Asuswrt-Merlin 3.0.0.4.372.30_2

[RMerlin]

Howdy folks,

This one took longer than usual, but it's finally ready for public release. While strictly speaking there is no new feature in this version, it's still one of the most important releases in a long time (and the one that required the largest amount of work for me).

This new release is based on the 372 code. Note that this is an early version of the 372 code and NOT the final 372 code. If Asus releases any new FW based on 372, it will most likely use more up-to-date code.

UPDATE:
Build 3.0.0.4.372.30_2 has been uploaded, fixing various issues in 372.30.


The highlights:

Support for RT-AC56U
First, I'd like to thank Asus for providing me with an early sample of this router for development purposes, and for their support in making it possible for Asuswrt-Merlin to be available so soon. I find the RT-AC56U a very exciting router for custom firmware stuff, not because of its wireless performance (it has slightly shorter coverage, and is only a dual-stream router). but because this is a major step forward in terms of router architecture, with the switch to a dual-core processor, and to the ARM platform (similar to what is used in the majority of today's Android smartphones). The router is still difficult to find, but expect them to become more widely available over the coming weeks.

The dual-core CPU won't help with wireless performance, but it greatly enhances Samba sharing (a single core USB 3.0 router typically caps at 30 MB/s - the RT-AC56U can easily reach 50 MB/s over gigabit Ethernet!), and OpenVPN performance (I measured close to three times the throughput vs an RT-AC66U).

Nearly every existing Asuswrt-Merlin feature has been implemented on this router. A few exceptions:

• No Entware or Optware support (these software repositories are built for the MIPS architecture, and would require a complete recompile to work on the ARM architecture)
  
• The Ethernet Port status table can't report the last seen MACs (just implementing support for port state required quite a bit of low-level changes to the robocfg tool, which wasn't designed for the Ethernet switch used by this router).

Everything else is there: JFFS, OpenVPN, Stealth Mode (including the switch port LEDs at the back).

Of course since this is the first public release for this router, there might still be some issues coming up. But for the past week the RT-AC56U has become my primary router at home, so it should be fairly solid after getting two months of development time on it.


Downgraded RT-N66U to SDK 5.100
This one was quite tricky to pull off. Asus didn't just upgrade the wireless driver with FW 354, but the whole Broadcom SDK. This means downgrading to the more stable 5.100 wireless driver isn't as simple as copying three files - various other bits had to be removed. I had to try three different approach to find one that worked - in the end I had to surgically remove some specific bits of code/binary blobs.

So here it is: the RT-N66U 3.0.0.4.372.30 FW uses the older 270 drivers, fixing the stability issues. Note that this means that we lose the PPPoE HW acceleration that came with the newer CTF module. I am unsure if the XBox fix still works or not. But I believe far more users will benefit from the stable wireless driver. For the rest, build 354.29 Beta remains available.


Saved backups with OpenVPN keys can now be restored
There was a long-standing bug that was finally tracked down and fixed. If you use OpenVPN and keep a backup of your settings, you *must* go to the OpenVPN Keys page, click on Apply to re-save your keys (they will be slightly re-encoded), then make a new backup of your settings. This only affects people who are using OpenVPN, and upgrading from a version older than 372.30.

Note 1: saved settings from older FW versions, if you use OpenVPN, can not be safely restored on any FW version (due to that bug that was just fixed)

Note 2: If you downgrade FW, you will need to go to the OpenVPN keys page, and clean up the keys manually (simply do a search & replace in a text editor, replacing the ">" character with an end of line, then pasting them back).


The usual fixes and tweaks
Various other issues were fixed/tweaked, such as handling device with 15-chars long names, JFFS2 getting reformatted on reboots if you had just reformatted it, etc... The details are in the Changelog.

As usual, my thanks to all the users who provided feedback, bug reports, helped answer questions from other users on these forums, or donated through Paypal - as always, this is very appreciated!

 

[maylyn]

Great work RMerlin Nothing but the best from you

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks Maylyn

One additional note: while the source code is available on Git, the bits required to fully recompile the RT-AC56U firmware are not all on Github at this time. The code I got from Asus isn't fully integrated/merged with the MIPS code yet, so I have to compile the RT-AC56U totally separately, in a separate directory (for instance, the current development environment cannot handle two separate versions of the precompiled binaries, that means I have to manually copy them on top of the MIPS ones). I did publish everything that was related to GPL however, including the ARM toolchain. The kernel with all its associated patches is also on Github (2.6.36.4).

 

[Bad Teddy]

Welp, if an Xbox user finds out that the Xbox still works properly, please, post up. My network is at its most stable point of instability right now, so I really don't want to screw it up, hence I'm gonna be a fraidy cat about flashing lol.

 

[cmillar6]

Great work Merlin, thank-you very much for your hard work. Was the wireless driver downgraded only for the N66U? If not is a wipe of nvram necessary with this upgrade?

 

[RMerlin]

Great work Merlin, thank-you very much for your hard work. Was the wireless driver downgraded only for the N66U? If not is a wipe of nvram necessary with this upgrade?

The RT-N66U is the only device with a downgraded wireless and CTF. Everything else is still at the 372 level.

No need to wipe your nvram, unless upgrading from 270 or older.

 

[RMerlin]

If anyone has an RT-AC56U, please share your experience, since only two persons have run this firmware so far

 

[cmillar6]

my ping rates are still high (10ms average) to 192.168.1.1 with a wired connection, wireless they are < 1ms. Was this issue not fixed with the .372 build? I tried a brand new cat 5e cable but still get the same results.

