Just Another Blog
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
12/02/2012 Asus RT-N16: impressions after using it for a while « Just another blog … Just another blog … Asus RT-N16: impressions after using it for a while Posted by Volodymyr Shcherbyna on 6 June 2010, 2:47 am; Commentors Feedback: 2/2 It’s been a couple of weeks since I bought RT-N16 and during this time I’ve accumulated some experience. The most important thing that I could understand for this time – firmware from Asus – sucks, because even though it provides minimalistic features it is very unstable and does not utilize the power of router’s hardware! Now, let me shortly review all firmwares I tried from Asus: 1.0.0.6 – was installed when I bought a router. Very unstable, huge pings to router if you visit rich flash site as youtube.com. It was impossible to talk via skype on this firmware: video and sound ware delayed, etc. 1.0.1.2 – installed it as soon as I’ve discovered that 1.0.0.6 sucks. At the beginning everything was stable, but then I got dropping wi-fi connections, even without a load. 1.0.1.3 – beta firmware from Asus, never published. Same problem as with 1.0.1.2 – network periodically disappears by itself. 1.0.1.4 – interesting firmware. A day after it was released, it was removed from Asus site, and then reappeared as another file – with different md5, creation date, but the version was exactly the same If the company where I work treats its customers in the same way as Asus, I would already have been looking some job because of unemployment. Well, if you release 1.0.1.4 and found a bug, why not to release a corrected firmware as 1.0.1.5? And why there is no changes.log file for each firmware? After all, it is important to know what bugs were fixed and what changes are made, because it will save time for users – if fixes are just cosmetic – there is no need to do firmware upgrade … In 1.0.1.4 there were several critical issues which forces me to quit using Asus firmware: 1. Mystical disconnects of wi-fi 2. Asus tools are very buggy, for example, scanning does not work. Printer hungs sometimes. If you disconnect network cable or your laptop is not in the range of wifi spot the Asus tools use 100% of your CPU. Cool, huh??? 3. After changing some options of router – it hangs. To remove the mystical disconnects I decided to shutdown unnecessary services, for example, upnp media server, firewall logs, etc. And what was my surprise when, after changing the options and saving them, the router after reboot did not connect the wi-fi clients! At some point, while solving problems with Asus software, I caught myself thinking that it just sucks. I bought router to be stable and work 24×7. In fact, the RT-N16 became a capricious piece of hardware which became less stable as my old Dlink DI-524 for 40 $ So I decided to look for something different, like dd-wrt, tomato usb mod, and oleg’s firmware. At this stage I can tell you that all three firmwares are more stable and www.shcherbyna.com/?p=802 1/20 12/02/2012 Asus RT-N16: impressions after using it for a while « Just another blog … better than Asus firmware. Make conclusions, gentlemen! 1. dd-wrt – interesting but raw firmware. It works quite stable, but to make printing or scaning work it is a pain. 2. tomato usb mod – very good firmware. The printer is fully operational just out of the box, firmware has an excellent web interface that shows you a lot of details – the noise of wifi signal, neighboring wi-fi spots, which channels they are use, etc. But at the same time I had trouble with USB flash drive formatted ext3 – it was unable to be mounted 3. oleg’s firmware – a very stable firmware which I use at the moment. I’ve downloaded one of the nightly builds of olegs firmware: I discovered how cool it is. First, it is very stable. Everything just works and does not disconnect. Secondly, there is a huge amount of information on how to extend Notebook firmware with ipkg, etc. Computers Access Files Anywhere, Anytime Thirdly, the project is very active – almost every day there come new with High-End versions, and you can see the changelog on the project site. Business Notebook Laptop. www.ivolute.com There is also information on how to build firmware from sources, the site of the project also has the necessary