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AC68U, height with antennas?

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shl329

Occasional Visitor
Hi all

Been considering buying the AC68U to replace our mash up of several old bits of kit.

My main question is, how tall is the router including the antennas? The ASUS site just shows the height of the main unit. I'm just wondering if it will fit in the cupboard we currently have our router in.

My other thoughts/questions, really in case some one can point out any know issues (I am planning installing the Merlin FW on it):

* Previously I've been running DD-WRT on old Buffalo router (but just as an access point/DNS/DHCP server, not actually routing). I've had to do custom DNS records on this configured in DNSMASQ so that hosts that are actually hosted internally resolve to the LAN IP instead of the public internet IP, as the router wouldn't 'realise' it was in fact local and would not work if trying to access it via the public IP (of this connection). Hope I'm making sense here. Does the ASUS either not have this problem or will allow me to do these custom DNS records so it's server responds with the LAN IP instead?

* Any known IPV6 issues?

* Unrealistic for me to have high hopes of this router having better signal in the garden out of the box than our old only 802.11g/2.4ghz ancient Buffalo but with a directional high gain antenna (sat right in the corner of the house at the front pointing out over the house, with garden at rear). I'd love to get down from router + buffalo to one piece of kit :)

* SNMP: reading forum posts it's not something included with the default or Merlin fw but via OptWare. Any thing that would cause me an issue and not allow me to use this? I like my Cacti and graphs, I miss that with out current router ;)

* I've read of issues with the 5Ghz deteriorating over time, is this problem resolved now?

The kit we've got now is all over 5 years old, nothing wrong with it except the wifi is old slow g. Only got n devices currently but I'm sure we'll have ac kit sooner or later. I want to replace it with something solid and will also last for a good few years! Also I'm a techy who likes to play (as I said, DD-WRT on the old Buffalo!), and the ASUS does seem brilliant for the techies.

I see there's a Linksys that is also highly rated but for some reason knowing Belkin now owns them puts me off (think it's the terrible Belkin AP I had experiences with years ago... unfair I guess). Plus it doesn't have the option of something like Merlin with the 'stability over features' attitude that is nice vs DD-WRT 'features! features! features!'.

Rambling sorry, just getting some thoughts/questions out and wondering what others thing, thanks! :)
 
Reading around reviews on Amazon and the such today and a lot of people complaining of either having to reset the unit a lot or it soft resetting its self. Known issue? Old known issue and they just haven't updated the firmware?

Just want to be sure before spending this much money! :D
 
Also.. Sorry :)

I've just been reading through posts in this forum and one mentioned NAT loopback and that on port 80 it wouldn't work as the Asus web GUI uses port 80 - can you change what the Asus uses?

Example:
* Internal host running Apache on port 80, IP 192.168.1.2
* Previously I have set up on the old Buffalo running DD-WRT and DNSMASQ so that www.mydomain.com points to 192.168.1.2 instead of my (static) public IP reported by the domains name servers to the rest of the internet

So can I either (a) change the default port of the web gui on the Asus from 80 and have NAT loopback working so I don't need to do this DNS 'trickery' or (b) can I add custom DNS records on the Asus internal DNS server (with Merlin?) like I have been with DD-WRT and the old Buffalo?

Thanks again
 
I have 12.25" straight up. Also, with the latest firmware my router has been up for almost 50 days straight.
 
I have 12.25" straight up. Also, with the latest firmware my router has been up for almost 50 days straight.

Then that's not the latest firmware then. ;)
 
That firmware was released in 2014.04.24, almost two months ago.

The RMerlin 374.43_2 which is based on that code but with many improvements has superseded it.
 
Regardless if your running the the latest Asus firmware or Merlin's code the point is that the router runs just fine.
 
I guess our definition of 'just fine' is what is open for discussion.

But this is what has been fixed since the 5656 GPL code was released and accessible by RMerlin.

Asuswrt-Merlin - Changelog
==========================

History
-------
374.43 (6-June-2014)
- NEW: User-configurable refresh period to trigger a DDNS
update after a certain number of days.
- CHANGED: dnsmasq option 252 now defaults to an empty string,
to silence broken clients such as Win7.
Important: if you were previously using a customized
252 reply (to use with a valid wpad/pac file), you
will need to use a postconf script to change the
default config instead of appending your own
config.
If you use DNS-based WPAD setting, you will need
to remove the 252 option using postconf, as IE will
not query for the DNS entry if there is a 252
option through DHCP, even if it fails to connect to it.

- CHANGED: Updated miniupnpd to 1.8.20140523.
- CHANGED: Updated openssl to 1.0.0m.
- CHANGED: More backports from OpenSSL 1.0.2, improving SHA
performance on ARM routers.
- CHANGED: The JFFS2 partition is now disabled by default after
a factory default reset.
- FIXED: Media server page wouldn't let you enable the iTunes
server unless you also enabled DLNA (Asus bug)
- FIXED: Restricted guests still had access to the router (Asus
bug introduced in GPL 4887)
- FIXED: 6in4 traffic wasn't bypassing CTF if dualwan mode was
either disabled or set to failover mode (AC56/AC68)
- FIXED: Single character workgroups were rejected as invalid
(Asus bug)
- FIXED: Networks with SSIDs containing single quotes
would break the client list (Asus bug)
- FIXED: Traffic Monitor results are wrong on PPPoE connections
(Asus bug) (Patch by pinwing, additional debugging
by fantom1)
- FIXED: Crash if entering close to 64 MACs plus their names on
the MAC filter page.


374.42_2 (16-May-2014)
- FIXED: Time Machine support (AC56, Ac68)


374.42 (9-May-2014)
- NEW: Merged with Asus's 374_5656 GPL.
- NEW: Added Comodo Secure DNS to supported DNSFilter services
- FIXED: Download2 folder wasn't selectable anymore on the
Media Server page.
- FIXED: Pass correct valid and preferred lifetime to radvd when
using DHCPv6-PD (Patch by pinwing)
- FIXED: IPv6 connectivity could be lost after 1-2 hours due
to the time shift caused by NTP at boot time
(Patch by pinwing)
- FIXED: Various IPv6 connectivity issues related to services
being (re)started at the wrong time, or twice.
(Patch by pinwing)
- FIXED: Build system would sometime try to use the local system's
header/libs - use a pkg-config wrapper to avoid this
issue (Patch by ppuryear)
- FIXED: Erratic 5G led blinking behaviour as the watchdog's software-
based blinking was constantly writing to the wireless chip's
registers for led control. (AC68)
- FIXED: LEDs weren't all turning back on when coming out of
Stealth Mode (AC56)
- CHANGED: Make the router use dnsmasq for internal name
resolution rather than directly using the WAN DNS.
- CHANGED: Upgraded OpenVPN to 2.3.4.
- CHANGED: Upgraded miniupnpd to 1.8.20140422 (PCP-related fixes)
 

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