Download Firmware Asuswrt-Merlin 378.53

Asus uses Tomato-derived firmware called Asuswrt for its newer routers, such as the RT-N66U and RT-AC66U. This firmware is open source except for a few drivers, the binaries of which are included.

Asuswrt-merlin is a modified version of the original firmware that 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. Version 378.53 was released a few days ago and the list of changes can be found below.

New:

• Merged with Asus GPL 378_4980 (with pieces from 378_4850 for AC56/AC68 and 378_5183 beta for AC87)
• OpenVPN policy routing. You can select client IPs or destination IPs which you want to route through your VPN tunnel. You can enter a single IP (192.168.0.1) or a whole subnet in CIDR format (for example 74.125.226.112/30).
  You can optionally block WAN access to these as well when the tunnel goes down.
• Ad blocker based on Trend Micro’s Web Reputation System (WRS). This is an EXPERIMENTAL feature implemented by Asus but that isn’t enabled in the stock firmware.

Changed:

• Updated Tor to 0.2.5.12
• Those providing a signed SSL certificate for httpd can now provide chain certificate. The three PEMs must be in that order: client, intermediate, CA. (Patch by sasoiliev)
• The setting to enable the neighbor solication filter rule for Comcast’s request flooding was changed to “ipv6_ns_drop”, and now defaults to “0” as this hack causes issues with other ISPs.
• Backported dnsmasq patch that reverts a fix for Windows 8 clients as it could cause issues with other clients.

Fixed:

• DNSFilter would fail if you had it set to “Router”, and didn’t have a DNS IP entered on the WAN page.
• MSS clamping wasn’t applied to traffic in both direction, moved it to the mangle table.
• OpenVPN client firewall “external” mode does not exist – removed from the webui.
• PPTP account list could become corrupted after removing an entry on the PPTP server page.