Release Asuswrt-Merlin 386.12_6 is now available for AC models

[heywire]

Or, they did not, depending on your own Asus Router and the specific config you've applied to it.
I sold my AC-68U - C1 to a colleague, way back when it was running 386.7 (Merlin).
He's since regularly upgraded it and is now running it on 386-12_6 (Merlin) without ANY issues on his (quite simple, to be fair) home setup.

The main topic of discussion with respect to instability and lagging was AC86U, not AC68U/AC66_B1. Different chipset platform.

As @bibikalka said above, 386.7_2 was one of the most stable versions (GPL 386_48966), so it's worth a try, @heywire .

Then stability issues started occurring with newer GPLs, as far as I can see:
386.9 - 386.11 (GPL 386_50757)
386.12+ (GPL 386_51997)

Good observation. I wish I had been more diligent at logging this. I think there was a string of firmware releases after the last stable one where I was experiencing only partial stability, and by the time I realized the good times were up and this was not one-time off incidents, I was already a few versions along, trying to achieve stability with them. I also have an environment where I don't always get feedback from the other people in the apartment complex once instability occurs, particularly when it's intermittent issues.

I'm also hesitant of running such old firmware for security reasons. When there also are people claiming 100% stability with new versions, there is a drive in you to just get to the bottom of the issues. Unfortunately, I've too late come to the realization that anything resembling long-term stability is just not in the cards with Asus and their seemingly non-existent quality control; in particular the AC86U - it's simply a spin roulette with teach firmware update, at least if you don't spend an afternoon resetting the thing to oblivion and back, unless you have an ideal setup of like one single Asus client of the same generation connected.

I have suggested structured testing/benchmarking routines and AI scanning in order to identify issues that pop up across versions, but this was evidently not interesting because why solve problems in case they are "user errors" (which I mistakenly thought what the forum was for).

I also am considering doing a full reset of the router, but I have reset the router before when I had firmware-related issues, and it didn't help, off course. And one hurdle I have with respect to reset besides it's physical location, is that I have AC66_B1 routers where the Aimesh pairing seems completely bricked(yes, I tested everything, more than thrice, and so I cannot afford breaking the current pairing that actually works (tried to downflash fw versions, both official and merlin, years back, but was unable to restore the ability to pair. And before somebody comes along with the inevitable wise-guy whining about them being 10 years old, I bought these new around 2019/20 (AC66_B1 was released 2018, even if build on the same base as AC68U, another reason why it would be crazy to EOL the latter).

So, that is why I was also hoping for a new GPL soon, and that it would be a stable one so that we can re-calibrate around a new, recent 100% stable version.

And then, if I fall too far behind on stable versions after that, I'll just throw the whole thing behind a validated, 100% stable across time, opnsense/pfsense box and relegate the Asus setup with the stable firmware to only do the wireless, which I think will limit the security threats enough (only wifi exploits, which I think are less common, and has a far smaller target surface vs the whole internet).

Anyways, that's my thoughts, hopes and wishes in case anybody wants to draw on that.

(That is, if I don't end up in a white straight jacket before that, for running around in the town square, ranting and raving, warning everybody to avoiding Asus all together while carrying bits and pieces of the blood-stained routers dangling around my neck.)

 

[Igor-KC]

Hi, this came up for me today and I never saw it come up in my system log Firmware: 386.12_6 RT-AC68U

 

[learning_curve]

The main topic of discussion with respect to instability and lagging was AC86U, not AC68U/AC66_B1. Different chipset platform.

It was for you, yes fully agreed.
My reply (that you've quoted and replied to) was to a post from @KrypteX which was more generic / firmware focused and did not specifically refer to the AC86U router, so sticking with that more generic / firmware focused theme, my reply included "...depending on your own Asus Router and the specific config you've applied to it" which covered all bases.

 

[heywire]

It was for you, yes fully agreed.

No, what I meant is that, as far as I can remember, it is the main theme of the threads (.12/.2/.4/.6), not just for me. I have seen a pattern of numerous people with AC86/HND-platform suffering instability/buffering problems etc, and not with AC68. This concurs with previous experiences, where the AC86 experiences far more firmware-issues and bugs than AC68U.

I could be wrong, tho. Which reminds me: anyone know how to display multiple/all pages at once? Browsing through a long forum thread like this feels like doing programming through a pirate-binocular. You can't simply do a Ctrl+F and trace back things that happened earlier in the thread without clicking, loading etc 325 times.. absolutely maddening!

