RT-ac66R Limitations

[mikebk]

Last weekend I bought an Asus RT-ac66R to replace a Netgear WNDR3700 (running DD-WRT) that had started forgetting its configuration.

The ac66R installed amazingly quickly providing basic Internet access in half an hour or so. This is obviously excellent.

I have found a number of limitations (compared to DD-WRT):

• It doesn't seem to provide a local DNS Server where the MAC address, IP address and hostname are entered and used for both dhcp and DNS.

• The Samba server doesn't seem to work with accounts. Windows file sharing works fine if accounts are not enabled. When I enable accounts, I can't authenticate.

• The GUI doesn't handle SSH.

It appears that DD-WRT provides these functions using Linux components (e.g., samba and DNSMasq) that are actually part of AsusWrt. This makes it surprising that they aren't included.

Would anyone have suggestions for dealing with these problems? Have I overlooked them somehow? Does the Merlin build solve any of these?

Thanks

Mike

 

[RMerlin]

I have found a number of limitations (compared to DD-WRT):
It doesn't seem to provide a local DNS Server where the MAC address, IP address and hostname are entered and used for both dhcp and DNS.

It does, it just lacks the ability to specify a custom hostname. But it does run dnsmasq, same as DD-WRT, and has the router act as the local DNS servers, providing name resolution for your LAN devices.

The Samba server doesn't seem to work with accounts. Windows file sharing works fine if accounts are not enabled. When I enable accounts, I can't authenticate.

Works for me and for other users. Double check your username, password (everything is case-sensitive under Linux) and filesystem permissions (if using ext3/ext4).

The GUI doesn't handle SSH.

Available through third party firmwares, or through Optware if you want to stick with the stock firmware. I don't think any commercial router ships with SSH support, possibly for legal reasons (crypto export/import laws can be somewhat messy with some countries).

 

[mikebk]

Progress on DNS and Samba

Originally Posted by RMerlin

Originally Posted by mikebk
I have found a number of limitations (compared to DD-WRT):
It doesn't seem to provide a local DNS Server where the MAC address, IP address and hostname are entered and used for both dhcp and DNS.

It does, it just lacks the ability to specify a custom hostname. But it does run dnsmasq, same as DD-WRT, and has the router act as the local DNS servers, providing name resolution for your LAN devices.

That answer helped - I think you meant the router was generating names for local addresses and I'd need to use those names. Perhaps I just didn't know what name to look up. I reviewed the DNS configuration on the PC and found it had a old domain name so I changed it to the workgroup name. I tried using the names that replace MAC in the client list. I was able to successfully find some of them using nslookup with the hostname from the client list. Others still couldn't be found.

Would you know what provides the name used for DNS? Is there a delay before it becomes active.

Originally Posted by RMerlin

Originally Posted by mikebk
The Samba server doesn't seem to work with accounts. Windows file sharing works fine if accounts are not enabled. When I enable accounts, I can't authenticate.

Works for me and for other users. Double check your username, password (everything is case-sensitive under Linux) and filesystem permissions (if using ext3/ext4).

It seems to be working fine now. I didn't knowingly do anything different to Samba. I did run my samba test after I'd gone through my PC networking configuration as part of investigating the DNS issue.

Thanks very much for your help.

Mike

 

[RMerlin]

That answer helped - I think you meant the router was generating names for local addresses and I'd need to use those names. Perhaps I just didn't know what name to look up. I reviewed the DNS configuration on the PC and found it had a old domain name so I changed it to the workgroup name. I tried using the names that replace MAC in the client list. I was able to successfully find some of them using nslookup with the hostname from the client list. Others still couldn't be found.

Would you know what provides the name used for DNS? Is there a delay before it becomes active.

The hostname is provided by the client at the time it requests the DHCP lease. The router just appends the local domain name (as configured on the LAN -> DHCP Server page), and will let you resolve them provided your clients all use the router's IP for their DNS (this is the default).

There currently is no way to provide your own hostname. It might be possible to do it by using a customized dnsmasq.conf, I'm not sure as I have never looked into that.

 

[mikebk]

Dns/dhcp

That makes sense.

A customized dnsmasq.conf would mean I'd need to keep IP/MAC addresses in step in two places. That may also explain why DD-WRT has DHCP and DNS information in the DMSmasq portion of its configuration.

 

[Nerre]

A customized dnsmasq.conf would mean I'd need to keep IP/MAC addresses in step in two places. That may also explain why DD-WRT has DHCP and DNS information in the DMSmasq portion of its configuration.

No, with a customized dnsmasq.conf you can override the settings from the web-ui. So you only need to have it in one place. That's how I'm doing it.

 

[mikebk]

customized dnsmasq.conf

No, with a customized dnsmasq.conf you can override the settings from the web-ui. So you only need to have it in one place. That's how I'm doing it.

That sounds good. How did you prevent the asus firmware from regenerating the file? I would have expected /etc/dnsmasq.conf to be regenerated when you make at least some changes in the GUI.

Could you post your one as an example please?

Thanks

Mike

 

[Nerre]

I'm using Asuswrt-Merlin, with a jffs partition and Merlins custom config support.

So I have a /jffs/configs/dnsmasq.conf.append which in turn includes a /jffs/etc/hosts.static containing my static DHCP assignments (including some bootp options for some hosts).