Happy birthday to us

[skeal]

From one Canadian to another; "Nice going eh!"

 

[immi803]

Awesome journey so far
Hats off and Happy Birthday

 

[JSinFCVA]

I've been on the Merlin bandwagon since the early days. Your firmware on various Asus routers has been the linchpin of my home office/network for years - I was a work-from-home telecommuter for the last five years of my career, working in IT for DOJ. Never had a single router failure or security issue on your firmware. Many thanks is an understatement!

 

[Deleted member 62525]

Happy Birthday! Canadians rock!!

Before using Asus Merlin I had R7000 and dd-wrt firmware. It was good but not as engaging and fun to work with as Asus Merlin code.
Also, I have to mention this Community, wonderful people, helpful and engaging. Kudos to everyone, Merlin and all key developers that spend hours and days building extensions, provide tips, code examples and help everyone. Big THANK YOU!!

 

[Alfsu]

Happy Anniversary, and thank you so much for a wonderful firmware.

I did join the forum back in Sep-2013, at the time I was deployed in Saudi Arabia and looking for ways to move away from pirated satellite systems into streaming services while bypassing the local censorship and Geo-restrictions. That's when I became the proud owner of an RT-AC66U running Asuswrt-Merlin, it was like a match made in heaven. Believe or not, I was able to stream western video content on a crappy DSL line picking around 4 to 5 mbps, it was incredible.
Been around since, and can say, after a couple of router upgrades and equipping some other family members with this marvel, that not only have I learned a ton of stuff but also have had tons of fun in the process.
Eric, I'd look forward to having a lot more of this experience.

Thank you again!

 

[SheikhSheikha]

Happy Anniversary! Eric (& team). If this firmware had not been available chances are very likely that my infrastructure would not depend on Asus hardware (nor would I have bought a second router or recommend some friends to do the same (with your firmware of course)).
(I already used your firmware some time before registering on this forum).

I am not into the bells and whistles but use my routers pretty straight forward with an L2TP client and over the past few years I have only been able to notice that my WiFi network has gone better and better. (even though the intermittently disconnection of L2TP client still remains a mystery) :-D

A lot of the scripts/add-ons might be useful to me but in all honesty it is not always clear what the real advantages are (I am knowledgeable to a certain extent but more to be considered a power user) When reading all the hassle about QOS, it made me decide to stay far away from it.

I am sure that my fear to destabilize my network with some of the enhancements available, causes a limitation to the use of the true capabilities and capacity of my routers.

Happy anniversary again! Congratulations with your project, with the collection of a user crowd that on this forum has an attitude to "help out" where they can, to make your firmware project a permanent chain of success.

 

[cplay]

Few questions @RMerlin:

1. Why you never moved to a subscription model?
2. Why ASUS doesn't contract you directly?
3. What do you love about creating Merlin firmware?
4. How many hours a week do you think you spend on this firmware/forum?
5. Do you have any expansion plans for the future?

As always great firmware, worlds above stock firmware.

 

[ika]

Thank you very much for everything, for the fw itself, for your dedication, for your care, and also thank you for all the help and continuous support you gave. Your firmware (with the help of the brilliant contributors and staff here) had a significant impact on the way how we all think about home routers now, and I really don't know a single person who would use stock instead of Merlin. You created a unique community and gave the world something amazing, and we are all greatful for that.
I hope Asus will continue to recognize what is really happening here and I'm looking forward to see the future of Asuswrt-Merlin.

 

[RMerlin]

1. Why you never moved to a subscription model?

Because I already have a full time daytime job. I don't have time for a second one. Subscriptions implies expectations, and therefore requires you to be able to dedicate time to the project, rather than just do so when you have spare time to do so. It also requires you to also provide technical support (I don't have the time nor the will to do so myself), and to start implementing features based on the user's requests, not on my own decisions.

And those like me who were around back in the Talisman days remember how poorly this can work out... The DD-WRT project was actually launched because of the backlash caused by Talisman going with a subscription model.

Why ASUS doesn't contract you directly?

They don't need me. They already have a large team of competent engineers. I can do what I do not because I'm more competent than them (I really am not, I'm NOT a software engineer), but because I am not bound by corporate and marketing planning like they are. Their goal is to sell products to as many users as possible. My goal is to push it a bit further in different directions, for very specific models and very specific user types.

