In this article we are going to show you how to breath some new life into your 2011 era ASUS RT-N56U Router. This topic came about after purchasing one of these routers off Craigslist for a friend in need of a router upgrade. Now to be completely honest, I originally purchased the router thinking I could install AdvancedTomato which is my go to firmware if it is supported on the device, however that is not the case here. After a few google searches it started to appear that my options were going to be limited at best. It seemed as if ASUSwrt-Merlin and this new Padavan firmware were the only two options for this device. I have run ASUSwrt and its variants in the past and while they are better than stock, they are not as good as the Tomato based firmware’s in my opinion. So with that said, it was time to give Padavan a try. To install Padavan, simply download the version for your router and upgrade the firmware as you normally would through the router web interface.
More up to date with builds for many routers
https://github.com/hanwckf/rt-n56u/releases
Padavan Router firmware
Thank you for the update. Much appreciated!
This router is supported by https://openwrt.org/toh/asus/rt-n56u. It is continually updated with patches and features and has much more software available for it than Padavan. Your best option is probably to flash it using the Asus Firmware Restoration tool.
Thanks for the info Peter.
It seems that this router is not really supported by anyone anymore. The Padavan firmware hasn’t been updated in nearly 2 years. Asus still has no official firmware version out to fix the Kracked vulnerability on this particular model, and Merlin won’t run properly on it either.
It’s a shame, because the hardware is pretty good and for me this router has been running awesomely for years. It looks like I will need to upgrade though. Not because there’s anything wrong with the RT-N56u, but simply because nobody has support for it anymore.
If you have even basic skills using Linux, you could build your own Padavan firmware from source. This can be accomplished using this or this method.
There are mirrors with quite some recent builds. Version is still like the one on his BitBucket downloads folder, but the source behind those is quite new. Try http://n56u-v2.avh.od.ua/current/RT-N56U/ or http://rt-n56u.soulblader.com/files/current/RT-N56U/ (check the build date).
Thanks for the updated info Mihai.
It is really fast the web interface. Also, the speed of internet has increase with 5 %.
Hi,
Are there any newer builds? Bitbucket shows lots of activity but the newest build is 2016!
It looks to me like those are the recent builds. Maybe try contacting the developer or you could compile the source yourself.
Just curious on which version you choose as there is 4 available for this model.
I went with the “full” version that includes all features.