The Asus RT-N16 router is one of the most powerful routers currently available. The RT-N16 has 802.11n, gigabit network ports, a fast processor, lots of memory and flash, and two USB ports for running a printer and external hard drive at the same time.
The stock Asus firmware is not that great, people have reported a lot of problems with it. So a great way to improve this router is to install a third party firmware. The two most popular are Tomato and DD-WRT. Tomato seems to have all the advanced features plus it is easier to use than DD-WRT so I decided to install Tomato. The standard version of Tomato does not support USB. Luckily there is another project called TomatoUSB that allows the use of the USB ports on the RT-N16.
The only problem with the alternate firmwares is that the documentation is severely lacking. There doesn’t seem to be a single, easy to follow guide on how to install the firmware. You have to spend many hours reading forum posts that are sometimes contradictory.
In reality installing Tomato is actually pretty simple once you figure it out. There is a lot of confusing information online, but if you follow the steps below you will have a working Tomato install:
- Download the latest version of TomatoUSB from here: http://tomatousb.org/download. For the Asus RT-N16 you need to use the “Ext” build for Kernel 2.6 MIPSR2. The Ext build has the most features and it will fit in the RT-N16′s flash space. I used Build 47, but use whatever the latest version is.
- Install the Firmware Restoration Utility from the CD that came with the router. Run \Utility\setup.exe from the CD to install it. If you no longer have the CD you can also download it from the Asus website.
- Disable the firewall on your computer. This is required, the Restoration Utility refuses to run unless it is disabled. To disable it on Vista or Windows 7, hit the Start key then type firewall to get to the firewall control panel. On XP you should be able to go to the Control Panel and find the Firewall icon.
- Using an ethernet cable plug your computer into one of the 4 LAN ports on the router.
- Open a web browser and go to http://192.168.1.1. Verify that the router login page loads. If nothing loads then your computer is not able to reach the router. You’ll need to fix this problem before continuing.
- Run the Asus Firmware Restoration Utility from the Start menu. If it gives you an error about the firewall then your firewall isn’t disabled. You need to disable it before continuing.
- Click the Browse button and select the file that you downloaded in step #1. Don’t click the upload button yet.
- Put the router in recovery mode: Unplug the router. Hold down the Reset button. Plug the router back in. Once the power light starts slowly flashing release the reset button. The power light should continue to flash. The flashing light means the router is ready to accept the new firmware.
- Click the upload button in the Restoration utility. The firmware will now start uploading into the router. Don’t touch anything while the firmware is being uploaded. After the upload is complete wait five minutes or so just to be sure everything is done.
- Now reset the settings to default: Unplug the router. Hold the WPS button on the back of the router. Plug the router back in. Hold the button for about 30 seconds and release it.
- Open a browser and go to http://192.168.1.1. Login with user “admin” and password “admin”. You should be logged into Tomato. Now you can configure your router using the Tomato GUI.
I’ve used the above steps to successfully install Tomato on my Rt-N16. If you have any suggestions or improvements to this guide let me know by leaving a comment.
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#1 by Mario on March 12, 2011 - 10:02 am
the solution for this problem can be found here:
http://tomatousb.org/forum/t-324101/no-internet-connectivity-on-rt-n16#post-1046903
#2 by fubar on March 12, 2011 - 3:45 pm
A quicker method for those who can’t be bothered with the ASUS recovery utility (windoze only!) which appears to just be providing tftp connectivity – I just flashed my new rt-n16 with the latest tomato usb k26 – if you hold reset while you power up until the power led is flashing, you can (I’m using linux and I had the stock router attached to my laptop) do
tftp 192.168.1.1
bin
put [firmware file]
Once it’s done uploading, the prompt returns and the router just sits – no more blinkenlights – but be patient – wait at least 5′ then power down and you should be able to power up into tomato.
#3 by fubar on March 12, 2011 - 7:21 pm
For linux users, there’s no need for the ASUS recovery utility (windoze only!). I just flashed my new rt-n16 with the latest tomato usb k26 by holding reset while powering up (power led is flashing), then (I’m using linux and I had the stock router attached to my laptop) do
tftp 192.168.1.1
binary
put [firmware file]
Once it’s done uploading, the prompt returns and the router just sits – no more blinkenlights – but be patient – wait at least 5′ then power down and you should be able to power up into tomato.
