Happy birthday to us

[kishork]

RMerlin, Congratulations! Your technical prowess is beyond reproach with these routers and I continue to be awed by the balanced approach and hard decisions you make on a daily basis regarding which feature to support or not, and why. And I'm sure I'll enjoy reading your responses to the questions the more technical among us will be asking you regarding the programming side of things. Not to mention your great contributions to Asus router hardware for almost the last decade (you really deserve a paycheque/dividends from Asus!).

I too would probably not be using an Asus router today if it wasn't for your involvement and contributions. With that original RT-N66U, which I bought and subsequently discovered your firmware and these forums through, it has been a great experience. I have learned a lot here while enjoying all the benefits of the best consumer routers available for many years now. So thanks once again.

My questions, are more on the personal side of things for you these past eight years.

Did you get married, have kids or become a grandfather in the meantime? What other personal milestones have you conquered. Were you always involved in programming/networking? Or did this develop into something bigger than you would have guessed at back then?

Thank you always for the wisdom and concise answers to our many never-ending questions. Not many would be able to keep doing what you do and still produce such great work every, single. time.

I raise my glass with the rest of us here and make a toast and three cheers to RMerlin. The firmware, the wizard, the man!

May your skies always be blue and your heart always light. With a smile on your face to keep your world ever bright.

-Barkeep! Another ale over here for our friend!

Happy Birthday Merlin !

You are a legend for many of us ! see ? i am on 384.16 already !!!! I always wondered how you manage your "personal world" and this - for i believe you are living somewhere in the world, have a job / consultancy, managing all that and working on these FWs for making the world a better place - how you manage all this Merlin.. and yes this quote shows more than one person is curious to know

 

[whitey019]

Congrats!

 

[RMerlin]

Did you get married, have kids or become a grandfather in the meantime? What other personal milestones have you conquered.

The biggest change was probably when my boss retired, and I took over the business I had been employed by since 1998. It's more a self-employed gig than running an actual business with employees, but it was still a major change for me.

@RMerlin may I ask what was your favourite router from back in the early days as in favourite to develop on?

The two most interesting ones were the RT-AC56U and RT-AC87U, for different reasons.

I received an RT-AC56U a few weeks before its launch, so they also sent me beta code at the same time so I could begin implementing support. It was a major change since this was the introduction of the ARM platform (the previous models were MIPS-based), with a different kernel, different toolchain, and so on. The firmware code I received was so early that it still didn't support the second CPU core, or the full amount of RAM. Being able to launch my support for that model within the week of Asus launching it was great. And the new ARM platform showed a very nice boost in performance in general.

The RT-AC87U was even more interesting for different reasons. The very day Asus officially announced it, two different contacts (one from Asus US, the other from Taiwan) emailed me to offer me an early sample. They were visibly very proud of this new model, and had high hopes for it. They even had a long, detailed write-up on their website about what made this router design so great (for instance, they talked about how the USB ports were designed to provide more power than the standard 500 ma stated by USB specs).

They sent me the router's pc-board (along with its power adapter and antennas, of course) without a case, as they were currently redesigning the case based on tester feedback. So for a few weeks, my primary router at home was a pc board laying on an antistatic bag in my living room

 

[RMerlin]

I’d like to push L&LD’s question a bit further back: how did you end up in this field of coding/networking/IT?

At 11 or 12 yaers old, I asked my parents for a gaming console for Christmas - I loved playing on my friend's Atari 2600. They said that since I was getting close to high-school, might as well buy me a computer instead. So they got me a Vic-20. Within a year I was writing BASIC code that no longer fitted in the 3 (or was it 5?) KB of RAM, so the C64 followed soon enough.

 

[RMerlin]

One question I've always wanted to ask, what's the story behind "RMerlin" and "Merlin" name in the firmware? as we all know it's not your real name.

Combination of my high school nickname (Ricky) and online BBS handle (Merlin). It became my IRC nick back in the 90s, and so I kept it when social medias appeared. It's unique enough to be almost always available, yet close enough to my real life nickname now with my friends (Merlin).

I couldn't come up with a good enough name when trying to name this project (after I dropped the idea of Tomato Regrowth), so I figured I'd just put together the official firmware name (Asuswrt) and my name (Merlin) to clearly identify it. Somehow I didn't like the idea of MerlinWRT and the likes, as it sounded way too generic considering we had already seen OpenWRT, DD-WRT, HyperWRT, AsusWRT and so on.

 

[Asad Ali]

Combination of my high school nickname (Ricky) and online BBS handle (Merlin). It became my IRC nick back in the 90s, and so I kept it when social medias appeared. It's unique enough to be almost always available, yet close enough to my real life nickname now with my friends (Merlin).

I couldn't come up with a good enough name when trying to name this project (after I dropped the idea of Tomato Regrowth), so I figured I'd just put together the official firmware name (Asuswrt) and my name (Merlin) to clearly identify it. Somehow I didn't like the idea of MerlinWRT and the likes, as it sounded way too generic considering we had already seen OpenWRT, DD-WRT, HyperWRT, AsusWRT and so on.

