Has anyone put Tomato on the RT-AC68U?

[philmiami]

It's NOT that I don't appreciate Merlin changing a few things in the firmware but I looked around....
1- seems there is a Tomato for the AC68U
2- seems like it's a drawn out process to flash it BUT there aren't any clear step 1 do this, step 2 do this readings I can find.
So wondering if it works on the AC68U (If anyone has done it) and difficulty level.
I don't want to FUBAR the router BUT I like the different GUI on the Youtube video.

 

[Handyman]

I ran Victek's Tomato on my RT-N16. Very nice interface and reliable. I haven't run it on my RT-AC68 but wouldn't hesitate to try it. His site makes it simple to determine which file to download, unlike some others. And he has a version for the AC68U.

My router stayed up without needing a reboot for over 500 days on Victek's Tomato, and would have continued longer, but I had to move the router. So I trust his stuff. I've heard that the Shibby builds are good too, but never tried those.

http://victek.is-a-geek.com/tomato.html

 

[No Limit]

It's NOT that I don't appreciate Merlin changing a few things in the firmware but I looked around....
1- seems there is a Tomato for the AC68U
2- seems like it's a drawn out process to flash it BUT there aren't any clear step 1 do this, step 2 do this readings I can find.
So wondering if it works on the AC68U (If anyone has done it) and difficulty level.
I don't want to FUBAR the router BUT I like the different GUI on the Youtube video.

I bought this router last week and flashed Tomato Shibby firmware 1.2.1 (the latest available on his page, http://tomato.groov.pl/?page_id=164). I had some trouble and needed to flash it twice (for odd reason) in rescue mode. It's been rock solid for about 7 days now with OpenVPN client running on it. My minor issue with Shibby firmware is that it doesn't record bandwidth usage but I'm guessing that will be fixed in future releases.

 

[hggomes]

Tomato Shibby still needs almost 2 minutes to reboot on AC68U?

Also flashing the FW is (at least it was) a nighmare, sometimes you needed to reflash and reflash again until it work.

 

[troels]

121 is still a work in progress - maybe 95 pct. finished. QoS now works, but you cannot restore a saved configuration.
You can flash from Merlin's firmware, but start by resetting to default values.
Power on with WPS pressed 30 secs in case of problems.

 

[hggomes]

I know the firmware is kind a beta version, but i still don't know if the reboot time problem still exists.

I use Merlin FW (signature), and it's great so i don't really need tomato FW anyway.

 

[troels]

Do you want me to time the reboot? You are probably right - but what does it matter? You dont have to reboot often.

 

[philmiami]

well I was wondering
I like the GUI on Tomato but I don't want to have problems

 

[RMerlin]

At this stage I would consider Tomato on ARM routers to be beta. Still numerous issues need to be resolved by Shibby/Victek. I also have a friend of mine who bricked his just-purchased RT-AC56U after flashing it with Tomato, as it would get stuck during boot, and due to limitations in the RT-AC56U bootloader he was unable to put it in Firmware Recovery mode. He had to RMA a 6 hours-old router.

 

[philmiami]

it's not that I don't like what you have done Merlin
I just like the GUI on the Tomato but I read in other places and yes, there is problems with it
just wondering if anyone had it up, running and didn't have any problems
I am going to keep your FW going but looking at maybe playing around with it but I don't want to get into a no recoverable boot loop
I did that with a RT-N66R, so 3 days after getting it I returned it and got my money back.

 

[KGB7]

it's not that I don't like what you have done Merlin
I just like the GUI on the Tomato but I read in other places and yes, there is problems with it
just wondering if anyone had it up, running and didn't have any problems
I am going to keep your FW going but looking at maybe playing around with it but I don't want to get into a no recoverable boot loop
I did that with a RT-N66R, so 3 days after getting it I returned it and got my money back.

Beta is like a Lottery, thus the chances of not having issues are very high.

You could try Dd-wrt firmware Kong build. Latest build has NAT Acceleration implemented.
It works well and has tons of options that Asus firmware doesn't provide. The GUI is nothing fancy but it gets the job done.

 

[KGB7]

At this stage I would consider Tomato on ARM routers to be beta. Still numerous issues need to be resolved by Shibby/Victek. I also have a friend of mine who bricked his just-purchased RT-AC56U after flashing it with Tomato, as it would get stuck during boot, and due to limitations in the RT-AC56U bootloader he was unable to put it in Firmware Recovery mode. He had to RMA a 6 hours-old router.

The very first public build, did or almost bricked.my router. Took me almost an hour of reboots and resets to recover the router. I had to get it to recovery mode several times, flash the router with Asus firmware several times, as the router wouldn't accept OEM Asus firmware.

Made an angry post that day in their forum, I'm sure youve seen it.

 

[No Limit]

I just wanted to clarify that I was moving from a Netgear WNR3500L to a Asus AC68U. I've only used Tomato firmware on that router so I'm familiar with the interface. I tried dd-wrt once, but didn't like it. I didn't want to upgrade my WNR3500L, but it was struggling with VPN and connection speeds. The dual CPUs on the Asus router eliminated that problem. Now 8 days running with Shibby Tomato running OpenVPN client with no problems.

 

[RMerlin]

it's not that I don't like what you have done Merlin
I just like the GUI on the Tomato but I read in other places and yes, there is problems with it
just wondering if anyone had it up, running and didn't have any problems
I am going to keep your FW going but looking at maybe playing around with it but I don't want to get into a no recoverable boot loop
I did that with a RT-N66R, so 3 days after getting it I returned it and got my money back.

The webui is one of Tomato's popular features. It's less confusing than DD-WRT's endless array of features, and some people like the fact it's quite Spartan. Personally I think it's a little too Spartan.

 

[KGB7]

The webui is one of Tomato's popular features. It's less confusing than DD-WRT's endless array of features, and some people like the fact it's quite Spartan. Personally I think it's a little too Spartan.

Not sure what you mean by spartan.

Ddwrt webui is a spider web that takes time to get used to, I've been using their firmware for a decade. But the fact that its way ahead of Tomatoe as far stability is a big plus on newer arm Asus routers.

At the end of the day I switched back to Merlin firmware, as I no longer need 1,000 options.

Would be nice to see Gargoyle firmware on this router, as they have best QoS in my past experience. I could limit bandwidth per IP at 1kb's increments. Ddwrt and Tomatoe was not able to do that.

 

[RMerlin]

Not sure what you mean by spartan.

The layout, colour scheme and grouping of elements is TOO simple. More visual highlighting would help quickly spotting sections at a glance rather than a flat list of categories on the side with no division. Stronger visual grouping of elements within a page would also help locating a specific item - there's not enough contrast between groups of elements.

I had to configure wifi on a customer's RT-N16 running Tomato a week ago, and it took me a while to find out where Wireless basic settings were located. I think ultimately, they were located on a section that didn't identify itself as holding Wireless settings, and I had to scroll quite a way down to locate it. Wireless settings should be clearly identified as being in their own section.

Ddwrt webui is a spider web that takes time to get used to, I've been using their firmware for a decade. But the fact that its way ahead of Tomatoe as far stability is a big plus on newer arm Asus routers.

Different issues there. The abundance of options can get confusing, however it's visually very well laid out. Easier to locate a particular setting as DD-WRT uses visual grouping of elements and clearly defined headers. You rarely need to scroll through a page to determine if the particular setting you are looking for is located on a given page, so searching for a setting in general is faster.

 

[bbb0777]

Since the above, Tomato has put out two more versions for the AC68U; how is Tomato on that router now?

 

[troels]

Shibby build 123 is still a work in progress, but as long as you remember the known limitations it is working well - at least here.