Asuswrt-Merlin 374.40 is out

[shobhitk]

I can't tell you the details, but they did get in touch with me. Which is why the range is much improved in my recent builds, as they provided me with a special driver that can't be used in the official firmware for various reasons.

Fine but you see when i bought the router it used to give me excellent range with excellent link speeds using the original asus firmware which means it WAS possible with the original firmware...and now somehow its not. even though they are unable to use the 'special driver' but there was something in their initial firmware which used to give simply the best range in the class! so am still confused. Asus should realise that the range was the main USP of this specific router (n66u) tampering with that aspect would shake the faith of many in Asus!

i hope they are not trying to 'push' us (n66u guys) into buying their xACx range of routers...

 

[thundergoat]

Hi, just want to say tremendous thanks to Merlin for improving the firmware! You help save the last of my sanity I have an RT-AC68R and it keeps randomly reboot with the stock firmware and I have tried all the different version of them to no effect. Finally, I use Merlin .40alpha4 and it has not reboot for 7 days

I only use the RT-AC68R for wired and wireless internet, no usb printing or file sharing. One of the issue that I see and it is not related to Merlin firmware (also happens on stock firmwares) is that my iphone 4S (connect to the 2.4 ghz band) and Ipad mini retina (connect to the 5 GHz band) have poor wireless performance on it. These two devices connects at slower speed and have issue browsing the internet some time.
The weird thing is that I have an Ipad 2 connects to the 2.4 ghz band and an iphone 5 and macbook air connect to the 5.0 GHZ and they work great.
The Ipad mini retina only connects at 24/300 (RX/TX) (the RX remain at 24 all the time, the TX number fluctuate)
Is there any setting that I should play around with? Anyone has the same issue? Thanks in advance!

 

[RMerlin]

Well, see my post earlier...I've seen just the opposite: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?p=111879#post111879

You are on 374.39. EM driver was made the default only starting with 374.40. You will also want to do a factory default reset, and tell your clients to forget the existing connection profiles to ensure you aren't using old low-level settings.

The vast majority of feedback indicated a clear performance improvement. Due to the nature of wifi, you will never get a single driver and configuration that will work optimally for every single user. But the fact is, a lot of people experienced a dramatic increase in range with the EM driver, similar to what they were experiencing with 270.26b.

 

[RMerlin]

Fine but you see when i bought the router it used to give me excellent range with excellent link speeds using the original asus firmware which means it WAS possible with the original firmware...and now somehow its not. even though they are unable to use the 'special driver' but there was something in their initial firmware which used to give simply the best range in the class! so am still confused. Asus should realise that the range was the main USP of this specific router (n66u) tampering with that aspect would shake the faith of many in Asus!

i hope they are not trying to 'push' us (n66u guys) into buying their xACx range of routers...

This has been explained numerous times already.

1) Broadcom changes to SDK5 brought major compatibility issues where many devices couldn't even connect anymore
2) Asus was forced to upgrade to a newer SDK, which is not optimum performance-wise, but is far more stable for everyone. I'd rather have a router that is slower than one that cannot connect at all.

And there's also the whole story of Netgear going wah-wah about Asus's superior range, and sending lawyers after them (sorry, little sympathy for anything involving lawyers personally). That part is pure speculation, but many people suspect it might have caused them to drop a bit on the RT-N66U range.

 

[mavack]

dropbear is run by with the following params "dropbear -p 22 -j -k" its not set on the interface, so therefore merlin must have put in a firewall rule to block it from the wan port.

It would have to be run with -p [address:]port option, and if you are running it on the wan, every time you got a new IP it would have to restart. I would just run the firewall, otherwise disable running ssh from the gui and setup a script to start it manually with the -p option for the internal IP address.

WAN yes
dropbear -p 22 -j -k

WAN no
dropbear -p 192.168.1.1:22 a.b.c.d:22 -j -k

I'm surprised dropbear can't be bound to interfaces as this would be better

WAN yes
dropbear -p br0:22 eth0:22

WAN no
dropbear -p br0:22

(you would need to add the other interfaces ipv6 etc however it is unlikely that will be used for mgmt)


firewalls are a way to block things but the service should not be made available in the first place, firewalls on consumer devices can be a bit of a pest because they tend to enable a host of other annoying rules and process with no ability to configure them. Sometimes breaking things like VPNs etc.

 

[Ford Prefect]

You are on 374.39. EM driver was made the default only starting with 374.40. You will also want to do a factory default reset, and tell your clients to forget the existing connection profiles to ensure you aren't using old low-level settings.

Sorry for being a noop, but on my N66U, I am on 374.34_2_sdk5.
With my AC68U, I am on 374.39 but that is a different setup, I wasn't refering to.

I am running the N66U as repeater and there were no clients connected to it at that time ...ever.
The ASUS was acting as the client to the main-router...with 379.40 the connection wasn't stable, so I went back to 34_2_sdk5...and I did a full reset of the N66U and main-router in between...more than once.

 

[jim769]

This has been explained numerous times already.

1) Broadcom changes to SDK5 brought major compatibility issues where many devices couldn't even connect anymore
2) Asus was forced to upgrade to a newer SDK, which is not optimum performance-wise, but is far more stable for everyone. I'd rather have a router that is slower than one that cannot connect at all.

And there's also the whole story of Netgear going wah-wah about Asus's superior range, and sending lawyers after them (sorry, little sympathy for anything involving lawyers personally). That part is pure speculation, but many people suspect it might have caused them to drop a bit on the RT-N66U range.

