Manufactured style

 wHEN A PERSON WRITES ANYTHING, *SKILLFUL* 

(what?) 

oh.

Skillful writers make the reader see the pictures in their head. 
I can't. I want you to picture the window in my router the way I see it, not how it looks online. Too small to really see much.

But first, my dream.

When phones can really do holograms,
(People will line up in the rain,
Mobs will rob)

I hate (jersey?) hats.
Icons of style

A rambling tangent (appearances matter) 

My waking dream was about pretentious people looking for a battered van, to look good in society (so they look like they've had many pleasant experiences.)

I am not sure why my character thought that pretending to buy old stuff was pretentious, because, (just as an example) "Antiques roadshow."

The old van could conjure up memories made by the original owners, as if they were filmed with an 8mm home camera, And people would admire them, being experienced and well-traveled.

"Popular Products"

The window in my new router is like that.
The window either never opens, or it's stuck.

Either way, it's totally pointless, like some necklace on a fat guy (I was gonna say "ring," but you'd misconstrue. And what have I got against "fat guys?"

Nevermind! ) "G∀MƎ" oooo, rebel

Inside the window are enticing shapes. That "07"-graffiti looking lump of plastic looks a lot like some added-on chip, taped down. (Disembodied-voice says it's a battery. Imitation, or ?? And Google is clueless too, on the numbers (eg) "/206"

206-what? An IP, an area code?

There's a tagline "For those who...."

Tai'an Jinshui Village, Taiwan 365, China (o....k)

on the left (you can barely see "for those" in the photo.)

And if you pick the router up at the rich, stylish-wannabe guy's house, just before he yells at you, 

you'll see "...Dare (For those who dare)"

Ghetto-chic, pretentious, yeah but it's fun.

and who drops by anyway? No pretensioner here. 

(No cat-shitters, no Roombas,...)

?

Some of the router's settings are almost useless, forgotten. 

The very few battleground settings making a biggie difference overshadow the others, and the other settings you don't know about, might never have heard of, might mess things up.

A Pissant setting from nowhere special (DTIM, for example,) might dictate how fast a person connects, how often they're bothered with useless stuff.

The style the designer chose is "verbose," I suppose because it looks more important that way. The next (Lower-down) blog entry wonders about some of those settings.
But if you never bothered to *Touch* them, left them alone and only watched the biggie settings, would it matter?

People attracted to the router initially might be turned away from it, because it's inscrutable or the lights are too bright, the wrong color.

Can it do "Fuchsia?"
"Blush" & "Bashful"?

It's corpulent.

It isn't fast enough for them or doesn't have some trendy (for 2025) feature.

*I* like it but who am I.
The makeup-video people haven't been polled.

Ble? (3.0.0.6.102_34491) GT-Be98

 Ble?

Think of this version (until I edit it) like a notepad.

The VCI who? (o shit)

DHCP option 60 is great, don't use it! (whut?)

You (I) (OK nevermind) *People* might certainly hate their freebie router and buy another router for the ass-end of the router (are we clear?) but when you put two routers together like that, shit happens.

https://sensepost.com/blog/2020/avoiding-detection-via-dhcp-options/ 

  

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-dhcpe/73d899d4-6978-4328-a151-5d20f3ef8271

 

I still have to do an excavation in search of MTU size, which (inexplicably) 

is 1480. Yes, 1480 (FOD, pontificators)

No "MTU" for You!!!

No tests on whether MTU size makes a whit of difference to a speedtest.

I mean, it *should* make a difference, you'd think, but maybe on slow routers

Missing so far: Setting the clock with no internet,

If it's so easy, why make you have to code it in a separate program??

DNS Privacy Protocol ("Solved (*I* Have no problems *SHS*")

My phone SPITS on "DOT" 

("DNS Privacy Protocol, "DNS over TLS, AKA "DOT") 

and refewses to hook up to the internet while connected 

(present, but not talking!) 

