[Release] Asuswrt-Merlin 380.65 is now available

[junkun13]

updated to 65.4 and the wireless connections are dropping

 

[AndreiV]

updated to 65.4 and the wireless connections are dropping

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/a...uswrt-merlin-380-66.37920/page-11#post-317487

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/a...suswrt-merlin-380-66.37920/page-9#post-316413


So first of all look to your set up / environment. The WiFi drivers haven't changed for @12 months .....

I have used every firmware version , including alphas and betas that Eric has released in the last 2 years.

I have NEVER seen a wireless " drop out" on my system , friends , family and neighbours that use Merlin will tell you the same.


Apart from the logs from the router, I set up Acrylic running a trace of my WiFi on a laptop and left that sitting in the kitchen at the far end of the house, as far as I can get from the router indoors.

Not one single wireless drop in the last 9 days , a perfect straight line across the graph, 24/7 .

 

[Gregory Phillips]

So first of all look to your set up / environment. The WiFi drivers haven't changed for @12 months .....

I have used every firmware version , including alphas and betas that Eric has released in the last 2 years.

I have NEVER seen a wireless " drop out" on my system , friends , family and neighbours that use Merlin will tell you the same.

I must concur with you on the environment as I don't get drops either on any of my wireless clients. I have them all set to fall back if they do lose their primary connection but they remain on their assigned connections unless I do something to the router.

I'm on the 380.66_alpha3 right now and I've not noticed anything unusual with it. I did have to physically unplug my primary WAN to force it to establish a connection with the second ISP to obtain a lease but after reconnecting the primary WAN it has maintained a lease in standby mode.

 

[Makaveli]

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/a...uswrt-merlin-380-66.37920/page-11#post-317487

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/a...suswrt-merlin-380-66.37920/page-9#post-316413


So first of all look to your set up / environment. The WiFi drivers haven't changed for @12 months .....

I have used every firmware version , including alphas and betas that Eric has released in the last 2 years.

I have NEVER seen a wireless " drop out" on my system , friends , family and neighbours that use Merlin will tell you the same.


Apart from the logs from the router, I set up Acrylic running a trace of my WiFi on a laptop and left that sitting in the kitchen at the far end of the house, as far as I can get from the router indoors.

Not one single wireless drop in the last 9 days , a perfect straight line across the graph, 24/7 .

Just because you don't see it doesn't mean there isn't an issue. There have been numerous post about it.

I've not noticed any drops but that doesn't mean there is no problem.

Right now the current recommendation is to turn off airtime fairness to see if that helps.

 

[AndreiV]

Just because you don't see it doesn't mean there isn't an issue. There have been numerous post about it.

I've not noticed any drops but that doesn't mean there is no problem.

Right now the current recommendation is to turn off airtime fairness to see if that helps.

You are missing the point , read again what Merlin is saying.

People are reporting wireless "drop outs" and blaming the firmware updates when nothing has been changed in the firmware that could have any affect on the wireless.

Read the posts carefully , people claim that after upgrade to 380_1 they had problems and 360_2 "fixed" the problem, next three posters claim the exact opposite.

380_3 is stated to fix things for @ 8 people, yet another 6 claim V_3 was a disaster and V_4 is their saviour and so it goes on.

Same with the latest alpha ..... opposing claims of "break" and "fix".

According to the posts here every firmware version both fixes and breaks the wifi.

There are conflicting claims for every version that has been released for the last few months.

As the firmware upgrades contain no changes that affect WiFi, how can they break or fix anything ?

Poster says the firmware broke 5Ghz Wireless then blame it on VPN not working .....

Poster states that 2 different routers both lose WiFi at the exact same moment , is that the firmware?

No , I am not seeing the issue and never have. My friends and neighbours using Merlin don't have the problem.

My nephew runs a company providing network services for home offices/small businesses from 1-50 seats.

They have 130+ Asus routers out there and they aren't seeing this wireless issue on any of these units either.

Maybe it is environment, maybe settings , maybe an intermittent Asus bug , or are people just seeing the Group Key Rotation working and think there is a problem ?

What it isn't is firmware upgrades ........

 

[FatherLandDescendant]

You are missing the point , read again what Merlin is saying.

People are reporting wireless "drop outs" and blaming the firmware updates when nothing has been changed in the firmware that could have any affect on the wireless.

I had wireless drop outs for a while and I read that post by Merlin this past Sunday and kept that in mind while I tried to resolve the issues. You guys know way more about this stuff than I so I know it's not a matter of I'm right and everybody else is wrong.

Maybe it is environment, maybe settings , maybe an intermittent Asus bug , or are people just seeing the Group Key Rotation working and think there is a problem ?

What it isn't is firmware upgrades ........

Or maybe it's what I think my issue was, user error. I was resetting my A66U every day and it got to be multiple times a day because of WIFI drop outs. When I finally found the how to guide for flashing the router the right way, and configured it manually after the 30/30/30 I've been up and running for a day and a half now with no WIFI drop out, my VPN has even stayed up and running though there is still a configuration issue there that I'm researching when I can.

 

[Gregory Phillips]

Edit: I flashed my old galaxy note 2 last night up to lollipop 5.1.1 and today I'm seeing some drops from the 5ghz network. I keep checking and my phone has been routed over to the AT&T router so it's lost the signal from the RT-AC88U. I can send it back over to the asus but it doesn't seem to take very long before it's back on the AT&T router. I'm going to have to run a Wi-Fi scanner off a laptop to log this behavior.

