Few questions about using Asuswrt-Merlin from somewhat of a newbie

[andrewgeller]

Sorry if some of these questions are elementary. I've done some reading online and most of the technical explanations, even the ones that are explained well, go over my head.

I recently purchased the RT-AC87 and flashed it with Merlin and had a few questions.

1. I live in a high populated area. Currently my Mac can see exactly 49 Wi-Fi networks. There are usually anywhere from 30-55 or so Wi-Fi networks and this will only increase as two new condos are being built on our street. I've set my channel bandwidth to 20 MHz for both 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ bands with control channel on auto. Are there are setting recommendations that anyone can kindly suggest to improve stability and throughput?
2. Under LAN, I read that it's recommended to change the IP address to something other than 192.168.1.1. I changed it to 192.168.1.2. Can I change the last digit to any digit between 1 and 9? And also, does this actually help in anyway at all?
3. My VPN provider doesn't officially support Merlin, but has a guide for it, although some of the settings have changed in the new build. I got it working, but it seems to use AES-128 and I'd prefer to have it use AES-256. When I leave the Negotiable ciphers option as is (AES-128-GCM:AES-256-GCM:AES-128-CBC:AES-256-CBC) and the Legacy/fallback cipher at AES-128-CBC everything works. But when I select AES-256-CBC it just won't connect. Is this something that I just can't fix because of my VPN provider?
4. For the Tx power adjustment setting I have it set to "good". I would turn it up all the way, but I'm worried that even with a small fan under the router it will overwork/overheat the router. Not sure if this is true and what most of you use. Would love your feedback on it though.

Also, I'd really appreciate any suggestions for securing my router, besides using a secure password, WPA2-Personal with AES encryption, and everything under the Router Security Assessment is green. Also, any general tips or suggestions for someone who lives in a highly populated area whose biggest concern is having a stable internet connection in our apartment, which isn't that big, but does have lots of walls.

Thank you all in advance.

 

[Zirescu]

1. I live in a high populated area. Currently my Mac can see exactly 49 Wi-Fi networks. There are usually anywhere from 30-55 or so Wi-Fi networks and this will only increase as two new condos are being built on our street. I've set my channel bandwidth to 20 MHz for both 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ bands with control channel on auto. Are there are setting recommendations that anyone can kindly suggest to improve stability and throughput?

Pick a channel that has the least number of overlapping channels. On the 5GHZ I've got mine setup for channel 36, 80Mhz, and on my AP channel 165 20Mhz.

2. Under LAN, I read that it's recommended to change the IP address to something other than 192.168.1.1. I changed it to 192.168.1.2. Can I change the last digit to any digit between 1 and 9? And also, does this actually help in anyway at all?

Won't help, but won't hurt too much either.

3. My VPN provider doesn't officially support Merlin, but has a guide for it, although some of the settings have changed in the new build. I got it working, but it seems to use AES-128 and I'd prefer to have it use AES-256. When I leave the Negotiable ciphers option as is (AES-128-GCM:AES-256-GCM:AES-128-CBC:AES-256-CBC) and the Legacy/fallback cipher at AES-128-CBC everything works. But when I select AES-256-CBC it just won't connect. Is this something that I just can't fix because of my VPN provider?

If the VPN provider doesn't support AES-256 this would be the issue - might also be setup on a different port number.

4. For the Tx power adjustment setting I have it set to "good". I would turn it up all the way, but I'm worried that even with a small fan under the router it will overwork/overheat the router. Not sure if this is true and what most of you use. Would love your feedback on it though.

On my AC87U I just set it to Power Saving and left it there.

 

[Vexira]

with the lan segment, ive set mine to 192.168.7.1 which is closer to whats meant, you can use 192.168.0.1 if you want.
tx power mine is set to max on both my 88 and 87 u routers my 87 is in ap mode and im suing the routers passive cooling.
router security enable the trend micro features, thye actually work.
for wifi i personaly reccoment using a tool like wifi analiser to the the best channel,in my personal prefrences i use 1, 6 or 11 for 2.4. on the 5ghz ill use 36, 44 or 153, but thats just me.