I run an RT-N66U and love it. I had a hard time with the original Asus firmware when I got it, so I've always run a flavor of the original Tomato, and now Shibby Tomato. While happy with it for the most part, I haven't upgraded in the last year or so, as each time I have, I seem to encounter more spotty performance than in versions past. So I've always rolled back to the one that worked.
Anyway, I was searching and saw that Asus has been pretty active over the last 2 years updating the firmware, and while reading, discovered AsusWRT-Merlin, which looks fantastic! What I'm trying to see is if there is a demo site or screen shots of the latest release, so I can review features. It's a bit of work to go from Shibby Tomato back to an Asus build, so I only want to do it if I know what I'm getting.
Two features in Shibby that I really hope I can do in Merlin, that would seal the deal for me to switch back, are:
1. Access restrictions - the ability to limit certain MACs access to the wifi during certain hours. Basically, I want wifi to not work on the kids devices after say 10pm each night.
2. The ability to add blacklist key works as well, for certain MACs. This is also in Access restrictions in Shibby. I know the stock firmware allowed whitelists, but sometimes it easier to list the sites you don't want a device to access, vs list the ones you do allow (a much longer list).
I found screenshots on Merlin's home page, and some references to possibly being able to do some of this with parental controls, but nothing definitive.
And oh yeah, one more question - I remember with the old stock Asus firmware, a device connected to the guest network could still access the router's IP address and access the device if it knew the username and password. In Shibby, I have a firewall rule that drops any connection requests from the guest network to the internal LAN IP range. Can Merlin do that, or does Asus support that security feature out of the box now?
Thank you for any help or guidance you provide.
Anyway, I was searching and saw that Asus has been pretty active over the last 2 years updating the firmware, and while reading, discovered AsusWRT-Merlin, which looks fantastic! What I'm trying to see is if there is a demo site or screen shots of the latest release, so I can review features. It's a bit of work to go from Shibby Tomato back to an Asus build, so I only want to do it if I know what I'm getting.
Two features in Shibby that I really hope I can do in Merlin, that would seal the deal for me to switch back, are:
1. Access restrictions - the ability to limit certain MACs access to the wifi during certain hours. Basically, I want wifi to not work on the kids devices after say 10pm each night.
2. The ability to add blacklist key works as well, for certain MACs. This is also in Access restrictions in Shibby. I know the stock firmware allowed whitelists, but sometimes it easier to list the sites you don't want a device to access, vs list the ones you do allow (a much longer list).
I found screenshots on Merlin's home page, and some references to possibly being able to do some of this with parental controls, but nothing definitive.
And oh yeah, one more question - I remember with the old stock Asus firmware, a device connected to the guest network could still access the router's IP address and access the device if it knew the username and password. In Shibby, I have a firewall rule that drops any connection requests from the guest network to the internal LAN IP range. Can Merlin do that, or does Asus support that security feature out of the box now?
Thank you for any help or guidance you provide.
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