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

[Swingtop]

First off, love the fork, and build 7 has improved speeds and especially website load times significantly, thanks for the great work.

Question: does anyone have a comparative speed/signal strength analysis with Merlin's 378.50?

 

[smagus]

Not sure is someone had it before, but I'm running latest fork and here's the issue:

After some random time (most likely after download a lot of data) my ping to router goes up from 1ms to 300-500ms for no reason. It happens on 3 different laptops with different wifi cards(Intel). all are connected using 5Ghz.

No error in router syslog, and when it happens on 1 PC, then other works fine. It just shows up sometimes on each of them, but not on all at once.

To bring back ping to 1ms I need to disable wifi adapter on laptop and then enable it again. I don't recall experiencing it with original firmware, but I went through so many versions that I really don't recall

Maybe it's not an issue with firmware itself, but some settings (I'm running defaults on router on Pro tab except increased power) incompatibility with Intel 4965AGN for example.

on attached screenshot first 3 tries are from time when I have this issue. Last one with 1ms ping is just after adapter restart on windows.

any help appreciated.

 

[john9527]

@smagus - I see you are pinging a Class B address. Can you give a little more info on how you are configured? There can be problems if you try to configure the router subnet with less than a /24 netmask.

 

[smagus]

i somehow sticked to class B for quite a long time

172.16.16.100 - router address, mask is /24 - 255.255.255.0

Nothing special in terms of LAN config.

I recall something regarding beamforming, but I have no idea where to disable it... I can't see nothing like that in Pro tab

 

[john9527]

i somehow sticked to class B for quite a long time

172.16.16.100 - router address, mask is /24 - 255.255.255.0

Nothing special in terms of LAN config.

I recall something regarding beamforming, but I have no idea where to disable it... I can't see nothing like that in Pro tab

Had to ask on the addressing

The beamforming options (there are 2, 802.11ac and Universal) just a couple of rows up from where you set the transmit power. That's one thing to try in different combinations (there's no one good answer on those).

But, my first try would be checking the 'AMPDU RTS' option (set to enable) and 'Enable WMM APSD' (set to disabled). Especially the latter, which can put the client adapter into a low power savings state.

 

[smagus]

thanks, will give it a try. I don't see beamforming config in menu - maybe because I have N66u

 

[john9527]

thanks, will give it a try. I don't see beamforming config in menu - maybe because I have N66u

Should have asked that question too No beamforming on N66

Hopefully one of the other options will help.

EDIT: One more thing.....check that the Windows setting for the wireless adapter is set for 'Maximum Performance'.

 

[rt392]

My router would not operate on channel 149 as delivered from Amazon or with any other firmware/settings. The '#a' change was a recent attempt at a fix. '#a' did get the router to send at AC rates on channel 48.

I'll try 802.11d+h and the 802.11h settings. Thanks for trying channel 149.

Perhaps there is something transmitting (noise) in channel 149 and stopping the router from using that channel. This would explain why the Netgear R7000 I tried also will not operate on channel 149. I will also explore this avenue.

To me the firmware rev changes seem to be down-playing the AC speeds or lack of. I understand the FCC restrictions. These restrictions leave channels 48+ and 149+ the only free AC 80MHz choices.

Ray

My router won't transmit on channel 149 because it detects something sending on that channel. I have a wireless device that unintentionally has energy in the 5GHz band. When I turn the device on the router turns off the Channel 149 transmission. This noise could be a Radar, so the router monitors the channel, waiting for the noise to cease before resuming transmission.

Ray

 

[Markmaster]

On the Update 7 found some strange battery eating activity with Wi-Fi. I use 5 GHz connection on my Android phones. What can harm it so high?
http://cl.ly/image/0p0Z3P0U1a1V http://cl.ly/image/0K252f1l0C2N http://cl.ly/image/1w421I080m3Q

 

[L&LD]

How long were you using the WiFi for? And for what?

