Asus RT-N66U

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frustratedN66Uuser
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 09 Jun 2019
Posts: 6

PostPosted: Mon Jun 10, 2019 1:29    Post subject: Reply with quote
Per Yngve Berg wrote:
CFE 1.0.1.9 is available here:

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/cfe-bootloader-update.8259/


Thank you for update, seems ryzhov's server was temporarily down yesterday.

EDIT: Interesting, at the end of ryzhov's thread is
"Closing thread. CFEs are now locked down so these instructions are not helpful." This is not a battle i'd wanna pick.


lazardo wrote:
1. Don't do 30-30-30 resets on the n66u, use the 'mega' builds unless you know why you need 'big'.


We're on same page here
30-30-30 just puts n66u into 'restore mode' after powering up because n66u's restore procedure is holding reset button on power up for about 5 seconds.
This is why I used WPS key instead. (This is valid according to Charles Wilkinson https://charleswilkinson.co.uk/2012/12/22/dd-wrt-on-the-asus-rt-n66u-with-64k-cfe/, who was earliest in flashing N66U with modified nv64k K2.6)
This was last effort to try to erase settings that were strangly sticking between different reflashes, "Restore Factory Defaults" and "erase nvrams".


As for mega's, thats mostly what I've used, since they are smaller and faster to flash with. Tried 'big' only so see if I'd get any better result.



lazardo wrote:

2. There's a Merlin v380.70 build https://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/download in the 'legacy' section that should work since it *is* the asus firmware + patches.

3. Run the merlin+Asus to see if it suits: good wifi, no issues, and unfortunately no longer maintained. It enables the asus recovery mode mentioned in the N66U wiki.


Both John's merlin fork and tomatoe's work great, so I'll presume Merlin v380.70 will have no issue either. My reason for desperately wanting DD-WRT is because "fq_codel" shows up for qos. But on tomatoe it doesnt (meaning tomatoe supports fq_codel just not on N66U).

In todays reading I found somewhere saying fq_codel isnt listen because it isnt supported by hardware's kernel. So IF thats true and IF I were to magically get dd-wrt running stable at this point, the codel could be gui gimmic option but wouldnt work well at all. On another hand I thought kernel was software based in firmwares.

EDIT: I should mention that I recall now, I have run merlins RT-N66U_380.69_0 to see if adaptive qos was there. Surprisingly it wasn't. But also i would note that after that flash in superstitious way dd-wrt started going downhill. So maybe the new FCC related stuff in 380 did some covert CFE writes.

lazardo wrote:

4. When you choose to run dd-wrt, flash this: ftp://ftp.dd-wrt.com/betas/2017/12-29-2017-r34311/broadcom_K3X/dd-wrt.v24-34311_NEWD-2_K3.x_mega_RT-N66U.trx and get it operational:
* 2.4ghz set to NG-mixed; AES+HT20 channel 1, 6 or 11
* 5.0Ghz set to NA-mixed; AES+HT40 channel 157+upper
* try 'vegas' [TCP congestion alg.] with no QoS and SFE on


At this point I'd be lucky to get dd-wrt to fire up at all. I've done probably 20 flashes last few days. With every flash it seems to degrade. I'm either getting soft bricks or some sort of Read-only's.

Last 2 thing I will try before I go back on tomatoe.

1 Running CFE 1.0.1.9 EDIT: Probably not worth trying to figure out
2 Some really really old DD-WRT




lazardo wrote:

6. Now you're as competent as 95% of us. Yaaay 'Very Happy'


Thank you kind sir! Networking is an interesting knowledge to have but it's been a challenge.
Sponsor
frustratedN66Uuser
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 09 Jun 2019
Posts: 6

PostPosted: Mon Jun 10, 2019 7:43    Post subject: Reply with quote
Success

Amazing thing happened. With nothing to lose I did one thing I havent done in long time, I installed stock Asuswrt (latest version at this time, RT-N66U_3.0.0.4_382_51636-g8e31fe6.trx 29.2mb)
Then did the usual, putting router into 'restore mode' and uploaded dd-wrt. BOOM IT WORKS!!!!

I'm not going to say any more because I still have to plug router into modem tomorrow and test qos but this is a major progress that I couldn't accomplish by shuffling between merlin's and tomatoes. It's clear to me now that stock asuswrt has something that merlinwrt doesn't.


UPDATE:
Everything is up and running PeRfEcT!

Can anyone with N66U B1 confirm they have or do not have
fq_codel in their tomato builds or "adaptive" qos visible in their stock or merlin builds?

Asking because I didn't, yet in "DD-WRT" it's got it AND IS working. Really really wished I got this running 2 years ago and not stray away from official asuswrt entirely due to scare of how FCC compliance would lock device down.
underdose
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 12 Jun 2019
Posts: 20

PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:59    Post subject: Reply with quote
frustratedN66Uuser wrote:
Can anyone with N66U B1 confirm they have or do not have
fq_codel in their tomato builds or "adaptive" qos visible in their stock or merlin builds?


