[Release 384/NG] Asuswrt-Merlin 384.4 is now available

[Gedeon30]

Nothing really broken with 384.4 in my AC66_B1 after a week, just to point out an few issues:
- SMBv2 just kills the router performance. It's about 4-5 times slower than SMBv1 over WiFi (didn't test over Ethernet since that isn't my use case). I had to force SMBv1 only.
- When indexing/sharing through minidlna folders with UTF charsets (áéíóú) are weirdly displayed in web interface. By now I'm avoiding those chars.
- And a change I did in Prof tab (disable interference USB3 protection) just rebooted the router without any warning.

Great job in any case !!!

 

[scjr]

I also see many of these messages daily for every connected device...is this just the DHCP addresses being renewed?

Apr 4 05:24:25 dnsmasq-dhcp[1867]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.1.57 <<mac address here>>
Apr 4 05:24:25 dnsmasq-dhcp[1867]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.57 <<mac address here>> HP-M475dw-Printer

If you want, you can hide those messages. Under LAN - DHCP Server, “Hide DHCP/RA queries” choose Yes.

 

[joegreat]

I am glad your 87U is working great on 384.
I did 30/30/30 reset with wps clear three times now and no luck.
Could you please describe the steps you took to reset your 87U?

As there is NO (again: NO!) 30-30-30 rest on Asus devices (when ever this myth will die??? ), you should do a proper RESET and reconfigure manually - then your wireless should work like a charm - as mine does on both devices!

 

[bidi]

i don't usually make these "me too, +1" posts, but it seems necessary in this case:
i upgraded from 380.69_2 directly to 384.4_2 and it's been working well so far after almost 11 days uptime. i did a reset using the hardware button on the back after updating the firmware, then reconfigured everything using screenshots.

the interface does seem slower compared to the 380 branch. i disabled regular cache flushing to speed things up a bit, but i'm hoping things will pick up with 384.5.

also, just in case people haven't noticed this: the Asus Router app does display the 5GHz connections with the correct icon, it's just the regular web interface that is bugged. not that it matters a lot to me, since i know what connection type each device is supposed to have anyway (and I disabled the 2.4GHz radio).

 

[king006]

Thank you everyone for testing with an iPhone X I think, my problem was the 'low batterij' option. If it is off, he also gets 866.

 

[Nigel Jones]

I continue to have some issues with the AC3200. 384.4 beta4 seemed stable, but with 384.4 release I had some situations where after a while, whilst I could get to my router pages, and the internet showed as connected (cable modem), I couldn't reach any internet sites. This seemed to affect all wifi radios & wired.

I upgraded to 384.4_2 and hit the issue again this evening. I did a full factory reset and deleted /jffs. Tonight I hit the same problem again. zero throughput. This affected all device.

Also last night I had to reboot when my son's surface & iPhone failed to connect to 5 Ghz wifi (incorrect password error ... it wasn't;t). resolved by a reboot. other devices were ok though.

Nothing obvious in the log.... I nearly went back to 384.4 beta4, but will think about waiting a few days for the latest code merge on the 384.5 test stream for the ac3200 in case the issue is addressed there. Official is another option for debugging, but I like the merlin enhancements (and also suspect any bugs have their origin in the Asus code anyway!)

Is anyone else hitting issues with the AC3200. It's worth pointing out also that the issue may go back further, as it can take a few days to surface (in this case it was < 48 hours). Unclear if it relates to number of devices (I have 30 or so) or other events. I do usually run with adaptive qos and the trend micro security stuff, but always have done.

 

[jeff3820]

My 86U runs the 192.168.1.1 subnet. The 68U runs the 192.168.2.1 subnet. Trying to setup a static route on the 86U but it's not working. Trying to reach the the 68U on 192.168.2.1. 68U connected to the 86U on 192.168.1.240. However, running a similar static route on the 68U to reach the 86U seems fine. Both running on 384.4_2. Anyone else try static routes on the 86U?

Also, can't get the network services filter (blacklist) to work...anyone else have any luck?

 

[Teng Wang]

I couldn't find Disk spindown option under Tools/Other Setting in latest 384.4_2 firmware. And my HDD is always spinning when connected to my router.