 

[bluepoint]

On the Update 7 found some strange battery eating activity with Wi-Fi. I use 5 GHz connection on my Android phones. What can harm it so high?
http://cl.ly/image/0p0Z3P0U1a1V http://cl.ly/image/0K252f1l0C2N http://cl.ly/image/1w421I080m3Q

Not only Update 7, I've seen the battery deplete faster in the fork compared to SDK6 Merlin's releases. Something in the fork keeps the wireless clients awake most of the time. Just check the connected time duration in "wireless log", even if the wireless clients are on standby the clients remain connected. Compared to Merlins SDK6 when the clients are on standby the wireless sleeps and will not show in the log.

RT-N66U

 

[Markmaster]

How long were you using the WiFi for? And for what?

It's ON by default. I need to switch it OFF when I am at home?
I am on the 68U BTW.

 

[innovateusa]

[*] A performance improvement for OpenVPN server and client for ARM routers by forcing the VPN session to alternating CPUs. This can be a large improvement for users running VPN Client/Server on the router....I got over 30% throughput improvement with my VPN client.

Does only this fork alternate CPUs for the VPN? Or does the main release do this too?

 

[john9527]

Does only this fork alternate CPUs for the VPN? Or does the main release do this too?

It's also in Merlin's builds starting with those that were released around the same time as V7 fork.

Not sure about ASUS OEM releases, but I don't think it's in those.

 

[john9527]

Not only Update 7, I've seen the battery deplete faster in the fork compared to SDK6 Merlin's releases. Something in the fork keeps the wireless clients awake most of the time. Just check the connected time duration in "wireless log", even if the wireless clients are on standby the clients remain connected. Compared to Merlins SDK6 when the clients are on standby the wireless sleeps and will not show in the log.

RT-N66U

All I can say here is that I haven't touched anything in the wireless drivers that would affect this over the base 374.43 release.

Trying to think of things that could possibly affect the clients going to sleep from the router perspective....

If you are using Roaming Assistant and the threshold is set close to the actual signal strength, the router may be disconnecting and then the client immediately reconnects somehow affecting the sleep timer. So try disabling Roaming Assistant.

The Enable WMM APSD setting, which can send information to the client about service periods and 'doze' states. With a lot of these functions, individual manufacturers implementations can differ and may be affecting the sleep states. So, you could try setting this to disable.

One last comment....if you do a search on battery discharge on android, you'll find pages and pages of results. In a lot of cases, it's Google Services or Google Play that is constantly waking up to check for updates, update location status, etc. Also, I think that with the wifi enabled phones, they can sometimes continually scan for access points to use in lieu of the cellular connect and you need to manage that function.

 

[bluepoint]

If you are using Roaming Assistant and the threshold is set close to the actual signal strength, the router may be disconnecting and then the client immediately reconnects somehow affecting the sleep timer. So try disabling Roaming Assistant.

The Enable WMM APSD setting, which can send information to the client about service periods and 'doze' states. With a lot of these functions, individual manufacturers implementations can differ and may be affecting the sleep states. So, you could try setting this to disable.

Roaming Assistant is disabled and Enable WMM APSD on. Both settings were the same when compared at each other. The difference with my iPhone 5s, it stays connected for a duration of time with the forks even when on standby. RMerlin's SDK6 let my iPhone sleeps.
If I have time to go back to the fork I'll turn off WMM APSD and see if it makes a difference.

 

[Markmaster]

All I can say here is that I haven't touched anything in the wireless drivers that would affect this over the base 374.43 release.

Trying to think of things that could possibly affect the clients going to sleep from the router perspective....

If you are using Roaming Assistant and the threshold is set close to the actual signal strength, the router may be disconnecting and then the client immediately reconnects somehow affecting the sleep timer. So try disabling Roaming Assistant.

The Enable WMM APSD setting, which can send information to the client about service periods and 'doze' states. With a lot of these functions, individual manufacturers implementations can differ and may be affecting the sleep states. So, you could try setting this to disable.

