Migrating from MIPS (AC66U) to ARM (AC86U) router: how to? (DDNS etc.)

[XIII]

Found a nice Black Friday deal on the RT-AC86U, so I decided to buy one to upgrade my RT-AC66U.

What is the best way to migrate from my old (MIPS) router to the new (ARM) router?

I might post more questions here in the future (when I have received the new router), but my main concern right now is: how can I make sure I can reuse the DDNS (*.asuscomm.com) entry from the old router on the new router? (then I don't have to reconfigure my iOS devices)

Since I'm migrating from RMerlin 380.69 to 382.1 I plan to (re)configure from scratch, though I probably want to reuse SSH keys and SSL certificates (and factory reset the old router when done).

Other tips?

 

[isr25]

Old router - change the DDNS to another dummy one. Save.

New router - key in your preferred DDNS name

I also changed my AC66U to the AC86U recently. I reconfigured everything back manually for ease of mind.

 

[XIII]

Thank you!

How do you feel about your upgrade?

 

[deddc23efb]

I'm about to do the same thing. I upgraded to the RT-AC3100 to get access to the fq_codel support. I'm now concerned about the screwy Trend Micro DPI Implementation backed into the system ... I hope that's not an issue.

I plan to migrate manually from my AC66U ... lots of static DNS stuff to retype.. sigh.

 

[atkinsom]

Use John's NVRAM utility and it'll migrate everything to your new router keys and all. I migrated from an AC66u to an AC68U with no issues using his NVRAM tool. MIPS to ARM based with no issues.

 

[deddc23efb]

Use John's NVRAM utility and it'll migrate everything to your new router keys and all. I migrated from an AC66u to an AC68U with no issues using his NVRAM tool. MIPS to ARM based with no issues.

Thanks for the pointer. I suspect it won't help me ... I'm migrating from Tomato to ASUS Merlin. I haven't been able to confirm that Tomato properly supports fq_codel and I'm fixated on that right now.

 

[XIII]

Finally found time to unpack my AC86U...

wl0_country_code=E0
wl1_country_code=E0
wl_country_code=

Which country is E0?

 

[XIII]

Also, I changed the DDNS name on my old AC66U (let's say from X to Y), but when I try to use X on my AC86U I get an error that it is already registered

How can I fix this?

 

[XIII]

Unfortunately John's tool partially failed to restore, but he's not to blame, as this is a known issue on the AC86U (which RMerlin discussed during the 382 development):

Restoring [System - Basic]
!!!!!!wl variable:https_crt_file's value size:3140 is bigger than allowed size:255!!!
nvram/value pair: is invalid or bigger than its max length
Segmentation fault

For the other things it worked great! Thank you John for providing such an excellent tool!

 

[martinr]

Also, I changed the DDNS name on my old AC66U (let's say from X to Y), but when I try to use X on my AC86U I get an error that it is already registered

How can I fix this?

Can you confirm you rebooted the AC66U after you changed it to Y? I recently went through something similar moving my ASUS DDNS address from one RT-AC68U to another one. I did have some problems till I got it right - all of my own making. I’m pretty sure if you keep trying you will succeed; you’re probably overlooking something simple.

 

[XIII]

I don’t know how/why it helped, but after setting a random name on the AC86U first I could reuse the old name from the AC66U on the AC86U.

 

[martinr]

I don’t know how/why it helped, but after setting a random name on the AC86U first I could reuse the old name from the AC66U on the AC86U.

I think you went through the same process I did, initially cocked up through ignorance but corrected by a bit of perseverance. Glad you got it sorted. I’m sure if you ever need to do it again it will be much smoother thanks to the learning curve.

 

[XIII]

Next challenge: getting DNSCrypt to work properly again (config copied from AC66U).

This is my dnsmasq.conf.add:

no-resolv
#strict-order
server=127.0.0.1#65053
server=127.0.0.1#65054

On the WAN tab:

Connect to DNS Server automatically: No
DNS Server1: 9.9.9.9
DNS Server2: DNS Server1

Entware runs 2 dnscrypt-proxy instances (1 on 127.0.0.1:65053, the other on 127.0.01:65054), using the 2 DNSCrypt.eu servers

When I ran the test on DNSleaktest.com on my AC66U I would only get a DNSCrypt.eu server in the results, but now I get many OpenDNS servers as well as some that I don't even recognize...

What should I do additionally?