patrick.net

Had an Asus N66U. Great router, but Asus dropped support years ago. Migrated to Asus Merlin, but they dropped support too. Had a great fork, but then the guy who created it disappeared three years ago. The fork was labeled abandoned, and it was recommended to move to freshTomato. Not sure what I did wrong, since I never had trouble flashing merlin, but router kept restarting, so put it into recovery mode. Flash seemed to happen, but then router never restarted, despite power button turning off(port in use continued to flash). So I think I bricked it.

Tried a TP-Link router from HomeDepot first, but no support for VPN, and no flash support. Tried a better(?) TP-Link, but the settings were so simplistic and limited, took it back next morning. Ended up spending $170 for an Asus AX58U. Got home and found out NOT flashable to Merlin because it's v2. Also noticed in time because I always read the release notes, otherwise might have bricked it. It's a pretty decent router though. Just to clarify, I don't game, and don't give a shit about mesh, or crazy fucking speeds or signal. What I like, the DNS controls are very detailed, and better options than Merlin provided on the old router. What I don't like, there's no killswitch for the router VPN. I realize I can generate IP table rules for most of my devices(all Linux).

My old router had a solid metal plate, mostly metal parts, and was 2-3x heavier than any of the larger routers I tried. Everything is cheap plastic now days, and it seems even when you spend a decent amount, privacy is still pretty hard to come by. If I lived somewhere bigger, would have just found another used one on the Merlin list, one of the drawbacks of being in a small town.

New router has a bunch of scanning and analysis features, but they all require I share data with Trend Micro, no thanks. Speeds do seem significantly higher, and it seems like we're using closer to our ISP limits now.

I imagine most people are still running the modem/router combos from their ISP. Can't imagine how they sleep at night, it's like having your front door open...