One last comment....if you do a search on battery discharge on android, you'll find pages and pages of results. In a lot of cases, it's Google Services or Google Play that is constantly waking up to check for updates, update location status, etc. Also, I think that with the wifi enabled phones, they can sometimes continually scan for access points to use in lieu of the cellular connect and you need to manage that function.

Roaming assistant is constantly OFF on my every Firmware setup and WMM ASPD is ON.

I am understand that there were a lot of problems with Android itself, but! One my phone is rooted and I use Greenify to prevent phone from awakening from different Play Services or unwanted apps. The second is without root. I can see the both phones have only this Wi-Fi hungry (greedy) in the Battery selection.

I want to say one more thing. This battery eating on Android for me starts maybe year ago. After some Asus firmware upgrade. I was happy to use RT-AC68U user with stock firmware. All was fine. But one day I start to look into the battery on my phones. The drain is too high. I try everything. Then I switch to the Merlin, but "this" was already there. I start digging. I ask every developer, write letters to Asus - no on is care, why the heck my Android battery is going down. I erased my phones to the factory reset, setup it without any gmail account, only phone, only calls and Wi-Fi - battery drain was there. I bought LinkSys router. Setup it. Use phones - the sleep was perfect. Return LinkSys. This is something in this router and Firmware.
I try to use WireShark on my rooted phone to see what it happens. I found a lot of posts on the XDA, SmallNetBuilder that something hide in the router, but I can see: nobody is care. NOBODY. Only see that: this is all your Android is kilty. I switch all DropBox Lan Sync, I switch Sync (formerly BitTorrentSync) on my phones to get rid of weakness. All useless. When I sniffed the traffic with WireShark I found, that my home NAS, it is the PC with Windows 8.1 Pro on it, it asking the phone on the specific port my phone. I thought it was a virus or trojan I don't know. But i can't figure what was it exactly. Scan the system. It is clean. THere was some advice on the XDA to switch off some services from Windows Media on my PC. I did it. The same.
I use DHCP table on my router to have strong local network and Port Forwarding. My humble opinion is that this "asking" is going from that DHCP setup in my router. But why and how does this affect my (and many people) devices I can't tell on 100%. I try to ask some people who made the Firmwares on the different sites, for router, what can it be, that harm Android in my local network, but I am stay without answer. I am understand that all cases is strongly individual, but I think, if I can handle this case I will be very happy to get rid of this wakelocks.
I use BetterBatteryStats with my phone to look what exactly harm my Wi-Fi, but only got a lot of kernels wakelocks and this http://cl.ly/image/2L403A291U3V wlan rx, wlan wd wakelocks. I don't know what it is. Somebody say switch of the IGMP Snooping (already did) and some other settings in Professional. I use them all. I never saw a solution for this problem. Only saw more and more post with this.
For time it get lighter, with I am found Fork firmware, but 6, 6E and 7 bring the big drain again. And I am ask you for a help. No man is an island. I think together we can provide the solution. But I am not so skilled. If you need a log - I will provide. Test with some specific settings - I will. But I even know where is to dig.

 

[CFoote]

John, just started using your latest build, thanks a lot for all your efforts and work.

A question, prior to flashing your build I was running a new version of Merlin's firmware which had the ability to put a description on each MAC/IP along with an icon, how much of a pain would it be to add that feature in? That was handy to see what was connected to the router and what wasn't.

Chris

 

[Deleted member 22229]

John, just started using your latest build, thanks a lot for all your efforts and work.

A question, prior to flashing your build I was running a new version of Merlin's firmware which had the ability to put a description on each MAC/IP along with an icon, how much of a pain would it be to add that feature in? That was handy to see what was connected to the router and what wasn't.

Chris

I doubt John will be making to many changes to the network mapping but you can still assign a name to your connected devices with John's firmware although there is no icons you can add or see the signal values of each device.

 

[CFoote]

I doubt John will be making to many changes to the network mapping but you can still assign a name to your connected devices with John's firmware although there is no icons you can add or see the signal values of each device.

A name would be great, I am sorry I must have missed that. Where is that in the menu system?