What became of your TM-AC1900?

[dave14305]

If you owned one of these popular TM-AC1900 routers back in the day, where is it now, and which firmware is/was it running? Still in use? Sold? Given away? Trashed? Recycled?

Mine is deployed in my son’s college apartment running Merlin 386.11 as a stand-alone router.

 

[Tech9]

I had one reverted to stock Asus RT-AC68U, it was updating firmware online from Asus servers, donated last summer. Perhaps still working at someone’s home.

 

[follower]

If you owned one of these popular TM-AC1900 routers back in the day, where is it now, and which firmware is/was it running? Still in use? Sold? Given away? Trashed? Recycled?

Mine is deployed in my son’s college apartment running Merlin 386.11 as a stand-alone router.

Donated for a long time ago. I'd tested it for some days. How your son's using personal router in the college? A lot of universities never allow to use personal routers at the dorm or on-campus housing. Routers are blocked by IT Dept, server side block.

 

[dave14305]

Donated for a long time ago. I'd tested it for some days. How your son's using personal router in the college? A lot of universities never allow to use personal routers at the dorm or on-campus housing. Routers are blocked by IT Dept, server side block.

It’s an independent apartment building near the university.

 

[Chuckles67]

I got mine soon after it launched and I thought it was "free" with my T-Mobile cellphone plan. I put Merlin on it. After a few years I got an invoice from T-Mobile for 99USD if I didn't return the unit - so sent it back to them with an Asus firmware on it.

 

[Yooshaw]

Using mine in media bridge mode to provide some ethernet drops w/o having to run wires. Still working well!

 

[harry]

mine sitting on side with latest Merlin installed. I was trying to use it as test hardware to test different scripts before I wanna use them scripts on ax6000 but some how CPU usage is way too high on that. to the point where connection hangs after installing flexqos only no other script at all. I am not throwing it away as I totally loved it when I bought it. had zero issues in 8 years. but now it's old.

 

[Stephen Harrington]

As per my Sig, still have 4 of them I picked up for $39 each on Amazon, “reborn” as RT-AC68U’s, all running in AP mode as an AIMesh which has served as the very stable and trouble-free house Wi-Fi for several years now. Waiting to find a reason to bin them, maybe Wi-Fi 7?

 

[CaptainSTX]

If you owned one of these popular TM-AC1900 routers back in the day, where is it now, and which firmware is/was it running? Still in use? Sold? Given away? Trashed? Recycled?

Mine is deployed in my son’s college apartment running Merlin 386.11 as a stand-alone router.

I used mine for six years as an AP off my AC86. When I upgraded to my AX86 I put the TM-AC1900 on the shelf.

 

[bennor]

Will neither confirm or deny that I may have used an TM-AC1900's in the past and hypothetically may (or may not) have even loaded Asus RT-AC68U stock and Merlin to it. Also note what RMerlin posted yesterday in another subforum re the TM router.

After discussing it with @thiggins, we agreed that at this point, considering this device has long been EOL, it was time to drop this rule. If people can find ways to avoid TM-AC1900 from ending up as e-waste, then it's a Good Thing, and as this is an 8 years old device, I doubt either T-Mobile or Asus would complain.

That being said, one thing stays unchanged: that device is NOT support by Asuswrt-Merlin, and anyone trying to get things to work on it is entirely on their own, as I won't waste my time (or the community's time) trying to help people figure out issues that are caused by Asus's undisclosed protection measures they might have in place.

I will be unsticking this thread inf a few days.

There are a lot of the TM's floating around out there after they were routinely on sale for around $50 on Amazon for a good year. They're still good for use as AP or media bridge or AImesh nodes in some use cases.

 

[bibikalka]

Will neither confirm or deny that I may have used an TM-AC1900's in the past and hypothetically may (or may not) have even loaded Asus RT-AC68U stock and Merlin to it. Also note what RMerlin posted yesterday in another subforum re the TM router.

There are a lot of the TM's floating around out there after they were routinely on sale for around $50 on Amazon for a good year. They're still good for use as AP or media bridge or AImesh nodes in some use cases.

A new RT-AC68U on Amazon is still $70, and it's hardware brother R7000 is $170!

Thus I don't really get why TM-AC1900 needs to be written off just yet - it's not like it's a WRTL54G which one is really too old for anything useful.

 

[bennor]

Thus I don't really get why TM-AC1900 needs to be written off just yet - it's not like it's a WRTL54G which one is really too old for anything useful.