It will work if 

I assign a static IP to the phone,

and DNS addresses (like maybe 8.8.8.8)

If I let the router use DHCP, 

it will assign a DNS from T-Mobile 

that hates TLS.

So nothing is automatic.

"Connected / No internet"

DHCP doesn't work yet)

I can read the front-page-news now!!

Static IP and TLS set to "on," (which the phone prolly ignores) 

or TLS OFF with DHCP working just great, those are my choices.

(And Now you know ....................................

The rest of the story)

--------------- 

dns-rebind protection, greatest thing since sliced bread, but it kills stuff.

(Or so I've read)

This stubbornly refewsed to work, then it worked fine.

It looks useless because it IS useless 
(for gosh knows why)

I think (this is a rant) that their "Mac Filter list" is / looks useless.

I could reject specific people, 

or accept specific people, not both.

I choose to accept specific people, and hope the router has enough sense to reject everyone else, but prolly not.

Gurus hate this feature anyway and say it's useless.

Well Fine, whatever.

Actually, After I chose to accept my own rig, it rejected it and I could not get back on with the PC set to "wireless."

Turning the filter off accepted my PC again, of course, But this should have worked. It works, I just had one teeny thing set wrong.

https://superuser.com/questions/1506247/why-is-my-router-s-mac-address-off-by-1-digit 

Today I navigated the more twilight-zoneish settings  and my "balls to the wall" obscure-settings-quest continues.

This just in:

• DL OFDMA
• DL/UL OFDMA
• Disabled
  "It's a cookbook!!"
  
  What I mean is, it was disabled, everyone was happy, but with DL OFDMA (because I don't upload much), It got stuck in first gear, 500 vs 930

I mean, could it be the obscure little server I've chosen for speedtest?
Covid/the war/ supply chains/immigrants?

But I need to verify that (and kill my allowance)

On Blue-moon-Tuesday, tried-and-true settings work as well as anything else.

I got back my speed (which dropped to almost nothing) by unplugging everything and powering back up.

No conclusions yet, except maybe you can't fool speedtest, it'll just crap out.

Not bursty-amalgamated-whatever breaking sound barriers.
But a guy can hope.

Same-ol' "It works (unless it doesn't) YMMV"

I'm still here, no brick owner yet. 

(but it's very early in the month)

(I can always edit this)

Everything I wished for in a router this thing does, like using super-low channels, and eliminating ghost channels. 

EHT (Yay, I guess)?

(But)

It's delicate, touchy. But I'll try to learn more to keep it happy.

---

I think I already wrote that neither Samba nor FTP work in "image backup" for me, but that could just be a wrong setting. They set up, they transfer stuff, backup starts and looks happy, then the mission is aborted around 10 minutes into the mission.

The way they put stuff in menus is unnecessarily complicated anyway, and easy to misconstrue.

For example:

A normal hypothetical menu could possibly ask for the current time.

It could ask (it's only twice-yearly, after all) when to start and end daylight savings

(11/3/24, 2AM)

buut no, it looks like a command on the space-shuttle console:

The "2 hour(s)" totally threw me until I figured out it was asking for a time!

"What Time is it?" "2 hour(s)"

Trend-Micro has its own page with a blurb about protection it offers, if you will only click the "enable" button.

At which point it asks for three different levels of protection, (You must choose wisely) and a privacy agreement you must agree to.

Asus takes no responsibility for the privacy agreement you must read (at some site) and agree to.
Are we clear? (yes/no)

If they took their own warning to heart 

(Or watched the movie, "Fate is the Hunter," with Cliff Robertson)

They would have protected the router from junk food, and especially,

coffee.

But the heat vent on the top, a great maw daring you to insert liquid substances,

is no protection.
The window is not water tight. 
So all this is a theme, a designer's fantasy and not to be taken seriously.

 

To-Do list:

If you look up DTIM interval and Beacon interval,

you'll determine quickly who the parrots-of-dictionaries are.

My android phone used to take a long time to connect on another router, and then it seemed you could count to "10" slo   ly, and have it connect nearly instantly (it didn't sit there checking stuff)

The NEW router brought the phone back to slow connecting, although the PC didn't care.

