Asuswrt-Merlin - custom build of the Asus RT-N66U firmware

[RMerlin]

RMerlin,

Is there a way to flash your version onto the RT-N16? Maybe hacking the the firmwares checksum or something.

If not, have you thought about giving it support in your firmware or even building a different version?

It would be great.

Thanks for all your hard work.

Don't even try to force flashing my build - different hardware, it won't work.

What you'd want to do is what MFighter is (attempting) doing: recompiling it from my sources. Unless Asus are leaving out some prebuilt files in their RT-N66U tarball, it should work.

Actually, I am working these days on rebuilding my mods on top of 3.0.0.3.130, by reusing the sources provided for the RT-N53 (which are newer). That means I might be able to provide some of Asus' fixes even before they actually release them for the RT-N66U I saw for instance that they apparently fixed the issue where flashing over HTTPS would crash.

 

[RMerlin]

I got 3.0.0.3.130 up and running on my RT-N66U (by using the RT-N53 newer source code). Still some work left to do (and lots of testing as well), but so far so good. Most of my modifications have been merged successfully.

Here's a summary of the changes I noticed Asus did between 108 and 130:

* Many IPv6-level changes, including basic firewall default rules, firewall logging
* Keyword-based filtering (in addition to the existing URL filter)
* PPTP settings split on two pages
* HTTPS upload fixed (need to test it, but I saw the code in place)
* Updated radvd
* UTF-8 webpages
* ISP meter (I need to see if that conflicts with the original traffic meter)
* A possible fix related to DST that never worked quite right (?)
* And a whole bunch of changes left and right, probably addressing various issues (and possibly creating new ones )

They also did a lot of work around dual-WAN support (for devices that can support it) and their cloudsync client.

 

[shantanugoel]

^^ Does it also have the 64k nvram change which was there in .25 beta?

 

[RMerlin]

^^ Does it also have the 64k nvram change which was there in .25 beta?

No. I suspect that build 25 was a test branch (and a not very stable one at that).

 

[RMerlin]

I need guinea pigs.... I mean, brave testers

I tracked down the last crashing issue of 3.0.0.3.130.8 (that's correct, this is based on 3.0.0.3.130 - 3.0.0.4.130 to be more accurate ) and I'll need help thoroughly testing this new puppy, since a lot of the underlying code has changed since build 108.

Send me a PM if you are willing to help me test it. Be warned that you will have to wipe your router's configuration to test this. I will need testing done specifically on these:

• IPv6 support
• VPN support
• Overall stability and performance under high load - torrents, fast Internet connections, etc...
• Potential fix for those who have a Sonos (or another network device that was causing a similar issue, where the webui would fail to load)
• Downloadmaster

And no, this version does NOT increase the nvram size.

While I haven't had any issue with flashing (having flashed over 15-20 test builds in the past few nights!), it's also best if people willing to help knew how to put their router in recovery mode so they can reflash build 108 in case of any unforeseen issue (tho highly unlikely).

 

[TRaSH]

i tried your 108.7 build today,
coming from .112 default asus firmware.
flash went okay.
but my 5 GHz radio doesn't show up anymore even after i tried to reboot and turn the radio off and on again.
is this a known issue ?

 

[RMerlin]

i tried your 108.7 build today,
coming from .112 default asus firmware.
flash went okay.
but my 5 GHz radio doesn't show up anymore even after i tried to reboot and turn the radio off and on again.
is this a known issue ?

5 GHz works fine for me, as I use it with my Xoom tablet.

Try doing a backup of your settings, then resetting everything to factory defaults to see if it helps. I'm not aware of any wifi-related change between 108 and 112 however.

 

[TRaSH]

well i tried the factory reset and that worked,
but it doesn't want to set the backup i made back from the default-asus .108 firmware.
tried it twice.

when i try to set the power of the 5Ghz to 100 mw the router reboots and the 5 GHz is gone.
weird

 

[RMerlin]

well i tried the factory reset and that worked,
but it doesn't want to set the backup i made back from the default-asus .108 firmware.
tried it twice.

when i try to set the power of the 5Ghz to 100 mw the router reboots and the 5 GHz is gone.
weird

I remember seeing one other person reporting a problem when trying to change the power output on their 5 GHz channel. I can't reproduce the issue on my current development version (did a lot of power output tests last night), so my advice is to keep it at default for now.

BTW, one thing to note: Asus doesn't directly apply the mW output value you set. Instead, they use a very loose table to convert mW into quarter dbm and apply that value to the radios, assigning whole range to specific output values. For example, here is how they convert the mW value you enter, on the 5 GHz band:

mW input: quarter dbm applied
------------------------
0-29: 48 qdbm
30-49: 56 qdbm
50-79: 64 qdbm

80: hardcoded default value

81-110: 66 qdbm
111-140: 78 qdbm
141-170: 80 qdbm
171-200: 82 qdbm
201-230: 84 qdbm
231 and more: 86 qdbm

So for instance, if you increase from 80 to 100 mW, you will probably still be applying the same power output, as the next step increase is at 111 mW.

On the 2.4 GHz radio, that scale goes all the way up past 431 mW, for a maximum of 96 quarter dBM.

