Download Firmware Asuswrt-Merlin 378.56_2

Asus uses Tomato-derived firmware called Asuswrt for its newer routers, such as the RT-AC66U and RT-AC87U. 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. Version 378.56_2 has been released and the following changes and improvements have been made to it:

Changed:

• Reverted the memory buffering optimization for ARM devices, as people keep panicking over the lower amount of free RAM. You can manually re-enable the optimization by setting “drop_caches=0” in nvram.
• Allow using a port < 1024 for http(s) webui interface.

Fixed:

• EMF wasn’t working on AC56/AC68/AC87.
• Couldn’t connect to ISPs using VLANs (RT-AC87U)
• Editing Port Forward entry with ellipsis in the description or the port range would still edit the shortened version instead of the full content.
• Debug log from mDNSNetMonitor could gradually fill up RAM – disabled it.
• Router crash if pasting SSH key > 2047 characters.
• Editing an entry on the networkmap would clear the hostname if entry existed in the DHCP static list.
• OpenVPN server in secret key mode would fail to start.
• Couldn’t add entries to the MAC Filter list of Guest Networks (reverted our previous implementation which conflicted with Asus’s new one).
• NTP failing to refresh for some cases. Implemented temporary workaround.
• Some services not properly starting at boot time (like Parental Control or Tor)