Asuswrt-Merlin - Custom firmware for RT-N16

[RMerlin]

I enabled Guest ssid, and my devices connect to the net no problems using it, not sure if there's anything else to test, but the net works.

Just a few questions.

1. Were do I lower the WiFi antenna transmit power?

2. How do I make my voip ata connected to LAN port, the highest priority of all?


Also, in future firmwares, would it be possible to include changing the login name, and something I really would love to be able to do is have the Guest WiFi use its own DNS servers. Would these be possible, or too complicated to implement?


Thanks again, so far its been working nicely!

Thanks for the feedback on multiple SSIDs

1) Power adjustment isn't enabled by Asus on the RT-N16. I don't know if it's because it's not adjustable on the RT-N16 hardware or just because they didn't enable it.

2) What I do with my Cisco ATA is setup a QoS rule with "High" priority, matching it with the ATA MAC address.

3) Login name: I need to see if it's doable, or if it's hardcoded all over the place.

4) DNS: not easily doable I'm afraid.

 

[snb]

Thanks for the feedback on multiple SSIDs

1) Power adjustment isn't enabled by Asus on the RT-N16. I don't know if it's because it's not adjustable on the RT-N16 hardware or just because they didn't enable it.

2) What I do with my Cisco ATA is setup a QoS rule with "High" priority, matching it with the ATA MAC address.

3) Login name: I need to see if it's doable, or if it's hardcoded all over the place.

4) DNS: not easily doable I'm afraid.

No worries!


1. Oh ok, it's just because I stated it as something I wanted to do in the other thread, and I assumed from your reply that its doable, hehe, no problems
But just to answer your question, it was available and working in the ddwrt FW I was using.


2. Yeah, I guessed that I should put my ATA's IP/MAC in the source field, but what should I put in the "service" drop down box, "destination", "protocol" and "transferred" fields?


3. cool


4. Damn, have been really wanting this feature, nothing in the ddwrt fw I was using either. It would come in really handy! Oh well


Thanks again

 

[RMerlin]

2. Yeah, I guessed that I should put my ATA's IP/MAC in the source field, but what should I put in the "service" drop down box, "destination", "protocol" and "transferred" fields?

Service is just a description, so you can put VoIP for instance.
I set protocol to TCP/UDP, and leave other fields empty.

 

[snb]

Service is just a description, so you can put VoIP for instance.
I set protocol to TCP/UDP, and leave other fields empty.

Thanks. Yep, I should never try and set up router settings when sleepy, after I posted, I went back and realized you can click in the service field to put your own name, doh
I left transfer empty ( after realizing you can click on the heading and a pop description appears, haha )

For dest. port I put in the 2 ports that my voip provider says to use, with a comma between them.
I hope that's correct, I guess we'll see when the calls are made and if any complaints are thrown at me


Thanks Merlin.

 

[convert65]

Roaming between access points

Hi Merlin,

I’ve been running your FW on my RT-N16 for a few days now, so far it’s very stable and best of all ,the wifi through put is the same as Asus’ own FW. I’m getting about 10MB/s read & write to my NAS.

One thing I have noticed though, is that when roaming between access points, the internet connection to my laptop/phone is dropped and then quickly restored. For example; when roaming between access points on a Skype call, the call will drop. Or if I’m downloading a large file the download will fail. The same happens with the Asus stock FW. I’ve tried .108 and .155.

I’ve also tried DD-WRT and Tomato (Shibby and Toastman builds). Roaming between access points on DD-WRT and Tomato is seamless, never a dropped connection. I don’t need all the features of DD-WRT or Tomato, and the big negative for both of these is the wifi speed, it tops out at about 6MB/s.

I’d love the wireless speed of your FW with roaming stability. I know you don’t have a N16 to test on, how is the roaming stability on your N66U? Any chance of a future release from you that addresses roaming even if Asus don’t fix it in their releases?

The N16 is my main router and it is wired with Cat5e to an Airport Extreme 4th Gen in Bridge Mode. I've also substituted the Airport Extreme for a Asus RT-N10+ configured as an AP with DD-WRT. Results are the same.

FIXED: By disabling the 'Hardware Accelerator' on the LAN-> Switch Control page of the GUI, roaming between access points now works.

 

[RMerlin]

I don't understand what you mean by roaming between access points in this case, sorry.

 

[applyuser]

Thanks you for update

When I update your firmware and factory reset all and set VPN again ,the VPN function is successfully working, thank you your improve and update, I like add WOL function, thank you so much, I must still update and support u!!!