 

[TRaSH]

okay gooed to know,
i can't raise above 100 anyway (seems it isn't allowed here)

going back to default .108 seems to work without a issue when changing the power output.

but it kinda sucks that i'm not able to restore the backup cfg
i did use .112 before but i heard it's full of bugs so i downgraded to .108 perhaps it left some stuff behind.
but even after a factory reset i'm not able to to restore the cfg file.

but your firmware looks promising,
still miss a few things on this router what i would like to see.
- bandwidth controlled guest account.
- able to name the clients that are connected based on mac address (my old cisco was able to do that)

could be more but i only got this router like for 2 weeks.

for the time beeing i stick with stock .108

 

[RMerlin]

okay gooed to know,
but it kinda sucks that i'm not able to restore the backup cfg
i did use .112 before but i heard it's full of bugs so i downgraded to .108 perhaps it left some stuff behind.
but even after a factory reset i'm not able to to restore the cfg file.

Make sure you are on the Settings Restore page, and not on the Firmware Upgrade page. I did that silly mistake myself once, that's why I'm suggesting making sure you aren't doing the same mistake

 

[RMerlin]

For those running the build 130 beta, note that QoS is currently broken with it. Asus changed the way they handle QoS, and the kernel is missing a required module. Disable QoS for now, I'll try to have an updated version available within the next day.

 

[AnthonyArmato]

I missed 130 somehow. Was there anything between 116 and 130 ?

 

[Gitsum]

Seems adding some forwarded ports breaks the internet with your .130 version too. E-mail sent.

 

[RMerlin]

I missed 130 somehow. Was there anything between 116 and 130 ?

130 was only released for the RT-N53. No changelog, since that was the first release based on Asuswrt for that router.

 

[RMerlin]

Seems adding some forwarded ports breaks the internet with your .130 version too. E-mail sent.

Got your mail, thanks. Haven't experienced any issue with port forwarding here, I'll check if there wouldn't be an issue with the presets.

I'm currently working on the QoS issue. I'm back to where I was three days ago, where just powering on my laptop causes the router to reboot. Something is broken with the new QoS rules Asus has been using in the past few versions that relies on the nf_physdev module. I might have to revert the QoS code back to the 108 code if I can't figure out what's going on.

 

[RMerlin]

The port forwarding issue is fixed. That bug has actually been in Asus's firmware for a long time... Their game profile presets apply a port list in this format:

20000:20050,1200

While the router correctly splits that into two rules in the NAT table, it does not do so in the Filter table as it adds it to the FORWARD list, and ends up creating invalid iptable rules, which obviously then fail to apply to the router.

The more I dig into Asus's code, the more depressed I get. I knew from past experience that their firmwares were bad, having dealt with firmware-related issues with numerous RT-N10 and RT-N12 I installed for various customers, plus the broken build 90 that shipped with the RT-N66U. But I would have expected that they would have fixed most of those completely broken features by now. Guess not...

On the QoS issue, the bug lies in the Netfilter Bridge module. If the kernel is compiled with this option, then certain packets will crash the router. I can easily reproduce that just by turning my laptop on and connecting to wireless: instant router crash. The same crash also occurs in Asus's own 3.0.0.3.125 beta, so I suspect it might be a kernel-level bug. I tried backporting a few netfilter bridge patches from newer kernels, but no luck so far. Debugging this would require getting a serial cable and voiding the warranty on my 200$ router. No thanks. I'll let Asus fix that one on their own, while I simply revert back to build 108 QoS code.

 

[edgedemon]

How bad is the asus firmware - is it worth even trying or should I just stick yours or the latest tomato firmware on the router.
I ask as I have a brand new rt-n66u sitting unboxed that arrived this morning
I was intending to run stock for a while as it has been years since I last ran a stock manufacturers firmware, but until dd-wrt can get a decent revision with the nvram issues that they are having, I thought Id give it go.

Now Im considering just giving stock a miss and whacking tomato code on there if the asus firmware is wack or maybe yours as Im presuming that you are ironing out the bugs

Off to have a read...

 

[RMerlin]

Version 3.0.0.3.108 of the firmware is usable. The main issues I found with Asus's original firmware of that version are:

- Port forwarding game profiles can break the firewall (don't use any rule that has both a range AND a single port, i.e. 1111:2222,3333)
- QoS causes issues to wireless performance
- VPN can sometime reboot the router when you access a device on your network over VPN, and are using an IP block in the same subnet as the DHCP
- Having a device on the network with a DLNA server name longer than 16 characters can lead to issues with the webui
- IPv6 isn't firewalled by default
- Nvram is only 32KB when it was intended to be 64KB

Those are the issues that I found. There are probably a few others, but none as glaring. I fixed many of these in my builds (the VPN one still eludes me however, and the nvram fix will have to come from Asus), so my recommendation would be to use my modded firmware if you want a stock experience with fewer bugs. Otherwise, I believe the recent build of Tomato is pretty good at this point, now that it also uses the same chipset driver as the Asus firmware.

If you insist on using the stock firmware, 3.0.0.3.108 is the most stable one at this time IMHO.

I'd say once nvram is fixed, the day DD-WRT gets more stable on the RT-N66U, this will be an awesome device to run it. The hardware is excellent. All it needs is equally excellent software.

 

[edgedemon]

Thanks for the update - am trying your firmware now