I changed DTIM from the default "1" to an Apple-approved "3."

The next setting, nearly no one tries to explain, but it's a fractional tweaker of the standard (55, 100, 101, 106, etc) with 100 being the default.

Is the default good enough?
It's like deciding shades of white-paint for a house.

But for now, connection Seemed faster (I left the "beacon interval" alone at 100)

The Wifi-list always lists my neighbors' wifi first, that kind of grates,

but companies leave the user to totally guess and with no $biggie bucks equipment, I'd think 'better' is acceptable.

Totally vague

The "Allow List," if  a subnet is included, blocks everything outside of that subnet, apparently, and port-ranges are separated by colons ":".

IF all that is true,

a guy could simply say, "Allow" 192.168.1.0/28, 1:65535, (blank), (Blank)

but way-smarter than me people tried and were locked out of the router!

It won't accept subnets (e.g., /24) come hell or high water.

It doesn't help listening to the internet parrots.

It DOES accept 192.168.1.* (asterisk) but that's not really the subnet I wanted

(The subnet for 192.168.1.* is, 255.255.255.0😒)

So it's pointless and stewpid, since anyone anywhere belongs to my gargantuan subnet.

The non-answer to (whatever) is at https://www.snbforums.com/threads/unable-to-edit-firewall-network-services-filter-table-on-rt-ax88u-pro-fw-388-3.85884/

DOT is still dead. 
Being more enlightened than a couple days ago, I thought I maybe had a chance, but no.

"Private DNS" on my phone will not use "GT-BE98" as a DNS server, it fails.

The bottom line is, the phone claims that it is connected to my network, 

but then it says that my network cannot use the internet.

SNBForums is filled with honest hardworking questioners and

the Replies are something like, 

"WHY would you want to do that? (rolleyes)"

"Could you repeat what you just asked?"

And no one else seems to even care, beyond parroting a book.

Known malicious so why are they there?
Will I slow my router much by enabling these security things?
One day, maybe.

See, cuz today, it looks a ton like someone wants to know my browsing habits,

and has a pretty program to front for a log.

The router is blinking at me that a new firmware awaits.
And what does this new firmware offer?
Among other things, "OCNVC."

I am wary, to be succinct.
They tested this firmware in May, according to some obscure link that lists acronyms but does not elaborate as to what they are.

VC="Virtual connect"

and ipv4 over ipv6 must be OCN

I just wondered....

should I maybe try to install it, or will this entry be six pages longer detailing the struggles I went through to get back here?

Did they fix any broken features that are already there?
A guy can hope.

Wait, that's for my twin, not me.

Fortunately the router is smarter than me and rejected the upgrade, after reading it slowly (it rejected it but read it anyway, for the pictures)

No, (*sigh*) Mine is the same 'ol-same 'ol, and I was too dumb to see that.

On the other hand, why is the router blinking about new firmware??

I would not have checked otherwise.

If I do the online-upgrade-thing, how do I know if some MAGA hacker spoofed the server?

My way (downloading and upgrading locally) seems best, but...

The page I just displayed five minutes ago changed, and I updated.

I hope all the resetting that snbforums requires is mostly paranoid bullshit;

I reset once before the update, then "reboot"-ed (It's in the menu)

But I won't be able to complain that something doesn't work without yet another reset and doing my myriad morass of mélange manually.

for example, does DOT work now?

If DNS over TLS were a lady in a vampire movie,

I'd venture that they cut off her head and put a stake of holly through her heart.

It killed the WAN, and my PC, although The phone liked it, unless I was reading the cache.

It's dead, *I'm* dead, 

offline.

OK wait, I'll toggle something....

...unplug something? (o crap)

("Sometimes they come back")

We're fine, nothing to see here, move along.

If my router was a proxy, it could forward the request to my upstream gateway...

