Upgrading RT-AC5300 for WireGuard

[MrFahrenheit]

Hi all, just wanted to get some confirmation / advice before I commit to something that ends up being an expensive mistake...

I currently have a RT-AC5300 with latest Merlin.
At the moment it's using Mullvad VPN, which on startup gets up to 50Mbps speeds, and that drops to 20Mbps within a couple of days so I have scheduled a router restart.

Recent reading has shown that there might be a way for me to get better speeds and less speed degradation thanks to the newer firmwares supporting Wireguard. What I've understood is, and please correct me if I'm wrong:

1. Wireguard is only available on the AX models, so won't work on my AC5300
2. There is Wireguard Manager available for older models, but that won't work on the AC5300 kernel i.e. 2.6.36.4brcmarm
3. So if I want Wireguard support I need a new AX router
4. Out of the AX range the AX86U, AX88U and the AX6000 seem to be well recommended
5. Once I get Merlin setup on there I can use that with VPN Director and use Mullvad and attain higher speeds (closer to the 400Mbps that I'm paying my ISP for)

My main questions are:

1. Is my above understanding correct?
2. If so, what would be the easiest way to migrate to the new router? I've read on here it's not advisable to try to restore a backup from the AC5300 as it will try to restore too much. Are there any other recent tools that might help?
3. When people are talking about the AX86U - do they mean the base model or the 'Pro'. I read on here that the Pro is the AX6000 in a AX86U body, so is that the one to go for?

Sorry about the long post but I didn't want to waste anyones time by providing insufficient information.
I would really appreciate the help, thanks in advance

 

[Tech9]

1. Is my above understanding correct?

Read this, WireGuard section:

Release - Asuswrt-Merlin 388.1 is now available for all supported Wifi 6 models

Asuswrt-Merlin 388.1 is now available for all Wifi 6 (AX) models. This release marks the merge with the new 388 code base from Asus. I don't want to list every 388-specific changes made by Asus, so I recommend checking Asus' own changelogs for more details. I will highlight the most important...

www.snbforums.com

 

[B255ea006]

Hi all, just wanted to get some confirmation / advice before I commit to something that ends up being an expensive mistake...

I currently have a RT-AC5300 with latest Merlin.
At the moment it's using Mullvad VPN, which on startup gets up to 50Mbps speeds, and that drops to 20Mbps within a couple of days so I have scheduled a router restart.

Recent reading has shown that there might be a way for me to get better speeds and less speed degradation thanks to the newer firmwares supporting Wireguard. What I've understood is, and please correct me if I'm wrong:

1. Wireguard is only available on the AX models, so won't work on my AC5300
2. There is Wireguard Manager available for older models, but that won't work on the AC5300 kernel i.e. 2.6.36.4brcmarm
3. So if I want Wireguard support I need a new AX router
4. Out of the AX range the AX86U, AX88U and the AX6000 seem to be well recommended
5. Once I get Merlin setup on there I can use that with VPN Director and use Mullvad and attain higher speeds (closer to the 400Mbps that I'm paying my ISP for)

My main questions are:

1. Is my above understanding correct?
2. If so, what would be the easiest way to migrate to the new router? I've read on here it's not advisable to try to restore a backup from the AC5300 as it will try to restore too much. Are there any other recent tools that might help?
3. When people are talking about the AX86U - do they mean the base model or the 'Pro'. I read on here that the Pro is the AX6000 in a AX86U body, so is that the one to go for?

Sorry about the long post but I didn't want to waste anyones time by providing insufficient information.
I would really appreciate the help, thanks in advance

Hi @MrFahrenheit

i cannot give you the positive and complete responses to your last post but i can confirm that the AX-series like my ASUS RT-AX88U router with the ASUSwrt-Merlin Firmware 388.1 positively and stable supports the WireGuard protocol. I would suggest that router for you, but do not feel linked. I think that the WireGuard works just fine and it is fast, very fast but it also comes with a lower grade of encryption compared to OpenVPN protocol.

Over all i can say that i am very happy with the ASUS RT-AX88U router and it works just fine without any issues. It takes a while to configure the whole device with all detail but it is wort it. But keep an eye on my recent Forum post, because the device is not without failure if you as me.

best regards




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VPN unlimited provides on it´s homepage a quick and easy way to get the config files for various VPN protocols, like WireGuard if you like, it is just a few clicks and a button push and done. Download the file and upload it, done. VPN configuration setup just nice.

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best regards

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Hi, to anyone interested I went ahead and purchased the AX-6000.
I'm very glad I did and here's a few notes based on my OP that others may find helpful:

• I'm still using OpenVPN but the speeds are considerably faster. The AC-5300 would cap out at 50Mbps and gradually make it's way down to 30, and then by the end of the week about 10Mbps. This has held 180Mbps for a full week. My ISP speed is 400Mbps.
• For the migration - I ended up just setting up fresh. I took loads of screenshots of my AC-5300 config, but to be honest I hardly referred to it as it only took me a short while to get it all configured.
• I did mess up my WAN settings when setting it up to use Pi-Hole and locked myself out of the network, but I figured it out in the end and now all my DNS is on Pi-Hole with no leaks detected.
• When I originally setup my AC-5300 I was using some scripts to bypass VPN for Netflix (the author later packaged those scripts into x3mRouting, which I didn't use as the scripts were running fine). On the AX-6000 I tried x3mRouting and it worked fine. Originally I made the mistake of installing the version with the GUI which didn't work. But installing the scripts only version works fine.
• In the end removed x3mRouting as I didn't need it - my devices seem to be working fine on Netflix without it.
• I've not even tried WireGuard - with the OpenVPN speeds I'm getting I'm more than happy, and reading RMerlins comments about more focus on OpenVPN I thought it'd best to stuck to that.