ASUS RT-N66U 3.0.0.5.354 Official Firmware

[got_milk]

Im looking at it as i type this the file i used is called fw_rt_n66u_3005354.trx

As I suspected. You might have better luck using the "official" beta release (3.0.0.4.354), or stick to 3.0.0.3.270 if it works for you!

On a sidenote, I've noticed my Galaxy Nexus is having issues staying connected to the 2.4GHz network I have set up ever since I upgraded. My girlfriend has also noticed her BlackBerry dropping back to mobile data. I'll play around with the configuration tomorrow (everything is their default values save for SSID and WPA2 encryption) and if that fails I'll just drop back to .270.

 

[nfodiz]

Upgraded to 3.0.0.4.354 and the 5ghz band is working great on our iphone 5's but my HP Touchpad is stalling out and loading webpages slow and sometimes just plain timing out. Switched the HP touchpad over to the 2.4ghz band and everything is fine. Rolled back to 270 and everything is running great on the 5ghz band again so for me this firmware is still a no go.

 

[RogerSC]

Also upgraded to 4.354. It worked fine for a few hours until I went away from my laptop for a couple of hours. Came back and my laptop was asleep. When I woke it up it was not connected to the wireless, so I fiddled around for a while and couldn't get the wireless to work. The laptop would not connect with the wireless. I tried disabling and re-enabling the laptop wireless interface a couple of times, no dice, would not connect.

I'm using 5GHz. wireless with my laptop, and it has connected at 450MHz. and worked fine for some time now including waking up from sleeping, this was the first I've experienced this problem.

Have gone back to 270.26b, and the laptop is fine again.

 

[dopefish]

BuTTuS' speed problems were Xbox-related - Xbox 360 Slim consoles suffering with performance issues were a known issue supposed to be fixed in this release with the "Optimize for Xbox" checkbox. Your problem is entirely different.

Just before ruling out .354, have you tried a factory reset?

Yes, i did a factory reset before and after upgrading to .354.

I just went back to merlins .270, now the speeds are much better again, for me. Even without Enhanced interference management. I don't know why. Maybe it is related to my end-devices...

 

[Henric]

New firmware dont like apple

Hi

Want to add my experience when upgrading the firmware (to 3.0.0.4.354) on my nt-66u.

Having fiber 100/100

With previous firmware (on the 5 GHz band) my speed was:
MBPr: 90/65 ping 4
Iphone 5: 70/80 ping 9
Ipad (3 gen): 40/40 ping 10

With the new firmware (on the 5 GHz band) the speed was:
MBPr: 80/50 ping 5
Iphone 5: 75/80 ping 9
Ipad (3 gen): 1/1 and a ping of around 100.

As you can see the new firmware killed my ipad, no matter what I did I could not make it work.

Further more, my almost new MBPr dropped it's connection after about an hour (just as someone further up in the tread stated) with the exeption mine was not at sleep. I could'nt get it to work again without a hard reboot of the computer... strange...

The only thing that seemed to be working properly was my iphone 5.

Off topic, how come the phone has better upload speed than my computer??

Anyway, I'm back on the .270 firmware and everything is just fine again.

Regards
H

 

[Trent Bates]

Without any experience with the inner workings of the firmware, I would hope that the existing 5GHz driver be retained and maybe Asus update only the 2.4 GHz driver.

I think I will be going with Merlin's 270.26b for now.

Honestly, I'm not entirely thrilled with my RT-N66u. I feel like I've had more issues with it than I ever did with my old Belkin Pre-N unit that I used for 3-4 years. I picked up a cheap OnNetworks N150R for $15 and even that seems to be more stable (though weaker) in the b/g band than the RT-N66u has been. But there are way too many variables for me to be sure about any of it. I didn't have InSSIDer handy with some of the older routers I've used.

 

[kerriskandiesinc]

No problems here, installed this Asus (beta?) and didn't reset the router, at first, my signal had dropped by about 15%, on both bands, did a router reboot, and all seems good......signal strength about where it was with Merlins latest build ( installed over the latest Merlin build, which was very stable)......

With the .354 though, I don't see any increase in signal strength, and my set up is very marginal for penetration anyway, signal seems about the same, on both 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz........maybe marginally (1-2%) stronger on the 2.4 channel............

I'm in a totally 100% Mac environment......although customers with other iOS systems are having no problems connecting ( they are literally at most 30 ft from router)........I am 75 ft away, at furthest Mac system...

Q: Should I do a router reset, or was a reboot good enough??...signal seems stable/ strong..........

 

[RogerSC]

Without any experience with the inner workings of the firmware, I would hope that the existing 5GHz driver be retained and maybe Asus update only the 2.4 GHz driver.

I think I will be going with Merlin's 270.26b for now.

I agree that the 2.4GHz. signal using 270.26b is at least slightly stronger than the 354 firmware one (5 bars for 270.26b., 4 for .354 in my living room, at the other end of my house). The 5GHz. signal seems about the same. This is just from signal strength, though, not from testing throughput, which can have different results. So I'm not currently motivated to move to .354 firmware, and will stay with 270.26b.

However, in respect to functionality compared to other routers, the RT-N66U is head and shoulders above other routers that I've had. Both the user interface (web GUI) and routing/wireless functionality have been good, and continual improvements are made. Yes, there have been problems, but that's not unusual, what's unusual is that both Asus and RMerlin have continued to work on the firmware for this router, and to put out timely fixes to problems. When I see slightly lower wireless signal strength, I'm still seeing better than I've had before. If I try new firmware and there are problems, there's always a stable version that I can fall back to that basically works well, at least that's been the case for a long time now.

