The rules are last Sunday in March and October for start/end. So my settings are as such:

So obviously October 2016 worked as it’s 5 Sundays, but March 2017 also worked with only 4 Sundays in the month.

Links;
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac68u-new-firmware-3-0-0-4-380-4118.35599/#post-291014
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/daylight-savings-time.13426/#post-89004 (settings are wrong for end but right for start)

I should probably change my ntp to uk.pool.ntp.org as well to avoid the possibility of the ‘system time does not match time zone’ message pop up. Chances are I’ll always get to the uk pool anyway based on my source IP but just in case it would be best to force it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[thelonelycoder]

I should probably change my ntp to uk.pool.ntp.org as well to avoid the possibility of the ‘system time does not match time zone’ message pop up. Chances are I’ll always get to the uk pool anyway based on my source IP but just in case it would be best to force it.

pool.ntp.org is just as fine:

Looking up pool.ntp.org (or 0.pool.ntp.org, 1.pool.ntp.org, etc) will usually return IP addresses for servers in or close to your country. For most users this will give the best results.

You can also use the continental zones (For example europe, north-america, oceania or asia.pool.ntp.org), and a country zone (like ch.pool.ntp.org in Switzerland) - for all these zones, you can again use the 0, 1 or 2 prefixes, like 0.ch.pool.ntp.org. Note, however, that the country zone might not exist for your country, or might contain only one or two timeservers.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Thanks for the screen shot and links @JDB . I couldn't see anything relevant to the "5=Last" idea in the second link, but the first link was interesting.

I'll try setting week 5 on my router as well and see what happens. Although I might have to wait until next March to find out!

 

[JDB]

pool.ntp.org is just as fine:

“Usually” and “most” are not 100%! Hence it’s probably best to force it to your local pool just in case of some DNS weirdness!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Anirudha Kadam]

The rules are last Sunday in March and October for start/end. So my settings are as such:

So obviously October 2016 worked as it’s 5 Sundays, but March 2017 also worked with only 4 Sundays in the month.

Links;
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac68u-new-firmware-3-0-0-4-380-4118.35599/#post-291014
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/daylight-savings-time.13426/#post-89004 (settings are wrong for end but right for start)

I should probably change my ntp to uk.pool.ntp.org as well to avoid the possibility of the ‘system time does not match time zone’ message pop up. Chances are I’ll always get to the uk pool anyway based on my source IP but just in case it would be best to force it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks JDB... I'll give this a go, and while I'm in there I'll set NTP to 0.uk.pool.ntp.org

Will find out in March 2018

 

[ColinTaylor]

I should probably change my ntp to uk.pool.ntp.org as well to avoid the possibility of the ‘system time does not match time zone’ message pop up. Chances are I’ll always get to the uk pool anyway based on my source IP but just in case it would be best to force it.

I'm not sure why that message would be linked to which NTP server you use. NTP doesn't return time zone information only UTC time.

 

[thelonelycoder]

“Usually” and “most” are not 100%! Hence it’s probably best to force it to your local pool just in case of some DNS weirdness!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Altough I doubt the UK servers (and the Swiss for that matter, we love timekeeping after all) are just forwards, there is more ambigous language for the regional servers:
"Note, however, that the country zone might not exist for your country, or might contain only one or two timeservers."

 

[thelonelycoder]

Using the standard pool.ntp.org is advisable when you use a VPN provider and use an exit node that is outside of your country.

 

[JDB]

I'm not sure why that message would be linked to which NTP server you use. NTP doesn't return time zone information only UTC time.

I don’t know either, but have seen others comment that getting time from an ntp server outside of the time zone you have set causes it. Maybe NTP does have a TZ flag just for informational purposes, I’ve never looked at the protocol in any detail tbh.


Edit: no TZ info in the protocol so no idea how the router gets upset about system vs Local Timezone

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ColinTaylor]

@JDB Good news! I'm glad to report that you were correct and "week 5" does appear to equate to "last week".

While one test is not exactly exhaustive, this is what I did. First I set the router to use week 5 @ 02:00. Then I redirected its NTP client to 127.0.0.1 so that it couldn't update the time.

I manually set the date & time to just before 02:00 on 29/10/2017 (5th Sunday) and let it roll over. Not surprisingly it correctly altered the time by -1 hour.

Then I set the date & time to just before 02:00 on 25/03/2018 (4th Sunday) and let it roll over. Even though the router was set to "week 5" in still altered to time by +1 hour.