 

[Blinkyz]

30/30/30

Sorry but the 30/30/30 method with Asus is useless
Wps button trick is the good way

 

[Morac]

I take it no one knows why the traffic analyzer treats 5 Ghz outbound traffic as wired?

 

[AndreiV]

Edit: I flashed my old galaxy note 2 last night up to lollipop 5.1.1 and today I'm seeing some drops from the 5ghz network. I keep checking and my phone has been routed over to the AT&T router so it's lost the signal from the RT-AC88U. I can send it back over to the asus but it doesn't seem to take very long before it's back on the AT&T router. I'm going to have to run a Wi-Fi scanner off a laptop to log this behavior.

So you have 2 conflicting WiFi sources ( 2 wireless routers ) , the Galaxy will presumably connect to the signal that is strongest .

 

[Gregory Phillips]

So you have 2 conflicting WiFi sources ( 2 wireless routers ) , the Galaxy will presumably connect to the signal that is strongest .

Well that is the reason that I don't enable Wi-Fi fairness so my devices can fall back if they loose the signal to a router. I found out just a few minutes ago after rechecking my settings that it was enabled after I flashed to the alpha_3 firmware which I've disabled along with rescanning for conflicting channels and manually setting mine in the gaps between my neighbors. Almost everyone around me is using Wi-Fi and several are on the same channel. In automatic mode the router had put me on the same channels so I've manually assigned them to an unused channel. This was an oversight on my part which I have corrected and now my wireless signal strength is the strongest again.

 

[FatherLandDescendant]

Sorry but the 30/30/30 method with Asus is useless
Wps button trick is the good way

I don't recall reading about that trick anywhere, would you by chance have a link handy? I'm a complete noob to advanced routing all around, I can plug em in and cable em up, change the PWs and update the FW. But until I started hosting this 66U for a friend who likes to DL lots of movies and music I never needed to route VPN traffic through the router, I always did it straight on the computer which is how I prefer to use it, I don't loose so much DL speed that way.

Whatever the case after installing the ASUS flavor of FW, not being able to figure out how to get PIA to work, then flashing back to the latest Merlin using 30/30/30 before and after then re-configuring manually I've yet to loose wireless internet so I don't know, I guess I got lucky.

 

[AndreiV]

I don't recall reading about that trick anywhere, would you by chance have a link handy?

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/faq-nvram-and-factory-default-reset.22822/

 

[Blinkyz]

I don't recall reading about that trick anywhere, would you by chance have a link handy?

30/30/30 with dd-wrt .

With Asus:
Press the WPS button (on Asus routers), then turn on the router. Wait about 10 seconds, then release the WPS button.Wait 2-3 min and reconfig from the beginning or use this tool to save and restore your settings.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/user-nvram-save-restore-utility-r24a.19521/

 

[FatherLandDescendant]

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/faq-nvram-and-factory-default-reset.22822/

30/30/30 with dd-wrt .

With Asus:
Press the WPS button (on Asus routers), then turn on the router. Wait about 10 seconds, then release the WPS button.Wait 2-3 min and reconfig from the beginning or use this tool to save and restore your settings.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/user-nvram-save-restore-utility-r24a.19521/

Thanks guys for the links. I have a question.

If I read the first link correctly, since I've jumped from the original (and a couple of versions older) ASUS flavor firmware, and flashed the latest Merlin FW would it be best to just do the WPS let it grab its' NVRAM settings during boot-up without restoring an older NVRAM configuration, then reconfigure the router manually? And this would mean renaming the WIFI channels, new PWs, admin level PWs and re-setting the VPN?

I've been having problems with this router loosing internet access since jumping into this deal and I got WAY in over my head. It's had internet access for the last 2 days since horsing with it all weekend, and like I said earlier there's still an issue with the VPN in the log file but I think that's another thread, another issue.

 

[Blinkyz]

would it be best to just do the WPS let it grab its' NVRAM settings during boot-up without restoring an older NVRAM configuration, then reconfigure the router manually?

Normally just a Reset to Factory from the GUI is enough.

WPS button trick will erase all old settings also from the Nvram.Its like a Factory Reset in the Gui , but in better.
Yes you will need to reconfig.Dont forget to manualy reconnect your clients after that.

 

[shawnpear]

Hello, just got myself an AC68R from ebay, scouring the whole router, i can only find the serial number : E1|RGO.....
Just wanted to ask if it's safe to flash merlin onto the router?
As i'm not sure if the serial number equates to the hardware rev being E1.

 

[AndreiV]

Hello, just got myself an AC68R from ebay, scouring the whole router, i can only find the serial number : E1|RGO.....
Just wanted to ask if it's safe to flash merlin onto the router?
As i'm not sure if the serial number equates to the hardware rev being E1.

Absolutely not ! Don't even try it. That is a combined modem router and you can't flash other firmware to it.

Merlin (and the other 3rd party firmwares) are only for use on cable type routers that do not have a built in modem.

Should you decide to proceed with the attempt you will become the proud owner of an attractively illuminated paper weight with pointy bits that can be used for hanging sticky notes .

 

[shawnpear]

Absolutely not ! Don't even try it. That is a combined modem router and you can't flash other firmware to it.

Merlin (and the other 3rd party firmwares) are only for use on cable type routers that do not have a built in modem.

Should you decide to proceed with the attempt you will become the proud owner of an attractively illuminated paper weight with pointy bits that can be used for hanging sticky notes .

Just saw merlin's post though, hahaha.
Not gonna flash anything till i'm certain

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac68r-firmware-comparison.33357/#post-268449

 

[AndreiV]

What is the full model number ?

Is it RT-AC68R or DSL-AC68R ?