What's new

[Fork] Asuswrt-Merlin 374.43 LTS releases (Archive)

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

power regulation

i did the #a setting son my rt-ac66u using the v6 fork firmware

huge increase in performance and range.

however did anybody test if power can be adjusted.

using ssinsider and wifi analyzer i noticed that decreasing the powersettings hardly has any impact on performance.

eg it does not matter much when going from 200mw to 25mw

is this normal

also as long as i= have the router temperature i steady on 54 degrees celius for 2.4Ghz and 58 degrees celcius for the 5GHz band
 
i did the #a setting son my rt-ac66u using the v6 fork firmware

huge increase in performance and range.

however did anybody test if power can be adjusted.

using ssinsider and wifi analyzer i noticed that decreasing the powersettings hardly has any impact on performance.

eg it does not matter much when going from 200mw to 25mw

is this normal

also as long as i= have the router temperature i steady on 54 degrees celius for 2.4Ghz and 58 degrees celcius for the 5GHz band

There is a quirk in at least the 374 and 376 code levels where the change in power level is not actually applied until you do a reboot of the router after hitting the 'Apply' button.

Here's a link to a test I ran on the AC68 measuring the power reduction going from the default 80mW down to 20mW. Both the 374 code mW entry and 376 code power slider provided measureable changes, although to somewhat different degrees.

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=154105&postcount=14
 
Edit;

it's a browser thing.
from google chrome i get the message
when in explorer 11 the message is not there

Thanks,

tried it and it seems to work.
i also did he complete #a thing so if there was a limit it is now set at 200mw.

the time of the router is the same as the time of my pc/browser.

so seing the message now might be logical since the router is at #a and my timezone is +1 which does not add up.

rtac66a.jpg

For the EU (country is read from the router), the gui imposes the 100mW limit. To try and go beyond that, after you set up/apply the rest of the parameters on the page, open a telnet or SSH session to the router and enter

nvram set wl0_TxPower=200 (note the case of TxPower, the number is the desired power level, 200 is a good start to test with)
nvram commit
reboot

The restriction message is always there. Unfortunately ASUS made it hard to determine what the actual limits are on the N66, but my best guess is that
it's definitely greater than 100mW.



First time I had heard of that message. It looks like it's comparing the time from the router with the time returned from a javascript date call (what is set in your browser/computer). Does your computer match the router setting?
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the help John.

yes it changes but not as much as we would like.
i think a reboot might work.

i will put it on a low level , sdo a reboot and will see the power output as well as the temperature change.

some other question.
i have the performance tuning tab but i only see the temperatures
should'nt there be 2 tx boxes to change the powerlevels from that page or did they remove it.

i only see the apply button along with the 2 temperature lines

thanks




There is a quirk in at least the 374 and 376 code levels where the change in power level is not actually applied until you do a reboot of the router after hitting the 'Apply' button.

Here's a link to a test I ran on the AC68 measuring the power reduction going from the default 80mW down to 20mW. Both the 374 code mW entry and 376 code power slider provided measureable changes, although to somewhat different degrees.

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=154105&postcount=14
 
Feature request:

When the tx power is set above 200mw from the cli, you can't make changes on the professional tab from the web interface. It says enter a value between 1 and 200. Any chance you can remove that dialog if the tx power hasn't changed? That should keep the 200mw max from the web interface in place, but allow me to change settings without adjusting tx power via the cli each time.
 
Feature request:

When the tx power is set above 200mw from the cli, you can't make changes on the professional tab from the web interface. It says enter a value between 1 and 200. Any chance you can remove that dialog if the tx power hasn't changed? That should keep the 200mw max from the web interface in place, but allow me to change settings without adjusting tx power via the cli each time.

Good idea....and I like the balance of keeping true to the original code while allowing the power tweaks. Already coded and will be in the next release.
 
Feature request:

When the tx power is set above 200mw from the cli, you can't make changes on the professional tab from the web interface. It says enter a value between 1 and 200. Any chance you can remove that dialog if the tx power hasn't changed? That should keep the 200mw max from the web interface in place, but allow me to change settings without adjusting tx power via the cli each time.

Is the post on page 61 of this thread the official method of adjusting the TX power greater than what the UI supports?

I have a N66 running this firmware fork with a EA-N66 receiving the signal and hooked into an AC66 in AP mode. On the AC66 I am boosting the 5GHz signal knowing that there are no other APs in the area on 5GHz at all (thanks InSSIDer), but don't see a way of confirming the TX power once adjusting.
 
Hi, and happy new year to all!

