Configuring Adaptive QoS in Asuswrt-Merlin

When your Internet connection is congested (most or all of its allocated bandwidth is used up) either from time to time, or most of the time, Quality of Service (QoS) is a mechanism for you to prioritize bandwidth usage based on network tasks and applications.

However, if your Internet connection is not congested most of the time (allocated bandwidth is hardly used up), it is advisable for you to turn off QoS function. This is because QoS won't make your Internet connection become faster, as your Internet connection is limited by your ISP allocation of maximum upload and download bandwidth. In fact, enabling QoS will incur additional workload to your router and your local network.

QoS is essential for a congested network to ensure that certain network tasks and applications will not be severely affected by the congestion by giving priority to their network traffic, at the sacrifices of those with lower priority. Turn on QoS when your Internet is congested will give you a better Internet experience if you configure it properly.

Bear in mind that QoS normally won't work together with Hardware Acceleration. Enabling QoS will cause the router to automatically shut down partial or all of the Hardware Acceleration function.

In the Asuswrt and Asuswrt-Merlin Game Boost screen, there is a LAN Boost - One Click Game First mode. That is actually a short cut to an adaptive QoS setting that turn on adaptive QoS and set Online Gaming with the highest priority of all network traffic. If you want to give the highest priority to other tasks such as Media Streaming instead of Online Gaming, make sure you turn off this LAN Boost - One Click Game First mode.

When you click into the Adaptive QoS menu, you will be presented with the Bandwidth Monitor screen. This screen is functioning regardless QoS is switch on or off in your router. It is a very useful screen to tell you the real time bandwidth usage of your network between the router.

Upload Bandwidth and Download Bandwidth is visually shown in the form of a speedometer. From this display, you can immediately know whether your Internet link is congested or not.

The same information is also obtainable in the Asus Router mobile apps connected to the router.

Below it is a list of hosts connected to the router, and their real time upload and download bandwidth usage respectively.

If you turn on Apps analysis, you can click on the icon of any of the hosts, and the screen will show a breakdown of bandwidth usage by the applications running in the host.

If you would like to turn on QoS function, recommended settings are as below:

• QoS type: Adaptive QoS
• Bandwidth Setting: Automatic Setting
• Queue Discipline: fq_codel
• WAN packet overhead: select the correct preset according to your Internet connection type

Click here if you are interested to understand more on the technical among the 3 queue disciplines of Stochastic Fairness Queueing (SFQ), Controlled Delay (CoDel) and Fair Queueing Controlled Delay (fq_CoDel).

You can then determine which kind of applications are going to have the highest priority to access the Internet: Games, Media Streaming or Web Surfing.

If you choose Customize, you are given control to customize the priority among the following traffic types:

• Gaming
• Video and Audio Streaming
• VoIP and Instant Messaging
• Web Surfing
• File Transferring
• Others

You can mouse over to each of them for more description of the traffic type respectively.

If you have QoS enabled, you can view the QoS Statistics screen to have an idea of the bandwidth usage by each of the traffic types.

Web History records down a log on the websites visited by the hosts. I find it no harm to enable or disable it. Even if you disabled it, it seems that the logging still be ongoing behind the scene. I also noticed that this Web History does not display every single website visited by the hosts.

Configuring AiProtection in Asuswrt-Merlin and Asuswrt

One of the selling points for Asus wireless routers is their AiProtection feature, providing real-time network monitoring and protection with its Trend Micro Deep Packet Inspection engine. This is a kind of enterprise-level security made available in Asus home routers.

AiProtection is signature based, which you can update its signature in Administration > Firmware Upgrade > Signature Version > Check. This is of no rival to today's enterprise-level security that uses machine learning and/or deep learning technology, but it is much better than none.

Router Security Assessment check your router settings for security best practices. If you enabled something that has potential to decrease the security protection, it will warn you by flagging that setting as a risk. It will provide you a direct link to disable that particular setting.

However, if you are clear on your requirement to enable certain settings, such as port forwarding, you can just ignore the warning.

To get the best from AiProtection, you should enable all the features of Malicious Sites Blocking, Two-Way IPS and Infected Device Prevention and Blocking.

Malicious Sites Blocking will prevent any computer in your local network to access to known malicious websites that can bring harm to your computer, such as infecting your computer with trojans, viruses, malwares, ransomwares, etc. Your computers should be installed with antivirus and Internet security software that performs this job. However, you will be surprised that there might be still some sites not detected by your computer's Internet security software but eventually blocked by your Asus router. Enabling Malicious Sites Blocking will provide double-layer protection from malicious websites on top of your computer's Internet security software. If you have a firewall with similar function behind your router, then you will have triple-layer protection.

Two-Way IPS will detect and block exploitation of a known network vulnerability, either from the Internet into your local network, or from compromized computers or IoT devices in your network trying to attack other computers or IoT devices in the Internet. This will, to certain extend, help you to protect unpatched vulnerability of your computers or IoT devices from being exploited and hacked.