 

[convert65]

I don't understand what you mean by roaming between access points in this case, sorry.

My house is 4 floors. On the 2nd floor the N16 router is configured to do the DCHP and is connected to the cable modem/internet. My Access Point is in my office on the 4th floor. The LAN port of the AP is hard wired to a LAN port of the N16. Wifi Settings for router and access point are the same SSID, WPA2-Personal, AES, N Only, 20MHz. Router is on Channel 6 and the AP is on Ch1. The Beacon Interval on the N16 is set to 50. Wifi interference is low with only 2 or 3 other networks around.
Without the AP I can get the wifi signal from the 2nd floor when I'm on the 4th floor, but the data rate is very low due to the weak signal.
My current set up gives me fast wifi in every part of my home.


Using Skype as an example; if i start a call in my office and walk (roam) down to the 2nd Floor, at some point of the journey my laptop/phone will switch it's wifi connection from the AP to the router, as it should.

With yours and Asus' FW, at the point when the wifi switches from AP to Router (or vice-versa) the Skype call will drop.

With DD-WRT & Tomato, the wifi connection will switch from AP to Router (and vice-versa) without dropping the Skype call.

Does this make sense?

 

[RMerlin]

I see what you mean now. I'm afraid there isn't much I can do about it, I'm even a bit surprised that it would actually work, considering that you are binding to a different socket as you change access point. This must have to do with the internal architecture of how wifi connections are handled. This is best left to Asus's engineers who are more skilled than me in this department - I don't want to mess with the actual inner workings of networking, or else I might end up breaking more things than fixing.

I suggest you send Asus an Email about it (make sure you do your tests with the latest official firmware, to take out of the equation any potential issue that might be specific to newer beta releases)

 

[mackworth]

Hi RMerlin,
Running your latest firmware, everything seems great.

I have a question regarding a comment posted on the asus board:

Indeed. This is now confirmed. I now deleted this specific POSTROUTING MASQ rule with "iptables -D POSTROUTING 3 -t nat" and everything works as it should! No more NAT between WLAN and LAN and the traffic to Internet is still NAT-ed. Now the question is WHY Router creates MASQ rule: "MASQUERADE all -- 192.168.1.0/24 192.168.1.0/24" !?

I know you responded to this but I had a follow up question.

Can you better explain the side affects this could cause? Is this "bad"?

 

[RMerlin]

Hi RMerlin,
Running your latest firmware, everything seems great.

I have a question regarding a comment posted on the asus board:



I know you responded to this but I had a follow up question.

Can you better explain the side affects this could cause? Is this "bad"?

For most users, probably not. It might mostly interfere if you are running a server on the wireless-connected device, and possibly with some particular applications like VoIP. I'm still unsure of the actual impact, since it's the first time anyone ever noticed this actually.

I'll try to take a closer look at this in the next few days, figure out if it's a new issue, an old issue, or actually working as intended.

 

[RMerlin]

Looking into the code, that was intentional by Asus, as there's even a comment in the code saying that this rule is meant to masquerade lan2lan connections. I believe this is done to ensure NAT loopback functionality.

 

[RMerlin]

Using Skype as an example; if i start a call in my office and walk (roam) down to the 2nd Floor, at some point of the journey my laptop/phone will switch it's wifi connection from the AP to the router, as it should.

With yours and Asus' FW, at the point when the wifi switches from AP to Router (or vice-versa) the Skype call will drop.

With DD-WRT & Tomato, the wifi connection will switch from AP to Router (and vice-versa) without dropping the Skype call.

Does this make sense?

Actually, while looking into that NAT loopback thing I might have found indication that this could be related to your roaming issues. Run this command on your router:

iptables -D POSTROUTING 2 -t nat

Then, reconnect your LAN devices (the second router and the computer you are roaming with), and see if roaming works.

 

[convert65]

Run this command on your router

At the risk of exposing my self for the amature that I am, can you run me through how to do this on your FW.
I'm using a Mac (I also have access to a windows machine, if necessary), so I guess I need to open terminal then tftp in?

Thanks.

 

[RMerlin]

At the risk of exposing my self for the amature that I am, can you run me through how to do this on your FW.
I'm using a Mac (I also have access to a windows machine, if necessary), so I guess I need to open terminal then tftp in?

Thanks.

Simplest way if you are not familiar with telnet is to use this hidden page on your router (just change the IP to match your router's):

http://192.168.1.1/Main_AdmStatus_Content.asp

Run just the following command:

iptables -D POSTROUTING 2 -t nat

Then test out roaming (first restarting your computer or whatever device you use for testing roaming).

