BIG UPDATE FW Version 3.0.0.4.220

[Dr.No.pt]

Is there a ftp or place where we can test beta firmware from ASUS ?

Thank you.

 

[Mark the Red]

I'm not really familiar with Airplay but your description is similar do DLNA and most devices (including this router) already support this.
What does Airplay enable that DLNA does not support?

Very good question. On paper, dlna does not do anything more special than Airplay. In practice though ALL the dlna apps for android are capital G garbage. Ive used them all, skifta pnp player, doubletwist, etc. Get this: Every time you go back to the main artist selection page of your music ALL the dlna apps RELOAD the entire directory from scratch. So if you are like me and have 40gb of mp3s , get ready for a whole lotta "loading" times if you want to switch between two artists in a listening session. And don't even get me started on the latency issues of volume up / volume down control with dlna. Is this button press gonna increase the volume by 3db or 30db? I don't know. Neither does my Tablet or my AVR. Better cross your fingers and hope its not 30db if you have company over.

I hate Apple with all my black heart. But the Apple programmers in their golden money palaces no doubt had enough foresight to:

(A) Create sliders for volume control that respond in real time

And most importantly:

(B) Sort large amounts of mp3's by artist album etc effortlessly for my nexus 7


So I am all ears to a dlna app that can do the above a and b features, that can allow me to sit on my butt with my tablet and stream music to my HT speakers. I'd pay good money for it. Really. But until then I'll just have to leave my computer on 24/7 with iTunes running.

Sorry to go off topic.

 

[RMerlin]

Very good question. On paper, dlna does not do anything more special than Airplay. In practice though ALL the dlna apps for android are capital G garbage. Ive used them all, skifta pnp player, doubletwist, etc.

PlugPlayer is working pretty well for me. I've used it quite often in the past for music playback on my Xoom.

I agree that a lot of the other players are mostly useless. For a while, the Twonky player beta was free and was the best one I found, but I've since replaced it with PlugPlayer.

 

[RMerlin]

Is there a ftp or place where we can test beta firmware from ASUS ?

Thank you.

Asus does not really have an public actual beta repository. From time to time someone from Asus will post a public beta on forums, either here (Jeremy has posted betas of Asuswrt for the RT-N56) or the russian Asus forum.

 

[Mark the Red]

PlugPlayer is working pretty well for me. I've used it quite often in the past for music playback on my Xoom.

I agree that a lot of the other players are mostly useless. For a while, the Twonky player beta was free and was the best one I found, but I've since replaced it with PlugPlayer.

Thanks. Let me try this out. I still have some left over Google cash from my Nexus 7 purchase.

But can you save me the money and answer this question first: Is the music library you are controlling with Plugplayer on the USB attached storage of your router? Will this Plugplayer app function in that way? If I need a computer on 24/7 for Plugplayer, I'll stick with the itunes remote as it would appear redundant.

Flowchart in case I was not clear:

Router USB Storage -> ("Play to" or Airplay Control) -> Denon 4311ci (AVR + Speakers)
_____________________ ^
_____________________ |
_____________________ |
(Me on my lazy butt with my Nexus 7 + Plugplayer)


PS: I do not want the music to play on my Tablet. Rather I want to use my tablet to browse the USB DLNA media and "Play To" the Denon AVR networked

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks. Let me try this out. I still have some left over Google cash from my Nexus 7 purchase.

But can you save me the money and answer this question first: Is the music library you are controlling with Plugplayer on the USB attached storage of your router? Will this Plugplayer app function in that way? If I need a computer on 24/7 for Plugplayer, I'll stick with the itunes remote as it would appear redundant.

Flowchart in case I was not clear:

Router USB Storage -> ("Play to" or Airplay Control) -> Denon 4311ci (AVR + Speakers)
_____________________ ^
_____________________ |
_____________________ |
(Me on my lazy butt with my Nexus 7 + Plugplayer)


PS: I do not want the music to play on my Tablet. Rather I want to use my tablet to browse the USB DLNA media and "Play To" the Denon AVR networked

My music is on my desktop, where I use Mezzmo as a DLNA server. But you could also host it on a USB disk plugged to the router, which runs the Minidlna DLNA server.

PlugPlayer can send medias to a DLNA renderer, so you can use the tablet to play the media on a TV or a WDTV Live, for example. So if your Denon can act as a DLNA renderer, you can push the media to it.

 

[Mark the Red]

Thanks again. Reason I ask is that I hate buying apps that I never use. Plugplayer: is it pretty snappy with large amounts of .mp3s?