Suspect, its a fact. But never the less the N66 is still a great router..

 

[shobhitk]

Anyways, we dont want to worry much as we have the good company of Merlin. Hats off once again! you have made it from an Asus router to People's Router!

 

[Sky1111]

[RT-AC56U] Having constant WAN disconnect issue with .40. I did end up changing ISPs and I moved from DLS to Cable, still the same problem

Assuming that OC-ing might to blame, reduced clockes to 1000/800 - still the same issue.

Basically, after few hours the router will disconnect WAN, while nothing is really wrong with WAN. Simple reboot restores WAN connection.

Now flashed .39 firmware without clearing NVRAM - let's see how that one holds.

 

[ciobster]

Din any of the RT-N66U users experienced random reboots ?

I upgraded last Friday from .39-em to .40 and noticed yesterday in the logs the router rebooted sometime friday night ... it seems everything is ok since...

The same suspicious behavior was happening also with 39-em, the router rebooted a couple of times, but i did not mention at that time because i thought it was something wrong with my setup ... I did a factory reset and reconfigured from scratch and for a couple of days it was ok, and then i upgraded to 40...

If it wasn't for the hardware acceleration tweak which i need for my gigabit pppoe connection i would go back to .26b without a wink ... any build past .26b was a complete disappointment for me...

I've been having some random reboots on my rt-n66u router running 374.40. Uptime between reboots varies but it ranges from several hours to several days. Usually wireless is able to reconnect, but there has been a few times where I have to power-cycle the router for wifi to reconnect.

When I upgraded to .40, I did a factory reset so I'd like to think nvram parameters are correct but I'll probably perform a reset later this week.

Looking through the thread, it seems that some other folks with n66 routers have had random reboots with the later firmware releases.

Does anyone have any thoughts if this may be related to the wireless driver SDK issue on the ac68?

This morning after 19 days uptime the router crashed again ...

And again ... RT-N66U crashed last night ~ 14 hours ago . I just noticed, trying to remotely connect to my home computer but failed as the IP got changed...

 

[Ford Prefect]

And again ... RT-N66U crashed last night ~ 14 hours ago . I just noticed, trying to remotely connect to my home computer but failed as the IP got changed...

Well, the change of the WAN-IP is not necessarily related with (the cause for or fact of) a crash of the router, isn't it?

 

[bill1228]

And again ... RT-N66U crashed last night ~ 14 hours ago . I just noticed, trying to remotely connect to my home computer but failed as the IP got changed...

Changed WAN IP address is not an indication of a router reboot. I could be that your ISP made a change to their DHCP server for example. Look at logs and see if there is an indication of the router restarting.
For what its worth, my N66U never reboots and never has with any of Merlin's builds.
--bill

 

[vagii]

I just can not get 374.40 to work on my AC-66U, even with restoration tool in recovery mode. After uploading finished, it just went straight into recovery mode again. 374.39 works fine though, any ideas? or i have to wait for 374.41...

 

[L&LD]

What have you tried specifically?

Remove all USB connections from the router, do a hard power shutdown and restart.

Wait for at least 5 minutes after you restart it before attempting to flash it.

Re-download the firmware (maybe the copy you have is corrupted).

Make sure you have unzipped the downloaded file.

Make sure you have downloaded the file for your router and not another.

If all the above are still not working; try resetting the router to defaults before you customize and flash it.

Hope some of this works.

 

[avi68]

What have you tried specifically?

Remove all USB connections from the router, do a hard power shutdown and restart.

Wait for at least 5 minutes after you restart it before attempting to flash it.

Re-download the firmware (maybe the copy you have is corrupted).

Make sure you have unzipped the downloaded file.

Make sure you have downloaded the file for your router and not another.

If all the above are still not working; try resetting the router to defaults before you customize and flash it.

Hope some of this works.

Hi L&LD,

Before I was a member here, I read a post where you said you were going to do some testing with the new 374.40 firmware. You were going to experiment with the wireless settings? Just wondering if you have and what settings do you recommend. I've seen your 5ghz post, but nothing recent.

Just asking to see if you've found anything?

Thanks

 

[L&LD]

Sorry, haven't had time, to be honest.

I guess I'll be testing the final 374.41 firmware now.

 

[avi68]

Sorry, haven't had time, to be honest.

I guess I'll be testing the final 374.41 firmware now.

It's ok mate

Lol I'll have to wait then

 

[L&LD]

I did just post my experience on the stability aspect and relative performance though:

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=113825&postcount=10

 

[ualdrivr]

Up time on the 374.40 alpha 4 is over 2 days now, without any hiccups. I really like all the extra goodies Merlin is putting into his Firmware. The only issue that I have found is with the Refresh of Network Clients in Network Map. When clicked, it just searches and searches and searches. It just doesn't update. If I reboot the computer that I use, which is Ethernet connected to the router, then everything shows normal, all clients are present...!

Anyone else has this, it might be explained somewhere here, but sorry if I missed it.

 

[vagii]

What have you tried specifically?

Remove all USB connections from the router, do a hard power shutdown and restart.

Wait for at least 5 minutes after you restart it before attempting to flash it.

Re-download the firmware (maybe the copy you have is corrupted).

Make sure you have unzipped the downloaded file.

Make sure you have downloaded the file for your router and not another.

If all the above are still not working; try resetting the router to defaults before you customize and flash it.

Hope some of this works.

374.40_beta2 works，i can live with it till 374.41