What does the Asus+Merlin router have that other routers don't?

[Nesalex]

Hello. For now, I still have the old AC68U. Ever since I've known Merlin, I've learned many things thanks to this forum and this great community. I don't usually participate in public discussions, but on FB I defended Asus products, specifically routers. Maybe I overdid it when I wrote to one guy that what he gets with the Asus + Merlin router he won't find anywhere else. He laughed at me with the answer: what about Cisco, for example? Mikrotik? Ubiquiti? Fortinet? I can't answer him because I don't know these brands, but I think that if some of these brands had what Asus and Merlin have, I would have heard about it. That's why I want to ask you who at least knows a little about other manufacturers and can compare it. Write what you can do with Asus Merlin and you won't find it with another router from another manufacturer. Thank you

 

[bennor]

Features and add-on scripts. Most other routers (Linksys, Netgear, Belkin, ISP provided routers/gateways, etc) I've used over the years don't have (in totality) as many features or options as what the Merlin firmware brings to the Asus supported routers.
https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/features

 

[Nesalex]

Features and add-on scripts. Most other routers (Linksys, Netgear, Belkin, ISP provided routers/gateways, etc) I've used over the years don't have (in totality) as many features or options as what the Merlin firmware brings to the Asus supported routers.
https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/features

I'm just wondering if other manufacturers don't have their own Merlin too . I don't want to oppose on FB with the claim that you can do this with Merlin, you can do that, and you won't do something like that on any other router..

 

[Tech9]

Asuswrt-Merlin on a home router is a swiss knife for your occasional weekend hiking with your family and friends. The price starts from $100 and it's easy to use. Sometimes you may get rust on it, may need some oil and care. If you need business networking equipment the price starts from $1000 and there is no upper limit. You also need networking skills or an entire IT department depending on the scale. There is no comparison between the two. Different products for different markets. Ubiquiti UniFi and TP-Link Omada are the cheapest alternatives to home routers, but still more expensive and not as user friendly. They have business oriented features not available to home routers. The quality of hardware and software is higher as well as reliability. Home router with USB stick is as reliable as the USB stick. Most home users don't need anything more than that though. Home AIO routers are disposable.

I use both home routers and professional equipment for different purposes. Asus router has no use in my business, but I have one $100 Asus router serving well as VPN exit point in another country for my personal use. No need to pay $1000 for Cisco equipment for this purpose. I also have one Synology home router for personal use and I find it better that Asus routers with it's original firmware. More stable with actually working features.

 

[Tech9]

See below Pro features coming to home routers:

Beta - RT-AX86U_Pro Beta firmware 9.0.0.6.102_3506

This seems to have gone under the radar... https://www.asus.com/networking-iot-servers/wifi-routers/asus-gaming-routers/rt-ax86u-pro/helpdesk_bios/?model2Name=RT-AX86U-Pro ASUS RT-AX86U Pro Firmware version 9.0.0.6.102.3506 Version 9.0.0.6.102.3506 Beta Version 54.47 MB Be noted: This is an...

www.snbforums.com

VLANs are available to Ubiquiti ER-X, TP-Link ER605 and MikroTik hEX wired business routers for $60.

GT-AXE16000 is the most expensive Asus home router for $700. You can't compare it to Netgate 1541 firewall with 20Gbps routing capacity and $3000 price. And this one is cheap, actually. The Asus router can't replace this firewall and this firewall has no place in someone's home unless this home plays local ISP for the entire neighborhood. You can't compare home router firmware with enterprise firewall software as well. It runs an entire OS on it.

 

[Adooni]

this is not easy question
Asus with RMerlin is definitely better than Asus with only AsusWRT - just amtm make a big difference and RMerlin is definitly user frendly and support HW that is even to good for 95% of home users

but in my case for Home use I prefer to use OPNsense or OpenWRT as it allow me to set powerfull PC like Xeon etc to do what even I want
additional you have 3rd party firmware like FreshTomato (supporting legacy routers) or DD-WRT, OpenWRT that you can make most or routers operate much better that at OEM FW

what is a big advantage of Asus routers with RMerlin you get verry good support and a lot updates, fix
Synology router have the vest parential control etc - you need to chose router that meet your needs and this forum is for new people to ask question to get advice and chose correct device.

I do not what even to start discussion about more profesional solutions here.

 

[Smokey613]

Which Synology router do you have? At one time I considered trying a Synology RT2600ac but never did.

 

[Tech9]

At one time I considered trying a Synology RT2600ac but never did.

Synology RT2600ac.

It's the same Qualcomm hardware as Netgear R7800. Netgear had better range, but Synology has better firmware. RT-AC86U is better in Wi-Fi than RT2600ac, you don't need it. I just can't rely on AC86U and is more fun to play with it. This is another Asuswrt-Merlin router strength over other home routers - it's a hobby you can play with for quite some time. I like FrestTomato as well on supported Asus routers, but I don't have one at the moment.

 

[RMerlin]

Write what you can do with Asus Merlin and you won't find it with another router from another manufacturer.

You can download the source code, make changes to it, and compile your own firmware. Or, if it's too complicated for you, you can customize almost every running services through scripting. You won't get any of that with a Netgear/TP-Link/Cisco/Ubiquiti/Mikrotik router.

 

[Smokey613]

Synology RT2600ac.

