Download Firmware Asuswrt-Merlin 384.12

Asus uses Tomato-derived firmware called Asuswrt for its newer routers, such as the RT-AC87 and RT-AC5300. This firmware is, with the exception of a few drivers, open source, whereby the closed binaries are included. Asuswrt-merlin, in turn, is a modified version of the original firmware from Asus. It includes bug fixes and minor improvements, but still tries to stay close to the original, so that it remains possible to add new features that Asus introduces to the code. The complete changelog for version 384.12 is up this page Here are the highlights in a nutshell:

The highlights of changes in 384.12:

• Merged GPL 384_45717 for non-AX models, with 382_51634/51640 binary blobs for the RT-AC87U and RT-AC3200.
• Implemented support for WS Discovery. This allows Windows clients without SMBv1 support to discover your router’s network shares.
• Updated components: nano 4.2, OpenSSL-10x to 1.0.2s, OpenSSL11x to 1.1.1c, curl 7.65.1 and miniupnpd 20190604 snapshot.
• Classification page now shows local clients by their names instead of their IP
• Reworked handling of up/down events in OpenVPN, resolved a number of issues/limitations.
• Added firewall to OpenVPN clients, which is enabled by default. This prevents remote servers from accessing your LAN through the VPN tunnel. If you have a site-to-site tunnel, or another setup where you are expecting inbound traffic to be sent to you through the tunnel then you can disable the firewall on the OpenVPN client page.
• The router will now directly use the WAN-configured DNS for name resolution done on the router itself by default. The option is still configurable under Tools -> Other Settings for those who have a particular need that requires the former default behavior. This matches how stock firmware works, and this change has zero impact on your LAN clients.
• SSL certificates generated on the router will now use a random serial number, which might help browsers that don’t like having different certificates with the same serial number but a different signature.
• Network Analysis page on non-HND router now also use the Netool daemon, however they still use the original busybox version of traceroute (the newer version is not compatible with older uclibc versions)
• Resolved IPv6 connectivity issues on the RT-AX88U (fix backported from other models)

Please review the changelog for the complete list of changes.