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks again. Reason I ask is that I hate buying apps that I never use. Plugplayer: is it pretty snappy with large amounts of .mp3s?

That will most likely depend on how your server reacts to the queries it receive. The client does not handle the complete list, only what gets returned by the query it sent to the server. I didn't observe any performance issue querying for albums on a Tegra 2 tablet.

 

[Mark the Red]

OK. Did my first major file backup to the drive. Got around 12 MB/s transfer rates with .ext3. Seems to be OK. Not any better than NTFS at this point, but certainly not shabby.

I have a Linux question. I'm putting the Samsung F4 in my computer because I'm eyeballing a HGST Touro 2TB that I can get for $80 at Fry's. It has a nifty enclosure included as well.

My question: This drive is a "Advanced Format Hard Disk" (AFHD), also known as a "512e" disk (512 byte emulation), with a PHYSICAL SECTOR size of 4096 bytes. People have reported problems with this disk, Windows backup and Linux as a result. Having said all that, if I format this disk to .ext3 from scratch, do you perceive this HDD having any problem with the RT-n66u USB interface?

No doubt this is probably a dumb question for you Linux pros, but what I don't know about Linux would fill a library......

 

[RMerlin]

Right now it seems to be hit-or-miss with those large drives. I have a 3 TB Hitachi in a Vantec enclosure that mounts fine, while reporting 512 bytes sectors instead of 4 KB - possibly through emulation. However other people with 3 TB HDDs that report using 4 Kb sectors are experiencing issues.

Asus mentioned to one of those users that there was an issue with large HDDs at the moment, but no one knows for sure if it's related to 4 KB sectors or not. So unfortunately it's impossible to tell if that specific disk will work fine or not for you.

 

[Mark the Red]

Well Paragon Partition manager doesn't recognize 2TB HDD's but gparted sure did. Got this thing up and running. Woot! Getting consistent about 13 MB/s write speeds on it.

Mildly disappointed with the DLNA server functionality. Only certain video and music files show up when browsing via a DLNA client: My Samsung d8000 smart TV). However, 95% of them do show up so its only a minor complaint. The thing is, I have no idea why it does not catalog the other 5%. They are all .avi, have similar permissions to the ones that show up, similar sizes, are the same resolution and codecs, but no DLNA client sees them even though they are on the HDD. I can "Play to" these 'invisible' files from my PC but when browsing from my TV they do not show up as a video file.

Anyway, don't want to sound like a whining princess. The router is great and the firmware you have made Merlin is fantastic. Appreciate the effort.

 

[RMerlin]

All credit related to DLNA actually goes to Asus and the MiniDLNA author. I merely updated it to the latest version in my builds.

 

[Mark the Red]

Wow. This Plugplayer is the real deal. Currently browsing all my movies on the USB RT-n66u router and streaming directly to the TV. No PC needed. Woot! Fastforwarding is a breeze too as I now have a slide bar.

Unfortunately, still have the same volume issue I had with all the DLNA apps. Radically huge and random volume increase / decrease when I press up or down. But now I'm thinking its probably my Denon AVR, as I really doubt all the DLNA apps have the same bug.

I did notice that after I transfer large amounts of files to the drive, the router requires a reboot. Otherwise it acts REALLY strange: i.e., none of the DLNA clients can open the files although they show up. Gives me "Format not Supported" messages for files I was playing the night before.

The only patch update I can hope from Asus in the future is to give us a "Refresh miniDLNA" so I don't have to physically power cycle it after large file transfers.

 

[RMerlin]

Wow. This Plugplayer is the real deal. Currently browsing all my movies on the USB RT-n66u router and streaming directly to the TV. No PC needed. Woot! Fastforwarding is a breeze too as I now have a slide bar.

I tried quite a few DLNA clients under both iOS and Android over the years, and so far this is the best one. Well worth the few bucks it costs.

Unfortunately, still have the same volume issue I had with all the DLNA apps. Radically huge and random volume increase / decrease when I press up or down. But now I'm thinking its probably my Denon AVR, as I really doubt all the DLNA apps have the same bug.

DLNA merely sends the file to the renderer, so any volume issue would be specific to the renderer indeed (your Denon in your case).

I did notice that after I transfer large amounts of files to the drive, the router requires a reboot. Otherwise it acts REALLY strange: i.e., none of the DLNA clients can open the files although they show up. Gives me "Format not Supported" messages for files I was playing the night before.