Thank you for a detailed answer. [emoji4]

 

[Stevens243]

Happy Birthday! I'm personally so happy that I found you and this site. I took a rather long and strange journey to find you, from running tomato on my WRT-54G and having it die (I'm pretty sure that it was the power supply that died, not the actual router), and replacing it with (IIRC) a WRT120 N series router that I was supremely unhappy with. Along with the (again, IIRC) tomato (shibby) and open WRT crowd not doing very well supporting the linksys N routers (I think Cisco really had a heavy hand in screwing around the dev team, but I'm not in the business). When AC came out, a ton of research went into moving away from linksys and while I spent an unhappy year or so with a initial Netgear AC unit (I have put that router out of my memory, I just hated it), so I bought my RT-AC68U and just ran it stock until I started having an issue with; who remembers what, and that research led me here (and yes, it did solve the issue I was having, I wish I remembered what it was now). That 68U is happily providing "good enough" WiFi at my daughters apartment as I type this. Her needing a router allowed me to upgrade to my AC88U.

Anyway, a long winded way of saying thanks for all the development and hard work put into this! I appreciate it more that my donations indicate (which is something I'm going to try to even the score on shortly).

Thank you for the work and greatly improved product!

 

[peepsnet]

I just started 6 months ago but

THANKS!!!!

 

[Vexira]

I wish we could have uncle Merlin story time more often this is extremely interesting and educational.


Also the 87u peaked my interest in Asus routers due to hardware acceleration.

 

[CriticJay]

Happy birthday!

This firmware is probably ESPECIALLY useful to many of us now. With so many of us "working from home", our internet connection is literally our lifeline to our paying job - i.e. our livelihood.

The improve in stability / functionality brought on by the Asuswrt-Merlin firmware no doubt helps us to Work From Home that much more efficiently.

So, a special Thank You from all the employed white collar/I.T. employees here, who no doubt have a better WFH experience due to the RMerlin firmware!

And indeed, like @martinr said - let's hope that by the NEXT birthday, this Pandemic is a distant memory.

 

[RMerlin]

This firmware is probably ESPECIALLY useful to many of us now. With so many of us "working from home", our internet connection is literally our lifeline to our paying job - i.e. our livelihood.

Its OpenVPN support truly shines right now. I have a number of customers currently using it to remotely access their offices, most of these using a RT-AC66U_B1.

 

[Yota]

I am really honored to use your firmware, thank you and other developers so much for that excellent work, and thank you for sharing hope with us in this dark age.

I have worked for non-profit organizations for more than ten years, what the important thing I learned is

Even the simple thing is not easy to keep doing.

I saw many outstanding projects stopped forever, then it became the honor of the past then no one remembers it anymore.

So I am very grateful for everyday of you done in the past 2,924 days, because it is really so hard to doing one thing for that long time.

Hope we can continue to see the Asuswrt-Merlin project thrive, of course it will happen because we have you and this strong community.

One more thing I hope is to read more about you and your firmware stories, like the SF interview in April 2019, it will make people excited and grateful!

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

 

[QuikSilver]

Happy birthday! @RMerlin Just like others have stated I know I would not have purchased an Asus router but each week (sometimes day) I see a new script or feature that increases the potential of these routers more and more. I also started with the DDWRT (linksys wrt-54g routers) and wanted something different due to the way the wrt forums were going. I'm glad I was able to find your firmware and because of that I purchased a second unit and recommend it constantly. Because of you, our routers continue to grow beyond our widlest dreams. You've opened the door to other developers such as @Jack Yaz , @thelonelycoder , @Adamm , @Martineau , @themiron and anyone else I may have forgot. We thank you all as well as those who will continue to take our routers even further! A simple thank you will never be enough for what you all have done!

 

[DAVID LONG]

Happy Anniversary.

Thank you for providing this for us. I don't think I could devote as much time and energy as you have, for a hobby.

 

[nbdwt73]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I have been a loyal user since 2014... Always impressed!

Thank you (and all involved) for your dedication...

 

[maghuro]

(or was it 5?)

5 it was!

 

[Maverickcdn]

Within a year I was writing BASIC code that no longer fitted in the 3 (or was it 5?) KB of RAM, so the C64 followed soon enough.

Happy Birthday and thanks for the flashback, in Junior High Computers class I was introduced to the world of programming in BASIC... never ran anywhere with it but I look at it as the seed that started my interest in computers in general for me.

 

[JDB]

Happy Birthday and thanks for the flashback, in Junior High Computers class I was introduced to the world of programming in BASIC... never ran anywhere with it but I look at it as the seed that started my interest in computers in general for me.

I got my Scouts Computer Programming badge after writing a little BASIC program on my Dad’s work laptop.
Scout leader was understandably amazed! Back then of course a Scout Leader rarely had any interest in computing and so he couldn’t get his head around it.

I presume the badge must have not been around for long when I got it. I just googled and it seems far more commonplace now of course, didn’t find a history of when it was introduced though.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[geobernd]

Big round of applause form me as well!
Without Merlin's Magic (and FreshJRs QoS magic) I would likely have switched from Asus a long time ago - I am on my third router (RT-AC68U) at the moment and plan to stick with Asus as long as it has Merlin when the next one comes out....

Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into this.
Reminds me of my first programming days on a KIM-1 - later on a Commodore PET and then the usual progression...
Later I diddled with embedded systems (Mainly DNLA media players before Chromecast and Firestick) and while I usually got stuff work (after many late nights) it was never in shape I would share it with anyone except my enemies...

Thanks again for all the hard work and the magnificent results!!!

 

[miroco]

Happy Birthday!

Thank you for sharing.

I'm convinced that Asuswrt-Merlin will live and thrive for many more years.