MIT Engineers

[eCat]

if you aren't interested in bland IT stories, just skip this

A couple of years ago Asus entered into agreement with T-Mobile to sell their AC68U router with a T-Mobile sticker on it and some proprietary software to become a hotspot home router - the idea being that people would use 4G as their internet at home and connect wireless devices thru the router.

It flopped and T-Mobile dumped these routers, most of them brand new as "refurbished" on Amazon for $59 a pop. Brand new this router is $120 or higher. Its a bit dated now - it was state of the art in 2015 but at any rate its still a heckuva router.

So the latest home networking craze is mesh networks, meaning that if you live in a home that has a dead spot, like a farraday cage or maybe you want wireless to extend to your workshop, before mesh you had to buy multiple wireless routers and set them up as a repeater or run a ethernet line, but with mesh, you can just buy an additional "pod" and extend your wireless network so it has the same name - and to the end user is just one big network. Google currently sells a system where you get 3 which should easily cover a 4500sq ft home for $250.

So Asus decides to add a feature to their firmware that lets you take certain versions of Asus routers and make them a mesh network- you can probably see where I'm going with this now. The AC68U is one of the routers that will let you use the mesh feature. So word gets out that with about an hour of modding and reloading firmware, you can turn the T-Mobile branded Asus router into just a regular Asus Router and then load the AiMesh firmware - and for $59 you have a brand new mesh router that is far superior to most if not all of the mesh pod routers out there. So I bought 3 of them, did the flashing and upgrade - and I was good to go.

But Asus found out that this mod community was buying up these $59 routers which apparently T-Mobile has dumped thousands out on Amazon, and instead of buying their $200 new routers with this mesh feature they did exactly what I did - bought 2 or 3 of these, and used all the features that are great about this router and took advantage of the mesh feature - and Asus, being short sighted complete dickfaces, offered a free firmware upgrade on all their routers which fixed a "mac" bug feature - the feature as it turns out detects whether the router is a T-Mobile branded router versus on of their own, and if so, automatically reverts it back to the T-Mobile router firmware. To add insult to injury, they also changed the reboot feature so that it would be extremely difficult to get the router back into recovery mode - the original directions for recovery no longer work. That's a serious dick move - to disable the reboot button on the router and create this intentionally difficult reboot process to discourage people from installing a new modded firmware and not telling anyone what it is.

Luckily for me, I am the if the clock works don't fix it type - learned the hard way from being in the software business for many years and I never do an update, especially for modded firmware, but hundreds of people have and they are pissed.

This would be similar to taking a Mazda Tribute, which is a badged 2 door Ford Explorer , taking a Ford explorer transmission , putting it in the Tribute , and it works fine and you now get 29mpg, but then Ford sells you a transmission oil so when you change the oil the Tribute reverts back to 17mpg while all the other Fords still get 29mpg.

At any rate for the time being I am still sticking it to the man, but I really question their vision on this. I have been a big supporter of Asus routers - suffice to say that most people that spend the money to get an Asus router, (I have 6 in various forms) are willing to pay a premium for them over the cheap brands like Tenda and TP-Link. Matter of fact the Tenda AC15 is a chinese knock off of the AC68U and you can install the same 3rd party firmware in both of them. Brand New the Tenda AC15 - which is an AC1900 just like the $200 Asus sells for $49, but it doesn't have the Mesh feature.

[hedge]

Wait, are you saying I can get wifi from the router in the back room now?

[eCat]

well ....no

[Saint]

We have an Asus router and I tried to set my old Linksys router up as a wifi extender, but it's just not doing that. Luckily the new Asus router is strong enough to send a signal everywhere I need it. Still, just having that Linksys sitting upstairs and connected by ethernet to the Asus and not doing anything sort of rankles me. But I've got so many other things that don't work right in my house and car, I'm not spending any time or money to fix it.

[eCat]

We have an Asus router and I tried to set my old Linksys router up as a wifi extender, but it's just not doing that. Luckily the new Asus router is strong enough to send a signal everywhere I need it. Still, just having that Linksys sitting upstairs and connected by ethernet to the Asus and not doing anything sort of rankles me. But I've got so many other things that don't work right in my house and car, I'm not spending any time or money to fix it.

that shouldn't be happening.

Do you have the the ethernet line in a yellow jack in the Asus going into the blue jack in the Linksys?

if so, the I suspect the Linksys and the Asus share the same DHCP IP addresses. You would need to go into the Linksys Admin GUI and change the DHCP IP addresses. If you don't know how to do that I can walk you thru it.

[hedge]

"We have an Asus router"

What about an anus router?

[Saint]

We have an Asus router and I tried to set my old Linksys router up as a wifi extender, but it's just not doing that. Luckily the new Asus router is strong enough to send a signal everywhere I need it. Still, just having that Linksys sitting upstairs and connected by ethernet to the Asus and not doing anything sort of rankles me. But I've got so many other things that don't work right in my house and car, I'm not spending any time or money to fix it.

that shouldn't be happening.

Do you have the the ethernet line in a yellow jack in the Asus going into the blue jack in the Linksys?

if so, the I suspect the Linksys and the Asus share the same DHCP IP addresses. You would need to go into the Linksys Admin GUI and change the DHCP IP addresses. If you don't know how to do that I can walk you thru it.

I'm pretty sure I followed it and changed the IP, per instructions I found online. One problem is that I have Greenlight, which doesn't put a modem i n the home but rather a TP link, which is basically a router. So I've got the Asus connected to the TP link, which is connected to the FTTP from Greenlight. Then I run the cable that runs upstairs to the Linksys out of one of the output ports in the Asus. I think I may just not have configured it properly. I'll have to sit down with it this week and go through what I have and report back.

[eCat]

[img2][/img2]

[Jungle Rat]

Heh

[eCat]

hired a kid from Duke onto the team on Monday, Looks like we're hiring a kid from Harvard tomorrow

We're upping our bar a bit.

[Saint]

You're setting yourself up for an early "retirement," smart guy

[eCat]

heh...yea

they don't even try to hide it at my place

62 and you better be ready to start your new career as a Wal-Mart greeter

[aTm]

Fortnite turned teen into a suicidal drug addict!

Huzzah, Video games are the debil again!

[Jungle Rat]

Play more

[wuhuilin11]

*Edit-SPAM Horseshit Deleted, User banned. aTm

[Dave23]

Has wuhuilin answered the 3 questions?

[hedge]

*Edit-SPAM Horseshit Deleted, User banned. aTm

Considering the traffic we have in this place these days, I don't think we can afford to alienate anyone...

[Jungle Rat]

Just one more

[10ac]

1

[crashcourse]

I hate it when I slur my posts