Tons of dumb problems on RT-AX58U with 3.0.0.4.386.47029

[RejZoR]

I've been using ASUSWRT-Merlin 384.5 and someone mentioned DoT is now officially supported. So I decided to flash official one back and use NextDNS as DoT on it, fully clean from scratch and my god, the amount of absolutely idiotic problems was insane. How on Earth is it possible that home brewed firmware works so much better than official one? I don't understand it.

With official, I had tons of stupid problems like my Roomba just straight out refusing to connect to its servers on 2.4GHz network no matter what I set wireless settings to. I also had wired connection on my PC just randomly stop resolving all addresses entirely. I also had Xiaomi MiBox for TV refusing to connect to 5GHz network unless I use WPA2. Not WPA2/WPA3 or WPA3, strictly just WPA2. And router's interface is ridiculously slow. You click a menu and it takes 2 seconds to respond. For EVERY click.

With Merlin, Roomba connects with parameters that didn't work on official at all, 5GHz on MiBox works even with WPA2/WPA3. PC also works fine without any resolving issues.

 

[zwitterion]

Short answer:

I've been using ASUSWRT-Merlin 384.5 and someone mentioned DoT is now officially supported. So I decided to flash official one back and use NextDNS as DoT on it, fully clean from scratch and my god, the amount of absolutely idiotic problems was insane. How on Earth is it possible that home brewed firmware works so much better than official one? I don't understand it.

With official, I had tons of stupid problems like my Roomba just straight out refusing to connect to its servers on 2.4GHz network no matter what I set wireless settings to. I also had wired connection on my PC just randomly stop resolving all addresses entirely. I also had Xiaomi MiBox for TV refusing to connect to 5GHz network unless I use WPA2. Not WPA2/WPA3 or WPA3, strictly just WPA2. And router's interface is ridiculously slow. You click a menu and it takes 2 seconds to respond. For EVERY click.

With Merlin, Roomba connects with parameters that didn't work on official at all, 5GHz on MiBox works even with WPA2/WPA3. PC also works fine without any resolving issues.

Short answer: Open-sourced products is community-driven and motivated, whereas Corporate environments are motivated by profits, which is not an environment life evolved to operate in.. Long answer: Read the book DRiVE by Daniel H. Pink.

 

[Tech9]

So I decided to flash official one back

RT-AX58U is quirky. If you prefer stock firmware, you have to flash 45898 first, then upgrade to 47029. It's written in notes as well.

 

[RejZoR]

RT-AX58U is quirky. If you prefer stock firmware, you have to flash 45898 first, then upgrade to 47029. It's written in notes as well.

I'll try this process. Not sure why recovery of whatever firmware wouldn't just roll it over clean. But I guess it's worth a try to see if this explains all the weird issues.

 

[Tech9]

This new firmware file is different. It adds support for AX58U V2 hardware revision. Both firmware versions are combined into one single file, similar to new AC68U firmware releases. Note the file size - it's double compared to the previous release. I have one AX58U for testing, but it's time wasting process to find good working firmware for it. This is perhaps the worst Asus router in my collection. I rarely touch it due to unpredictable results. Find what works for you and stick to it. Don't jump back and forth firmware releases to avoid issues. Nothing to do with Asuswrt-Merlin and Asuswrt. Everything wireless is the same, if you compare Asuswrt and Asuswrt-Merlin built on the same firmware base. Latest stock Asus may have newer/different wireless drivers.

 

[RogerSC]

I've found this firmware to be fine. My use case is "media bridge" mode to provide wired ports for clients that need them in an area in my house where there's only wifi, but none the less, my system log tab shows uptime of 2 weeks at this point. I did flash 45898 first, then 47029, then did a reset to factory defaults. And did the configuration after that manually. Haven't had any problems, it's just worked. Very happy with the RT-AX3000 (equivalent to the RT-AX58U).

I'm surprised to see the problems posted here. It isn't the most capable router that I have, but it has been largely trouble-free.

 

[Farley]

Another dumb problem with this quirky router...

Mine is definitely V1, not V2, as I did have Asuswrt-Merlin 386.7-2 running on it for a while.

I downgraded to the latest stock firmware while troubleshooting an ISP-related issue, after first doing the downgrade to the stock version from 1 Oct 2021 (45898).

But now I am having trouble getting back to the Merlin FW. I have tried going back to 45898 first. It either immediately claims that the Merlin firmware is unsupported, or goes through the upgrade process, but then the new firmware isn't loaded.

Have Asus done something tricky with the 1 Oct 2021 FW to enable later versions to support both V1 and V2? Is there a method that will get me out of trouble?

 

[Farley]

All sorted... For some reason, the copy of the firmware I had on my laptop got corrupted. I didn't think these things actually happen, but I guess there's a reason why the checksums are provided.