Asus Routers Issue - May 17 2023

[jaydeel]

Did anyone else using Asus routers experience a internet outage on May 17, starting around 6am Pacific Time?

This was apparently relatively wide spread.

Here's a nice description of the issue that mirrored my experience.
What happened with ASUS routers this morning?

To recover, I had to update the firmware.

An unfortunate side effect is that newer firmware killed my OpenVPN setup and I've been unable to fix it so far.
I'm reading through posts here to see if I can find any ideas. If not, I'll post a request for assistance separately.

 

[smiticans]

I'll have to see if any of my friends are still using Asus routers. I've swapped all of mine out with custom built pfSense boxes which is far superior to any Asus router. I suggest looking into that or OPNsense as their OpenVPN integration is superior. With Pfsense you can create a backup file that contains the VPN server/user certs so when you update or reinstall the firewall everything can be imported and you don't have to re-initialize your VPN. You can also create multiple VPN servers and limit users to specific IP addresses. IE only allow user X to access the Blue Iris web server and block access to the rest of the LAN.

PfSense will run perfectly on an old used Dell OptiPlex with an i3 processor and a dual port Intel NIC.

 

[mattp]

I have an Asus router and wasn't home when this happened. I didn't notice an outage when I got home the day before yesterday or yesterday.
I didn't read the whole thread, but I'll update firmware when I get home tonight.

Here's the official response from Asus that was at the bottom of the thread that @smiticans posted:

[Wireless Router] Use ASUS Router App to optimize router | Official Support | ASUS Global

 

[jaydeel]

I've swapped all of mine out with custom built pfSense boxes which is far superior to any Asus router.

Besides the following, can you point me to any other good starting points for looking into this option?

Official pfSense Hardware, Appliances, and Security Gateways

pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat management, load balancing, multi WAN, and more

www.pfsense.org

The Best pfSense Box (Updated for 2022)

We identify our choice of the best pfSense box for the money. pfSense has become the standard for open source firewalls and is great for home or business.

www.thegeekpub.com

 

[ctm]

My asus rt-ac86u was giving me trouble (maxing out memory and losing internet connection), i randomly decided to update the firmware after a few hours and it went away. I never looked into it to realize it was a larger issue than my router.

 

[smiticans]

Besides the following, can you point me to any other good starting points for looking into this option?

Official pfSense Hardware, Appliances, and Security Gateways

pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat management, load balancing, multi WAN, and more

www.pfsense.org

The Best pfSense Box (Updated for 2022)

We identify our choice of the best pfSense box for the money. pfSense has become the standard for open source firewalls and is great for home or business.

www.thegeekpub.com

Lawrence Systems has a decent amount of videos on pfSense;

Video on how to install pfSense;

There are a lot of options when it comes to running pfSense such as;
Netgate Appliance (Company who owns pfSense). Comes with PfSense Plus and is the most expensive option.
Used PC's/Custom Built PC's
3rd party Appliances such as the Protectli

I personally use a custom built pc in a rackmount case. I'm running a 10th Gen i3, 8 GB of RAM, Asus Micro ATX motherboard, Seasonsic 500W power supply and a Q-NAP Dual Port 2.5GB Intel NIC. This is overkill and more expensive.

My go to for friends/family is a used Dell Optiplex with a 7th gen i3. I usually look for a SSD boot drive and 8GB of RAM. You can find these on eBay for $100.00 or less. FAST Computer, Dell OptiPlex 5050 SFF i3-7100 8GB 128GB m.2 SSD Win10 Pro DVD-Rw | eBay
These Dell computers are fairly power efficient and usually pull between 12 to 20 watts.
After you purchase the computer you need to buy a dual port gigabit Intel NIC (one port for WAN and one port for LAN). Do not use realtek or other brands of NIC as they don't work well with pfSense.
You can usually find a dual port intel NIC on Amazon for about $40.00.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXTF48X?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

Just be careful as there are a lot of counterfeit Intel NIC's on Amazon. I'm not sure if the one I linked to is Genuine or not but it has a lot of reviews stating it works with pfSense and similar applications.

Once you get pfSense up and running you're going to need an access point for wireless. You can either put your Asus router into AP mode or buy an access point like the Unifi AP's, Aruba Instant on AP's or something similar.

Switching from Asus to pfSense was a bit of a learning curve but once you have an understating it's not hard. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that will help you along the way. I'm not a pro with pfSense but if you have any questions I can probably answer them.

 

[fenderman]

Besides the following, can you point me to any other good starting points for looking into this option?

Official pfSense Hardware, Appliances, and Security Gateways

pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat management, load balancing, multi WAN, and more

www.pfsense.org

The Best pfSense Box (Updated for 2022)

We identify our choice of the best pfSense box for the money. pfSense has become the standard for open source firewalls and is great for home or business.

www.thegeekpub.com

If you want to go with more conventional router the Synology RT6600-AX. Supports vlan, custom firewall rules, threat detection and the user interface is miles ahead of asus.
There is also untangle. For home use there are 2 licenses available one for 50 the other for 150 per year which includes threat detection.
If you go with pf sense and you want to use threat detection, Lawrence has a video on surocata and snort. I believe both are 30 annually for home use and 300 for business.

The one feature important to me that the synology lacks is the ability to setup multifactor authentication (with TOTP like google authenticator) with open vpn. Untangle allows you to easily set this up and I believe pfsense as well. The MFA is built into Open vpn so for the life of me I cant understand why synology has not implemented it (perhaps they will). Synology does allow TOTP authentication when using its own SSL vpn but not openvpn.