RT-N53 Firmware

[BrianB]

Great News! I have the RT-N53 working stably as a dual-band access point with Tomato. I've been using it as a 5ghz only AP at home and a 2.4 AP at work -- because it is so unstable if you enable both bands. Even TheIdiots.net complained about the RT-N53 not even saving an IP config change....


First, write down any config settings you might need.

Second, flash to DD-WRT "Image for initial flashing". Yes, this will only run as 2.4, so don't even bother configuring more than the initial username/password.

Third, flash to Tomato. The firmware you need is located http://tomato.groov.pl/download/K26RT-N/. The 5x-104 is the current build now, and underneath that pick "with USB" (yes, I know the router doesn't have USB, but pick anyway!). The file you want is the one specifically for the RT-N53, currently tomato-K26USB-1.28.RT-N5x-MIPSR2-104-RT-N53.trx.

Once you flash it, it is supposed to keep the username/password from DD-WRT setup, but mine defaulted to the old linksys style defaults of blank username and "admin" as password.

Now you can reconfigure everything and have a useful router/access point again.

Special thanks to Shibby for continuing to develop new Tomato firmware!


Edit:

The 5Ghz light on the router will not light up. Just ignore that, 5Ghz is fine as both A and N.

[robertc]

And here I thought you were going to tell me something about the new Dacia Sandero...

I will definitely be giving this a try on my RT-N53. Mine was getting to where even 5GHz by itself was unstable. I finally got a newer firmware on it and (so far) 5GHz has been stable (knocking on wood). I will definitely be giving this a try, as I like keeping my RT-N16 as straight routing under my desk, and the RT-N53 as an access point high up on a bookshelf.

[robertc]

Ok, so... I attempted to load Tomato on my RT-N53 yesterday afternoon. I first loaded the DD-WRT "initial flashing" image, then restarted.

That is where my problems started. When the router would come back up, all led's (except power) would be flashing in sync 2-3x per second. Setting my laptop's wired lan to 192.168.1.10, I couldn't connect to the router (192.168.1.1). My network adapter kept showing that the "Network Cable Unplugged". Doing 30/30/30 restarts didn't help, as it would just go right back to all led's flashing again. I was getting pretty frustrated after an hour or so of this, so decided to leave it and come back later.

I came back a few hours later, to the sight of a router with no flashing led's and the power led on steady. I plugged a network cable back into my laptop and tried to connect to 192.168.1.1 and to my surprise, the DD-WRT page came up asking for a password. I was then able to log in without any problem! I changed the password in DD-WRT, then went to firmware upgrade and picked the Tomato firmware.

After the Tomato firmware loaded, I tried to log in using the password I set on DD-WRT, no success. I tried what BrianB tried (blank username, "admin" as password), no success. After trying multiple combinations, I looked up what the default tomato password is. Apparently, I didn't read the instructions right, as I didn't know about this part:

If you're upgrading from the DD-WRT firmware, telnet into the router *before* upgrading and type "nvram get http_passwd". The result will be your password in Tomato. This is necessary because of a change in DD-WRT's way of using the standard http_passwd variable.

So, since I hadn't done that, I held the reset button down for a bit (20-30 seconds) and tried to log back into the router. This time, it came up with the Asus Recovery Mode screen looking for a firmware file. I browsed out to the Tomato firmware again and had it flash the firmware a second time. This time, it came back up asking for a password. The combination that worked for me was "admin" for the username and "admin" for the password.

Finally, I was logged into Tomato! Since I was going to be using the RT-N53 as an access point, I then configured it to have a static IP on the Basic tab under LAN and turned off DHCP. I also disabled the WAN, then finally set up my wifi networks. Finally, my RT-N53 is working as a dual-band access point!

[BrianB]

Wow, I have another RT-N53 to do that I use at the office and I'm not looking forward to it now... I had a glitch on the password but thought it was just me.... I did the "clear nvram" and think that must have been what reset it?

I will pay more attention to details on this next one and report back next week

[BrianB]

Oh, aren't you glad we aren't using this stupid things as our internet connection router? Good grief..... Glad my RT-N16 is stable. Which I need to upgrade...

[BrianB]

I forgot I had a "spare" RT-N53 at the office since I use one just as an access point for a couple laptops. I ran into a weird problem, DD-WRT applied great, but would not let me upload Tomato. But I found that if I used Internet Explorer instead of Firefox it would upload fine. So if you run into any weird problem with the web interface, try another browser.

Now on the passwords, mine did as robertc described. If you hit the web page right after it powers up -- but before it boots the firmware -- the Asus recovery screen has a "clear nvram" option that resets all the passwords and everything. Then the default admin/admin worked. What a pain!

I have this in place on the LAN and it is working great today. My home AP has been stable over a week. I'll let this sit a couple weeks before I flash the N53 that I just took offline.