mips toolchains for download. And last, what is very important for me, with oleg’s firmware you can install via ipkg a sane scanning server on the router. Thus I was able to find a replacement for Asus Tools, I made printing and scanning work with my router. Using ipkg I also was able to setup big amount of useful tools on the router like: 1.wakelan to turn on my computer from internet 2.vim to edit files 3.mc to browse files like in Far Manager 4.sane scanning server 5.printing server So I am happy now It just works and I don’t bother myself trying to dig into shitty firmware from Asus trying to explain why wifi suddenly stopped working, etc .. P.S. You can download firmware from oleg here: ftp://core.dumped.ru/rt-n/ . Currently I am on RT-N16-1.9.2.7-rtn-r1639 . If by some reason you don’t trust *.ru websites, you can download firmware from my site: http://www.shcherbyna.com/files/rt-n16/RT-N16- 1.9.2.7-rtn-r1639.trx.zip Filed under compulsive thoughts, linux, rt-n16, 33,689 views Tagged ASUS, Firmware, Linux, Oleg, Open Source Software, RT-N16, Wireless Router | Permalink 80 Comments 1. Christian says: July 14, 2010 at 06:56 Thank you for taking the time to write this guid/review! It was really helpfull, I was about to pull my hair! Thank you! www.shcherbyna.com/?p=802 2/20 12/02/2012 Asus RT-N16: impressions after using it for a while « Just another blog … 2. Volodymyr Shcherbyna says: July 14, 2010 at 11:16 I am glad I helped someone . I will try to cover in future the faq on how to master RT-N16 to get the best of it. 3. John says: July 14, 2010 at 14:41 yes thanks a lot for this clear and concise explanation. i have flashed my n16 with the latest oleg firmware and now i want to set up a usb hard drive for use as a network drive to be accessed by machines running both os x 10.5.8 and xp sp iii. is this possible? and is there any documentation on how to do it. i’m a newb. thanks again! 4. Volodymyr Shcherbyna says: July 14, 2010 at 21:16 John, Enable samba sharing. Look at this screenshot: http://wl500g.info/attachment.php?attachmentid=4197&d=1233338457 . Just enable samba, reboot router and access it like this \\192.168.1.1 5. John says: July 16, 2010 at 02:38 Thanks very much for that. I did as you suggested, but I still can’t get it to work. My USB disk is formatted fat32 so I can read/write to it on both XP and OS X. Should i be formatting it with another file system? Or do i need to set up ‘manual network shares list’? To access \\192.168.1.1, do I do this in finder>connect to server and just type in \\192.168.1.1? Sorry for all the questions! Total noob! 6. Volodymyr Shcherbyna says: July 16, 2010 at 08:31 John, Just try to run \\192.168.1.1 in Start-Run (in XP). In order to troubleshot the problem, enable SSH daemon, connect to router via ssh and type: dmesg and provide output here … 7. Luke H says: July 22, 2010 at 22:00 Hi I was using TomatoUSB but I saw it is dead project now. So I want to try the Oleg firmware. I installed it but wow, so ugly!! It use the default ASUS gui. Is that right?? Is there no custom GUI for this? Do you actually use this GUI or do you configure completely via ssh/console? Because I cannot stand to look at or use this horrible GUI, no matter how strong it may be. Comments?? 8. Volodymyr Shcherbyna says: July 22, 2010 at 22:10 Indeed, the UI is ugly. www.shcherbyna.com/?p=802 3/20 12/02/2012 Asus RT-N16: impressions after using it for a while « Just another blog … However the whole firmware is very stable and functional. I configured almost everything via GUI, and the rest – like ipkg via ssh, afterwards I did not touched the router for a month Everything is working perfectly, nothing to touch. I am happy. 9. Luke H says: July 23, 2010 at 00:12 I am curious how you might configure such things like QoS which is very important to me because I use VoIP phone. In the GUI for QoS you have very few options. Like fore example I want to set up queue based on HW MAC address of my ip- phone. I think its not possible via gui right? So all of those things would have to be done with command line? I am curious now if some modules like newer broadcom driver etc can be “merged” in from oleg firmware to TomatoUSB project and custom-compile a new build that has Tomato GUI but some of the newer modules from oleg.