Why I am staying with Merlin 378.53 on AC87R

[Ronv42]

I will just have to say that version 378.53 on my AC87R has been rock solid. Out of the core features that ASUS has provided and the customizations that Merlin has exposed I plan to keep 378.53 as my base build for long term deployment.

Features that have been working well:

• DHCP pools and assignments for addresses outside of the pool
• QOS rules
• Traffic Analyzer (mostly for the top 5 users of bandwidth)
• 5 GHz stability and performance
• 2.5 GHz stability and performance
• Loopback driver
• Parental controls for access to the internet based on application and time of day
• OpenVPN
• General performance of the router for LAN based traffic has no issue keeping up with my internet service
• Entware in general works, utils like htop and monit work great
• Guest networks

Items that don't work well and not Merlin's or Asus issue:

• Squid Proxy via Entware - Memory leaks and memory allocation issues has to be restarted every 24 hours to be stable or it just keeps crashing
• Privoxy ad blocking - Goes though cycles where it cannot create threads and thus connection fail
• Not all entware packages are stable on the ARM version. Found MIPS on older router much more stable. This may be due to the multi-core implementation in the ARM versions or the version of libraries compiled against may have bugs on ARM.

Unless there is a security issue or needed enhancement in the builds, version 378.53 is a keeper. Already deployed 15 sites so far this weekend and pretty happy. They will soak in for 30 days before hitting the remaining locations.

Thanks Merlin for all the work you put into this.

 

[microchip]

Although I don't use an ASUS router atm but the Netgear R7000, I run the latter on XVortex's mod of Merlin's FW and everything appears to work well and is stable, so I'm thinking exactly as you atm. Unless there's a compelling thing that forces me to upgrade, .53 is a keeper here.

 

[L&LD]

I have updated many customers RT-AC56U's, RT-AC68U's and RT-N66U's routers to 378.53 RMerlin firmware and they too are rock solid.

When RMerlin releases the next one, I'm sure it will be a 'must install' too.

Yes, I'm saying that I haven't run into an RMerlin release that I didn't like.

 

[microchip]

I have updated many customers RT-AC56U's, RT-AC68U's and RT-N66U's routers to 378.53 RMerlin firmware and they too are rock solid.

When RMerlin releases the next one, I'm sure it will be a 'must install' too.

Yes, I'm saying that I haven't run into an RMerlin release that I didn't like.

I'm done playing with firmware (I hope). I just want to leave my router working and keep it so. Unless something forces me to upgrade its firmware, I had enough of flashing it every month and a half or so whenever new fw comes out

 

[L&LD]

microchip, there is no such thing as 'done' in computer related updates.

If you stop here you are simply left behind in security, performance and features as long as your router is otherwise currently supported and actively developed.

 

[kvic]

I was forced to do a factory reset one week ago. So I took the chance to upgrade my rt-ac56u to 378.53. Previously running 376.48_1.

5/2.4GHz wifi are very stable as before. I don't expect change without wireless driver update. I wish Broadcom could release improvements or rather Asus shall more proactively pick up from Broadcom(?). But I guess low hanging fruits (regardless of wifi optimisation or profit of older models) are all grabbed. We as users of older equipment may have already been enjoying the very best we could get. Other core functionalities are also solid as before.

New feature wise (note I come from 376.48_1), I like the new wireless log page. Traffic analyzer is also eye catching and revealing. I appreciate Merlin brings new features to older models as soon as they’re available.

Also took the chance and migrated Optware to Entware. Have been running Privoxy adblcok for a few days. It’s very stable for me. I have 1820KiB worth of action/filter scripts generated from Easylists.

AiProtection, Adaptive QoS and OpenVPN policy routing are nice additions but I don’t need at the moment.

I wish httpd (that runs Web GUI) can read the port from a NVRAm variable instead of hard coding to 80 in a future release.

 

[microchip]

microchip, there is no such thing as 'done' in computer related updates.

If you stop here you are simply left behind in security, performance and features as long as your router is otherwise currently supported and actively developed.

Security I agree, hence why I said "compelling reason". But what if the performance is more than enough and the features too? So as I said, unless something forces me to upgrade, I will let it run on this version as long as possible

Do you think all those millions buying routers sit all day around waiting for a new fw version to upgrade? No, it's only us who do that. I see a router as a device performing a task, not a toy to play with.

 

[Ronv42]

For me it's the issue of supporting my clients and at home the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). If I can reduce the number of support calls and keep the availability up for my clients customers its a win. I got over 3 years out of a version of Tomato from Toastman that was so stable one of the routers was up for over 400 days without issue.

But the days of the single core MIPS routers (N66U, N16) are pretty much over and many of my clients have a large device pool that they are trying to support. Most clients seem to leveraging "N" on the 2.4 GHz band is what I setup for their "Guest" networks. I reserve the 5 GHz band for client special needs. ARM based processors has really disrupted the 3rd party router firmware market and I really prefer Merlin's approach to leverage the core that Asus does well along with tweaking it for potential customizations through common scripts.