Feature Questions

[trparky]

I'm looking into getting one of these ASUS routers and I happened to find this project which seems to build upon what ASUS already provides which is great. I've played with the online ASUS demo page and it appears that it's lacking some stuff that I wish it had and I'm wondering if the Merlin project has added it.

I noted that when setting up a WAN connection (in the ASUS default firmware) to Automatic IP you can't specify your own DNS server, you can only do this when set to Static IP mode. Does Merlin support this? The reason why is that my ISP uses Dynamic Statically Assigned IP addresses for their clients but I still want to use my own DNS server (OpenDNS) without having to use the parental controls (that would be a PITA to setup).

Second question. Firewall rules, specifically IPTables rules. Does Merlin support iptables rules? Can they be put in some kind of script to be initialized at boot?

Third question. Bandwidth monitoring and per-device monitoring. Does Merlin support this?

I currently have an old router that's running TomatoUSB and many of the features I'm asking about TomatoUSB support but I need a new router for better wireless so I'm looking at this. If Merlin supports these things then I won't have to investigate using Tomato.

 

[yk101]

Short answer is yes, yes and yes.
There are many posts on this forum addressing individual questions you ask - just look for them.

 

[jph1589]

Short answer is yes, yes and yes.
There are many posts on this forum addressing individual questions you ask - just look for them.

That is the kind of answer that would make me look elsewhere for help. How exactly would you enter the search argument to find all of that in previous posts?

 

[trparky]

It's not like I haven't Googled this stuff, believe me, I have. Vague answers are all I get. I did some searching of this forum too. OK, six pages of threads to look through with many of them being multiple pages as well. Um... yeah, I'm not going to be reading through all of that.

 

[RMerlin]

Static DNS is already supported by the stock firmware, under WAN -> Internet Connection (set "Connect to DNS Server automatically" to "No").

Custom firewall rules, through user scripts: https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/User-scripts

I recommend taking a look at both the Wiki and the feature list for more details.

 

[trparky]

Alright then, it appears that Merlin's firmware will work for me. I'm looking at this router here, is there a specific version of the AC66U firmware that I need to load (ARM vs ?)?

 

[thelonelycoder]

Alright then, it appears that Merlin's firmware will work for me. I'm looking at this router here, is there a specific version of the AC66U firmware that I need to load (ARM vs ?)?

The router is a model RT-AC66U_B1
Which, according to this:
https://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/about
needs the RT-AC68U firmware.
Everything you ask in post #1 can be done with it, you just have to read up a bit, like every other user with questions.
They are answered in the wiki and these pages multiple times.
Get the router, play with it and if you're stuck, were here to help.

 

[trparky]

Another question... How much throughput can this thing handle before I start maxing out the CPU?

 

[RMerlin]

Another question... How much throughput can this thing handle before I start maxing out the CPU?

If you don't enable any feature that's incompatible with hardware acceleration (IPTraffic is incompatible), probably around 350-400 Mbps. If you keep hardware acceleration enabled, you can hit gigabit throughput.