AC3200, what to do with it. Embarrassed!!!

[Tech9]

How fast your Internet connection is?
You may like FreshTomato better and may want to use this RT-AC3200 as your main router instead.

 

[drinkingbird]

How fast your Internet connection is?

Yoda? Is that you?

 

[drinkingbird]

I don't see how I can recover from this bad purchase. It won't mesh, can't be used as a repeater and I can't use it wired to my base unit.

I'm assuming you bought it used or something? If not just return it? If so just sell it via same venue you bought it from, might lose a bit of money but better than a paperweight.

 

[Tech9]

The greatest teacher, failure is.

 

[drinkingbird]

The greatest teacher, failure is.

Maybe its just your French kicking in.

 

[tgl]

It might have WDS but that would compromise security to an unacceptable level IMHO.

I'm curious about this statement ... what do you have against WDS setups, and why would they be any worse than AIMesh's "wireless backhaul"? I understand the performance issues with these setups, but I hadn't heard that they had security problems.

 

[drinkingbird]

I'm curious about this statement ... what do you have against WDS setups, and why would they be any worse than AIMesh's "wireless backhaul"? I understand the performance issues with these setups, but I hadn't heard that they had security problems.

Certain deployments only support WEP, others only support WPA-TKIP (so G speeds only), etc. I think a lot of deployments can't support rotating keys. It's just a bit of an outdated technology. I think there was a deployment using WPA-PSK with AES but not WPA2. Don't remember the specifics but trying to find a firmware with decent security that is compatible with that model may be a challenge. You'd need WPA2-AES to support AC or even N speeds.

 

[ColinTaylor]

I'm curious about this statement ... what do you have against WDS setups, and why would they be any worse than AIMesh's "wireless backhaul"? I understand the performance issues with these setups, but I hadn't heard that they had security problems.

Asus' WDS page says it only supports Open System/NONE and Open System/WEP authentication which is trivial to hack. There are some routers that support higher levels of encryption with WDS but these are non-standard and rely on proprietary methods.

 

[wilsonbh]

AC3200 update: Tried a suggestion and loaded the Tomato Firmware. Killed the router. Now, can't even get it to send and receive via 2G or 5G. It just stopped working. So I tried to reset it to factory defaults. No fix. No matter what I did, I could not get back into the GUI. It locked me out. I guess I really boogered it up. Is there a way to load the firmware from the USB drive? I'm researching that now. If I can't get it to come back online soon, it's headed to the garbage can. Right now, it's just a paperweight.

 

[wilsonbh]

In summary, the ASUS AC3200 is a complete total piece of garbage. I feel embarrassed to have purchased it. Bought it on eBay so I'm stuck with it. It's all on me though for failing to do the research before the purchase. I just threw the damned thing into the trash.

 

[drinkingbird]

In summary, the ASUS AC3200 is a complete total piece of garbage. I feel embarrassed to have purchased it. Bought it on eBay so I'm stuck with it. It's all on me though for failing to do the research before the purchase. I just threw the damned thing into the trash.

You can put it in rescue mode and reload the factory firmware.

Ebay isn't necessarily no returns, depends what is on the listing. Some even pay the return shipping for you. Depends on the seller.

If not, you've got a backup router or a standalone access point, it isn't garbage. Or sell it on ebay or craigslist or facebook marketplace, can even reuse the other sellers pictures. Sure you'll probably end up with 20% less after fees etc if you use ebay, but better than throwing out 60 bucks.

Now, did you overpay for it? Yeah, you did. But doesn't mean you should trash it.

 

[Tech9]

Tried a suggestion and loaded the Tomato Firmware. Killed the router.

I don't know. You don't like to read too much.

 

[tgl]

Asus' WDS page says it only supports Open System/NONE and Open System/WEP authentication which is trivial to hack. There are some routers that support higher levels of encryption with WDS but these are non-standard and rely on proprietary methods.

Very interesting. I've got a couple of Zyxel APs doing WDS, but they claim to be using WPA2-PSK encryption for it. That's not necessarily inconsistent with what you said, as the manual says Zyxel's WDS implementation is only compatible with other Zyxel APs.

 

[Tech9]

Very interesting.

From Asuswrt:

 

[ColinTaylor]

Very interesting. I've got a couple of Zyxel APs doing WDS, but they claim to be using WPA2-PSK encryption for it. That's not necessarily inconsistent with what you said, as the manual says Zyxel's WDS implementation is only compatible with other Zyxel APs.

Yeah, about 10 years ago I was using some Buffalo routers/APs in WDS mode using their proprietary implementation. It only supported other Buffalo devices.

 

[drinkingbird]

Very interesting. I've got a couple of Zyxel APs doing WDS, but they claim to be using WPA2-PSK encryption for it. That's not necessarily inconsistent with what you said, as the manual says Zyxel's WDS implementation is only compatible with other Zyxel APs.

There are several like that, will only work with their own brand, are they using AES? Didn't think anyone ever updated to use WPA2 or AES for WDS, last I saw was WPA-TKIP only and no key rotation.

 

[tgl]

There are several like that, will only work with their own brand, are they using AES? Didn't think anyone ever updated to use WPA2 or AES for WDS, last I saw was WPA-TKIP only and no key rotation.

The model I have doesn't seem to say whether it's AES or not. Via Google, I found that in older models AES was a selectable option, so I'm hoping they locked it down to AES rather than locking it down to TKIP . Don't know if there's a reliable way to tell from outside...

 

[drinkingbird]

The model I have doesn't seem to say whether it's AES or not. Via Google, I found that in older models AES was a selectable option, so I'm hoping they locked it down to AES rather than locking it down to TKIP . Don't know if there's a reliable way to tell from outside...

If it connects at more than 802.11G speed between the APs then it should theoretically be WPA2-AES, unless they really fudged the standard.

 

[tgl]

If it connects at more than 802.11G speed between the APs then it should theoretically be WPA2-AES, unless they really fudged the standard.

It's faster than that, for sure.

 

[drinkingbird]

It's faster than that, for sure.
View attachment 48181

Either they're doing WPA2-AES or they've ignored the standard and let AC speeds run over TKIP. You could probably use something like inSSIDer to see what encryption type it is for sure. I wouldn't be too concerned about WPA2-TKIP I guess, definitely not as secure as AES but a lot better than WEP.