[pquesinb]

Hi everyone,

On Black Friday, just over a year ago, I picked up an ASUS RT-AC5300 in an attempt to solve streaming issues with a Pi 3 based LibreELEC Kodi media center, since the construction of our home has, at least so far, prevented me from running wired Ethernet to it.

I had been running TomatoUSB on an old RT-N16 which worked extremely well until it died (capacitor issue I think but I never got around to fixing it), and was disappointed to learn that there was no version of it for the AC5300. I installed the Merlin firmware, and had the next to the most-recent version (384.2 I think) installed, and it worked ok but it just didn't seem to perform quite like TomatoUSB on other routers I've used it on, and I wanted a bit more control.

Just recently, I did some additional searching and came across some builds for this router, mostly from posts in this forum. After a lot of reading, I came to the conclusion that my router probably did not have the encrypted cfe bootloader, also being version 1.0.4.0 as in page 4 of the following post:
https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=314358

So I grabbed the 09/23/18 version of the Kong build for that router from here:
http://www.desipro.de/ddwrt/K3-AC-Arm/

And was able to successfully flash the router to DD-WRT. For reference, I did the following:

Backed up my Merlin config, just in case things didn't work out. Did a WPS reset. Pulled up the web interface (now at 192.168.1.1 as I recall, I forget whether it came up with DHCP enabled or not but I had set up a static IP on the PC interface within that subnet), did the basic setup to get back to the main Merlin web interface and loaded the Kong firmware right from the Merlin web interface. When it was done, I rebooted the router and waited, passing the time by chewing a couple of fingernails off...

To my happy surprise, I was eventually greeted with a shiny new DD-WRT interface! Things appeared to be working but one of the interfaces' MAC addresses, I think it was the wireless, was 00:00:00:00:00:(01?), so I did another WPS reset to be sure, and it all came back up fully functional and with proper MAC addresses (and wide open with no wireless security!)

I haven't done any testing to determine actual numbers (i.e. iperf, etc.) but things are working really well now. In fact, an annoying problem I had with my Samsung Galaxy S5 Android cell phone, where it had either no or spotty Internet connectivity despite a strong signal on the 5GHz band, is now completely solved! Another 5GHz device, a Netgear (edit: oops, Linksys) wireless extender operating in cross-band mode, seemed to connect to the 5GHz radio with reliable connectivity, so I figured there was a problem with the Samsung's 5GHz radio but something else was going on... any ideas?

Anyway, I'd like to say thanks to Malachi, bigalsworth, and others who took the time to describe what worked and answer other people's questions, etc., I'm a very happy camper right now. I really have no desire to crank up the power or do anything else that would potentially interfere with other neighbors or other users/services but this regulatory router lockdown is BS, I should be able to run whatever software I like on MY router, with no back-doors!

One question though, are there any significant differences between the Kong and Brainslayer firmware builds?

Thanks again!

- Phil

[Alozaros]

Kong builds are personally tested by Kong prior realise ...
BS builds are usually more recently updated but not tested or at least not confirmed as a tested and sometimes may contain surprises like bricks and lock downs to no further updates and so on...
In general dealing with DD-WRT or any 3 rd party firmware its suppose to be related with some skills of how to unbrick my router in case of ...
so reading the new build thread before an update pays back... sometimes..
just stick to the Kong builds it wont hurt...

[pquesinb]

Alozaros,

Thanks for the info, that sounds like good advice to me... not really interested in playing Router Roulette and potentially getting into hours of work to get back to working hardware, but that's always the risk you take. Most of the embedded work I do is with Microchip PICs which don't require jtag programmers so I don't have any of that stuff on hand but the serial recovery sounded like a good option for this router based on what I'd read.

At any rate, the update was definitely worth it and the router does appear to perform noticeably better now, especially after a few minor protocol tweaks. I don't know if the annoying Galaxy S5 5GHz interop issue was related to the Merlin firmware which I understand is closely related to the stock firmware, or if the stock firmware would have done the same thing. I'd like to understand what was happening, I saw another thread where a phone was rapidly going in and out of powersave and something like that seems like a potential fit for that problem but I guess it could be anything and I should just let..it..go... and be happy, since I'm not about to reflash the Merlin firmware and start capturing traffic to try and track it down. Well, probably not...

I'm going to do some additional reading and see if I can backup the cfe for that router to have a copy on hand, just in case.

- Phil