Hi, I am new to the forum and thought to share my experience with the 2 AC66Rs I just got (especially since I searched the forums a bit and didn't see any posts related to that).
1)
Saw many posts about how to get rid of the 2.4Ghz net on the mediabridge for those who didn't want it.
I too ran into the same problem and I tried disabling the 2.4Ghz radio before switching the mode to mediabridge, but that process always asks for the 2.4Ghz SSN and triggers it to be switched on again, also with the Merlin FW (as far as I remember my many nights of playing around with that stuff).
One way that worked for me:
Except for the enable/disable switch... the settings ARE being used. So even though you cannot control channel once in the MediaBridge GUI, it does take the settings from the router mode and you can set what you want.
I therefore tried using the times of day settings to disable the 2.4Ghz band for all days, except you have to specify at least 1 work day... and I used something like 16:00-16:10 (basically off whole week except for 10min)
Sure indeed, when switching back to mediabridge, the 2.4Ghz was OFF!
2) I thought I share this and it might be important and interesting to Merlin himself.. not sure (and I think it's the same for stock FW):
My router crashed a couple of times, aka sudden reboot.
I don't know how to do remote logging and on reboot the system log that is displayed in the GUI is starting fresh... so I left a telnet session with a "tail -f syslog.log" open to see what might have caused the reboot. But it was so sudden, nothing ended up in the log. Just bang, reboot..
BUT I found a possible PROBLEM, that may have caused this reboot (?):
When you attach a USB disk the DLNA server is on by default and the "media server path" is by default /tmp/mnt.
After testing this for a bit what that actually means (insufficient manuals) and logging into the router via telnet... I found that the dlna server drops its database of files into that folder.
The problem is that with the default setting of /tmp/mnt it actually writes to the router memory instead of to the attached USB disk.
E.g. "df -m /tmp/mnt/usbdiskname reveals /dev/sda or whatever...
but "df -m /tmp/mnt" is still on the Asus tmpfs or something.
Once a USB disk is attached, the dlna server starts scanning the files and building the files.db.
In my case there were a ton and the final size of the files.db is like 22Mb and it takes long.
I am wondering if that could have caused the crash, basically filling the router's tmpfs. And besides I read somewhere (about the jffs) that it is not good to write frequently to the flash or something like that.
So I am guessing it could really be bad and the default /tmp/mnt folder for the "media server folder" is really a HAZARD?
3) Also I found that if you connect 2 Routers Media Bridge, you better rename the 2nd AC66U/R to something else, otherwise I got some spam in the log files, but again it was late at night and I did so much testing that I lost track a little of all the problems I was dealing with.
4)
Noticed a bug(?) in the traffic monitoring (and tested that is both stock and Merlin FW):
When a client is attached via cable and sends traffic to the router and via wireless to another client, the traffic monitor shows the correct data transfer for the wireless client, but splits the data for the cabled client to "WIRED" a certain percentage AND "INTERNET" a certain percentage. This seemed wrong to me. As there was no Internet traffic, and it came all from the "WIRE".
But maybe that is a limitation in recognizing on which network devices the traffic is coming in, not sure...
----------------
OVERALL: long story short, everything seems to be working fine now.
GREAT ROUTER, GREAT FIRMWARE!
Thumbs up!
Thanks
1)
Saw many posts about how to get rid of the 2.4Ghz net on the mediabridge for those who didn't want it.
I too ran into the same problem and I tried disabling the 2.4Ghz radio before switching the mode to mediabridge, but that process always asks for the 2.4Ghz SSN and triggers it to be switched on again, also with the Merlin FW (as far as I remember my many nights of playing around with that stuff).
One way that worked for me:
Except for the enable/disable switch... the settings ARE being used. So even though you cannot control channel once in the MediaBridge GUI, it does take the settings from the router mode and you can set what you want.
I therefore tried using the times of day settings to disable the 2.4Ghz band for all days, except you have to specify at least 1 work day... and I used something like 16:00-16:10 (basically off whole week except for 10min)
Sure indeed, when switching back to mediabridge, the 2.4Ghz was OFF!
2) I thought I share this and it might be important and interesting to Merlin himself.. not sure (and I think it's the same for stock FW):
My router crashed a couple of times, aka sudden reboot.
I don't know how to do remote logging and on reboot the system log that is displayed in the GUI is starting fresh... so I left a telnet session with a "tail -f syslog.log" open to see what might have caused the reboot. But it was so sudden, nothing ended up in the log. Just bang, reboot..
BUT I found a possible PROBLEM, that may have caused this reboot (?):
When you attach a USB disk the DLNA server is on by default and the "media server path" is by default /tmp/mnt.
After testing this for a bit what that actually means (insufficient manuals) and logging into the router via telnet... I found that the dlna server drops its database of files into that folder.
The problem is that with the default setting of /tmp/mnt it actually writes to the router memory instead of to the attached USB disk.
E.g. "df -m /tmp/mnt/usbdiskname reveals /dev/sda or whatever...
but "df -m /tmp/mnt" is still on the Asus tmpfs or something.
Once a USB disk is attached, the dlna server starts scanning the files and building the files.db.
In my case there were a ton and the final size of the files.db is like 22Mb and it takes long.
I am wondering if that could have caused the crash, basically filling the router's tmpfs. And besides I read somewhere (about the jffs) that it is not good to write frequently to the flash or something like that.
So I am guessing it could really be bad and the default /tmp/mnt folder for the "media server folder" is really a HAZARD?
3) Also I found that if you connect 2 Routers Media Bridge, you better rename the 2nd AC66U/R to something else, otherwise I got some spam in the log files, but again it was late at night and I did so much testing that I lost track a little of all the problems I was dealing with.
4)
Noticed a bug(?) in the traffic monitoring (and tested that is both stock and Merlin FW):
When a client is attached via cable and sends traffic to the router and via wireless to another client, the traffic monitor shows the correct data transfer for the wireless client, but splits the data for the cabled client to "WIRED" a certain percentage AND "INTERNET" a certain percentage. This seemed wrong to me. As there was no Internet traffic, and it came all from the "WIRE".
But maybe that is a limitation in recognizing on which network devices the traffic is coming in, not sure...
----------------
OVERALL: long story short, everything seems to be working fine now.
GREAT ROUTER, GREAT FIRMWARE!
Thumbs up!
Thanks
