WOL Problem with Stock Firmware - Will Merlin Fix this ?

[Kevin Marchant]

I want to be able to use the WebUI WOL utility on my AC87U router to wake devices connected to an EA-N66.

I have and RT-AC87U (lastest stock firmware 3.0.0.4.380_7743 at the time of writing) with an EA-N66 in bridge mode.

If I use a WOL utility on any client (either hardwired or wifi) I can successfully wake up devices connected to the EA-N66 or directly connected to the router.

If I use the WOL utility in Network tools in the router WebUI, WOL for devices directly connected to the router works as expected, but for devices connected to the EA-N66 it fails.

I believe this broke a couple of stock firmware releases ago - the WebUI WOL utility can only wake directly connected devices. I've tried reporting this to ASUS support, but not a productive experience.

I've tried setting static ARP entries for the EA-N66 connected devices. Using Wireshark I cannot see any WOL packets when trying to wake EA-N66 devices using the WebUI, but do see them when using a WOL utility on the client.

Has anyone got any experience of this topology with Merlin firmware - I know the answer is likely to be to just try it, but I'm worried about the effort of swapping to Merlin and swapping back to stock if it doesn't work - the config I've got has an OpenVPN server, about 30 MAC address in the filter list etc etc.

Will Merlin fix this? @RMerlin or has anyone got any suggestions of how to get stock firmware to do this (again).

 

[RMerlin]

I don't know. I doubt that my firmware will make any difference there.

 

[Kevin Marchant]

I had my doubts too - it's probably a trivial fix or regression needed in the code (the release notes of several of the previous stock firmware releases claims they had fixed WOL problems and when I begged to differ they weren't that interested).

Thanks for the quick reply anyway. I may give Merlin a spin to have a look anyway.

 

[RMerlin]

I had my doubts too - it's probably a trivial fix or regression needed in the code (the release notes of several of the previous stock firmware releases claims they had fixed WOL problems and when I begged to differ they weren't that interested).

Thanks for the quick reply anyway. I may give Merlin a spin to have a look anyway.

You shouldn't need to reconfigure anything after switching to my firmware. Just make a backup of your settings before hand, so returning to stock firmware will be painless.

The only things to check after moving from stock to Asuswrt-Merlin is the VPN setting (we don't enable/disable the same way) and SSH (LAN/WAN access is configured differently). DHCP reservations might need some attention too, due to the additional hostname field.

Going from my firmware back to stock however can be more problematic with these settings, best to restore a saved backup if you go back.

 

[martinr]

Rest assured, having tried it, you won't be going back.

 

[Kevin Marchant]

Thought I'd get back to you all these months later.

Merlin DID fix my problem. Finally took the leap today to installed it (mainly because I spotted the stock firmware was exposing port 21 FTP server (only used internally) to the Internet and Merlin has a disable button for that). Only one hickup that you've already pointed out (OpenVPN server needed to be set to start) but the SSH config and DHCP reservations were fine. I even found an old post https://www.snbforums.com/threads/wol-with-asuswrt-merlin.19407/ on how to set up a static arp to a broadcast address (and a quick dabble with scripts), forwarded port 9 from my OpenVPN range to that address, and now I can wake up any of my machines, either ethernet attached or connected to my EAN66 LAN segment from my iPhone when remote. Very cool.

As Martin suggested, not going back !