Is it expected? I see spindown option before this firmware upgrade.

My router is RT-AC68U

 

[RMerlin]

I couldn't find Disk spindown option under Tools/Other Setting in latest 384.4_2 firmware. And my HDD is always spinning when connected to my router.

Is it expected? I see spindown option before this firmware upgrade.

My router is RT-AC68U

From the top of the Changelog:

General changes in the 384/NG branch vs 380.xx:
   - Clear your browser cache after flashing your first 384 build.
   - It's generally recommended to do a factory default reset
     when coming from 380 to 384/NG.
   - HDD spindown settings moved to the System settings page
   - SSL certificate management moved to the DDNS page for models
     that support Let's Encrypt
   - Nvram settings now have maximum lengths enforced, to protect
     against buffer overruns.  This means that some very long
     lists of settings might no longer be possible on 384.xx.

 

[Quiller]

When I switched from 384.3 to 384.4 on my RT-AC88U, I noticed that my Nvidia Shield wasn't able to connect to the network drives.

After searching on the internet why that was, I found that the Shield only supports SMBv1. So I set the Samba protocol version to "SMBv1 + SMBv2". My Shield connects perfectly to the network drives on my windows 10 PC, but it won't connect to the USB3 drive connected to the router, or it takes a long time to connect and only shows some of the folders that are on that drive.

I've all the settings on the "Network Place (Samba) Share" Tab, but nothing seems to work.

I need a sollution for this, because it's very annoying.

 

[Gedeon30]

When I switched from 384.3 to 384.4 on my RT-AC88U, I noticed that my Nvidia Shield wasn't able to connect to the network drives.

After searching on the internet why that was, I found that the Shield only supports SMBv1. So I set the Samba protocol version to "SMBv1 + SMBv2". My Shield connects perfectly to the network drives on my windows 10 PC, but it won't connect to the USB3 drive connected to the router, or it takes a long time to connect and only shows some of the folders that are on that drive.

I've all the settings on the "Network Place (Samba) Share" Tab, but nothing seems to work.

I need a sollution for this, because it's very annoying.

Just leave SMBv1 as the only available protocol, reboot and test.

 

[Quiller]

Just leave SMBv1 as the only available protocol, reboot and test.

I tried that before and it doesn't work.

 

[chris.at]

Merlin NAT loopback was removed, as it was becoming increasingly problematic with the constant low-level changes to the firewall

One question on this: Does this mean that the selection if nat loopback should be enabled or disabled was removed completely - because I can't find it, or I'm blind. Furthermore, if it's removed, is nat loopback now generally enabled or disabled and how could it be changed?

Thank you,
Chris

 

[Nigel Jones]

I continue to have some issues with the AC3200. 384.4 beta4 seemed stable, but with 384.4 release I had some situations where after a while, whilst I could get to my router pages, and the internet showed as connected (cable modem), I couldn't reach any internet sites. This seemed to affect all wifi radios & wired.

I upgraded to 384.4_2 and hit the issue again this evening. I did a full factory reset and deleted /jffs. Tonight I hit the same problem again. zero throughput. This affected all device.

Also last night I had to reboot when my son's surface & iPhone failed to connect to 5 Ghz wifi (incorrect password error ... it wasn't;t). resolved by a reboot. other devices were ok though.

Nothing obvious in the log.... I nearly went back to 384.4 beta4, but will think about waiting a few days for the latest code merge on the 384.5 test stream for the ac3200 in case the issue is addressed there. Official is another option for debugging, but I like the merlin enhancements (and also suspect any bugs have their origin in the Asus code anyway!)

Is anyone else hitting issues with the AC3200. It's worth pointing out also that the issue may go back further, as it can take a few days to surface (in this case it was < 48 hours). Unclear if it relates to number of devices (I have 30 or so) or other events. I do usually run with adaptive qos and the trend micro security stuff, but always have done.

It happened again this morning. I did a little more investigation and could see that there was no WAN connectivity even from the router itself... By a little random fiddling in the WAN section I got the router to come back online (WAN is via Virgin Media Hub 3 ie a cable modem). For now I experimented with setting DNS to normal not aggressive, but that was really a random change. Will also reboot the cable modem.