And also because one daytime job is enough. I don't need to also get a night time job (because their dev team is about 12 hours away from my own timezone).

What do you love about creating Merlin firmware?

I'm a tinkerer. Some people like to work on their cars. Others like to build hardware projects with Arduino. I like to play with code, and be able to see a concrete result come out of it.

How many hours a week do you think you spend on this firmware/forum?

Anywhere between 5 hours and 50-60 hours, depending on things. While working on the RT-AX58U things were quiet at work, and it was a lot of work to implement support for that that model and debugging it, so that week I probably spent close to 40 hours on it. But my average is probably about 1-2 hours a day.

Do you have any expansion plans for the future?

Nothing in particular. I already greatly slowed down on new features addition over the past two years due to the increasing complexity of working with Asus' code. The code has simply grown way too large and too complex for a single person to fully handle it. New GPL merges are also increasingly complex because the further apart my code grows, the more manual these merges have to be. So priority remains on maintaining the existing code base and keeping it in sync with Asus. That alone is now a lot of work whenever they release new GPL drops. A typical GPL merge was taking me about 2-4 hours in the early days. Now, it can be closer to 8-12 hours depending on how far apart the two GPL releases are.

 

[Asad Ali]

(I'm NOT a software engineer)

Really??
Now I have one more question if I may ask? Whats your educational background?

 

[dosborne]

Really??
Now I have one more question if I may ask? Whats your educational background?

Not really all that surprising to me. I've always been a tinkerer of sorts, with both hardware and software. I've written a number of groundbreaking programs that were very specific to a particular industry, completely on my own as sole coder. I've been in IT since I was 15 (56 now - so 40+ years), but never technically hired or titled as a software engineer (or programmer,....) and never took a programming course despite being proficient in at least 15 programming languages. In all honesty, you only need about 20% of the skill set to take professional level code and tweak it compared to coding a huge project from scratch. Particularly when you consider that whole teams of experts in various bits and pieces work on most commercial projects.

Not trying to take anything away form Eric's contribution or efforts, just pointing out that education or profession do not necessarily play a significant role.

Also, if I have a personal interest in something as a hobby, it is often not directly related to my "work", but doesn't mean I put less effort into it (often just the opposite depending on what my boss "assigns" to me)

 

[RMerlin]

Whats your educational background?

College degree in electronics (with my final year specializing in computer electronics, micro-controllers, etc...).

And 21 years (and counting) of experience as an IT consultant/computer tech/system builder/server administrator/etc...

 

[Asad Ali]

I have two more questions which just popped up in my mind lol.

What do you think is the reason behind Asus closing down thier code day by day? Illegal forks of Asuswrt running on non Asus devices?

And do you still get test devices from them whenever they launch a new product?

 

[JT Strickland]

Happy Birthday indeed, Asuswrt-Merlin! May your cake be smothered with candles, your blessings be many, and your enemies be few!
Thanks to RMerlin also from me. I would no doubt be using another brand router if it were not for Asuswrt-Merlin firmware.
I have since developed a love for the Asus router.
jts

 

[RMerlin]

What do you think is the reason behind Asus closing down thier code day by day? Illegal forks of Asuswrt running on non Asus devices?

Many different reasons.

1) The FCC requires manufacturers to ensure that end-users cannot easily modify channel/region/power levels. So almost everything related to configuring the wifi radios was moved to closed source.
2) Illegal forks running on non-Asus hardware, causing breaches of licensing terms, this has forced Asus to make some of that code more opaque, including safeguards to (somewhat) limit the possibility of running on unlicensed hardware
3) To protect their own IP, and prevent competitors from simply copying and reusing their AiMesh implementation in their own products, for example
4) Security measures, to make it harder for malware authors to work around those security measures by just looking at the source code

Mind you, they are still more open than a lot of the competition. Netgear for instance closes the complete source code to their web server, as well as to the firewall configuration code. (because iptables rule creation is obviously a major trade secret. ). But, it still makes my work much more difficult today, especially in supporting multiple models as I can no longer share the same code between all models.

And do you still get test devices from them whenever they launch a new product?

