BRT-AC828 New Firmware Going to be released

[TreelessForest]

I contacted Asus via email regarding Concerns for the BRT-AC828 not receiving security updates as a business router should. Since i Purchased my BRT-AC828 i had only received a single update to the frimware,

First Email: Feb 28, 2020
To: router_feedback@asus.com

Have had this my BRT-AC828 for a while now however i don't believe its received a single firmware update since i received it.

Being a member of the Infosec community (however green i may be), and a sysadmin for several small companies in my area i've pulled it from commercial use and am considering trashing (sell) it for a different brand. Would greatly appreciate it if someone could respond to my concern. If this device was supported by any of the community driven Custom Firmwares i would simply look to them for a stable/open/secure solution, however this is not the case and i'm hoping that this nice hardware can get the support its owners have been waiting for.

Would also like to be able to recommend Asus products to my customers moving forward, as i once did!

Thank You for your time regarding this matter and if anyone would like to reach out i can be reached either by phone on my personal phone (*** ***-****)
0800-0000 CST or by email (****************) 24/7

After about 30 minutes i remember that this wasn't the first time i had emailed them regarding my concerns on this matter, i had emailed the same address over a year ago. I decided to try and reach someone that might car, so i emailed everyone at the company that might be able to ask the same questions and potentially get something done.

Second Email: Feb 28, 2020
To:
tony han : Head of Service North America
Jennifer Stover : Senior Manager of Quality at North America
Wendy Huynh : Corporate Customer Care Executive Liaison
samson hu : CO-CEO
Joe Hsieh : Corporate Vice President
Jonathan Tsang : President of the ASUS Group
Henry Yeh : Global Vice President of Asustek Computer
Eric Chen : Corporate Vice President
Jackie Hsu : Corporate Vice President and General Manager of ASUS Worldwide Sales
Alex Sun : Vice President of ASUSTeK Mobile
Taiyi Huang : Chief Technology Officer of ASUS
Jonney Shih : Chairman

I have had my BRT-AC828 Router for a while now however i don't believe its
received a single firmware update since i received it.

Being a member of the Infosec community (however green i may be), and a
sysadmin for several small companies in my area, I've pulled my BRT-AC828
unit from commercial use and i'm considering trashing (sell) it for a
different brand. Would greatly appreciate it if someone could respond to my
concern. If this device was supported by any of the community driven Custom
Firmwares i would simply look to them for a stable/open/secure solution,
however this is not the case and i'm hoping that this nice hardware can get
the support its owners have been waiting for.

Would also like to be able to recommend Asus products to my customers
moving forward, as i once did!

Thank You for your time regarding this matter
if anyone would like to reach out i can be reached either
by phone on my personal phone (*** ***-****) 0800-0000 CST
or by email (****************) 24/7

After a short 6 days i get a call from an asus customer care coordinator named Nina Pham. Nina is polite and soft spoken and after a day of lose communication by phone and email, sharing my thoughts and opinions of the situation. she informs me on march 4 that a new firmware update is being worked on and should be released in april of this year, this update should include security patches and hopefully some feature additions that later versions of asus firmware pushed out.

Hopefully Nina is right and a firmware release is just around the corner, if not i will have to start a
campaign to keep the company to their word. But i'm hopeful that My BRT-AC828 will get the firmware update its needed since i opened the box.

Will update when i have more

 

[TreelessForest]

Reserved for Updates

 

[Grisu]

They are sold for price of their average customer routers (some even more expensive).
Do you really believe that this one is suitable for business (despite marketing)?

 

[OzarkEdge]

Aren't there better vendor choices for business networking equipment?

OE

 

[TreelessForest]

They are sold for price of their customer routers.
Do you really believe that this one is suitable for business (despite marketing)?

However not relevant to original post. It is not a setup i would advise for most businesses but when i put it on location for one of my customers it fit the markers that they put forward at the time. when it no longer fit the customers changing needs it was pulled.

Keep on doing you!

 

[TreelessForest]

Aren't there better vendor choices for business networking equipment?

OE

In short, YES. At the time of installation it best fit my customers markers,

Keep on doing you!

 

[OzarkEdge]

In short, YES. At the time of installation it best fit my customers markers,

Keep on doing you!

OK. So, why make a big production now out of trying to make more out of Asus than it is? Seems like a waste of time. Upgrade the installation and move on. Your survey serves no purpose.

OE

 

[RMerlin]

I suspect Asus were testing the business waters with that model, and it didn't sell enough to justify long-term support/launching more BRT models.

I would have to agree, might be best for you to move on and replace it with a better supported product at this point. Even if they did release a new firmware next month, considering the last one was in 2018, I wouldn't expect them to start releasing regular updates after that one single release. You'll be back to where you started in no time.

 

[TreelessForest]

OK. So, why make a big production now out of trying to make more out of Asus than it is? Seems like a waste of time. Upgrade the installation and move on. Your survey serves no purpose.

OE

The point of the post was to inform, the additional information (history and emails) was to give more than just posting expect a firmware update on hardware that was abandoned my the manufacturer.