I found a very strange issue with my n66u running the latest version of this fork. After a few days the wireless speed just starts to slow down until it reaches almost zero. I watch videos over DLNA every night, and I noticed that the playback stops and buffers more and more as how days pass after a router reboot, but until now, I thought it's a bug in the version of minidlna john9527 uses, so I did not make much out of it, besides hoping for a new version or a fix (since had no such issues with earlier FWs from Merlin, and I had those running non-stop for months).

I did reset, format, and also everything else you can think of (or what was suggested in other threads), but nothing helps. Speed is fine over UTP cables, the problem only occurs over WIFI. I do nothing special except I have ipv6 and 5Ghz disabled and I filter 2.4Ghz clients by MAC, and I force fix IPs for each clients via the DHCP server, and I also use 200 as TXPower, that is all.

Nothing suspicious in the log either. Router restart fixes the issue, (but disabling and re-enabling the 2.4Ghz antenna is not).

Any help or suggestion would be much appreciated.
Ika
 
I noticed signal drop last night and may have found cause... It appears if you run wireless survey from the rtac68us wireless tab that the transmit power goes back to default 80mW... GUI doesn't say so... But noticed my bridge signal dropped to default upon scanning and don't think its a coincidence...

Anyway...
I reapplied the setting on the professional tan then rebooted... All good since.. Had been running week+ without a drop prior... From memory... Last reboot was same issue and around the time I was doing a wireless survey from the rotuer...

...use an android device with a wifi scanner or inSSIDer...

John... Thanks for figuring out transmit powers aren't accepted without a reboot. ...helped immensely!!!!
 
Hi, and happy new year to all!

I found a very strange issue with my n66u running the latest version of this fork. After a few days the wireless speed just starts to slow down until it reaches almost zero. I watch videos over DLNA every night, and I noticed that the playback stops and buffers more and more as how days pass after a router reboot, but until now, I thought it's a bug in the version of minidlna john9527 uses, so I did not make much out of it, besides hoping for a new version or a fix (since had no such issues with earlier FWs from Merlin, and I had those running non-stop for months).

I did reset, format, and also everything else you can think of (or what was suggested in other threads), but nothing helps. Speed is fine over UTP cables, the problem only occurs over WIFI. I do nothing special except I have ipv6 and 5Ghz disabled and I filter 2.4Ghz clients by MAC, and I force fix IPs for each clients via the DHCP server, and I also use 200 as TXPower, that is all.

Nothing suspicious in the log either. Router restart fixes the issue, (but disabling and re-enabling the 2.4Ghz antenna is not).

Any help or suggestion would be much appreciated.
Ika

Following the other areas of the forum, it seems as if there has been an increase in problems similar to yours across all code levels, both stock Asus and Merlin builds. And quite frankly, I'm not sure what to make of it.

I think we can cross minidlna off the list. I've been keeping in sync with the Merlin builds and the latest minidlna version up through the 06 release.
Merlin just picked up an update as part of an Asus merge in the 378.48 builds, that I haven't yet, in part because of some of the reported issues. (But I really don't think it's minidlna related)

One thing I might recommend to try is to reduce your power level. Early on a user was having 'stuttering' problems during streaming that went away when he reduced the power level (I think he was also running at 200 TxPower and reduced to 100)

Some of the factors which seem to have some commonality with the slowdowns (but are not conclusive) are:

- Having Sonos devices on the network
- Having multiple types of Apple clients on the network
- And most recently, using Keyword filtering on the router

Any of the above fit your environment?
 
Last edited:
Following the other areas of the forum, it seems as if there has been an increase in problems similar to yours across all code levels, both stock Asus and Merlin builds. And quite frankly, I'm not sure what to make of it.

I think we can cross minidlna off the list. I've been keeping in sync with the Merlin builds and the latest minidlna version up through the 06 release.
Merlin just picked up an update as part of an Asus merge in the 378.48 builds, that I haven't yet, in part because of some of the reported issues. (But I really don't think it's minidlna related)

One thing I might recommend to try is to reduce your power level. Early on a user was having 'stuttering' problems during streaming that went away when he reduced the power level (I think he was also running at 200 TxPower and reduced to 100)

Some of the factors which seem to have some commonality with the slowdowns (but are not conclusive) are:

- Having Sonos devices on the network
- Having multiple types of Apple clients on the network
- And most recently, using Keyword filtering on the router

Any of the above fit your environment?

Hi john9527.

Thanks for you reply (and again, for your awesome work).

It did happen with the default power level too, hence I increased it and hoping it would fix the issue.

