[Experimental] Asuswrt-Merlin 384.13 test - AiMesh/DNSSEC through OpenSSL

[Swistheater]

Thanks, but if I have read correctly, from alpha2, the nodes can also be running Merlin firmware.

Previously I had my AX88U in router mode and my AC88U as an access point with Ethernet backhaul, obviously. That setup was rock solid, no disconnects at all.

I have gone back to this setup and all is well again.

Is there any benefit of AIMesh over Router/AP setup?

read my post above.^^^^

 

[JemTheWire]

Thanks. My bad. I went straight into replying to your original reply to my question. DOH.

 

[L&LD]

User report: RT-AC86U 384.13 Alpha 2. Dirty upgrade from 384.12 (with free time being hard to find these last few weeks, this is a dirty, dirty, dirty run since v384.10 ).

I'm now running this latest alpha 2 for just under 24 hours and am impressed with its stability and fluidity.

Not using AiMesh, but I did switch back to Quad9 DoT servers (both IPv4 and IPv6) and notice a much smoother surfing experience. I did go back to Cloudflare for a few weeks and the browsing experience was superior, but now they are equal.

What Quad9 offers is a better https://rootcanary.org/test.html report. But still not as good as what RMerlin shows in post 1.

Btw, I am using Edge Chromium for developers, Edge, and Firefox to test with. With Edge Chromium being superior and Firefox being the worst browser for me (it now scores lower than the two Edge browsers too, in the rootcanary.org test above).

There were a few glitches along the way which are not memorable enough to be repeated here. Suffice to say that rebooting the router, rebooting the computer in question (or both) was enough to get the issue(s) resolved quickly.

The biggest glitch was with Diversion (4.13), but a simple uninstall/reinstall fixed that too.

Can't wait for this to hit Beta (I think it is ready as-is right now) and release status so that my customers can benefit from the under the hood changes too.

Thank you RMerlin for another solid release. There should be different 'alpha' classifications for your releases I think. Much more stable and usable than almost anything else we can try.

 

[HuskyHerder]

@RMerlin Et al.

I always assign my nodes static ip's mainly due to liking everything tidy.

Anyway, in trying out your alpha(s), I noticed my statically assigned IP's of the nodes do not appear in the network map/list. Previously they had always appeared when using stock. Though its possible with the most recent stock fw this had changed. I didn't really do much re-config after setting up as new, this last time.

So mainly for curiosity sake, is this a by product of you supporting mesh, or something ASUS did ? They still grab the assigned IP they simply don't show in the list.

 

[Empassant18]

That's a great explanation. Thanks so much for taking the time to break it down. I will explore AiMesh, hopefully in the next release.

*note asus router also has a roaming assistant that can contribute to this behavior.*

well when you deal with AImesh the networks wireless bands are toned to each other to all have the same channels on the wireless to match your main routers wireless channels think of it as becoming a big wifi umbrella and all your wireless is suppose to the be able to seamlessly transition from one AP to the next. the wired back-haul just gives the extra added advantage of freeing up the strain on the wireless, while still benefiting from the pre-configured umbrella model. when you just have them turned on as AP you do not get the added benefit of the wireless auto adjusting power levels and channels to appropriately match the main and the enhanced benefits of the seamless capabilities. As an AP you have to configure things in a way that works for you and each band act independently of each other. this leads to you having to adjust channels and power levels properly to prevent interference.

For example, with gig speeds , i get a better wifi speed off of my 68U with Aimesh(wired back-haul used) configured, than i do with having it configured as a simple access point, I don't know why, but i just do.

 

[skeal]

What lan-ip do you have on you aimesh routers? Just asking as Im using 12.1 instead of 1.1 May have to change that to get nodes working.

My Lan IP on the node was automatically assigned 192.168.50.10 but I changed it to 192.168.50.6 (static) to fit into my addressing scheme.

 

[RMerlin]

When trying to set up AC86U as a node and noticed that 2.4Ghz band is not working and 5Ghz band is working ok and when searching for a node, it didn’t find AC86U. Does it need both bands to be working in order to be a node to the master?

Might be, I don't know how it searches/connect with nodes. It most likely does need to at least be able to connect to it, I doubt Asus specifically implemented support for half-working nodes.

Does the node also have to be running 384.13 alpha2 as well?

Node support was only properly added with alpha 2. It shouldn't have any effect on the ability to connect and stay connected however, I suspect your problem is wifi-related, not AiMesh-related. Try keeping the node closer, and do the usual optimizations on your primary before adding nodes (disable Airtime Fairness, explicit beamforming, etc...).

 

[RMerlin]

Anyway, in trying out your alpha(s), I noticed my statically assigned IP's of the nodes do not appear in the network map/list. Previously they had always appeared when using stock. Though its possible with the most recent stock fw this had changed. I didn't really do much re-config after setting up as new, this last time.