Adaptive QOS is not available in AsusWRT (stock), Asus-Merlin (forked from stock) and John's LTS Fork (forked from Merlin) for N66U because of its old kernel (2.6 or something) which does not support fq_codel.

Quote:

Note that due to the age of the kernel used by the RT-N66U and RT-AC66U, these two models do not support the new queue disciplines.
https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/QoS-Queue-Disciplines


I'm pretty sure I've recently read that something is broken with Tomato on N66U (IPv6 maybe?) but can't seem to find it now.
frustratedN66Uuser
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 09 Jun 2019
Posts: 6

PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 14:02    Post subject: Reply with quote
Quote:
Note that due to the age of the kernel used by the RT-N66U and RT-AC66U, these two models do not support the new queue disciplines.



Thanks for validating that, didn't want to be left out having this exact problem only on my end.



Quote:
Note that due to the age of the kernel used by the RT-N66U and RT-AC66U, these two models do not support the new queue disciplines.




The quote suggests the device is not capable. Limit seems to be present in interaction with K2.6, Under DD-WRT's K3.x, device does not suffer from it. Meaning it's not N66U's limitation unlike suggested otherwise by the quote. Thank you for the snippet.

To put it in another way.


K2.6 based firmware's do not play nice with this specific device concerning QOS. K3.X alleviates this problem.



As far as QoS is concerned, DD-WRT > any other firmware, for this device. and who knows what else.



Qos is a pretty big deal and perhaps google-able/top-youtube-able guides that were written at the time (with exception to Charles Wilkinson) were pushing for tomato because dd-wrt was buggy on N66U at the time. Even Charles Wilkinson who wrote guide about using Fractals modified K2.6 was saying he was having qos rebooting issues every 2 minutes on K3.x build (23598) in his last 'update' snippet on March 11 2014 . But that's been a long time ago and yet those guides still the only things around.



Which reminds me I need to do longer under load test sessions (TV streaming on Lan while gaming thru wifi, on 3.5 Mbit down 1.5Mbit up) to be conclusive that latest DD-WRT v3.0-r39956 mega (06/06/19) build, is rock solid. So far everything is running swimmingly.
lazardo
DD-WRT User


Joined: 17 Apr 2014
Posts: 132
Location: SF Bay Area

PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 17:19    Post subject: Reply with quote
firmware: 06-06-2019-r39956/broadcom_K3X/dd-wrt.v24-39956_NEWD-2_K3.x_mega_RT-N66U.trx

kernel: Linux 3.10.108-d8 #24813 Thu Jun 6 12:23:23 CEST 2019 mips

QoS: SFQ, CODEL, FQ_CODEL, PIE

hardware: n66u.B1

full report: https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1167438#1167438
Cheers,
frustratedN66Uuser
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 09 Jun 2019
Posts: 6

PostPosted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 11:32    Post subject: Reply with quote
@Lazardo

You've edited out the -qos +vegas setup you are using on your 18Mb down which wouldn't be applicable to me but I think is fine to leave in because someone with decent ISP speeds could benefit from reading, I would like to share my setup.

I'm still on 3.5Mb/1.5Mb ISP (grandfathered plan, that I'm keeping b/c it remains cheap roughly $600 a year in savings) so just TV streaming by itself consumes the whole down pipeline.



I've enabled bandwidth limiter (2000 kbits on won and lan) for TV, to force stream into SD quality (no TV's in-app option for that) instead of HD to prevent it from taking all the bandwidth. So I dont see a way out without QOS.
Then WAN HTB FQ_CODEL 2500/800 takes care of low latency on wifi.
Been 1ms-delay-spam pinging openDNS thru wifi, staying solid in 15ms while TV buffers, same story in game, ping is consistent.

There are naysayers on web who claimed you can't shape downlink's or you couldn't game over wifi, this is phenomenally awesome result. Here comes the catch.

If I get browser involved in the mix. TV stops buffering at some point. So far the longest it went without interruption while streaming and gaming is 1 hour .

So thats good. While browsing, not so good.



I've further gimped gaming laptop:

Under load Wan max up and down 20kbit and "bulk" via mac priority.

TCP Congestion Control: testing loss-based algorithms, instead of delayed



Also should mension, set TX queue on most interfaces to 5.



Tested streaming TV and youtube(480p) on laptop simultaniously. Things seem at bay.

Overall in different scenerios I do get intermittent short TV buffer pauses but they dont stop the stream. Stream gets nuked occasionally without any activity elsewhere, at random, I partly blame it on app's poor implementation(its not mainstream one) and TV itself is a cheap first generation SmartTVs by Samsung which has in general sluggish performance (It's slow to start or loading apps, takes 30 seconds to log-in into account hub, sometimes glitches out and get stuck in blackscreen and I'd have to unplug it from back and so forth).

So viewing this as a 85% win. Will look into getting Edge Router X for its SQM or find a $20 router on craiglist that support's OpenWRT and run dual router setup b/c N66U's 5hz wifi is solid.