Check in the System Log if you see any error. One problem I can see happening is if you are using a HDD that is bus-powered rather than with its own power supply that maybe it barely gets enough power from the USB port, and ends up getting disconnected when doing large transfers. You should see error messages related to that in System Log if that's the case.

The only patch update I can hope from Asus in the future is to give us a "Refresh miniDLNA" so I don't have to physically power cycle it after large file transfers.

If it's the HDD getting dropped try power cycling just the HDD itself. Otherwise you should be able to turn the Media Server off and back on to force it to restart.

 

[Mark the Red]

^^^^

Something else is at play here. The files are being copied without interruption. To be sure, I copied some sample files from the 'NAS' to my computer and did an error scan on it and it is 100%.

The HDD has its own power supply, here is a link to it. Got it for $85 on clearance at Fry's.

It has something to do with the spin up time from an idle (not unpowered) HDD. For instance, if you try to read the files with a DLNA client before the router gets 'warmed' up it gives 'Format Not Supported' errors on all media files on all clients until I reboot the router. The only exception is my PC that plays it fine via file explorer.

Regardless, its not a major issue. Whenever I plan on watching movies via my Smart TV directly, I just power cycle the router so that it 'warms up' or does its Deus Ex Machina thing. I just love it that I effectively have a virtual HTPC with just my Samsung Smart TV, a HDD and this RT-n66u.

 

[urn357]

After I upgraded firmware to to .220 I noticed that every time I rebooted my cable modem the router would not pick up the wan ip automatically. I literally had to go in and do the connection setup wizard or turn the switch from on to off and back on on the network map, internet status page every time to finally get it to pick up an ip and sometimes would have have to reboot the router if that didn't work. And what is even weirder is EVERY TIME when it finally assigned the wan ip it would be different. I could restart/reboot my cable modem and get a different wan ip every single time. So I downgraded to the .178 firmware I was using and everything is fine again.

 

[RMerlin]

After I upgraded firmware to to .220 I noticed that every time I rebooted my cable modem the router would not pick up the wan ip automatically. I literally had to go in and do the connection setup wizard or turn the switch from on to off and back on on the network map, internet status page every time to finally get it to pick up an ip and sometimes would have have to reboot the router if that didn't work. And what is even weirder is EVERY TIME when it finally assigned the wan ip it would be different. I could restart/reboot my cable modem and get a different wan ip every single time. So I downgraded to the .178 firmware I was using and everything is fine again.

That's odd, considering that build 220 actually fixed the issue where a lease wouldn't be properly released/renewed on the WAN interface.

Cablemodems tend to allocate only an IP to the first MAC address they see. When power cycling a cablemodem, it's advised to leave it off for a few minutes (I recommend 5 minutes) before turning it back in, to allow the ISP to properly notice that the connection is down, and to once again allocate an IP to the first MAC address it sees querying one.

 

[urn357]

That's odd, considering that build 220 actually fixed the issue where a lease wouldn't be properly released/renewed on the WAN interface.

Cablemodems tend to allocate only an IP to the first MAC address they see. When power cycling a cablemodem, it's advised to leave it off for a few minutes (I recommend 5 minutes) before turning it back in, to allow the ISP to properly notice that the connection is down, and to once again allocate an IP to the first MAC address it sees querying one.

Odd is exactly right and what I could not understand. I can understand my IP changing if I were to leave my modem off for over 24 hours or something, but not every time I reboot or turn it off. And I know it was related to the router firmware because after I went back to the older version, it is now not assigning me a different IP everytime. The last 2 nights I have turned off my modem and left the router on to test it and the router is automatically assigning me same IP with no problem, automatically without having to go into settings etc. like I was before with new firmware.

 

[GM4X4]

off topic but does anyone have a link or info on what versions for what router? I just got a RT-N66u B1 and see there are a few different versions of the Tomato firmware. Which should I use? Just found I have to use the RT-N builds.

 

[RMerlin]

Odd is exactly right and what I could not understand. I can understand my IP changing if I were to leave my modem off for over 24 hours or something, but not every time I reboot or turn it off. And I know it was related to the router firmware because after I went back to the older version, it is now not assigning me a different IP everytime. The last 2 nights I have turned off my modem and left the router on to test it and the router is automatically assigning me same IP with no problem, automatically without having to go into settings etc. like I was before with new firmware.

Having a different IP actually makes sense. Build 220 now correctly releases its WAN lease when you disable the WAN interface, which allows people to renew their lease just by disable and re-enable the WAN interface. Being re-assigned the same IP is actually a side-effect of incorrect behaviour, it means your lease does not get properly released with your ISP.