Node handling is kinda different from a regular AP. From what I saw, the wireless connections will have specific MAC addresses (probably for the wireless bridges between the two), but the DHCP lease will use a different MAC address. This is why the Wireless Log page shows "unknown" for the IP. I know the actual lease can be found on the DHCP Lease page, so try using that to generate your static lease.

I don't know how Networkmap handles nodes. I only know that nodes are identified as such in the client dump sent to the browser, I didn't check if Networkmap filtered out clients flagged as nodes.

 

[Swistheater]

Might be, I don't know how it searches/connect with nodes. It most likely does need to at least be able to connect to it, I doubt Asus specifically implemented support for half-working nodes.



Node support was only properly added with alpha 2. It shouldn't have any effect on the ability to connect and stay connected however, I suspect your problem is wifi-related, not AiMesh-related. Try keeping the node closer, and do the usual optimizations on your primary before adding nodes (disable Airtime Fairness, explicit beamforming, etc...).

For initial connection it uses both but it does not need both to remain active it will periodically adjust which one it uses from my understanding. If you have wired backhaul you are reluctant to see it use any.

 

[FTC]

Tried enabled the cpuwait manually, and there is around 8-9 degrees difference in CPU temperature in same ambient temp.
Eric, if it is possible to ask Asus why they disable cpuwait?
Thx a lot!

Hi, how did you enable cpuwait manually ? I'd like to do some testing on that...

 

[JemTheWire]

Sorry, I don't think I explained myself clearly enough.

The disconnection was between my router (AX88U) and node (AC88U) which is connected via Ethernet.

The AiMesh detail box on the router reports that the node is Offline. However, it only goes offline after a couple of minutes. Up until it goes offline, I can see devices connected via the Network Map status page. That is both WiFi and Ethernet clients connected to the node.

No cables or anything else from a hardware perspective have been changed from my original configuration of Router/AP.

 

[MarvinAndro]

First of all, big THANK YOU to @RMerlin for letting us all jump into the mesh world!

I'm late to the party and spent the last night trying to get this working by resurrecting my old AC68U and flashing dirty my AC5300 to convert it into the main node.

The process went fine, AC5300 showed the AiMesh button, AC68U was reset and brought to N-1 version of ASUS firmware, took a couple of minutes and I got wireless back-haul working. Tested automatic upgrading of the AC68U node and it upgraded fine but it felt like it took quite some time to do so.

Then the issues started:
* Wemo app lost all of my lights
* Google Play Music would see a few of my Chromecast devices but none of the Home ones
* Looked for videos on AiMesh as it was my first time setting it up and wanted to see if my manual way of keeping 2.5, 5-1, 5-2 was a good idea, especially when AC68U has only dual-band device.... but YouTube was stuttering.

I figured out lazy is no good, super lazy for way too long doesn't make things better. I must have dirty flashed my AC5300 for years. Even the clean flashes were followed by nvram-save.sh restore. Sooo, it was time for the ultimate reset.

Full reset on both routers. Setting AC5300 router and WiFi password (just one, as per the Wizard) finally giving into the magic of Dual-Band Smart Connect. No other customization, apart from entering my Bell Fibe PPPoE credentials. Adding the AC68U took again a couple of minutes and appeared to be working fine. The last thing I did around 2am was to check the devices and saw them spread across the 2 nodes - mainly 50-ish of them that used 2.4Ghz (left updating the ones that used 5Ghz for today).

Well, the end of good news again:
* got out of bed to turn off the lights as Wemo app didn't see any of my dimmers again
* tried to see if Play Music would cast to my Lenovo smart display but again, it saw only 2 of the Chromcasts downstairs

I didn't have time to see if there's any correlation between which node my phone was connected to vs the smart devices.

Any pointers to what worked for you folks when setting up wireless back-haul over AC5300 and AC68U or similar would be greatly appreciated!

Note: turned off the AC68U to browse this forum as Speedtest was showing 6-8Mbps when connected to the AC68U and as soon as it connected downstairs to the AC5300 I was back to 450Mbps up/down.

Thanks a lot!

 

[skeal]

Sorry, I don't think I explained myself clearly enough.

The disconnection was between my router (AX88U) and node (AC88U) which is connected via Ethernet.

The AiMesh detail box on the router reports that the node is Offline. However, it only goes offline after a couple of minutes. Up until it goes offline, I can see devices connected via the Network Map status page. That is both WiFi and Ethernet clients connected to the node.

No cables or anything else from a hardware perspective have been changed from my original configuration of Router/AP.

I had strange stuff going on at first too. I reset both the master and the node to defaults and then setup AiMesh again. Works awesome now!

 

[skeal]

First of all, big THANK YOU to @RMerlin for letting us all jump into the mesh world!

I'm late to the party and spent the last night trying to get this working by resurrecting my old AC68U and flashing dirty my AC5300 to convert it into the main node.

The process went fine, AC5300 showed the AiMesh button, AC68U was reset and brought to N-1 version of ASUS firmware, took a couple of minutes and I got wireless back-haul working. Tested automatic upgrading of the AC68U node and it upgraded fine but it felt like it took quite some time to do so.