Yes, sometimes they send them on their own (like the XT8), other times I ask them to provide me one (like the RT-AX58U).

 

[Asad Ali]

I'm back lol (I hope it's the last time)

Between you and Asus's engineers, who made the first contact? Did they approach you directly? Or you tried to reach out to them first. And when was the first time you started talking with them?

 

[RMerlin]

Between you and Asus's engineers, who made the first contact? Did they approach you directly? Or you tried to reach out to them first. And when was the first time you started talking with them?

My memory is a bit fuzzy as that was a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, I first contacted their tech support a few weeks after getting my RT-N66U, back in 2012 as I saw it supported Optware, but only partially, and wanted to ask them about that. When later on I posted a bugfix on their forums about something unrelated, I got contacted by their Customer Loyalty group (which were kinda Asus's social media interaction team at the time, they were posting on various forums) telling me their dev team were aware of my project, and also thanking me for a fix I had posted, and to look at their next release notes for a special "thank you" note.

So I'd say that, generally speaking, they are the ones who first got in touch with me specifically about my project, after they had seen my interactions about it on their VIP Forums (that was before the move to SNBForums).

Over time, my primary contact went from that CL representative to a product manager back at Asus USA, and then to the Asuswrt project manager back at Taiwan HQ (among other things - he seems to carry a lot of different hats within their networking division). That PM still remains my primary contact within the company, although I occasionally interact directly with some of their engineers now. Sometimes I reach out to them with a question/bugfix/bugreport, sometimes they are the ones contacting me asking me about something I did, or to inform me of an important coming change.

 

[Asad Ali]

My memory is a bit fuzzy as that was a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, I first contacted their tech support a few weeks after getting my RT-N66U, back in 2012 as I saw it supported Optware, but only partially, and wanted to ask them about that. When later on I posted a bugfix on their forums about something unrelated, I got contacted by their Customer Loyalty group (which were kinda Asus's social media interaction team at the time, they were posting on various forums) telling me their dev team were aware of my project, and also thanking me for a fix I had posted, and to look at their next release notes for a special "thank you" note.

So I'd say that, generally speaking, they are the ones who first got in touch with me specifically about my project, after they had seen my interactions about it on their VIP Forums (that was before the move to SNBForums).

Over time, my primary contact went from that CL representative to a product manager back at Asus USA, and then to the Asuswrt project manager back at Taiwan HQ (among other things - he seems to carry a lot of different hats within their networking division). That PM still remains my primary contact within the company, although I occasionally interact directly with some of their engineers now. Sometimes I reach out to them with a question/bugfix/bugreport, sometimes they are the ones contacting me asking me about something I did, or to inform me of an important coming change.

Awesome, thank you again for a detailed answer. Hopefully I won't bug you again anytime soon. (No promises though hehe)

 

[Skeptical.me]

Thank you @RMerlin ... it has been my introduction to router firmware. I only purchased an ASUS router after discovering I could use a VPN client (for streaming US Netflix) using Merlin.

 

[Sky]

Yesterday was Asuswrt-Merlin's 8th anniversary. The first release was on April 5th 2012.

My sincere apology for being late to the party. I would like to add my name to the chorus of praise for your many and exemplary efforts. Thank you so much!

My introduction to computers was when a brand spanking new FORTRAN device was installed at our local Junior College and it only took three large really, really cold classrooms to house it, along with a brand new futuristic 2-story building! (Students weren't allowed to physically create the cards, we used these weird forms and someone else punched the cards after the teacher OK'd them.) It was a real step up doing Drosophilia genetics on the old COBOL cards at the UC, but what a mess if you failed to number them.

The thought of a personal computing device, routers, and the like were so far off—even the ARPANET project was still a dream in development at the beginning, the very first message having not yet been sent. Tinkering remained on cars and trucks, $600 USD/mo was a solid middle-class wage and computers were so far out of reach that it was not until the late 1980's that I once again ventured that way. My how times have changed and yet, the tinkerers' souls still abound all about us.

You and your hobby have blessed a great many people Eric (if I may be so personal), far more than you will ever realize, including me and mine. I hope and trust it has been and will continue to be a blessing to you and yours as well.

Sky