 

[Maverickcdn]

No, what I meant is that, as far as I can remember, it is the main theme of the threads (.12/.2/.4/.6), not just for me. I have seen a pattern of numerous people with AC86/HND-platform suffering instability/buffering problems etc, and not with AC68. This concurs with previous experiences, where the AC86 experiences far more firmware-issues and bugs than AC68U.

I could be wrong, tho. Which reminds me: anyone know how to display multiple/all pages at once? Browsing through a long forum thread like this feels like doing programming through a pirate-binocular. You can't simply do a Ctrl+F and trace back things that happened earlier in the thread without clicking, loading etc 325 times.. absolutely maddening!

Just as a point of reference I've been running a AC86U for nearly 5 years with up times over 100+ days and have no issues

I did have some 5GHZ stability issues (slow/freq key renewal interrupting access) but after adjusting DHCP/GroupKey/PMK cache/reauth timeouts in nvram I've had zero issues (I use WPA2-Enterprise)

 

[HorseCalledHorse]

Just as a point of reference I've been running a AC86U for nearly 5 years with up times over 100+ days and have no issues

Yep, same for me: over four years with my AC86U without issue, including all the 386.12 builds. And my home network (the 86U with a Netgear R7000 as a wired access point) is used all the time: wife and I working from home, with two teenage boys who are online 100% of their time indoors. If there were any problems with wired or wireless devices, I would hear about it.

 

[banger]

Main router running 12_6 disappeared from my network after 15 days uptime, couldn't access router page and AImesh routers disappeared. Had to hard reboot.

 

[heywire]

Main router running 12_6 disappeared from my network after 15 days uptime, couldn't access router page and AImesh routers disappeared. Had to hard reboot.

Yep, this is the exact same phenomenon that I described earlier in the thread (and earlier threads), and has been plaguing me since at least 386.10 (.12 introduced intermittent connection drops as well). Has happened more frequently than 15 days for the most part, tho.

If you read earlier in the thread, what happened to me was that the main AC86 router (not the aimesh nodes) eventually came back online (after 8 minutes if I remember correctly, and I managed to extract the logs via ethernet by connecting over ethernet. Not sure if the wireless features of the main AC86 node was working ok, as I didn't have physical access to it at the time.

Maybe you can confirm whether it does and you can extract the logs next time it happens?

These are the exact kind of "user error" correlations that an AI scan would be able to pick up, btw. Which would at least give us confirmation that this are not anecdotal examples, indicating a deeper issue. Add some structured testing/benchmarking routines and make people file a report with the stock firmware if reproducible there, and we could actually get somewhere in terms of getting these issues resolved.

 

[Sixsonic]

chromecast not showing up on RT-AC88U with this latest version, must be something in the firmware? RT-AC68U works fine.

Any news on chromecast issues?

 

[unclebuk]

I have two Asus routers, an AC88U (very good, stable) currently in storage and my current "ride" a 2017 model year AC86U on merlin 384.19 (refer to attached scr-shot) chugging along in a hot, under-ventilated non air conditioned room in hot and humid SE Asia and performance and reliability has been stellar.

The plastc housing has virtually disintegrated likely due to thermal stress's. I am pondering f/w upgrade to 386.10 despite very stable operation with current 384.19 with moderate use from 2 or 3 iPads, iPhones, a few laptops, TV's, android devices galore, guest network initiated along with OpenVPN Client and OpenVPN server operational. All is good, so I ask why I need to update the Merlin f/w?

After reading the reports of faulty and failing 86U's I question if I should leave well enough alone and motor on under current configurations.

 

[Tech9]

All is good, so I ask why I need to update the Merlin f/w?

Because you are missing >3.5 years of security fixes?

 

[TnF]

Main router running 12_6 disappeared from my network after 15 days uptime, couldn't access router page and AImesh routers disappeared. Had to hard reboot.

It's since 386.12_2, yet they tell me it's fine, it's not, or they mean it's not merlin's fault, def asus borged something in the code. fail

 

[unclebuk]

Because you are missing >3.5 years of security fixes?

With zero security incursions till date despite it all. What security issue is most likely to affect outdated merlin firmwares? Not sure how I can become compromised and what is at risk inherent with my hardware configuration? Not real sure what security risks and harms could come my way since I have never had a security issue using the current firmwares. In fact I seldom read security related problems reported here. Seems to be not an issue. But do advise the worst case scenario I risk by this. Thanks,

 

[jomcty]

I'd wager to guess even more have "lost" their router not to complete hardware failure, but firmware-related instability which they interpret as "hardware failure" based, i must say, frequently on misinformation spread by you.


