pull down to refresh

Seeking help flashing asus router firmware
121 sats \ 11 comments \ @unschooled 12 Jun tech
So a friend of mine has an old (c.2010 asus router--the RT-N56U A1) and wants to see if it would work as a vpn server.
I told him I'm pretty sure you'd have to flash it with OpenWRT, but this seems a bit out of his depths and before diving into the weeds he's got some more questions I'm not able to answer.
  • is it worth it for this generation of routers?
  • what is tftp and is it necessary for firmware installation?
  • can he use NordVPN as a client (lol I know, I already I told him that's spyware, but what else can one do?)
Any thoughts/ideas/suggestions?
1000 sats (or more) if i think your advice/guidance is worth it (let's see if we can get him to come over to SN!)
1,000 sats paid
write
preview
unschooled's bounties
11 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 12 Jun
👀 https://www.asus.com/us/supportonly/rt-n56u/helpdesk_bios/
reply
11 sats \ 0 replies \ @unschooled OP 12 Jun
OpenWRT is not asus firmware afaik.
reply
1000 sats \ 6 replies \ @arjen 12 Jun freebie
Hey, TollGate dev here.

what is tftp and is it necessary for firmware installation?

It's a system to load files onto the router for flashing, i haven't used it personally, maybe you don't need it.
If you just want to copy an OpenWRT image file to a router that has no ftp server installed, Here's a snippet of what i do in the TollGate installer:
The -O option uses the old SCP protocol which doesn't require sftp-server
scp -O -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o LogLevel=error "${localPath}" "${username}@${ip}:${remotePath}"
i've used this for the MT-3000, MT-6000 and GL-AR300M.

is it worth it for this generation of routers?

Questionable. I see it has 8mb flash, which is low source. We try to target the gl-ar300m which is already a squeeze with 16mb flash.
We do hope to support very low-power hardware further down the line to make TollGate more accessible for low-income areas, but we're not there yet.

can he use NordVPN as a client

There are packages for openwrt to route traffic through a VPN. You might wanna look into the OpenVPN package. Mullvad could be a good option instead of NordVPN.
hope this helps a bit!
  • Arjen
11 sats \ 1 reply \ @supratic 12 Jun
playing with TollGate?
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @unschooled OP 12 Jun
Very interesting project! Myself, I'll probably just buy one from Flash Routers when I'm ready for that fun.
reply