Any releases to handle wireless wan in merlin?

[Rudi Pittman]

I am shocked to find that with all the features of merlin and the wonderful addon packages it appears that using a wireless wan appears to still be a manual process involving some rather intimidating shell scripts. Has anyone released anything to simplify this process? Currently I get my internet via a wifi hotspot. I ended up using a wifi dongle to connect to it and plug that into the wan port of the merlin router. This triple nat situation works but I'd much prefer to simplify as much as possible.

Can someone point me to whatever is available? Thanks for your time


Brain twister: If someone purchases a non working asus rt-ac68u and then swaps the plastic housing with a working modded tm-ac1900 are they then "legal?"

 

[Grisu]

are they then "legal?"

dont ask ...

 

[RMerlin]

Let's take aside the legal issues that leads both Tim and I to block any discussion on conversion of these models, and look at the additional practical reasons for which I personally get really annoyed when someone either lies to me or omit to mention that he has a modified router.

The TM router has slightly different hardware, the firmware code behaves differently based on the specific model/revision, and Asus are taking specific steps in the firmware code to prevent running unlicensed firmware on it. These steps can lead to a lot of problems, such as failure for people to flash newer firmware. Lying to me (and the community) when you have such an unsupported model and still request for assistance is going to be wasting my time, and the community's time as well, since there is a high probability that your issue is specifically caused because of these protection measures Asus has in place. How many times did we get asked for support about "my RT-AC68U won't accept this new firmware, please help me", only to eventually discover that the requester did NOT have a real RT-AC68U, and the issue encountered was expected, and normal.

So let me be blunt about this. If you a) failed to read the sticky posts, or b) decided to omit or lie to me about it, then I will be doubly pissed off because a) you obviously can't even be bothered to read what is already posted before posting for assistance, and b) you are wasting my time (and also the time of anyone else who might try to help you) because this is the expected behaviour.

And as I wrote in the sticky, I don't care how you modded it, whether you modified your bootloader, did a paint job or whatever. It's not supported, period.


As for Wireless client mode, it's not supported. Your alternative is using Media Bridge mode, or Repeater Mode based on your specific needs.

 

[Rudi Pittman]

Let's take aside the legal issues that leads both Tim and I to block any discussion on conversion of these models, and look at the additional practical reasons for which I personally get really annoyed when someone either lies to me or omit to mention that he has a modified router.

The TM router has slightly different hardware, the firmware code behaves differently based on the specific model/revision, and Asus are taking specific steps in the firmware code to prevent running unlicensed firmware on it. These steps can lead to a lot of problems, such as failure for people to flash newer firmware. Lying to me (and the community) when you have such an unsupported model and still request for assistance is going to be wasting my time, and the community's time as well, since there is a high probability that your issue is specifically caused because of these protection measures Asus has in place. How many times did we get asked for support about "my RT-AC68U won't accept this new firmware, please help me", only to eventually discover that the requester did NOT have a real RT-AC68U, and the issue encountered was expected, and normal.

So let me be blunt about this. If you a) failed to read the sticky posts, or b) decided to omit or lie to me about it, then I will be doubly pissed off because a) you obviously can't even be bothered to read what is already posted before posting for assistance, and b) you are wasting my time (and also the time of anyone else who might try to help you) because this is the expected behaviour.

And as I wrote in the sticky, I don't care how you modded it, whether you modified your bootloader, did a paint job or whatever. It's not supported, period.


As for Wireless client mode, it's not supported. Your alternative is using Media Bridge mode, or Repeater Mode based on your specific needs.

Perhaps you should start your holiday cheer early as you seem very stressed. How could I possibly miss the stickies or the fact your antipathy for the TM-1900 gets mentioned in almost every thread. I have both an actual ac68u as well as a tm-1900 sitting in a box as my emergency spare. I also have a Xiaomi Mi mini, Xiaomi Mi 3 and probably 10 or more other routers sitting in boxes in the attic. I'm a retired mainframe programmer and have used various alternative firmware including tomato, dd-wrt, padavan etc. I assure you I won't need or ask you to hold my hand. I find it interesting that the very first question usually asked here isn't "what have you tried to fix your issue so far", it's "is this one of those routers that's pretending to be something else?" and that's not a hypothetical. It's an actual real response I got on an issue I had with a corrupted macid where the network map was failing to populate. The solution (to clear out the macid lists via a script) had nothing to do with what router it was but for the record the issue originated ON the rt-ac68u. To the best of my recollection that's the only "support" issue I have ever asked short of general inquiries like this or questions about addons made by other devs. Sorry to have drawn your attention.

As for media bridge mode that's not really workable as it would limit the router to the 10 connection limit the wifi hotspot has which is the whole reason I originally started out using a router with it. Thank you for your reply.

Happy Holidays.

 

[QuikSilver]

I find it interesting that the very first question usually asked here isn't "what have you tried to fix your issue so far", it's "is this one of those routers that's pretending to be something else?" and that's not a hypothetical.

Most people here have legit Asus devices that can run Merlin's firmware and are willing to help others, BUT when you have numerous people jump in and out of this forum wanting help (small or large) and we find out its a device not supported then it waste everyone's time. One of the stickies in the forum is regarding that unit. If you want help for that unit you won't find it here. Its not that we don't want to help, its that we respect what Merlin has said regarding this issue.

 

[Rudi Pittman]

Most people here have legit Asus devices that can run Merlin's firmware and are willing to help others, BUT when you have numerous people jump in and out of this forum wanting help (small or large) and we find out its a device not supported then it waste everyone's time. One of the stickies in the forum is regarding that unit. If you want help for that unit you won't find it here. Its not that we don't want to help, its that we respect what Merlin has said regarding this issue.

I can understand your viewpoint. It just seemed to have gotten a little one sided where every person owning a TM-1900 is automatically assumed to be 1) the blackest of criminals punishable by public verbal flogging 2) unable to figure out how to use a router on their own 3) unwilling to ever ANSWER a question for someone else (after all it's much harder to consider someone a leech on limited resources if they are actually doing service of benefit such as providing solutions to other people's support inquiries right?).

Random probability would indicate under most circumstances the percentage of people who have a TM-1900 and have got it working just fine is higher than the percentage of people who have it and have a support issue. Those same people are going to be very hesitant to donate to a dev who chooses to publicly humiliate them but as always the dev has the right to make the project decisions.

In any case, I'm gonna drop this especially since I'm not even using that model with my regular 68u working fine. The tm-1900 was more of an issue when it was $40 and the rt-ac68u was $150. It's basically a moot point when you can get a rt-ac68u for $30 on ebay and $60 new on deal forums like slickdeals.

 

[RMerlin]

find it interesting that the very first question usually asked here isn't "what have you tried to fix your issue so far", it's "is this one of those routers that's pretending to be something else?" and that's not a hypothetical.

That's because the two most common questions we get that are caused by running the firmware on an unsupported model (either TM or Netgear) are:

1) Firmware fails to update
2) Network Map completely fails to work (most common with modded Netgear routers)

So, since the majority of "RT-AC68U" owners coming in with these two questions are actually using an unsupported model, that's why this is the first question we ask whenever someone claims to have an RT-AC68U (hence my post about wasting people's time when omitting that very important element). It's simply based on past experience with these two very specific issues.

Just like when someone comes asking why he can't add new DHCP static leases, one of the first question we ask is: "how much free nvram do you have?". It's just proper troubleshooting: you start by asking questions that cover the most common occurrences of the reported problem based on past experiences. Once you've eliminated those 75% cases that are covered by these, then you can move on with more advanced troubleshooting.