Then the issues started:
* Wemo app lost all of my lights
* Google Play Music would see a few of my Chromecast devices but none of the Home ones
* Looked for videos on AiMesh as it was my first time setting it up and wanted to see if my manual way of keeping 2.5, 5-1, 5-2 was a good idea, especially when AC68U has only dual-band device.... but YouTube was stuttering.

I figured out lazy is no good, super lazy for way too long doesn't make things better. I must have dirty flashed my AC5300 for years. Even the clean flashes were followed by nvram-save.sh restore. Sooo, it was time for the ultimate reset.

Full reset on both routers. Setting AC5300 router and WiFi password (just one, as per the Wizard) finally giving into the magic of Dual-Band Smart Connect. No other customization, apart from entering my Bell Fibe PPPoE credentials. Adding the AC68U took again a couple of minutes and appeared to be working fine. The last thing I did around 2am was to check the devices and saw them spread across the 2 nodes - mainly 50-ish of them that used 2.4Ghz (left updating the ones that used 5Ghz for today).

Well, the end of good news again:
* got out of bed to turn off the lights as Wemo app didn't see any of my dimmers again
* tried to see if Play Music would cast to my Lenovo smart display but again, it saw only 2 of the Chromcasts downstairs

I didn't have time to see if there's any correlation between which node my phone was connected to vs the smart devices.

Any pointers to what worked for you folks when setting up wireless back-haul over AC5300 and AC68U or similar would be greatly appreciated!

Note: turned off the AC68U to browse this forum as Speedtest was showing 6-8Mbps when connected to the AC68U and as soon as it connected downstairs to the AC5300 I was back to 450Mbps up/down.

Thanks a lot!

The smart connect may be what is giving you the issues you have.

 

[Swistheater]

Setup:
AX88U (main) running 384.13 alpha2 connected via Ethernet backhaul to an AC88U (node) running 384.12.

I am having trouble with the the node (AC88U) loosing connection after a couple of minutes. It doesn’t reconnect after it drops.

I have factory reset, including an NVRAM erase, of the node, but still it drops.

Does the node also have to be running 384.13 alpha2 as well?

Any ideas gratefully received, thanks.

If you are having this issue between node and master, then make sure you click on the node via the main gui and select connection priority as ethernet because sometimes this happens if there is a switch connected in between wired node and master somewhere.

this happens do to the behavior of a switch which is constantly firing signals, network map setup doesn't always properly deal with this.

please reference this post where i talk about setting connection priority for each wired node that makes contact between a switch.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/e...ssec-through-openssl.57489/page-4#post-503583

Normal wired back-haul setup
Point A router + point B node

One involving switch

Point A router +Point B switch+ Point C Node

 

[JoGi]

Sorry, I don't think I explained myself clearly enough.

The disconnection was between my router (AX88U) and node (AC88U) which is connected via Ethernet.

The AiMesh detail box on the router reports that the node is Offline. However, it only goes offline after a couple of minutes. Up until it goes offline, I can see devices connected via the Network Map status page. That is both WiFi and Ethernet clients connected to the node.

No cables or anything else from a hardware perspective have been changed from my original configuration of Router/AP.

I have the same setup at home.
router (AX88U) and node (AC88U) wired connected.
And everything works great.
Even try stock firmware and merlins 384.13 alpha2 on ac88u

Only setup i changed were “connection priority” from automatic > ethernet And the node have a static IP

Maybe a full reset nodes will works ?

 

[Plompie]

Hi, how did you enable cpuwait manually ? I'd like to do some testing on that...

I asked him the same question in private conversation, reply was as follows;

pwr config --cpuwait on

You might want to add it to your startup script.

Haven’t test it yet but sounds logical!

 

[Swistheater]

What is the benefit of this?

I asked him the same question in private conversation, reply was as follows;

Haven’t test it yet but sounds logical!

 

[JemTheWire]

If you are having this issue between node and master, then make sure you click on the node via the main gui and select connection priority as ethernet because sometimes this happens if there is a switch connected in between wired node and master somewhere.

this happens do to the behavior of a switch which is constantly firing signals, network map setup doesn't always properly deal with this.

please reference this post where i talk about setting connection priority for each wired node that makes contact between a switch.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/e...ssec-through-openssl.57489/page-4#post-503583

Normal wired back-haul setup
Point A router + point B node

One involving switch

Point A router +Point B switch+ Point C Node

Thanks but it is a direct cable between LAN of master and WAN on the node.

However, priority was set to AUTO. I will try again but not tonight.

Thanks for the advice. AiMesh and all its idiosyncrasies are new to me.

 

[JemTheWire]

I have the same setup at home.
router (AX88U) and node (AC88U) wired connected.
And everything works great.
Even try stock firmware and merlins 384.13 alpha2 on ac88u

Only setup i changed were “connection priority” from automatic > ethernet And the node have a static IP

Maybe a full reset nodes will works ?

I will change that too. Thanks.