The survey was clearly not the point and was to get others opinions on the matter at hand. Seeing that merlin seems to agree with you, I ask what router firewall combination/dedicated hardware setup would you recommend that supports a fail over dual wan and cellular along with data storage and ALQT/QOS support? I currently have a pfsense firewall and some Bargain Bin netgear AC router in place (forget the model). However the costs of this setup is much more than original, granted I know that current setup is much better in just about every way, except costs (price,time).

 

[TreelessForest]

I suspect Asus were testing the business waters with that model, and it didn't sell enough to justify long-term support/launching more BRT models.

I would have to agree, might be best for you to move on and replace it with a better supported product at this point. Even if they did release a new firmware next month, considering the last one was in 2018, I wouldn't expect them to start releasing regular updates after that one single release. You'll be back to where you started in no time.

I agree that this fight with them will likely end after a single firmware release, however it might not. Sometimes all it takes is a single voice. Hell they might just send me newer hardware if its cheaper than having their Dev team work on firmware for this router.

Don't expect them to do anything, which makes it hard to be disappointed. However I do hope that they put this model back under the update schedule that other models receive.

 

[OzarkEdge]

The point of the post was to inform, the additional information (history and emails) was to give more than just posting expect a firmware update on hardware that was abandoned my the manufacturer.

The survey was clearly not the point and was to get others opinions on the matter at hand. Seeing that merlin seems to agree with you, I ask what router firewall combination/dedicated hardware setup would you recommend that supports a fail over dual wan and cellular along with data storage and ALQT/QOS support? I currently have a pfsense firewall and some Bargain Bin netgear AC router in place (forget the model). However the costs of this setup is much more than original, granted I know that current setup is much better in just about every way, except costs (price,time).

I was afraid you'd ask that. I don't have experience with those requirements to advise. Hopefully someone here can.

OE

 

[camulodunum]

well seems Nina wasn't lying,the firmware was releasead some days ago and my office router updated last week.

and now I'm stuck in the company because since the update the openvpn server stopped working and needed to reboot the router and reconfigure in order to work,and now I'm here fighting becuase suddenly the ppoe has stopped working....

thanks asus,now they only need to launch somehing to downgrade my router in order to wait for a fix

 

[L&LD]

@camulodunum, why do you have updates automatically flashing?

 

[camulodunum]

@camulodunum, why do you have updates automatically flashing?

wasn't automatic,just appeared an advice button in my router,clicked in it to see what was happening (sometimes before I had some ip issues that were advised in that button) and the router automatically sended me to the firmware page and started flashing itself.......

was like ASUS wanting everyone to be f*cked by this update,and the routers now doesn't let you return to older firmware,so I'm here that have internet thanks to the dual wan and my other ISP but my main conexión is down and my VPN server could fail in any moment.

thanks to this update today's the first cuarentine day that I HAD to go to the work in order to fix this.

now what I'm hopping is some update fixing this as early as possible or I'm gonna talk to amazon and ask for a cashback

 

[L&LD]

Sounds automatic to me (even if you had to click a button first)?

Why don't you just download the firmware you had previously and flash it back to how it was and then ignore the 'advice button' from now on?

 

[camulodunum]

Sounds automatic to me (even if you had to click a button first)?

Why don't you just download the firmware you had previously and flash it back to how it was and then ignore the 'advice button' from now on?

¿cause,as I said in my last post,asus doesn't allow you to flash an older firmware?

 

[L&LD]

Have you asked them nicely to allow you to flash the working firmware?

 

[camulodunum]

Have you asked them nicely to allow you to flash the working firmware?

nope,I'm stil waiting a reply from the support center

 

[RMerlin]

From what I saw they jumped from 380.xxxx to 382.xxxx. This means this is a fairly major update, so I doubt flashing back is possible unless doing a factory default reset and manually reconfiguring things afterward (unless you kept a backup of your old 380.xxxx settings).

IMHO, now is not a good time to be upgrading firmwares tho, as people are highly dependent on having a functional remote connection to their closed down offices. This applies obviously to routers, but I would also extend the recommendations to NAS and other devices that are mission critical.

 

[camulodunum]

From what I saw they jumped from 380.xxxx to 382.xxxx. This means this is a fairly major update, so I doubt flashing back is possible unless doing a factory default reset and manually reconfiguring things afterward (unless you kept a backup of your old 380.xxxx settings).

IMHO, now is not a good time to be upgrading firmwares tho, as people are highly dependent on having a functional remote connection to their closed down offices. This applies obviously to routers, but I would also extend the recommendations to NAS and other devices that are mission critical.

yeah,not my intencion to update but as I said if you click the advice button that pops out with the update the software starts flashing itself.

for me at least not a big deal to lost all the settings,dind't have a backup but is not so complicated,can have the router re-configured in half an hour I think

but for ppl reading this that have a BRT-AC828 DON'T UPDATE YOUR FIRMWARE and DON'T CLICK IN THE ADVICE BUTTON until ASUS fix this mess

for me seems that asus doesn't want to provide me with support since they ask for my serial number that is in the office with the devide and not gonna return to the office without a good reason until the lockdown is finished,so I'll wait till I can return office and then try to use the recovery software for flashing-crashed routers and see if that lets me install an older update