 

[RMerlin]

my ping rates are still high (10ms average) to 192.168.1.1 with a wired connection, wireless they are < 1ms. Was this issue not fixed with the .372 build? I tried a brand new cat 5e cable but still get the same results.

Asus fixed it in that beta 372 release that they sent me, however the 372 code I have was an earlier snapshot. No idea what change they did afterward to fix that issue, but it wasn't in the 372 branch yet.

 

[erwinquek]

Thanks Merlin for your hard work.

With this firmware, accessing DDNS name from internal network to port forwarded servers will not work. Access from public network works fine.

Do not have this problem with pass firmware and original ASUS firmware. Please take a look.

 

[bluepoint]

You might want to change the title of your thread.

 

[Maghook]

Thank you so much for this release Merlin!

I use my RT-N66U in AP mode. Upgraded from 354.29 directly to 372.30 without having nvram cleared. Last time cleared nvram was with 354.29.

Noticed that with changing TX power on 2,4GHz in advanced settings the RT-N66U rebooted. My assumption is that this behaviour is the indirect result of the downgrade of the wireless driver or not?

 

[tritius]

You might want to change the tittle of your thread.

I agree
Thank you Merlin ... I truly appreciate your hard work !!!

 

[krabs]

Thanks for this new release
I notice a harmless issue I think
It reports an ext2 filesystem as ext 4

Jan  1 01:00:13 pre-mount: started [/dev/sda3]
Jan  1 01:00:13 e2fsck: Data: clean, 846/1782368 files, 5465730/7128832 blocks
Jan  1 01:00:13 hotplug[356]: USB ext4 fs at /dev/sda3 mounted on /tmp/mnt/data
Jan  1 01:00:15 disk monitor: be idle
Jan  1 01:00:16 rc_service: hotplug 356:notify_rc restart_nasapps
Jan  1 01:00:16 dnsmasq[306]: read /etc/hosts - 5 addresses
Jan  1 01:00:16 pre-mount: started [/dev/sda2]
Jan  1 01:00:16 FTP Server: daemon is stoped
Jan  1 01:00:16 Samba Server: smb daemon is stoped
Jan  1 01:00:16 e2fsck: Entware: clean, 4435/114688 files, 15083/458752 blocks (check in 4 mounts)
Jan  1 01:00:16 hotplug[368]: USB ext4 fs at /dev/sda2 mounted on /tmp/mnt/entware

output of mount command

/dev/sda3 on /tmp/mnt/data type ext2 (rw,nodev,noatime)
/dev/sda2 on /tmp/mnt/entware type ext2 (rw,nodev,noatime)

 

[miodzicho]

Entware script removed ?

entware-setup.sh
-sh: entware-setup.sh: not found

 

[darkstalker]

Unfortunate to say, but my DL speed dropped with this firmware. I've got a 300/300 FTTH connection and with the previous firmwares; both 270.26b and the 3xx beta's, I got my max. speed with a wired connection. With this firmware, my speed caps around 250Mbit like a straight line. Also the cpu usage skyrockets to 0.90 instead of the usual 0.10ish, which is weird since QoS or any other breaking HW acceleration feature is turned off. Also, AI-disk, cloud and other Filters are turned off. Even turning the firewall off doesn't help

nevermind: I went back to 270.26b and speeds stayed 250Mbit. I noticed how I got a new IP address after I initially upgraded to the new firmware. After I went back to 270.26b I still got 250Mbit. When I did a factory reset, I got my old IP back and speeds were back to normal, lol... I then re-upgraded to this new firmware; kept my old IP and speeds. Now that's weird, wouldn't you say, how a different IP (range) can affect speeds.

 

[geko53]

2 bugs found...

Thanks very much indeed for your valuable efforts, Eric!

Flashed your build on a "clean" NVRAM (set it to factory default before flashing), and now Wi-Fi works on 2.4G and on 5G as well...

BUT: when entering control channel manually at 2.4 GHz this entry seems to be overruled by the router, the channels 6 + 8 are chosen automatically (see screenshot 1). I tried to reboot and change it again but with no effect.

Another small cosmetic flaw:

When using modem connection as internet access the window "Internet status" at Network Map doesn't show any values for WAN IP and Gateway (see screenshot 2). This behavior seems not to be related with browser confusions - no change whe using different browsers or cleaning cache before...

 

[Martineau]

Great work RMerlin, I really appreciate your considerable technical skill/efforts to successfully rectify the RT-N66U 5G connectivity issues with this release.

However, (despite clearing NVRAM and reflashing twice), I've noticed that the PPTP server doesn't work?...although the OpenVPN server is fine.

Secondly, the Dual-WAN fail-over to the 3G modem no longer works.

Sadly, I have now reverted back to 354.29 since the WAN fail-over is a crucial feature for me.

Regards,

 

[marks1723]

Merlin RT-N66U_3.0.0.4_372.30 Now Available

The Merlin RT-N66U_3.0.0.4_372.30 is now available to download at the link below. Thanks Merlin.

http://www.mediafire.com/asuswrt-merlin/#a5gwz5qgq0d3q

 

[zenmota]

Bug with IE and new Firmware

On the Network Map page at bottom left where it has number of Clients, the number of clients seems to be right, but when I click the icon to show the Client Status all I get is the Refresh button showing with the busy circling cursor to the right of it. It just stays like that forever never showing the clients. However, it seems that if I click the Refresh button enough times, it will eventually show the Client List.

This is with Windows 8 Pro 64bit, IE 10 and RT-N66U router. I tried with Google Chrome and the problem is not there, Client List shows almost right away. Seems to be another IE problem.

I have attached a pic of it.

Thanks for the great firmware work Merlin.....