Let me know the results. What this command does is eliminate the lan 2 lan natting that Asus is doing for NAT loopback functionality. Seems like that is responsible for numerous issues so far, and I already got experimental code that should fix it in a future release.

Note that restarting the router or your Internet connection will revert that change.

 

[snb]

Some things I've noticed, which I also noted down when I first upgraded to ddwrt a few years ago, sometimes updating/upgrading firmwares and settings in Firefox doesn't work well, times out, or just gives an error page.
It always works correctly in IE9 though, down to the progress indicator.
Not sure if it has anything to do with firefox itself or some add-ons, but I will always use IE from now on.

OK, in QoS, when I choose user defined settings, add services, apply, and reboot, then log out and log back in, QoS page is back to "automatic configuration"!
If I choose " user defined" again, all my additions are still there.
So is it really using user defined config, even if it shows the basic auto page?

Also in QoS settings, its strange, if you pick one of the already listed services, and try to add it, it gives an error that "-" cannot be used in the name, I had to manullay delete it....

Another thing, is it safe to add my router IP to Avast ( maybe other AV as well?) exclusions?
Because when applying a setting, avast script shield scans apply.cgi until it finishes completely.
Also, even if the Asus GUI is just open in IE and Firefox, with nothing being applied, whether the window is minimized or not, or whether the tab is selected or not, Avast Web shield polls/scans ajax_status.asp every few seconds and the File shield scans ajax_status[1].htm every few seconds.

 

[convert65]

Let me know the results.

I tested a number of times, the results are the same.

However, I did notice this, which may or may not be of relevance. It's the same with or without your line of code executed:

If I start a file download with WiFi connected to the N16 (router), the WAN traffic shows that the file is downloading at the speed which I am connect to my ISP.
During the download, if I roam to the AP, the WiFi connection will jump to the AP. The WAN traffic, as seen at the N16, will drop off to zero and the download will pause. At this point I still have the same IP that was assigned via the N16's DCHP and I can open new web pages, so I'm still connected to the internet.
Then, I roam back so that WiFi is connected to the router, the WAN traffic page will show that the downloading of the file has resumed and the download will continue from where it paused before.

 

[RMerlin]

I tested a number of times, the results are the same.

Was worth a shot... Thanks for testing it, I have no other idea, sorry.

 

[RMerlin]

Some things I've noticed, which I also noted down when I first upgraded to ddwrt a few years ago, sometimes updating/upgrading firmwares and settings in Firefox doesn't work well, times out, or just gives an error page.
It always works correctly in IE9 though, down to the progress indicator.
Not sure if it has anything to do with firefox itself or some add-ons, but I will always use IE from now on.

I'm using Chrome here, without any problem.

OK, in QoS, when I choose user defined settings, add services, apply, and reboot, then log out and log back in, QoS page is back to "automatic configuration"!

That's normal. That dropdown actually isn't linked to any setting, it's merely a way for Asus to hide the advanced settings by default. A bit odd design IMHO. Your router will always apply whatever is saved on the User Settings page.

Also in QoS settings, its strange, if you pick one of the already listed services, and try to add it, it gives an error that "-" cannot be used in the name, I had to manullay delete it....

Can't reproduce it here, which particular preset gives you that?

Another thing, is it safe to add my router IP to Avast ( maybe other AV as well?) exclusions?
Because when applying a setting, avast script shield scans apply.cgi until it finishes completely.

Should be safe.

Also, even if the Asus GUI is just open in IE and Firefox, with nothing being applied, whether the window is minimized or not, or whether the tab is selected or not, Avast Web shield polls/scans ajax_status.asp every few seconds and the File shield scans ajax_status[1].htm every few seconds.

That's normal, that script executes some code every few seconds.

 

[snb]

Can't reproduce it here, which particular preset gives you that?

its not really a problem, I just found it strange that asus would include default names that would give an error.

Choose any service from the drop down list that has "-" in the name, for example, "some - service" , when you click add, an error pops up saying the service name cannot contain "-" !
Could it just be for me, don't see how that's possible

Also about the QoS, how does one differentiate between the priority of highest settings?
Say, I want VOIP/Gaming/Web to all be highest, but in that order. So if I'm downloading something, and someone on wifi is browsing, they should get priority, but if I'm browsing and someone is using VoIP, they should get priority.. how does it work if they're all set to highest?
Or should only VoIP be set t highest, then gaming to high, then HTTP to medium?