theirongiant
Regular Contributor
Hi gang,
I have been lurking for a long time (hence my low post count) but have been using Merlin's firmware since I bought my RT-N66U almost a year ago. I have gone back to TomatoUSB after much toil and sweat, because I have reached the almost certain conclusion that while ASUS' hardware is excellent, the software is deeply flawed. There are some bugs in the software that cause wireless hiccups and daily modem reboots, all of which has completely disappeared with TomatoUSB.
Not long after I bought this router, I was experiencing random dropped packets and latency over Wi-Fi, and the cable modem would unexpectedly reboot itself 2-3x a day. I thought the device was defective, so I exchanged it at Fry's. The issues continued, so I started troubleshooting elsewhere: I replaced all my Ethernet cables with Cat5e. I upgraded from a Motorola SB5120 to a Motorola SB6121. I have Charter Cable, so I called them to see if there were issues with my line. Nothing.
We moved to a new apartment nearby (still in a Charter area) and the issues persisted. Then I discovered Merlin's firmware. This was back at ASUS Firmware 2.x (revision 260, IIRC), before the WAN DHCP setting was implemented in later revisions. I still liked the feature set enough to keep using it, but random wireless hiccups and cable modem reboots persisted, according to the modem logs anyway.
Frustrated with the lost IP addresses and having to reboot the modem every month, I sought alternatives and found TomatoUSB. After using it a couple of weeks, I noticed that the wireless was a lot more stable. Unfortunately, the cable modem was still dropping the IP address every few weeks. This was baffling, of course, until I learned of the WAN lease issue that is very specific to Charter and some other ISPs. Merlin implemented the "Normal/Aggressive" option at the time, and I did not know if there was any way to fix this in TomatoUSB, I switched back to Asus/Merlin because of the WAN DHCP issue.
I put up with the wireless hiccups, but I also cheked the modem logs and found that the cable modem was still rebooting several times a day. I called Charter on two separate occasions to check my equipment and the lines, both inside and out, and only found an unnecessary splitter on the outside box (my signals were well within spec, even with the splitter). However, the modem would continue to reboot at random times throughout the day.
Some time later, I discovered numerous posts on the Internet about setting the following options for the udhcpc daemon in TomatoUSB. These options tell the router to try the WAN DHCP query 3 times every 5 seconds, then wait for 310 seconds (5m5s) between these attempts:
With that, I switched back to TomatoUSB. That was January 16th. The modem hasn't logged a single reboot, and the wireless performance has never been better.
I have seen other threads about random wireless issues with these devices. These are not the work of Merlin (The Magician). I applaud his efforts, and the features he's adding are terrific. ASUS makes a great product, but they still have some work to do on their software.
I have been lurking for a long time (hence my low post count) but have been using Merlin's firmware since I bought my RT-N66U almost a year ago. I have gone back to TomatoUSB after much toil and sweat, because I have reached the almost certain conclusion that while ASUS' hardware is excellent, the software is deeply flawed. There are some bugs in the software that cause wireless hiccups and daily modem reboots, all of which has completely disappeared with TomatoUSB.
Not long after I bought this router, I was experiencing random dropped packets and latency over Wi-Fi, and the cable modem would unexpectedly reboot itself 2-3x a day. I thought the device was defective, so I exchanged it at Fry's. The issues continued, so I started troubleshooting elsewhere: I replaced all my Ethernet cables with Cat5e. I upgraded from a Motorola SB5120 to a Motorola SB6121. I have Charter Cable, so I called them to see if there were issues with my line. Nothing.
We moved to a new apartment nearby (still in a Charter area) and the issues persisted. Then I discovered Merlin's firmware. This was back at ASUS Firmware 2.x (revision 260, IIRC), before the WAN DHCP setting was implemented in later revisions. I still liked the feature set enough to keep using it, but random wireless hiccups and cable modem reboots persisted, according to the modem logs anyway.
Frustrated with the lost IP addresses and having to reboot the modem every month, I sought alternatives and found TomatoUSB. After using it a couple of weeks, I noticed that the wireless was a lot more stable. Unfortunately, the cable modem was still dropping the IP address every few weeks. This was baffling, of course, until I learned of the WAN lease issue that is very specific to Charter and some other ISPs. Merlin implemented the "Normal/Aggressive" option at the time, and I did not know if there was any way to fix this in TomatoUSB, I switched back to Asus/Merlin because of the WAN DHCP issue.
I put up with the wireless hiccups, but I also cheked the modem logs and found that the cable modem was still rebooting several times a day. I called Charter on two separate occasions to check my equipment and the lines, both inside and out, and only found an unnecessary splitter on the outside box (my signals were well within spec, even with the splitter). However, the modem would continue to reboot at random times throughout the day.
Some time later, I discovered numerous posts on the Internet about setting the following options for the udhcpc daemon in TomatoUSB. These options tell the router to try the WAN DHCP query 3 times every 5 seconds, then wait for 310 seconds (5m5s) between these attempts:
Code:
--retries=2 --timeout=5 --tryagain=310I have seen other threads about random wireless issues with these devices. These are not the work of Merlin (The Magician). I applaud his efforts, and the features he's adding are terrific. ASUS makes a great product, but they still have some work to do on their software.
Last edited:
