Question for Merlin Developer

[meaganmargaret]

I read somewhere that you focus on performance vs. other iterations of Wireless router firmware. My question is about wireless bridging. Specifically WDS, but as of this date, I'll take anything that works. Because in my experience, wireless bridging is very immature and very hard to get working

I'm looking for a firmware that is stable and one on which WDS actually works and is reliable. My experience with Asus original firmware is that it doesn't and on DD-WRT, various versions, WDS works on some and not on others.

I have two identical Asus RT-AC68R routers, and getting WDS to work between these two routers has been very very difficult. Actually, it's working now using the AC band between the two routers, but if I try to login via a PC to the main master router, the connection drops. I'm on a beta of DD-WRT.

But I'm not posting here to ask for support on DD-WRT, I'm posting here to see if your software's support for WDS is stable and to try and get a solid version that would work.

I'm just wondering how good your support of WDS is?

 

[RMerlin]

WDS support is 100% Asus's code, so it works exactly the same way as with the stock firmware. I have no idea how reliable it is, because I never tested it, and personally I consider WDS to be obsolete technology that should not be used. WDS, by design, requires the use of WEP, which can be cracked within minutes.

I know that a few devices claim to support WPA2 with WDS, but there are two problems there:

1) Those are non-standard implementations, which will not work with anyone else
2) WDS requires a static key. WPA2's security design requires the encryption key to be rotated at frequent intervals (the default is 3600 seconds). Disabling this (which is what those WPA-based WDS probably do) effectively drops a large portion of WPA's security, making it once again highly insecure.

So in short, don't use WDS, look for a more secure alternative (Media bridge mode, powerline adapters, etc...)

 

[meaganmargaret]

WDS support is 100% Asus's code, so it works exactly the same way as with the stock firmware. I have no idea how reliable it is, because I never tested it, and personally I consider WDS to be obsolete technology that should not be used. WDS, by design, requires the use of WEP, which can be cracked within minutes.

I know that a few devices claim to support WPA2 with WDS, but there are two problems there:

1) Those are non-standard implementations, which will not work with anyone else
2) WDS requires a static key. WPA2's security design requires the encryption key to be rotated at frequent intervals (the default is 3600 seconds). Disabling this (which is what those WPA-based WDS probably do) effectively drops a large portion of WPA's security, making it once again highly insecure.

So in short, don't use WDS, look for a more secure alternative (Media bridge mode, powerline adapters, etc...)

I appreciate the rapid response.....I knew there was a reason I spent 18 hours in h@ll trying to get WDS to work......thanks!!