With Linksys, Netgear, and DLink, I had problems that I'd wait 3-months for a fix for, and generally the fix would break other things, occasionally they'd fix a problem. Or a fix would never come, they would just stop supporting the "older" routers. It was more a process of learning to live with problems than expecting fixes. I'm very happy with the high level of functionality that this router has provided, and the fact when new features are introduced that have problems or problems crop up, I can expect them to be fixed in the near future.

 

[nfodiz]

I couldn't agree with you more RogerSC... ASUS firmware support is leaps and bounds above the rest.
I think I was experiencing similar issues as you did with your laptop. I would put my HP Touchpad to sleep and when I would wake it up it was almost like it dropped the connection on me. I would turn wifi on off on off and would eventually get the connection going again, but it was slow, laggy, wouldn't load a whole webpage. Very strange stuff going on, so I rolled back to 270 and rock solid again. This is all on the 5ghz band...

Strange thing is, iphone 5's were rock solid on 5ghz on 3.0.0.4.354

 

[valerima]

rt n66u

Dear Roger,

I am with you here fully.
I am keen to try also Victek's new Tomato RAF for our router - which is already beta "f"... , too.

 

[chief_os]

I saw that link rate on .26b FW on 5GHz and 2,4Ghz was 300 Mbps in mostly cases, but with same configuration on router and client (HP ProBook 6360b with Broadcom 2Tx2R module {43224AGN}) on new .354 FW on 2,4GHz I got 300Mbps, but on 5GHz - only 108 Mbps maximum link rate.

Real download (WAN->Wi-Fi) speed on .26b 5Ghz was ~95mbps and remains the same on .354
Upload (Wi-Fi->WAN) speed was ~75 mbps on .26b and now on .354 is only 40-50 mbps

P.S. there are no any neighbor networks on 5ghz band. Distance from router to laptop is 1-2 m.
I tried to set different channels, N-oly mode, 40Mhz width... Device is RT-N66U

 

[Trent Bates]

Yes, there have been problems, but that's not unusual, what's unusual is that both Asus and RMerlin have continued to work on the firmware for this router, and to put out timely fixes to problems.

That's a good point! I think I'm weary of messing with all of this stuff though. I just want it to work, and stay that way for a while because I have other stuff I want to focus on.
I have been experiencing problems in one form or another since 4.220 I think. (Many of those related to the Parental Control screen crashing. Now I understand that the naming of devices can affect it.)

I'm currently on Asus 4.270 and plan to go to Merlin's 4.270.26b. I want to clear nvram before and after and then add back in the 25+ assigned IP's, etc.

To add a bit more data, On b/g/n I have two routers running now. One is the RT-N66u and the other is the $15 On Networks N150R that I spoke of earlier. They are both on a closet shelf and the WAN of the N150R is being fed from LAN 1 of the RT-N66u. (different subnets)
Attached is an InSSIDer 2.1 graph of those two units from my laptop in my bedroom. This is near the Wii that I often stream TV shows from Hulu Plus. Guess which router has been more stable and consistent for the Wii? The cheap N150R! I've tried both routers alone for a few days and now they are together.

I'm a bit frustrated because I shouldn't have to run a second Wi-Fi router to watch Hulu Plus reliably. If the range of the N150R was better, I'd just switch to that.

The blue line is the RT-N66u and the purple line is the N150R. Thoughts?

 

[kerriskandiesinc]

UPDATE:

After 2 reboots, and about 12 hours running since the last one, my Wireless signal, both 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz seems to of improved by about 10%......this on a 'signal strength meter, not testing throughput................Mac is about 75 ft from Router, at the extreme end of a two building property, router located in a very tricky metal roofed building.....hard to get a strong signal out of it!!!!!

 

[Danish]

I would agree with you Roger if it wasnt for the Xbox live issues plaguing this router

 

[Chaosphere64]

Hi

Want to add my experience when upgrading the firmware (to 3.0.0.4.354) on my nt-66u.

[snip]

I second your statement "New firmware dont like apple". With firmware 3.0.0.5.354 I ran into severe trouble using the 5 GHz band with my Apple devices (iPhone 4(s) devices on 2.4 GHz band were Ok). The rates dropped significantly, as for instance from 130 down to 14 in the case my 2007 iMac 24" (RSSI around 60).

 

[Pierino]

5ghz band works fine on my iPad 2 on latest fw.

 

[bluepoint]

I second your statement "New firmware dont like apple". With firmware 3.0.0.5.354 I ran into severe trouble using the 5 GHz band with my Apple devices (iPhone 4(s) devices on 2.4 GHz band were Ok). The rates dropped significantly, as for instance from 130 down to 14 in the case my 2007 iMac 24" (RSSI around 60).

Not seeing your problem with iphone 5, ipad2 and ipad mini in here. Try to reset the NVRAM then set the 5GHz with a fixed channel preferably the lower channels.

Added: iphone 4(s) is only single band(2.4GHz) so yes, it will not connect to 5GHz. The only dual band iphone so far is iphone 5.

 

[scorpionro]

With 354 I couldn't connect on the 5GHz band with ASUSes own network adapters ( N53 and N66 ). Reverting to 270 fixed the problem for me.

 

[RMerlin]

With 354 I couldn't connect on the 5GHz band with ASUSes own network adapters ( N53 and N66 ). Reverting to 270 fixed the problem for me.

It's highly unlikely that Asus's own network adapters would be totally unable to connect with their own routers, so it's highly likely that the issue was either with your settings, or the need to reset your router to factory defaults after the firmware upgrade.

Same thing for people reporting issues with their iPhones: if two persons have the same router and device, and one of them can connect without any problem, then the other user's issue are most likely config-related, not firmware-related.

 

[ALyubovtsov]

Thank You!
Could You advice correct settings for WIFI 2.4 and 5 gHz, if i use iPhone 5 and iPad 4 only?

Thanks!