Thanks
mrlint
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 21 Feb 2010
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Tue Jun 25, 2019 13:57    Post subject: Build reccommendation for Asus RT-N66U Reply with quote
Recently i flashed my n66u to ddwrt (DD-WRT v3.0-r39956 big (06/06/19). Which im very happy to be back on ddwrt. However I've been getting some issues with wifi dropout (requiring router reboot) and poor N network behavior and speed. I'm wondering if anyone recommends a build that they have been happy with.

Thanks
lazardo
DD-WRT User


Joined: 17 Apr 2014
Posts: 132
Location: SF Bay Area

PostPosted: Wed Jun 26, 2019 20:09    Post subject: Reply with quote
31690 and 33492 [n66u mega] releases have been running for me in several remote locations for years without issues: gateway w wired+2.4+5GHz clients, light-medium loads, scheduled reboots. Other notable stability gems: 35531, 34311. The modern era is somewhat different.

5GHz @HT40 w fixed, high channels, aka 157+161, and \_|_/ antenna positioning normally yields 16MB/s down, 13MB/s up to wired clients.

The observed dropouts *may* be the post-KRACK nas bug that triggers thousands/second 'timer' errors [libutils/linux_timer.c] and [eventually] restarts, clients appear to hang. There's a reference script that triggers an early reset and prevents most noticable hangs.

Start here: https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1140981
mrlint
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 21 Feb 2010
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Wed Jun 26, 2019 21:19    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you for the info. I just jumped up to r40065 build today to see if it helps, but if it doesn't settle down I'll totally be trying your suggestions. Its exactly what I hoping for Very Happy

lazardo wrote:
31690 and 33492 [n66u mega] releases have been running for me in several remote locations for years without issues: gateway w wired+2.4+5GHz clients, light-medium loads, scheduled reboots. Other notable stability gems: 35531, 34311. The modern era is somewhat different.

5GHz @HT40 w fixed, high channels, aka 157+161, and \_|_/ antenna positioning normally yields 16MB/s down, 13MB/s up to wired clients.

The observed dropouts *may* be the post-KRACK nas bug that triggers thousands/second 'timer' errors [libutils/linux_timer.c] and [eventually] restarts, clients appear to hang. There's a reference script that triggers an early reset and prevents most noticable hangs.

Start here: https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1140981
Very Happy Very Happy
tripnotics
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 12 Jul 2019
Posts: 2

PostPosted: Fri Jul 12, 2019 4:14    Post subject: Reply with quote
Been using v24-sp2 (12/10/12) mega - build 20363 since back in 2012, when I think this modem came out. Got everything working and never really messed with it.

However, I just recently upgraded to Gigabit down, but I'm only getting around 100Mbps down when connected to this router.

Does anyone know if this router can even come close to getting 1 Gigabit? Is the router my bottleneck?

Also, for upgrading my DD-WRT, do I need to do anything special because the version of DD-WRT I have is so old? Or can I just follow the regular steps outlined in this thread?

Thanks!
tripnotics
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 12 Jul 2019
Posts: 2

PostPosted: Fri Jul 12, 2019 18:14    Post subject: Reply with quote
Upgraded to DD-WRT v3.0-r40260 mega (07/09/19).

Speeds improved from 150Mbps to 450Mbps.

When I connect directly to the Comcast provided Router/Modem I can do 950+Mbps pretty consistently.

Going to see if there are some settings that can be adjusted to improve speed. Anyone have any suggestions or any posts that deal with this subject?

Thanks.
mrlint
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 21 Feb 2010
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Sun Jul 28, 2019 12:59    Post subject: 5Ghz Reply with quote
Is the G5z just out of whack in ddwrt with this model or is there some settings to use to get better reliability? I've had to switch back to 2.4 on my phone because it seems to keep disconnecting.

DD-WRT v3.0-r40439 mega (07/26/19)
Per Yngve Berg
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 13 Aug 2013
Posts: 6855
Location: Romerike, Norway

PostPosted: Sun Jul 28, 2019 15:47    Post subject: Reply with quote
tripnotics wrote:
Does anyone know if this router can even come close to getting 1 Gigabit? Is the router my bottleneck?
No, you have the maximum speedfor this router. You can get up to 120M by overclocking to 662Mhz.

For Gig connection, you need a Netgear R7800.
underdose
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 12 Jun 2019
Posts: 20

PostPosted: Sun Jul 28, 2019 21:30    Post subject: Re: 5Ghz Reply with quote
mrlint wrote:
Is the G5z just out of whack in ddwrt with this model or is there some settings to use to get better reliability? I've had to switch back to 2.4 on my phone because it seems to keep disconnecting.

DD-WRT v3.0-r40439 mega (07/26/19)


Everything works as expected here, at least on the surface, with DD-WRT v3.0-r40352 big (07/16/19) and 2.4GHz radio disabled.
frustratedN66Uuser
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 09 Jun 2019
Posts: 6

PostPosted: Mon Jul 29, 2019 4:11    Post subject: Reply with quote
Quote:
Is the G5z just out of whack in ddwrt with this model or is there some settings to use to get better reliability? I've had to switch back to 2.4 on my phone because it seems to keep disconnecting.


I had to flash with official asus firmware to get dd-wrt to work proper. I wrote about it in above posts.
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