[Preview 384/NG] Asuswrt-Merlin 384.5 early test builds

[Reinvented]

Manual - automatic does nothing for me as I'm trying to remedy bufferbloat in the first place. Wish we had a simple option for percentage adjustment that would constantly adjust for say 70% to better account for variable top end speeds.

What is your maximum throughput on both download and upload?
And % would be worse, as there is no top end speed to compare it to.

 

[Find the Door]

What is your maximum throughput on both download and upload?
And % would be worse, as there is no top end speed to compare it to.

300 down / 12 up

Used every combination of speed you can think of and still get spikes on the upload side.

 

[Reinvented]

300 down / 12 up

Used every combination of speed you can think of and still get spikes on the upload side.

What kind of connection is it? Have you tried touching the WAN Packet Overhead?

 

[Find the Door]

What kind of connection is it? Have you tried touching the WAN Packet Overhead?

It's a Docsis 3.1 Cable connection. Yeah I've tried both 18 and 0. Comcast

 

[cmkelley]

Could you explain it please?

My RT-AC68U with asus 384.20648 and half memory of 86U needs only 50% RAM.
As well I can see most of the time:
Apr 8 21:25:25 kernel: nvram: consolidating space!
Never seen this log on 86U with log-level notice and show more urgent than debug, think that are the default-values.

2 different issues here: nvram is not connected to the free memory displayed on the GUI. It's totally different. As noted the "consolidating space" log entry is totally normal. Someone who know more than I do can explain why it does that at some frequency.

The thing to know about the "free" memory shown in the GUI is, it's only the memory that is totally free, kinda like 1984, some memory is more free than others. If you have ssh set up you can ssh into your router and type "cat /proc/meminfo" The third line, 'MemAvailable' is really what counts. It uses 'Memfree' plus knowledge from other lines of meminfo of how much memory is "in use" but readily reclaimed, and a bit of estimation to come up with a total memory that can be reclaimed more or less instantly and not force the system to use swap. For my AC86U, the first 3 lines of meminfo are:

MemTotal:         440436 kB
MemFree:           30904 kB
MemAvailable:     111280 kB

So even though only ~7% of memory is "free", in actuality about 25% of memory is available for use by the system. The reason not to mark the easily reclaimable memory as "free" is because (I think) if the program that said it was "done" with that memory suddenly finds it isn't, it doesn't have to reload stuff from nvram / jffs or re-create it, saving a lot of CPU cycles.

 

[From Michigan]

Hello all, I updated to the latest 384.5-2 alpha on my RT-AC68P and everything went wonky on me. The router slowed to a crawl. Tried everything-resetting, rebooting, all of that. Then tried to go back to previous build but couldn't, would error out, etc. Found directions above how to put 384 back onto the router. When I did this per WinSCP and Putty I was able to restore the the old 384 firmware, but it was still really slow and unresponsive. I finally decided to check my CFE under tools menu and walla... the bootloader has been updated to 1.0.2.9. from the 384.5 release. For some reason that bootloader is not playing nice with my RT-AC68P .I have been running the 1.0.2.5 US(RT-AC68P/V2) that I updated from my previous CFE on the above website. I went back in and loaded my old 1.0.2.5 CFE file and boom. Everything was back to normal, no buffer bloat or slow screens. If you load the 1.0.2.5 CFE it clocks you to the default speed 1000 MHz.

 

[From Michigan]

RT-AC68U here on Alpha 1. Like others have reported I cannot upgrade firmware to alpha 2, nor downgrade back to 384.4. No USB devices attached, I have tried factory defaulting the device.



Thanks, I'll try that when I have a chance.

Thanks Strange Luck, I followed your lead and set my router back to 384 build, but forgot to check my CFE. Didn't realize that it had been updated to 1.0.2.9 by the latest 384.5 release. Had to go back in and change it back to my originally updated CFE of 1.0.2.5. Hope that helps someone. The router became extremely slow and unresponsive RT-AC68P for some reason, buffer bloat, etc. Reverting back to the old CFE and the previous build and I'm back to normal.

Thanks Merlin for your continued work on this project. I will keep track of the progress on the current 385 builds.

 

[indark]

Hello all, I updated to the latest 384.5-2 alpha on my RT-AC86P and everything went wonky on me. The router slowed to a crawl. Tried everything-resetting, rebooting, all of that. Then tried to go back to previous build but couldn't, would error out, etc. Found directions above how to put 384 back onto the router. When I did this per WinSCP and Putty I was able to restore the the old 384 firmware, but it was still really slow and unresponsive. I finally decided to check my CFE under tools menu and walla... the bootloader has been updated to 1.0.2.9. from the 384.5 release. For some reason that bootloader is not playing nice with my RT-AC86P .I have been running the 1.0.2.5 US(RT-AC68P/V2) that I updated from my previous CFE on the above website. I went back in and loaded my old 1.0.2.5 CFE file and boom. Everything was back to normal, no buffer bloat or slow screens. If you load the 1.0.2.5 CFE it clocks you to the default speed 1000.

it's completely different device you talking here.
AC86U
TM-AC1900 - that people flash and hack into AC68u
AC68U
you should not have try to flash CFE to ac86

 

[From Michigan]

it's completely different device you talking here.
AC86U
TM-AC1900 - that people flash and hack into AC68u
AC68U
you should not have try to flash CFE to ac86

Sorry about that I meant RT-AC68P, it ends up showing up with the P instead of the U at the end in your router if you update to the 1.0.2.5 US CFE from the website up above. Not sure if that made any sense. My router showed as RT-AC68U before updating to the 1.0.2.5 US CFE from the above website. After the CFE update it now shows up as RT-AC68P.

