WRT1900AC - Newbie! About to install on WRT1900AC

[CPCI]

Hi all,

I am brand new to this and just want to make sure I'm doing things right before starting... Any advice / help would be great. Thanks in advance.

I am in Brisbane Australia. I have the Linksys WRT1900AC and am looking to install Gargoyle for the quota management and usage reporting capabilities.

Steps to install as I understand them: (please let me know of anything I have wrong or any guidance that would help)

1. I have read a lot on the Gargoyle site and the forums - particularly from Lantis and ispyisail (thanks guys)

2. I have downloaded the Nov 7 1.9.x ispy torrent and extracted the following image "gargoyle_1.9.x-mvebu-armada-xp-linksys-mamba-squashfs-factory" for the Linksys wrt1900AC - at least I think this is the right one (as per info gathered from the forum)?

3. I have direct connected my router to my PC via Ethernet cable

4. I have saved the current config of my router to disk just in case.

5. I am about to use the router firmware update interface to select the 1.9.x image file to replace the current firmware.

6. Not sure exactly where to from there - I am assuming that once installed I just set up the Internet connection like any normal router. Then can take advantage of the extra capabilities via the GUI...?

Is there anything else I should do? I'm particularly interested in making sure AC can work on the 5GHz radio - I read in a forum thread that this might not work out of the box and I might need to change the radio settings (as per a post by Lantis) - I really don't know where to start to do that so any direction would be very much appreciated...

Thanks in advance!!

Cheers

Perrin

[Lantis]

You seem to have everything under control.

the only thing I'll get you to double check before you start is what version of the 1900AC you have.
Check the serial number: XXX10XXXXXXXXX is version 1 (or a "20" if you have version 2)

Version 1 is indeed "mamba", v2 is "cobra".




Getting AC to work has to be done through the command line for now (as you have already figured out).
If you are familiar with SSH, then we will be able to give you a thorough guide when you are ready.

If not, once you have installed Gargoyle, practice connecting with SSH and performing a simple command like "logread".

If you are a Windows user I recommend you download a copy of PuTTY.exe and WinSCP.

[CPCI]

Thanks for the quick reply Lantis,

Just checked the serial number as per your advice and confirmed its version 1. Thanks for the tip.

Will give installation a go and post back how it went. And thanks, I would be keen for the guidance re SSH once I have the basic config sorted.

Cheers

Perrin

[CPCI]

The installation was a breeze! Took about 10 minutes end to end - including adding the ISP user name and password. I had to reboot after that to get it working but its now working like a charm.

I've made the wireless networks the same SSID and password as before and all my clients have connected seamlessly!

A big thanks to all those that work so hard to make the Gargoyle project work! It really is appreciated!

I've been reading up now on how to effectively set quotas. It seems like a simple process - so once all my kids devices have connected later today I'll set static IP's in ranges for them and then set quotas.

Maybe a tricky one: I am allocating usage quotas to each of the kids as they have been using our entire 100GB monthly quota very quickly. My ISP is iinet. iinet have a deal with Netflix where Netflix usage isn't metered. I know the gargoyle quotas will measure all traffic served to a host including any Netflix usage. Is there anyway of excluding only Netflix usage from quotas (e.g. via an exception rule for Netflix servers). Or alternatively is there anyway to monitor how much of a host's traffic is Netflix useage? If I could know that then I could increase the quota manually at regular intervals to allow for the amount of Netflix usage. Any ideas?

Cheers

Perrin

[Lantis]

Glad the install was straight forward.

There is no easy way to distinguish Netflix traffic because it comes through on the same port as other services. You could try filtering by IP address or connection bytes. Unfortunately there isn't a way to exclude these from the quotas.