So the successor to the RT-N66U has now been released: http://www.asus.com/Networks/Wireless_Routers/RTAC66U/ This router is now in stores and seems to have the same hardware as the RT-N66U (256MB RAM, 600Mhz Broadcom CPU) except that it supports the new 802.11ac wireless standard which has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of ~1.7gbps. I presume that the only thing that would be needed to make Tomato work with this router (and the AC radio) would be newer drivers from Broadcom. What are the chances that this router will work on TomatoUSB and its various mods anytime soon?
I too see it readily available and would be very interested in this model. Although I don't see any wireless adapters to support the new AC mode yet.
I've had the RT-AC66U for a couple weeks. There are more differences from the RT-N66U than I thought. It appears to have a 2MB Flash and a 128MB Flash. Ram is still 256MB. Asus Version 3.0.0.4.164 firmware uses 6.30.39.29 wireless divers . They used 5.100.138.20 drivers with there initial firmware release. No JFFS partition. Uses 64K NVRAM. Everything else is the same as the RT-N66U.
128MB and 2MB flash? I suppose it's possible that the 2MB flash stores some kind of failsafe FW that loads in case the main FW on the 128MB gets a bad flash?
I been in a RT-AC66U discussion on different forum. We knew it came with a 128MB flash but we were surprised to find the 2MB flash. We are trying to determine what its function is and how it effects third party firmware.
I thought it was using the new Broadcom chipset that is ARM based? Won't work easily with tomato that expect MIPS based core.
Yeah, I was just going by what I saw on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_routers which shows it has the same CPU as the RT-N66U. Whether this is correct information is another question.
The only Broadcom 802.11ac chipset listed on their web site is a dual core 1Ghz ARM. So now, they may have another one that is MIPS based and I missed it
No its the same 600 Mhz Broadcom BCM4706 that's in the RT-N66U. The 2.4 GHz Radio is the Broadcom BCM4331 and the 5 GHz radio is the Broadcom BCM4360. The BCM4360 is the 5Ghz AC radio chip. All currently shipping AC Routers (Neatgear, Buffalo, D-Link and very soon Linksys) use this same setup as Broadcom is the only one with a shipping AC product. The BCM4708 is the 1Ghz ARM processor but we won't see routers at the earliest until the end of the year.
Follow up on the RT-AC66U having two flash devices (2MB and 128MB). From RMerlin: "The RT-AC66U have a quite different flash memory architecture from the RT-N66U. For starter, two separate flash storage. One 2 MB storage used by the bootloader and by NVRAM (and yes, 64KB is allocated and used). And the second storage is a whooping 128 MB, of which 32 MB are currently set aside for the firmware itself. The kernel contains inactive code that would be able eventually to handle two firmware images in flash. No idea if Asus intends to implement this for the AC66U or for some future device."
No, Asus just has the flash setup in a 32MB configuration. My feeling is that Asus uses the same AsusWRT firmware across several models and to get an AC product out the door they just modified the firmware for the RT-N66U which has only one 32MB flash. The dual physical flash locations is a major problem for Tomato as Asus is breaking down the firmware into different flash locations. The bootloader and the NVRAM are stored on a 2MB flash while the rest of the firmware is kept on the 128MB flash. Tomato is currently not setup to run this way.
Who cares, we still have to wait for a good AC, these first ones are just to make some money with the name and bad draft results. Buy an RT-N66U or an E4200v1 for now.
Hi Though! No support for the foreseeable future if ever. Flash is separated into two physical flash devices. This is the same problem with Netgear WNDR4500 and why it is not really widely supported. I have heard of people running Tomato and DD-WRT on the WNDR4500 but its difficult and very technically involved to do so.
Actually, once you have kernel support to detect both flashes technologies (serial and NAND) and mtd creates its partition table, the rest is transparent to the firmware. All operations are done through the mtd partition table, which shows as a single flat list of partitions. DD-WRT already works on this dual-flash support.
tomato does support NAND flash, ddwrt does not. i runned tomato on WNDR4500, ddwrt does not. when i get RT-AC66u in my hand i will look what we can do
They must have added it at some point, because this guy has DD-WRT running on an RT-AC66U, and both flash are detected and handled by the kernel from what I can see: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=708333#708333
No, the firmware isn't detecting it properly, read 3 posts above it. http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=708175#708175
128 MB is the NAND, not the RAM. The bad model detection was explained by Fractal in that same thread - it's the default DD-WRT will report if the model can't be detected (which is normal, as RT-AC66U detection hasn't been added to DD-WRT yet) EDIT: I see the screenshot now with that bit. The guy was also surprised by this. Keep in mind he's booting a version built for a Buffalo router. Could be that the kernel gets passed the wrong amount of RAM at init time.