But I've experimented enough already.
I'll wait for an online post that I can actually read, explaining how they set it up.

whut (unfathomables)

We need a decision, Mr. President

Asus Mission critical folderol

https://dongknows.com/asus-rog-rapture-gt-be98-pro-wi-fi-7-review/,
Image link (I hope)
https://dongknows.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Asus-GT-BE98-Pro-has-two-6GHz-bands-each-occupying-the-lower-and-upper-parts-of-the-spectrum.jpg

Indexed Inscrutable terms

"Protected Management Frames" (PMF)

https://www.asus.com/us/support/faq/1042472/ 

(Whole lotta nothing link,

"PMF...protects"

But Some guy said

7-years is an epoch in computer time, but it's something to consider.

Lore from tomes:

6Ghz Requires WPA3.

WPA3 incorporates PMF.

Non-issue (here's hoping), beeeecause,

I use wpa3-personal exclusively, 

at 6Ghz, Per the marketers and gurus of this stuff.

(Not dancing around with MLO and AImesh, at 5 and 2.4 GHZ, which might not use PMF or have different requirements)

OTOH if any problems with connections occur, I'll know where to look.
Possible Scenario:
Router connects to modem fine and dandy, but a few hours or days later, it refuses to connect.

This particular horror movie comes up a lot in consumer reviews.
I'm seriously trying to guard against it, but no firm answers, yet.
A hint:
It MIGHT be some newer feature in the latest routers.
If PMF (because, firmware-choices) were enabled TWICE, uhm, hmm.

Set damn near everything to "Disabled", get the thing to work,
and try fancy-features one-by-one.

It's apparently a time-thing; stuff works, time passes, stuff dies.

(marketing blurb)

AFC + Wifi Location + 802.11AZ all appear (to me)
to be similar, but with different marketers.

--------

I wondered

That red X in the picture 
shows the forbidden-area, 
and my world starts at "31" 
And I was only able to pick a center channel of 33.

A more discreet (I hope) app. 
I've agreed to three different things without reading them, I feel the fool.

But it's cute and it works. (It does not reveal hidden networks?)

Informative but discreet (on the display, anyway)

Should I *also* point out that my phone used to take "forever" to link up, if at all?
Now it's happy in mere seconds, but both the router, my phone and my PC have had firmware updates, so IDK.

I don't know why it's winking in and out, 
The phone doesn't care (does it?) so I don't
(omg)

Does 4x4 have better range than 2x2? In case I'm mixing metaphors, 

Do more antennas matter?
External vs internal??

OK basically:
A smooth surface that was designed to be a part of a mesh anyway,

vs an eight-legged spider.

Says who, 7-11 Guru?
I need a better reference

50% poll 4x4 is a waste
50% poll more range, more mimo.

If you sell routers, work for a factory that makes them,

more expensive=better, of course.
Stock rises, investors get all happy.

But........

If you're already breaking your bank with 2x2 tiny devices, you prolly don't deserve 4x4 (unless you want range???)

(hello?) Grandfatherly type who knows stuff needed here.
no venerable types available, how's about a factory-shill?

Ex Cathedra(?)

No one has convinced me (actually they warned against them!) Asus routers are the best, but they must have reviewers convinced.
For me,

The odd I.O.T. problems, and whatever "MLO" is, are meaningless, because,

This is no palatial estate complete with Wi-Fi cat-shitters, many lightbulbs all designed to phone home, A couple Wi-Fi-fountains.

No. So (I hope) this next section means more now, but maybe not.
Someone else's Mesh empire with all their electronic slaves chanting 24/7 might Need equal access to three different bands each partitioned up electronically to counteract congestion, I don't judge (OK I do but)

The wife wanted a larger telescreen 

I think I like Mu-Mimo (I'll go look at the name) 

OFD...well, whatever.
Beeeeecause, reading this slightly dated analysis broken down 
for the truly esoterica lovers,
Is,
uh,
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
6 of one, 1/2 dozen the other,
It depends.

My Wi-Fi bravely soldiers on without Mu-Mimo, with no OFDMA.
I don't pontificate here, I'd be contradicting a zillion blurbs and oodles of firmware revisions...

still...