The latest firmware versions have been treating me badly, partly because I've been sloppy with the rollbacks, which again is partly due to the problems' intermittent nature - they can seem to work for a while, and then do a total crash on me like .11 did. They can work for a while after a reboot, but then it turns out it is not long term stable.

Not long ago, I actually had a stable AC86U working. I'm back on .10 ATM, trying to figure out if it was .10 or .9 that gave me long term stability.

This is not exclusive to AC86 btw, as I've experienced fw instability with both AX88u and AC68u (which you't thought they had stabilized by now and learned their lesson on, but you'd be wrong) relatively recently. All in all, I want more focus on Asus' shirtty fw QC than false reports on hardware failure, because I've already invested a pretty penny in my setup, and want to get it to work.

I tried to launch the idea of creating a standardized test-battery where all users can do a couple of stress-tests designed to tease out common failures on new firmware versions, but only received feedback on how this wouldn't be 100% guaranteed to solve every problem, which was never my point btw. Nevertheless...


It is a wifi 5 router which has been shown to perform equally if not better than AX routers on AC units, 7 has barely hit the market yet. 7 years since it hit the market, yes, sold long after that. We're not talking about smartphones here, the operational lifecycle of a top-tear wifi router doing simple internet sharing should not be 3-5 years.


If we managed to land on which version was long term stable across most setups, we could extend the life of this router, which performs very well. The money is already spent, there is no way to get it back unless you still have the warranty. Thus, I recommend finding a stable firmware and rolling back to it until a new stable version appears, over binning it just because the last one doesn't.

FWIW, six plus year old RT-AC86U (w/ yazFi) at my daughter's apartment. Dirty upgrades last three or so upgrades.

Only issue it seems to have has every now and then the 2.4Ghz devices lose coherent WiFi connection to router. They are connected, but the Rx/Tx speeds are reported as "??? / ??? MHz". A simple restart_wireless fixes the issue.

 

[L&LD]

With zero security incursions till date despite it all. What security issue is most likely to affect outdated merlin firmwares? Not sure how I can become compromised and what is at risk inherent with my hardware configuration? Not real sure what security risks and harms could come my way since I have never had a security issue using the current firmwares. In fact I seldom read security related problems reported here. Seems to be not an issue. But do advise the worst case scenario I risk by this. Thanks,

Zero security incursions that you know of.

The best/smartest malware is one that you don't know you have.

I would not be running that firmware today. Even as a Media Bridge, in double NAT, or any other mode that you may feel 'safe' in. Malware writers don't follow any rules. I would consider your network compromised at this point until proven otherwise.

 

[banger]

It's since 386.12_2, yet they tell me it's fine, it's not, or they mean it's not merlin's fault, def asus borged something in the code. fail

Funny thing my Alexa was still playing music so 5ghz was up and I could browse the internet on a wired PC just couldn't access the router page. I will wait if it happens again and see if it comes back. Nothing in logs just looks like a restart.

 

[banger]

Zero security incursions that you know of.

The best/smartest malware is one that you don't know you have.

I would not be running that firmware today. Even as a Media Bridge, in double NAT, or any other mode that you may feel 'safe' in. Malware writers don't follow any rules. I would consider your network compromised at this point until proven otherwise.

I saw a headline the other day, think it was the Register, saying there is a bounty on Asus router exploits on the dark web.

 

[Tech9]

What security issue is most likely to affect outdated merlin firmwares?

As far as I remember around this firmware there was a malware infecting the routers in unknown way preventing AiProtection signatures update. It was replacing one 0 with the letter O. @Adamm released Skynet script update because of it and affected routes had to be wiped off clean and reconfigured. A firmware >3.5 years old is a security risk. What exactly risk - I can't predict what is going to happen to your router. You may get hit tomorrow, I don't know. You may have malware running already, I don't know.

 

[unclebuk]

Zero security incursions that you know of.

The best/smartest malware is one that you don't know you have.

I would not be running that firmware today. Even as a Media Bridge, in double NAT, or any other mode that you may feel 'safe' in. Malware writers don't follow any rules. I would consider your network compromised at this point until proven otherwise.

The burden of proof is on you, so do tell how , what, has compromised me? Do you think men can breastfeed babies? LOL. This malware, that I don't know I have is what exactly and what is it doing?

Do you tell all your clients, customers, employer, anyone that asks, etc that "I would consider your network compromised at this point until proven otherwise."

(Edit: removed political comment. -rm)

 

[unclebuk]

AiProtection signatures update. It was replacing one 0 with the letter O. @Adamm released Skynet script update because of it and affected

I have never used AiProtection. Does it work and is it fit for purpose or just a bit of unnecessary gagetry taking up space?