Intelligent Dual WAN on ASUS RT-AC68U with DD-WRT v24

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Korahm
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 05 Jan 2015
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 6:38    Post subject: Intelligent Dual WAN on ASUS RT-AC68U with DD-WRT v24 Reply with quote
Hello! This is my first post and I look forward to being part of this community! If I have placed it in the wrong thread, I do apologize .

I picked up the ASUS RT-AC68U last spring because it advertised dual-WAN. I was very disappointed with the ASUS implementation so I tried several different open source firmware options - such as Merlin-WRT. I am still not satisfied with the dual-WAN functionality, so I have read through all of the DD-WRT tutorials about building my own dual-WAN configuration. The closest tutorial is the Dual, Triple... one.

My ideal end state is dual-WAN with policy-based options to assign protocols to different ISPs. Since I have one with high upload and one with high download, when both are up I want to route traffic in a way that makes sense. When one is down I want all traffic to be routed through the remaining connection until the other connection comes back online.

I will reply a couple times to this post with the steps I have taken and the questions I have.

In addition to starting this thread I am taking copious notes to allow anyone regardless of technical background to repeat this process. I will, of course, share the notes once I am done.
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Korahm
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 05 Jan 2015
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 6:49    Post subject: Initial Steps Reply with quote
I initially installed and configured the DD-WRT in a very standard manner: DHCP, wireless, etc. I won't get into any unnecessary details here since I've seen hundreds of guides for basic configuration.

I added telnet to MS Windows 7 using the [Turn Windows features on or off] menu in the [Control Panel].

I connected to my router via telnet using "root" and my admin password.

I began by capturing my default configuration to better understand the router using these commands, output pairs:

[in]
nvram show | grep vlan.*ports
[out]
vlan2ports=0 5u
vlan1ports=1 2 3 4 5*

[in]
nvram show | grep port.*vlans
[out]
port5vlans=1 2 16
port3vlans=1 18 19 21
port1vlans=1 18 19 21
port4vlans=1 18 19 21
port2vlans=1 18 19 21
port0vlans=2 18 19 21

[in]
nvram show | grep vlan.*hwname
[out]
vlan2hwname=et0
vlan1hwname=et0

This is where I ran into my first question: "5u" what is this? I understand 5* has to do with the CPU. I can only guess that the 5u might be the upstream CPU since the router advertised using one core for local traffic and one core for external traffic. Is that the case?
Korahm
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 05 Jan 2015
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 7:05    Post subject: First Real Step Reply with quote
The first real step, based on my understanding of the dual WAN tutorials, is to change a LAN port to a WAN port on a separate VLAN.

Define a new VLAN:
nvram set vlan3hwname=et0

Change the VLANS associated with port 1 to mirror the current WAN:
nvram set port1vlans=”3 18 19 21”

Add VLAN3 to the "internal":
nvram set port5vlans=”1 2 3 16”

Set the ports on VLAN3 to mirror the current WAN:
nvram set vlan3ports=”1 5u”

Remove port 1 from VLAN1:
nvram set vlan1ports=”2 3 4 5*”

Save the changes:
nvram commit
reboot

I ran the initial commands again to verify the changes went through. I also learned in this step that pasting into telnet does not retain double quotes.

[in]
nvram show | grep vlan.*ports
[out]
vlan2ports=0 5u
vlan3ports=1 5u
vlan1ports=2 3 4 5*

[in]
nvram show | grep port.*vlans
[out]
port5vlans=1 2 3 16
port3vlans=1 18 19 21
port1vlans=3 18 19 21
port4vlans=1 18 19 21
port2vlans=1 18 19 21
port0vlans=2 18 19 21

[in]
nvram show | grep vlan.*hwname
[out]
vlan3hwname=et0
vlan2hwname=et0
vlan1hwname=et0

It looks like everything worked!

I omitted the size fields from all results since they do not appear relevant; please correct me if I am wrong.
Korahm
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 05 Jan 2015
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 8:35    Post subject: Reply with quote
The next step I attempted to complete was to define VLAN3 as WAN2.

Set WAN2 to the new VLAN:
nvram set wan2_ifname=”vlan3”

Hard code the address info:
nvram set wan2_ipaddr=”192.168.0.2”
nvram set wan2_gateway=”192.168.0.1”
nvram set wan2_netmask=”255.255.255.0”

Save changes:
nvram commit
reboot

Before conducting those commands I accessed my 2nd ISP's gateway and set the MAC address for VLAN3 to the static address above. I would rather allow DHCP to avoid that step or to require less work for the user, but I have not found a simple explanation about to to do that. Any help?

I am starting to doubt the VLAN3 MAC is the right one for the first port since I am not seeing any address assigned on the 2nd ISP's gateway or on the router.

Here is my current output which is missing the expected inet addr, bcast, and mask fields:

[in]
ifconfig vlan3
[out]
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr E0:3F:49:99:19:F0
UP BROADCASE RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets: 430 errors:0 dropped:32 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets: 0 errors: 0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:91449 (89.3 KiB) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

And this is where I am currently stuck. I still plan to attempt the scripts once I get past this step, but I expected to see them aforementioned missing fields in that output.
Per Yngve Berg
DD-WRT Guru


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

PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2015 16:03    Post subject: Reply with quote
This is a Broadcom based router. Please post in the broadcom Forum.
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