Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JSHarris]

I have an old Asus RT-AC66U-B1 router and need to replace it with a model that has a dual WAN capability (so I can use a 4G modem as a backup internet connection).  At the moment the RT-AC66U router only works as a router. The VDSL connection is handled by a separate HG612 modem.  I don't see this changing anytime soon, as the earliest we may get FTTP is 2030 (according to Openreach).

My potential problem is that I've spent a lot of time setting up the AC66U, so it now has a well-tailored set of firewall settings, LAN fixed IP settings, etc, and I'd rather not waste an hour or two re-typing all these into the replacement router.

I can export the settings file from the AC66U, what I'm not sure about is if I can import that settings file into a different model Asus router, one with a dual WAN capability, like the AC86U or the AX5400, perhaps (I'm not interested in gaming).

If anyone knows if this is possible then I'd be grateful for any tips.  If I'm honest, I'd be open to switching to any make of router, but I'd rather not spend hours faffing around with settings!

[j0hn]

It's certainly not possible between an RT- AC68U to an RT-AX86U.
I was hoping it would copy most similar settings and I could manually tweak the rest but the newer device wouldn't take the exported settings of the old device at all.

In the end, even with a bunch of advanced firewall rules and a rather large DHCP device list, it only took 10 minutes to manually configure the new Asus.

[JSHarris]

Many thanks, that's exactly what I feared might be the case.  Asus imply that this can be done but are very vague about whether it works across different Asus models.

I guess I'll have to just take a few screen shots of the existing settings and manually copy them over.  Seems a bit of a stone age way to do things, though.

[Chunkers]

Might be worth looking at Fritz!Box routers they can certainly use USB 4G/5G dongles as a backup and in my experience are well designed, easy to setup and highly configurable.  Possibly also Draytek
If you are more geeky and like being hands-on then I guess the next level would be a custom box with OPNsense or Pfsense installed, something like an N100 based fanless model- some good build threads on this forum by others

C

[G.DMT]

This is good advice from Chunkers.

I recently bought a used (ebay) FritzBox! 7530 which is a modem+router all-in-one device and am extremely impressed by how sophisticated the features are. Especially since it is approaching 5 years old!

https://wikidevi.wi-cat.ru/AVM_FRITZ!Box_7530

I bought it primarily because you can put the OpenWRT router firmware onto it, but have not bothered (yet) because I am sufficiently impressed with it that it has not been necessary.

Using an open source Firewall solution on your router has the advantage that you can keep upgrading the firmware which keeps security issues up to date, whilst your configuration is visible in simple text files that you can see, edit, export, archive and copy to other OpenWRT devices.
So no more hardware / vendor lock in. :-)

As Chunkers says if you want to get a bit more technical you could use a more Enterprise weight Firewall Appliance.
For someone just starting out I personally would recommend OPNSense as a much easier and better place to start than pfSense.

It is quite easy to experiment now as you can buy compatible hardware on ebay now from around £40 upwards. e.g. cyberoam or sophos.