 

[Vexira]

It's a Docsis 3.1 Cable connection. Yeah I've tried both 18 and 0. Comcast

Are you running the Freshjr qos script?
Theirs two commands one for upload the other for download thank might help

 

[From Michigan]

Are you running the Freshjr qos script?

Yes, I am running the Fast version of his script and it is working very well.

 

[Vexira]

Yes, I am running the Fast version of his script and it is working very well.

That's good I was just asking find the door if they were using it ant to try the bandwith % commands, to see if it helps. Through the the script the bandwith can be set to 95% or less to see if it helps with the buffer bloat in combination with the per packet overhead.

 

[indark]

Sorry about that I meant RT-AC68P, it ends up showing up with the P instead of the U at the end in your router if you update to the 1.0.2.5 US CFE from the website up above. Not sure if that made any sense. My router showed as RT-AC68U before updating to the 1.0.2.5 US CFE from the above website. After the CFE update it now shows up as RT-AC68P.

if I remember correctly, P and U is just the identifier used for different vendor, like bestbuy, not really anything different in hardware/software.
Since you already roll the CFE back, not much to be done there, but try to check CPU usage if you try the next build.

 

[From Michigan]

if I remember correctly, P and U is just the identifier used for different vendor, like bestbuy, not really anything different in hardware/software.
Since you already roll the CFE back, not much to be done there, but try to check CPU usage if you try the next build.

OK, sounds good. That is one thing I noticed on the new 385 build, my CPU usage was through the roof. If I did a speed test it would max out both cores...and was really slow, bufferbloat even with the QOS on with my manual settings the same as before. Now that I am back to the 384 build and my original CFE my CPU usage is well under 10% most of the time. Not heavy use in our house, have the Roku streaming either DirectTVNOW, Amazon Prime Video, or Netflix and maybe 10-15 wireless gadgets. I get straight A's on the http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest website. We have Fiber connection with 250 down and 10 up. I have my QOS currently tweaked/set manually to 250 down and 11.5 up with adaptive QoS and fq_codel, preset is set to 0 for WAN packet overhead... and I received no Bufferbloat.
s

 

[Kal1975]

When CPU is high you can ssh into the router and try "top" to see what is using up CPU. Not sure if it will be any useful information, though.

 

[PDinDetroit]

Updated RT-AC86U to 384.5_alpha2-gcc44562, everything is working great. Ethernet-connected desktops, work laptops Ethernet/Wi-fi connected running Microsoft DirectAccess and/or VPN, Android Cell Phones, Android Tablets, Samsung TVs, Samsung Blu-rays, Yamaha Receivers, Ring Doorbell + Chime, Laserjet Printer USB connected - all are working great!

An Aside - We dumped the Spectrum (Brighthouse) cable boxes for Tivo Bolt VOX and Mini Bolt VOX. I have an RT-AC66U (newest ASUS FW) running in Media Bridge Mode with the Tivo Bolt VOX Ethernet-connected to it and the Mini Bolt VOX MoCA-connected to the Bolt VOX. Very happy so far...

 

[Find the Door]

Are you running the Freshjr qos script?
Theirs two commands one for upload the other for download thank might help

I'm running it and have recently upgraded my speed to Gigabit to hopefully have better luck with more upload.

It inputted that code into the script that you sent me and set my Max speeds but the speed test wouldn't recognize that they're to be throttled to 90% it'd just respect the values inputted into the GUI.

Didn't seem to have any effect at all?

 

[fafot]

Installed Alpha 2 on AC86U with a overlay on Alpha 1 and no issues. Forgot to remove the USB stick (as like Alpha 1 install...err..), but all went ok anyways. Also installed ok on AC87U running as AP (message after install, to Power Off/On...didn't get that on the AC86U).
384.5 Alpha 1&2 certainly smoother/snappier then the earlier 384 levels. Also no problems anymore with my Slingbox on Alpha 1&2....which started with the earlier 384 levels (380 was ok).
| Forgot to add...QOS settings retained now after a Power off/on...yippee...

Just wondering if this version shows correctly the 5Gb network devices on AC87U ?

 

[Find the Door]

Something with adaptive is just flat out not right. I'm running Gigabit and am trying a multitude of speed combos regardless I get a ton of bufferbloat. If I go Traditional I get very clean bufferbloat results but of course I'm speed capped at about 300 Mbps.

I don't understand why adaptive performs so poorly when fq_codel is utilized. Any other settings I can tinker with here to potentially yield better results?

 

[Sinner]

Not sure if its possible or how much work it would entail but i would like to see "hotmail" added to the list for email alerts. I dont use gmail/aol and the other two ive never even heard of.