Beta Asuswrt-Merlin 386.1 Beta (stage 2) is now available

[shabbs]

I guess we're looking at a few more weeks of debugging until I can finally get 386.1 finalized. At this point maybe I should just pull a Brainslayer, and give up on pushing out "final" releases, and just push a constant stream of betas...

386.1... the Duke Nukem Forever of Merlin Firmwares...

Just kidding. It will be ready when it's ready. This is why we test. This is why I don't update daily-driver critical routers/APs with Beta software.

Take the time, get it right. We'll test it out as we go.

 

[AntonK]

Holy Smokeronies!

So here's what the attached capture shows for my Comcast 200/5 connection (usually provisioned a bit above that):

15:58 - test with beta3
18:04 - test with beta4 (Yikes!)
18:16 - test with beta4 (after powering-off router, rebooting modem, powering-on router)

View attachment 29289

I know the AC88U is not one of the troubled models, but just to report: Everything is running perfectly smoothly here with Beta4 after the weird hiccup above. No issues heat-wise, performance-wise, or anywhere else.

Thanks @RMerlin !

 

[RMerlin]

@RMerlin - I uploaded straight to the beta 4 rebuild from the broken build successfully and imported trend micro and QOS back in. Everything seems to be working now. Going to continue to monitor it

Can you confirm if it still works correctly with beta4b?

 

[brianward317]

Ahh! I downloaded the 1st beta 4 you uploaded. Downloading the latest one now. Report back shortly.

 

[Paul Smedley]

Another thing to try is see if 384.19 is accepted when you have the broken beta 4 flashed.

It took me more than 1 attempt, but I got 384.19 to flash, and have been able to flash 4b over the top of it. Will try flashing 4b again shortly...

 

[brianward317]

Can you confirm if it still works correctly with beta4b?

@RMerlin Just uploaded to beta4b and looks good so far.

 

[Bodin Praphanthongchai]

@RMerlin I can confirmed that the latest beta4b fixed those issues.

broken beta 4 > Firmware Restoration to Beta 3 > Fully reset > Flash Beta 3 again and fully setup > update to latest beta 4b with AiProtection ON no issue yet.

 

[Jeffrey Sánchez]

Also confirming that the latest beta4b fixed the issues. broken beta 4 > test beta4 > Beta3 > beta4b. TrendMicro settings enabled

 

[nzwayne]

Thanks for testing the beta 4 rebuild. One more test for you guys:

1) Test performance with the Trend Micro engine enabled with this test build.
2) Test again with the beta4b build that I just uploaded to the Test Builds folder

Are either or both of these now giving you your usual performance? I can't test for sure myself, my performance is slightly lower than usual right now, however I suspect it's an ISP node congestion issue, as the performance drop isn't that big (350/400 Mbps down, and 25/50 Mbps up).

The first beta 4 had a downgraded TM engine. In 4b I rebuilt once again with the 41535 engine (but still with the SDK fix in place that resolved the flashing issues).

Ran three tests on each line, results are the avg. Then test results after firmware change to a different release, then restored back. Results very solid for each release, before and after each firmware change.

 

[menthex]

I experienced internet slow down on the AX88u flashed with the original beta 4. Withdrew from TM and speed recovered.
beta 4 --> firmware recovery utility -> beta4b
turned TM services back on (adaptive QoS), so far no slow down in internet speed. Seems like the TM issue has been resolved. thank you!

 

[ExtremeFiretop]

Sadly I hit my sweet spot where my internet speeds are at their slowest with my Cable ISP.

So while I was able to flash beta 4B and reconfigure, I can't provide accurate results anymore.

I'll have to wait a few hours for more consistent speedtests as right now I am sure I am being throttled as is.

Based on other peoples experience it seems promising, I'll keep this flashed for a little while to see if there is any improvement.

 

[Calkulin]

Too bad my AX88U got delayed and won't arrive till Monday now, so I can test then if needed but it looks like the new Beta 4b builds fixed the issues. As for my AX58Us, beta 4 seems to be running fine, speedtest vary a lot in speed, like 400-500Mbps to 850Mbps(1Gbps fiber) but it does peg 2 cores to 100% when I notice that slow down, so that variation is probably CPU related,

 

[visortgw]

@RMerlin Might the issue that you found with RT-AX88U have anything to do with why some users cannot flash to Beta 4 onto an RT-AC68U?

 

[ExtremeFiretop]

Sadly I hit my sweet spot where my internet speeds are at their slowest with my Cable ISP.

So while I was able to flash beta 4B and reconfigure, I can't provide accurate results anymore.

I'll have to wait a few hours for more consistent speedtests as right now I am sure I am being throttled as is.

Based on other peoples experience it seems promising, I'll keep this flashed for a little while to see if there is any improvement.

@RMerlin

I am officially joining the group of people saying your Beta 4B is running perfectly fine for speedtests at the router (RT-AX88U) and on my mobile devices connected to WiFi with QoS enabled and AiProtection on.

Thank you again for your troubleshooting skills on this, you made the newest GPL more stable than ASUS's equivalent release. You do amazing hard work for us all and it's apprechiated.

 

[RMerlin]

@RMerlin Might the issue that you found with RT-AX88U have anything to do with why some users cannot flash to Beta 4 onto an RT-AC68U?

No. Completely different architecture, plus I have no issue flashing on my own RT-AC66U_B1. I suspect most people with issues (one confirmed so far) do not have a genuine supported model.

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks for the RT-AX88U feedback folks. Looks like the same issue causing flashing problems also affected the Trend Micro engine for some reason.

 

[L&LD]

No. Completely different architecture, plus I have no issue flashing on my own RT-AC66U_B1. I suspect most people with issues (one confirmed so far) do not have a genuine supported model.

Beta - Asuswrt-Merlin 386.1 Beta (stage 2) is now available

I'll remove the RT-AX88U beta 4 image. I can't even flash an updated build on top of it right now, it fails some more validation that I can't determine. More shenanigan from Asus in their model/version validation possibly. Getting so tired of dealing with this... So, for those of us that...

www.snbforums.com

These are confirmed and genuine. Most, I unboxed myself and set them up for the customers.

 

[visortgw]

No. Completely different architecture, plus I have no issue flashing on my own RT-AC66U_B1. I suspect most people with issues (one confirmed so far) do not have a genuine supported model.

Mine is definitely genuine.

 

[RMerlin]

Beta - Asuswrt-Merlin 386.1 Beta (stage 2) is now available

I'll remove the RT-AX88U beta 4 image. I can't even flash an updated build on top of it right now, it fails some more validation that I can't determine. More shenanigan from Asus in their model/version validation possibly. Getting so tired of dealing with this... So, for those of us that...

www.snbforums.com

These are confirmed and genuine. Most, I unboxed myself and set them up for the customers.

Then I don't know. The RT-AC66U_B1 is my primary development platform (since it's faster to compile), so I've done lots of firmware flashing to it so far, never ran into any issue.

I would check the amount of available nvram. Asus suspects that part of the recent failures for the RT-AC68U firmware update were caused by lack of nvram.

 

[rtn66uftw]

View attachment 29295
Ran three tests on each line, results are the avg. Then test results after firmware change to a different release, then restored back. Results very solid for each release, before and after each firmware change.

Thank you! I did not know that enabling AI-Protection reduces the DL speed by almost 30%