Freezing out ANY web-access would be real nice, it would be a biggie reason to pick one model over another.

CAN you prevent anyone accessing from the WAN? 
No one brought it up yet.

Yay, if it's still true

Keeping my Wi-Fi off completely (because it has no wan-access button)
is like sticking plywood over my portal to hell.
I mean, *yeah*, it works, but I'd rather not have the portal.

A person close by has a TP-Link router, with a channel, and a ghost channel sitting on top of it.
Is this some new technology? I wonder.
Two days later, the same router has a hidden, a "MLO" and a third SSID all in the same exact frequency, On top of my signal!
Geez!
It (the three signals) are very narrow, sitting smack dab in the middle of my zaftig signal.
I moved mine. It prolly does not matter, but I get less creepiness.
I was blaming "Netgear," but TP-Link does it too?
If it's some "Mesh" thing, I wonder if Asus (anyone) lets you switch it off?

https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/2/post/119826?page=2 

It's a thing, (OK) now, how to get rid of it?
I hope this isn't some quest, it should be easy/obvious??

*My* issue is, even with wi-fi ostensibly Off (no radios) the ghost channels still exist.
No mesh!

It's like some bizarre back-door into the router.

And if Asus does this too, so be it, (I guess), but it sounds a lot like their routers are more mesh-savvy, and they *might* have an "off"-switch, a guy can hope.

I believe users, and reviewers too. 
I think meshing different chipsets might be problematic, not sure (lotsa long nights reading tomes, or forget that and plunk down big bucks, IDK)

Blah-blah "A Steal" (lol)

"It died," "Do not buy", can't be ignored, but maybe they're shills, overclockers, 

just plain stewpid?(lol)

If you *got* a 10Gbps-port router and never used the ports (because, why)

or, should you use those ports geared down for your sorry setup?

vague ruminations on resetting the router completely on a firmware-upgrade are maybe relevant, maybe not (NVRAM-left-over garbage from the last revision?)

and is it important on *every* upgrade or just the first one?

One Biggie thing I have in my head from one user is the way his WAN would not connect to his modem.
No biggie, unplug the modem, wait a bit, re-plug, or was his problem much more mysterious? (random-MAC or some such?)

This explains tons or is a red-herring, IDK
Pardon me while I copy this picture for another section of this bombast

Please read the very last line:
and rewording it to my satisfaction (sort of,)
MLO is only as good as the devices it connects to.
Hopefully, from the Same brand and year of manufacture.
If your MLO sucks, examine the clients.

Old duffer devices from competing companies, might be pissed off at the newfangled upstart.

It's the "can vary" that worries me.
"Can vary" how?

(be98) MLO sucks, 6Ghz range sucks, AFC is a TBA.

I get it (sort of) 

So don't use MLO, Range is ok for this hovel.
(I'm still wondering why the hell anyone would use "MLO" anyway.)

My dinky phone would ignore it, my PC-card might like it (if Qualcomm and Broadcom liked each other, and they don't)
But then a guy wallows in the muck wondering which lesser devices are just good enough, and it gets too complicated. 

I imagine that freebie reviewers who state at the top of their page that they get credit for what you click on to buy, aren't the most trustworthy types in the world.

"Sleek", wtf

96u:
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/asus-rt-be96u
Most expensive, massive commission (duh)

You COULD knit and watch reruns of Gilligan's island until 2026.

GT-BE19000-Pro will cost as much, as a BE30000 (be98) 

Acronyms you'd never use nor pay extra for, 
Temperamental(??) ports, uh, ??

Underdog, where have you gone?

Bah! Humbug.

Basically, I wanted to await black/Cyber thanksgiving, 

or is that a mistake because of the out-of-stocks and mis-deliveries?
Best to pay $20 more and be reassured or wait til bedlam and see what occurs?

"I bought a RTG (richer than God) Router to keep my other RTG routers company, and the cat warm,"

"I bought Two RTG routers, because I can say I bought two"

(I don't fit the demographic at all)