ASUS ROUTERS FIXES/FIRMWARE NETWORKING..

kfarris · July 4, 2015

ASUSWRT-MERLIN A CUSTOM FIRMWARE FOR ASUS ROUTERS

Link to official website: http://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/

About

Spoiler

Asuswrt is the name of the firmware developed by Asus for use in all their recent routers. It was originally based on Tomato, and got extensively modified by Asus over the years as they added their own features to it.

Asuswrt-Merlin is an alternative, custom version of that firmware. Developped by Eric Sauvageau, its primary goals are to enhance upon the existing firmware without bringing any radical changes, and to fix some of the known issues and limitations, while maintaining the same level of performance as the original firmware. This means Asuswrt-Merlin retains full support for NAT acceleration (sometimes referred to as "hardware acceleration"), enhanced NTFS performance (through the proprietary drivers used by Asus from either Paragon or Tuxera), and the Asus exclusive features such as AiCloud or the TrendMicro-powered AiProtection. New feature addition is very low on the list of priorities in this project.

Asuswrt-merlin officially supports the following router models:

RT-N66U
RT-AC66U
RT-AC56U
RT-AC68U
RT-AC68P (same firmware as RT-AC68U)
RT-AC87
RT-AC3200

(Note: the U, R and W variants are all supported, as they are the exact same hardware and firmware, only different marketing SKUs or different case color)

The following models are no longer officially supported:

RT-N16

DD-WRT A CUSTOM FIRMWARE FOR A WIDE VARIETY OF ROUTERS.

Link to official site: https://www.dd-wrt.com/site/

About

DD-WRT is a Linux based alternative OpenSource firmware suitable for a great variety of WLAN routers and embedded systems. The main emphasis lies on providing the easiest possible handling while at the same time supporting a great number of functionalities within the framework of the respective hardware platform used.

These are the only two firmwares that I will particularly talk about.. (unless asked)

Now I know that a lot of the asus routers have wireless connection issues particularly the N and AC bands.

Even port forwarding has issues on asus routers and many more things..

Another thing to note is that the more features/load you use/put on the router the more heat it out puts which may result in over-heating issues. So you may have to add a fan on it.

(Example: 30sec video Fan + speed control (NOT MY VIDEO I DO NOT OWN ANY RITES ETC..) )

Now the ASUSWRT-MERLIN firmware fixes all asus problems with the supported models. And if you do run into an issue you can pretty much always fix it using the advanced features it adds to the firmware..

The DD-WRT Firmware adds a great amount of features to most of the asus routers however it still results in having the same issues as the stock firmware in some cases.. And can be a pain to work around your particular issue.

Please post any issues with your router below and I will do all I can to help you sort it out.

I SPECIALIZE IN NET-GEAR, ASUS, LINKSYS routers.

I plan on adding some how to tutorials on installing/reverting back to stock firmware. How ever it is 4th of july today so...this is on hold until next week.

Will add how to tutorial sometime next week! Stay tuned for more to come! B)

kaefers · July 7, 2015

I am just writing this for discussion purposes:

http://www.flexhub.org/forum/index.php?topic=788.0

"Asus currently sells wireless routers that include AiProtection powered by Trend Micro. [...]

sending the full url of visited webpages to Trend Micro [...]

This means that Trend Micro can collect, monitor and store your complete browsing history and technically can even take over (unsecure) web sessions by using the token you use yourself. This is a huge privacy and security issue."

So, imho, for me this is a case of "guilty, unless proven innocent".

Since part of the ASUSwrt and TrendMicro code is not open, it's difficult to check (for most of us anyway).

Merlin does a great job with tweaking the stock ASUSwrt.

Still, there is still stuff in there from ASUS & Co. that nobody should not even consider enabling.

That whole "AiProtection" section should in fact be disabled so nobody (especially unknowingly) gets lured into false security land.

Maybe one day pfsense will support ARM