Technology and Wifi capabilities have moved beyond the RT-AC68U/TM-AC1900 capabilities. There is also the issue of the hardware and limited NVRAM used on the AC68U model that is starting to show it's age and as some of us have discovered presented weird issues when the NVRAM becomes full; the infamous low NVRAM warning message after one of the recent Asus-Merlin firmware releases that was later addressed by reducing the number of OpenVPN clients in the firmware. These routers are still useful but there may be better options depending on one's use case or needs.

 

[CaptainSTX]

A new RT-AC68U on Amazon is still $70, and it's hardware brother R7000 is $170!

Thus I don't really get why TM-AC1900 needs to be written off just yet - it's not like it's a WRTL54G which one is really too old for anything useful.

I still have a 54G working just fine as a switch in a media cabinet. A wired fast eternet connection works great there. No need for a device with gig ports to support streaming even 4K HDTV.

The issue with the TM-AC1900 is that it isn't supported and and no firmware updates in years so it is risky to use as a router. As an AP or switch then no problem.

 

[bibikalka]

I still have a 54G working just fine as a switch in a media cabinet. A wired fast eternet connection works great there. No need for a device with gig ports to support streaming even 4K HDTV.

The issue with the TM-AC1900 is that it isn't supported and and no firmware updates in years so it is risky to use as a router. As an AP or switch then no problem.

Hmm, cough cough, there is a certain procedure out there that enables TM-AC1900 to get anything ac68u, including the latest Merlin. It's not the formally blessed support, but the device will be running software indistinguishable from a new AC68u ! That's as supported in my book as it ever gets.

Asus got all hot and bothered when they released AiMesh in 2018, and realized that a non-designated TM-AC1900 could run AiMesh just fine. Asus went on a "search and destroy" mission for these converted TM-AC1900s. The community here complied as well and switched to the "don't ask don't tell" mode.

But, with more than 5 years passing since AiMesh release, it's probably reasonable to expect Asus to have earned their AiMesh investment, and keeping these devices from landfill is a bigger imperative as Merlin stated elsewhere.

 

[Tech9]

There is also the issue of the hardware and limited NVRAM

Apparently not in stock Asuswrt. I got one RT-AC1900P back and filled up the DHCP reservation page with 30 entries plus icon change, custom names and host names, enabled VPN server, generated SSH access keys, etc. and ended up with >10K NVRAM still available*. Latest stock Asuswrt firmware. Whoever wants Asuswrt-Merlin with 5x VPN clients, 2x VPN servers and ton of extra custom configuration - this is not the right hardware anymore anyway.

* - done to see how bad the NVRAM issue is. Turns out it's not an issue in stock Asuswrt.

 

[Kingp1n]

Hmm, cough cough, there is a certain procedure out there that enables TM-AC1900 to get anything ac68u, including the latest Merlin. It's not the formally blessed support, but the device will be running software indistinguishable from a new AC68u ! That's as supported in my book as it ever gets.

Asus got all hot and bothered when they released AiMesh in 2018, and realized that a non-designated TM-AC1900 could run AiMesh just fine. Asus went on a "search and destroy" mission for these converted TM-AC1900s. The community here complied as well and switched to the "don't ask don't tell" mode.

But, with more than 5 years passing since AiMesh release, it's probably reasonable to expect Asus to have earned their AiMesh investment, and keeping these devices from landfill is a bigger imperative as Merlin stated elsewhere.

Yes, I've been running my overclocked RT-AC68U (TM-AC1900) in AP mode for the longest time with the latest stock firmware! No issue at all.

 

[bennor]

The issue with the TM-AC1900 is that it isn't supported and and no firmware updates in years so it is risky to use as a router. As an AP or switch then no problem.

If one properly jail breaks the TM-AC1900 there is absolutely no problem running the latest RT-AC68U firmware (3.0.0.4.386.51665), or the latest Asus-Merlin firmware (386.12). One can keep it from becoming eWaste by jail breaking it.

 

[aggressive-syrup]

Finally left T-mobile after 20 years and they asked for the router BACK! AT&T (which I've also moved on from) sent me a letter about 6-7 years ago saying there was a unsecure device on their network - the T-mobile router. So I ended up trying all the other router software, ended up running ddwrt because I built a custom ad-blocker during Covid. I realize that there are newer technologies out there, but for what it is - this router is pretty solid if you don't care about the latest wi-fi. (I could never find anything cost/features wise that made me move on) I did have some memory and overheating problems at times, but figured those out too. Kinda sad to see it go, but I replaced it with a Linksys MX4300 that cost me $15, so I'm happy for now.

 

[hancox]

AI Mesh node in an unattached garage forever - no issues, but band movements have relegated it to spare use.

It makes one nice WIFI NIC for a device without WiFi, when needed.