 

[xtropodx]

It happened again this morning. I did a little more investigation and could see that there was no WAN connectivity even from the router itself... By a little random fiddling in the WAN section I got the router to come back online (WAN is via Virgin Media Hub 3 ie a cable modem). For now I experimented with setting DNS to normal not aggressive, but that was really a random change. Will also reboot the cable modem.

Can you explain how exactly ie random fiddling & DNS normal ? I've experienced same problem as you, even with previous FW, & have RT-AC3200. My internet can go days, sometimes weeks, & then the outbound connection randomly stop working, despite it saying it's connected still, but I can still access the cameras via internet & they sit behind a switch which sits behind router bridged to modem. Last 2 times this happened I temporarily disabled firewall & it all worked again. But I'd rather not do this.

 

[Nigel Jones]

Can you explain how exactly ie random fiddling & DNS normal ? I've experienced same problem as you, even with previous FW, & have RT-AC3200. My internet can go days, sometimes weeks, & then the outbound connection randomly stop working, despite it saying it's connected still, but I can still access the cameras via internet & they sit behind a switch which sits behind router bridged to modem. Last 2 times this happened I temporarily disabled firewall & it all worked again. But I'd rather not do this.

It didn't help anyway. Issue reoccurs. Yes local net still works and can get to router but nothing external

Alpha4 (or3?) was the last build I didn't notice such issues with so if there's no.5 test build by Sunday and the issue reoccurs I'll back off again


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[RMerlin]

One question on this: Does this mean that the selection if nat loopback should be enabled or disabled was removed completely - because I can't find it, or I'm blind. Furthermore, if it's removed, is nat loopback now generally enabled or disabled and how could it be changed?

Correct. The setting was entirely removed, Asus's implementation of the NAT loopback will always be active in the firewall rules.

 

[JemTheWire]

It happened again this morning. I did a little more investigation and could see that there was no WAN connectivity even from the router itself... By a little random fiddling in the WAN section I got the router to come back online (WAN is via Virgin Media Hub 3 ie a cable modem). For now I experimented with setting DNS to normal not aggressive, but that was really a random change. Will also reboot the cable modem.

I have an 88U connected to a Virgin Media superdud 2ac CIA an Ethernet cable. The superdud is set to MODEM mode.

Randomly after hours or days, I will loose Internet. No alerts, or errors logged on either the 88U or superdud. All lights indicate all functional. Internal network is fine, just no external.

Never happened before I updated to 384.4.2

 

[Nigel Jones]

I have an 88U connected to a Virgin Media superdud 2ac CIA an Ethernet cable. The superdud is set to MODEM mode.

Randomly after hours or days, I will loose Internet. No alerts, or errors logged on either the 88U or superdud. All lights indicate all functional. Internal network is fine, just no external.

Never happened before I updated to 384.4.2

My latest experiment is to disable spanning tree protocol... I remember now doing this on a previous firmware. Too early to know if this is the cause but I do see some spanning tree events around the time I lost connection last time around


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[TheReverendSlim]

When I switched from 384.3 to 384.4 on my RT-AC88U, I noticed that my Nvidia Shield wasn't able to connect to the network drives.

After searching on the internet why that was, I found that the Shield only supports SMBv1. So I set the Samba protocol version to "SMBv1 + SMBv2". My Shield connects perfectly to the network drives on my windows 10 PC, but it won't connect to the USB3 drive connected to the router, or it takes a long time to connect and only shows some of the folders that are on that drive.

I've all the settings on the "Network Place (Samba) Share" Tab, but nothing seems to work.

I need a sollution for this, because it's very annoying.

Yeah, something possibly related going on here on my RT-AC68U. Accessing the share from my PC, I can drag a file over and it starts copying to my drive... but performance constantly goes up and down, whereas it used to consistently stay near its max transfer rate. And if I try to do ANYTHING while that file is copying (i.e. browse other directories or copy another file), it causes Windows Explorer to hang until the first task completes. It's almost as if it's only allowing a single connection, though I have it set to 10. Have tried going back to SMBv1 and it still seems to do the same thing.