None of the above criteria you listed would apply to my environment. No vpn, or anything heavy is enabled either. There is an entware installation on the router with transmission installed, but it's disabled for many months now. There was also a ZNC installation too, what my brother used some time ago, but I have uninstalled that one too (by the way, I'm not even sure why entware is installed anymore, since it's not being used for anything at the moment.)

The range after reboot is awesome, so I would have no problem restarting the router every day, but there are quite a big number of video and audio files on the attached HDD, and the media scan takes almost an hour after every reboot with very high cpu usage, and that's something I would be happy to get rid of.

Perhaps I will try allocate some time and experiment with different fw versions from you and from Merlin, to see when all of this started.
 
Hi all,

Thank you for this great fork! I have a problem with static routes in Update 3. When I setup a static route for a subnet (ex. 192.168.1.0), only ICMP traffic works. When I try to setup an RDP session to for ex. 192.168.1.10, the connection doesn't work. When I configure that static route on the client (Windows 8.1 or Server 2012 R2) itself, it works.

Is it a bug in version 3? It took me a long time to resolve this problem, but I would like to configure the static route in the router.

Thanks.
 
Hi all,

Thank you for this great fork! I have a problem with static routes in Update 3. When I setup a static route for a subnet (ex. 192.168.1.0), only ICMP traffic works. When I try to setup an RDP session to for ex. 192.168.1.10, the connection doesn't work. When I configure that static route on the client (Windows 8.1 or Server 2012 R2) itself, it works.

Is it a bug in version 3? It took me a long time to resolve this problem, but I would like to configure the static route in the router.

Thanks.

I think I may have found a similar situation (restriction?) that occurs when you try to route traffic from an entire subnet to another subnet. It's present in the base code for all releases (that is, not unique to the fork). Can you telnet/SSH to the router and enter the following after you set up the routing and see if it resolves your issue?

iptables -D FORWARD -m state --state INVALID -j DROP

If it works, then you can add it to or create a firewall-start script to make it permanent.
 
I think I may have found a similar situation (restriction?) that occurs when you try to route traffic from an entire subnet to another subnet. It's present in the base code for all releases (that is, not unique to the fork). Can you telnet/SSH to the router and enter the following after you set up the routing and see if it resolves your issue?

iptables -D FORWARD -m state --state INVALID -j DROP

If it works, then you can add it to or create a firewall-start script to make it permanent.
Hi John,

Thank you for your help. I logged in as admin, but the command doesn't work:
admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root# iptables -D FORWARD -m state --state INVALID -j DROP
iptables: Bad rule (does a matching rule exist in that chain?)

This is the forward chain:
Chain FORWARD (policy DROP)
target prot opt source destination
ipttolan all -- anywhere anywhere
iptfromlan all -- anywhere anywhere
logaccept all -- anywhere anywhere state RELATED,ESTAB LISHED
ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere
logdrop all -- anywhere anywhere
logdrop all -- anywhere anywhere state INVALID
logaccept all -- anywhere anywhere
DROP icmp -- anywhere anywhere
logaccept tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp flags:FIN,SYN,R ST,ACK/SYN limit: avg 1/sec burst 5
logaccept tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp flags:FIN,SYN,R ST,ACK/RST limit: avg 1/sec burst 5
logaccept icmp -- anywhere anywhere icmp echo-request l imit: avg 1/sec burst 5
logaccept all -- anywhere anywhere ctstate DNAT
ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere
 
Hi John,

Thank you for your help. I logged in as admin, but the command doesn't work:
admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root# iptables -D FORWARD -m state --state INVALID -j DROP
iptables: Bad rule (does a matching rule exist in that chain?)

This is the forward chain:
Chain FORWARD (policy DROP)
target prot opt source destination
ipttolan all -- anywhere anywhere
iptfromlan all -- anywhere anywhere
logaccept all -- anywhere anywhere state
...

Have to admit I'm a bit confused....your forward chain doesn't look like a 'standard' chain for the router (which does have the chain I referenced to delete). Have you added your own custom chains?
 
Have to admit I'm a bit confused....your forward chain doesn't look like a 'standard' chain for the router (which does have the chain I referenced to delete). Have you added your own custom chains?

Hi John,

No, I did not. This is the original version. Never changed the iptables. Any tips?
 
Hi John.. Just wondering what might be new for your next release #7. I dont think there has been any security issues since #6. :)
 

Support SNBForums w/ Amazon

If you'd like to support SNBForums, just use this link and buy anything on Amazon. Thanks!

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top