Firmware upgrade for Asus RT-n16 router?

J

JimS

Senior Member
I was having trouble with DNS and discovered the stock firmware had issues several months ago. Since I had wanted to go to ddwrt or one of the other similar firmwares I took this as an opportunity to do that. During the process I also found I had a bad capacitor - a known issue with this model and fixed that.

After a couple months the unit reset to defaults. Apparently the NVRAM got filled up and that is what happens - it's a known bug. Has been for years. And sorting though the large number of choices of ddwrt builds and trying to find the files is very frustrating and time consuming. I am about to go back to Asus firmware - they have an update to address the original problem.

I know people here have used Tomato and others. Any recommendations? My original reason for going with alternate software was to run Asterisk and other such things on the router. With many other boards (like Pi) for that sort of thing I don't see any real good reason to be running alternate firmware on the router. And having the router fail at random times has very low WAF! I just want the router to work and keep working. I can play with VOIP and such on other boards that don't kill the network. About the only thing I need on the router beyond basic operation is good QoS.

Any suggestions on this?
 
LOL. "Not that hard to find ... if you know where to look." It's the knowing where to look that is the problem and leads to a maze of twisty passages that all look the same.

The wiki lists several old versions as current - obviously out of date and conflicting info:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Asus_RT-N16

Your link is for RT-N15 not N16. I have no idea if that is a problem. How did you know where to look and how do you know this is the right file? Various places it is noted that the database is not upto date but maybe that has changed.

It appears I need to upgrade to 21530 first since it will take care of rearrangement of memory going to 3.x version (just what I read).
Then go to 28598.
 
I know people here have used Tomato and others. Any recommendations?
 
You can utilize dd-wrt to switch over to open-wrt if you want.
 
dd-wrt has an easier gui but open-wrt has more features.
 
I utilize both here depending on the device.
 
Sorry for the N15 link. Looks like N16 is not supported with the new K3 kernel builds yet.

Before I buy a new router, I always check if dd-wrt supports it first. Then check the forums for issues.

To find the latest click on:
Router database -> other downloads -> betas -> {year} -> {date, build} -> {router model}
 
Personally I would just build a router using PFSense.  It's GUI makes for a simple interface.  It'll do anything you want.
 
pete_c said:
Personally I would just build a router using PFSense.  It's GUI makes for a simple interface.  It'll do anything you want.
Click to expand...
I'd rather buy on off the shelf router and flash it with dd-wrt. Then use the time saved on the beach sipping tropical drinks.
 
elvisimprsntr said:
I'd rather buy on off the shelf router and flash it with dd-wrt. Then use the time saved on the beach sipping tropical drinks.
Click to expand...
 
Not to start anything with you, but...
 
As someone who used DD-WRT for many years in the past, I'd have to completely disagree with this statement. If you truly have a full-featured router setup then you know the work that is involved - which package for the features needed, with release has bugs, etc. That doesn't even include the time spent making sure the router you have/want to purchase can support the feature set you wish to utilize. Then repeat that process when the time comes to replace your current router with a new one because of space requirements or it's simply starting to fail. You said yourself "Then check the forums for issues."
 
I was lucky enough to start my migration to something NOT hardware dependent right at the same time my ASUS router started failing. I simply had too much of my network, such as VLANs, depending on something that was not easily replaceable. I made the transition to pfSense running in a virtual environment and never have to worry about that again. Further, I can easily tinker around and restore snapshots or backups, run powerful CPU-intensive packages and have the hardware to run my SSL VPNs at full speed.
 
Set it up once, with a very simple GUI - unlike DD-WRT where many features need to be setup via console - and I can sip tropical drinks with peace of mind  B)
 
For the OP...
 
Your decision to go back to ASUS or DD-WRT would depend mostly on the features you need and the stability and/or speed of each of the firmware options.
 
Don't know about that these days.  It takes all of 5 minutes to write the BSD PFSense OS to a computer.  The defaults are all configured without touching the GUI. 
 
The rewrites of the OS for the off the shelf routers are levels above what is provided.  The CPUs / memory is getting better on the SOHO boxes but still just an underpowered CPU with no memory for much.
 
Take the Asus RT-N16 box mentioned in the OP.
 
Specifications are:
 
1 - Broadcom BCM4718 @ 480MHz
2 - 128MiB RAM
3 - 32MiB FLASH
 
Truely writing an good OS for is it is still sucking blood from a rock which is really underpowered these days relating to the data that flows through the device.  That said you can today manufacture the base router with a faster chipset (SoC) for about $10 which is a good price point when you sell it for $XX dollars.
 
I am not knocking the SOHO boxes here just mentioning the differences between what you purchase off the shelf and what you can do today.
 
The Netgear Nighthawk R7000 is a bit faster with:
 
1 - Broadcom BCM4709A0 dualcore @ 1 GHz
2 - 256MiB RAM
3 - 128MiB FLASH
 
Better but not soup as it still only has 256MiB of RAM and 128Mib of OS space.
 
As with anything Linux and/or community supported, it's best not to be an early hardware adopter. That's why I just upgraded to Linksys WRT1900ACv1 units, which have been on the market for nearly two years. I picked them up on clearance since the v2 and ACSv1 replaced them. They replaced a pair of 5 year old E3000's. I fully expect I will get 5+ years out of the WRT1900AC units. I really don't tinker with them unless I read about a security vulnerability ( NTP, SSH, etc.). They are an appliance which just seem to work. I seem to get a fair amount of mileage out of them with low initial cost and little/no recurring time investment.

That being said, perhaps I'll look at PFSense in 5 years. At the moment I have a separate Linux appliance to run my Time Machine server and ZoneMinder NVR server. If PFSense could allow me to combine everything in a single embedded appliance, the cost savings on electricity alone might make it worth it.
 
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