not Solved yet, PIA OpenVPN to work with my new Asus AC68U router flash w/Merlin

[BirdDad]

Latest FW of Merlin
I have googled the hell out of it and cannot find a working solution.
I have tried everything that every page said to do. I finally got the client to stay switched on but no traffic is going through the VPN! It is all going to my ISP directly.
I have Redirect Internet traffic set to All Traffic
I had to use a certificate that was off a googled page just to make the Service state stay on.
Can someone help me out please? What information do you need from me in order for you to help me?
I don't want to flash to DD-WRT because of all the warnings of the bad flashes scares me.
Thank you

 

[AnonymouseUser]

The best thing to do is start from scratch - reset the router. Find a good tutorial, get all files downloaded and in order, and follow the instructions step-by-step. Don't use more than one tutorial at a time, so if the first one doesn't work, reset the router and use another tutorial.

If you really can't get it working with Merlin, flashing DD-WRT (Tomato also works with AC68U) is not that risky, especially with Asus routers. Just read the instructions twice, take a short break, read it again making sure you understand every step, then proceed. If you don't understand any of the instructions at all, study up before you start. The first flash is always scary, but I've flashed and re-flashed several routers dozens of times, Tomato, DD-WRT, Linksys, Netgear, Airlink101, TP-Link, and it's second nature now.

 

[BirdDad]

I ended up flashing it with dd-WRT
problem solved. Although I did like the appearance of the Asuswrt/Merlin a lot better.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Too bad about Merlin, but glad you got it.

As for the DD-WRT GUI/Style, it is kinda ugly and dated, and I prefer Tomato's interface myself. You could change the GUI under Administration/Management > Router GUI Style. I'm not really a fan of anything other than the default style (elegant) myself, but you may like something else.

You could also flash Tomato if you are feeling adventurous, just make a backup of your current DD-WRT settings first in case you want to go back to DD-WRT (I strongly recommend making a backup even if you don't flash Tomato).

 

[XavierMace]

You're also not going to be happy with the performance. Router doesn't have enough grunt.

 

[BirdDad]

I am going to try tomato
my speeds are at a crawl and dd-wrt the build I am using from June of this year does not support long enough passwords (only like 25 characters) which frustrated me to no end until I figured out that it was truncating the rest of my password.
Hopefully tomato will have the speed and long password support that I require. I plan to flash tonight.

 

[BirdDad]

You're also not going to be happy with the performance. Router doesn't have enough grunt.

What router would you suggest? do they have any quad cores or Celerons yet?

 

[XavierMace]

Either build a pfSense box or just run PIA's software on your computer(s). There's more than one long thread on PIA's forums about the matter.

If you decide to go the pfSense route, there's a VERY good thread on the [H] forums about how to setup pfSense specifically for PIA. Save/print that out first as you're configuring your router so you may lose internet and you should be good to go. I'll be happy to help however I can and I know we've got some other pfSense users on here as well.

Be aware though, there's going to be a learning curve with pfSense. You'll need a box with two ethernet ports but beyond that it will run on about anything and just about any computer made in the last decade will be faster than a home router. If you're buying new, there's a handful of NUC/Bookshelf PC's that have dual NIC's. Assuming you want wireless, either check here for supported wireless NIC's or buy an access point. But I haven't had a "normal" router in my house for probably 2 years now. I don't regret it in the slightest.

 

[BirdDad]

those have Atoms driving them, not my idea of power.

 

[XavierMace]

Not all of them do.

 

[rchunter]

I used to run shibby tomato vpn client on my router but rarely do it anymore. I set up delugevpn on my server so all my major torrent downloads are taken care of now and I have plenty of cpu grunt with a haswell xeon compared to my router a asus rt-n16 (broadcom 480mhz)