Infected Device Prevention and Blocking will try to block the communication between compromised computers or IoT devices in your network and the hacker's command and control server. In this way, the hacker will not be able to easily take remote control of your compromised computers or IoT devices.

If you click on the Alert Preference button and set your email (Gmail / AOL / QQ / 163) there, you will be able to receive email alerts from your router whenever AiProtection alert is triggered.

The firmware actually provide reports for these AiProtection features in their respective tab so that you can known what threats have been intercepted, and which hosts are affected.

Parental Controls consist of Web & Apps Filters and Time Scheduling.

Parental Controls are host based and block traffic based on the source MAC address of the host accessing to the Internet. It is automatically enabled if you set one or more family members in Asus Router mobile apps as below 18 years-old and assign one or more hosts under them. The mobile apps will block them from accessing to Adult websites.

Beside adult websites, Web & Apps Filters can also block a host from accessing to Instant Message and Communication, P2P and File Transfer, and Streaming and Entertainment in the Internet.

Note that you can expand each of the 4 categories for finer blocking settings. For example, Adult category consists of Pornography, Illegal and Violence and Gambling sub-categories.

Enabling Web & Apps Filters will consume some of your router's CPU and memory, and will make web browsing slightly slower.

If you are using Asuswrt-Merlin firmware, there is another alternative called DNS Filter to do the filtering at the DNS server.

Time Scheduling function allows you to set time blocks in each of the days in a week that a particular host is allowed to access Internet. Internet access will be blocked for that particular host when the time is outside the allowed timeframe. You can set multiple blocks within a day.

This is only useful if the host is dedicated to a person or some persons that need to obey to your time scheduling. If it is a shared computer used by the whole family, then every family member will need to obey to the time scheduling when using that computer. There will be no exception.

You will notice that if you have any of the Parental Controls settings enabled, there are additional Port Forwarding entries automatically defined in your router. Those Port Forwarding entries will disappear after you disabled the setting.

Parental Controls are nice features to have. For better router performance, you might want to disable them, unless necessary to use them to guard your children Internet access.

Configuring Guest Network in Asuswrt-Merlin and Asuswrt

If you are reluctant to give out your WiFi password to your guests who want to borrow your WiFi to get their mobiles devices to connect to the Internet when they are visiting your place, you can set up a Guest Network for them.

Guest Network is a useful function to allow guest or public Internet access while separating them from your own internal network. Asus Guest Network also has some advanced features for you to impose restrictions such as access time, bandwidth limiting, MAC filter, etc.

The Guest Network function in Asuswrt-Merlin firmware should be the same as in original Asuswrt firmware. It allows you to configure up to 3 separate Guest Networks for 2.4GHz wireless band and up to another 3 separate Guest Networks for 5GHz wireless band.

If your Asus router has two 5GHz wireless bands, then you'll have yet another 3 separate Guest Networks for your second 5GHz wireless band.

It is advisable for you to set an SSID for Guest Network that is different from your regular WiFi SSID.

If you set the Authentication Method to "Open System", anyone around your wireless router can connect to your Guest Network without the need of any password. It is advisable to set the Authentication Method to "WPA2-Personal" and set the WPA Pre-Shared Key as the password to connect to your Guest Network, which can be different from your regular WiFi password.

You can optionally restrict the Access Time of this particular Guest Network. For example, if you set the Access Time to 2 hours, the Internet access for this Guest Network will be cut off 2 hours after you clicked on the Apply button.

You can also optionally limit the Download Bandwidth and/or Upload Bandwidth for this Guest Network. If you set the value to 0 Mb/s or higher than your Internet access bandwidth assigned by your ISP, then it is not restricted.

If you enable Access Intranet, the devices connected to this Guest Network is able to access to networked devices connected to any of the LAN ports of your Asus router. If you use a switch to expand the network linked to a LAN port, all the devices connected to the switch are also accessible by the Guest Network. In this way, your Intranet is exposed to your guest.

If you disable Access Intranet, your guest won't be able to access to any networked devices connected to the LAN ports of your Asus router. However, they can still access to the devices connected to your WiFi, including those connected to your regular WiFi network.

If you want to also disable access to your WiFi connected devices, you can Set AP Isolated for a particular wireless band under Advanced Settings > Wireless > Professional. However, this setting is not Guest Network specific, and will affect all the devices connected to that particular wireless band.

If you want to only isolate the Guest Network from other wireless devices, you can explore into YazFi expansion for Asuswrt-Merlin. You can click here to find out more information about YazFi expansion in SNBForums, including its installation method and sample configuration file.

You can also optionally make use of MAC Filter to specify which mobile devices is allowed or not allowed to connect to this particular Guest Network.