It's the same Qualcomm hardware as Netgear R7800. Netgear had better range, but Synology has better firmware. RT-AC86U is better in Wi-Fi than RT2600ac, you don't need it. I just can't rely on AC86U and is more fun to play with it. This is another Asuswrt-Merlin router strength over other home routers - it's a hobby you can play with for quite some time. I like FrestTomato as well on supported Asus routers, but I don't have one at the moment.

I think I am going to put one of my RT-AC86U online to handle my network.....

This will allow me to setup an Omada network for testing without disturbing my home network.

I already have an OC200 sitting next to my laptop.

 

[Nesalex]

You can download the source code, make changes to it, and compile your own firmware. Or, if it's too complicated for you, you can customize almost every running services through scripting. You won't get any of that with a Netgear/TP-Link/Cisco/Uniquiti/Mikrotik router.

This is the answer I was waiting for and from who else but the master . Thank you

 

[Tech9]

You can download the source code, make changes to it, and compile your own firmware.

This is not entirely true. Folks complain about Client List every day. You know more than anyone else about Asuswrt. Can you fix it?

 

[L&LD]

What does one have to do with the other?

It is entirely true. Stop.

 

[RMerlin]

This is not entirely true.

What I said is true. You can download the code, make changes to it, and recompile it. I never said you could rewrite everything in it. You could completely rewrite networkmap if you wished to do so (to take on the example you are alluding to).

Folks complain about Client List every day. You know more than anyone else about Asuswrt. Can you fix it?

Networkmap is closed source. It used to be open sourced, I fixed a ton of bugs in it in the early days, but with 382 Asus made it closed source because they started to leverage proprietary BCM and TrendMicro APIs within it.

Personally it has always been reliable for me (except when it was randomly crashing, which was some of the bugs I initially fixed back in the day) or for the customers for whom I manage an Asus router. I know that some people with issues were using a subnet different than /24. At least back in the day, networkmap was hardcoded for /24, so it would miss clients if you used, for example, a /16 subnet. Some people with issues were also using repeaters of some sort, which would only expose the repeater's MAC to the router rather than the client's individual MACs.

Networkmap-related complains are far less common these days than they were back in 2014-2016.

Initially, networkmap's behaviour was fairly straighforward.

1) Send arp pings to the whole /24 subnet
2) When getting a reply back, start polling various services on that client to extract information (i.e. polling NETBIOS, LPR, SMB, etc...)
3) Add the client to the list along with the MAC, the IP and determine the type of device based on the polled information (nowadays they also leverage bwdpi to better identify devices I believe).

I don't know how that behaviour has changed since it was closed.

 

[Tech9]

Networkmap is closed source.

It's not network map only. Many other firmware components too. What you can change or fix is limited. What an average user can change is minimal.

This is the answer I was waiting for

What you @Nesalex can change in Asuswrt-Merlin firmware, for example? You got the answer to reply, but what difference does it make for you?

 

[Nesalex]

You won't get any of that with a Netgear/TP-Link/Cisco/Ubiquiti/Mikrotik router.

FB writes:

But of course, all these routers have FW based on Linux and I can do more or less what Linux allows me to do in them, or often download other FW into them.

I see the AsusWRT Merlin is built on Tomato firmware, so that doesn't really make it any better than anything else with Tomato FW.

I don't think he's right.. Maybe I'm wrong. I would like to close this conversation with him, but I can't when I know that the guy has a little distorted information

 

[Nesalex]

What you @Nesalex can change in Asuswrt-Merlin firmware, for example? You got the answer to reply, but what difference does it make for you?

I'm sorry, but I can't answer you professionally. No. I'm not that skilled. The only thing I wanted to achieve with this thread is to get a response to the sarcastic reactions from the guy on FB.

 

[Tech9]

Neither is right or wrong in this conversation. You're comparing apples with oranges. Your Asus router with Asuswrt-Merlin is perhaps the best you can get from home routers. Of course he can do more and better with some data center Cisco gear. Otherwise data centers would be running on Asus routers.

 

[Nesalex]

Neither is right or wrong in this conversation. You're comparing apples with oranges. Your Asus router with Asuswrt-Merlin is perhaps the best you can get from home routers. Of course he can do more and better with some data center Cisco gear. Otherwise data centers would be running on Asus routers.

On the Asus FB page, a guy wanted some advice in the comments. He asked which Asus router he should buy in the amount from €200 to €300. I wrote him to buy the GT-AX6000, it was currently on our online stores from €242. Then "intelligent" joined the discussion and wrote that he should rather buy TP link XYZ, which is equally powerful but €40 cheaper. That's why I wrote that he will achieve more with Asus and Merlin. And that's where it all started... We're dealing with nothing more than a noob who goes to the Asus FB page to fight against Asus..

 

[RMerlin]

I see the AsusWRT Merlin is built on Tomato firmware

It's not. It's based on Asuswrt, which was forked from Tomato over 13 years ago. And Tomato itself was forked off other firmware, which ultimately were forks off Linksys' firmware, which was basically based off Broadcom's own SDK...

It's like saying OS X is "just" a BSD fork...

Obviously he's relying on either 10+ years old information, or not properly reading the information available out there. For instance he seems unaware of the numerous features available in Asuswrt-Merlin (and Asuswrt) which aren't available in Tomato.