#4 by anon on March 22, 2011 - 6:33 am
the windows tool also didnt work for my win7 64bit.
i googled and used a tftp app to upload the file, and that worked… thanks for the write-up though.
#5 by bc on March 22, 2011 - 1:00 pm
Excellent – thank you for this. I was getting more and more frustrated with the ASUS firmware and tomato resolved all my problems. Your write-up worked very well.
#6 by sam on March 23, 2011 - 10:52 am
thank you for your write up. I’m going to try it out tonight for I’ve just bought a new asus rt-n16 router – hope that I’ll come back with some good news.
#7 by Joe Cohn on March 23, 2011 - 8:15 pm
I followed the instruction installed tomato on my RT-N16 router. But I cannt connect the internet due to no valid IP, and I cannot browse http://192.168.1.1.
Please give some suggestions.
Thanks
#8 by Scott on March 23, 2011 - 10:28 pm
Thanks much! Installation went flawlessly.
#9 by Rob Jobnes on March 30, 2011 - 9:09 pm
Excellent writeup!! Worked perfectly. Thank you!
#10 by bbmak on March 31, 2011 - 5:05 pm
What happen if you DDWRT installed? How do you switch from DDWRT to TomatoUSB?
#11 by Crystal on April 7, 2011 - 7:38 pm
Hey this tutorial works for Asus RT-N16. I just used this and http://tomatousb.org/forum/t-251656/installing-on-rt-n16 and I had no problems. I used the NVRAM command to clear, which is the same as unplugging the router and pressing VPS.
The upgrade got stopped at 99% but that was due to Asus trying to verify the stuff, which isn’t able to since it’s all difference and such, but it works. If anyone else gets stuck at 99%, just go to IE and type in 192.168.1.1 and you should log in just fine.
If anyone follows this tutorial, he/she will be fine.
#12 by Anonymous on April 18, 2011 - 7:55 pm
I’m having the same issue… I flashed according to procedure. It said it succeeded.. waited 5 minutes. Then held the WPS just like instructions. Now when i try and access the 192.168.1.1 address it doesn’t load?!?!
#13 by Peter on May 4, 2011 - 7:42 pm
This was a *huge* pain for me, and it may happen for other people. I had to manually set my IP as 192.168.1.2 in order for the Firmware recovery tool to work, but then I had to set it back to automatically obtain in order to see 192.168.1.1 in the browser. If you are having trouble, try that.
#14 by Burnso on May 7, 2011 - 6:41 pm
This worked for me.
I just wanted to know though, what exactly is the purpose of step 10 (“Now reset the settings to default…”)?
#15 by pv on May 20, 2011 - 6:38 am
I used the above steps and it went fine. But router stuck in reboot and it never comes out of it. How to resolve this.
Thanks,
#16 by jimmy on May 22, 2011 - 6:53 pm
I had windows 7 64-bit. the firmware restoration utility didn’t work for me either. I downloaded wintftp client which is freeware. picked the tomato trx file to upload. put my router in recovery mode. set wintftp client to push to 192.168.1.1. It said it pushed the file (lights blinked fast on router). Waited 5 minutes. unplugged router. the plugged it back in. After about 1 minute, the router came up with tomato usb installed at 192.168.1.1 admin/admin.
#17 by pv on May 24, 2011 - 7:05 am
I am able to fix my router stuck in recovery mode. It is my mistake. i tried to loading tamotousb firmware *.rar file rather unzip and load the file. once i did it using the steps it worked. I am sure above steps should also works.
http://www.yourbts.com/blog/installing-tomato-and-optware-on-an-asus-rt-n16-router/
Thanks,
#18 by pv on May 24, 2011 - 7:06 am
does any body has steps to set up brother MFC-7340 printer/scanner/fax on tamoto firm ware. I have problems scanner and fax setup.
Thanks,
#19 by Rio on June 2, 2011 - 7:31 pm
My RT-N16 router can detect MFC-7340 printer only if I enabled both USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 OHCI. You may have a try.
For scanner feature, you can follow the link below:
http://www.shcherbyna.com/?p=983
#20 by Anonymous on June 4, 2011 - 11:09 pm
DebWrt now supports the asus rt-n16, full debian on the device http://dev.debwrt.net/wiki/AsusRT-N16
#21 by David GS on June 6, 2011 - 11:04 pm
I bought the ASUS router about 3 weeks ago and it was incredibly glitchy … HUGE issues with it having a hard time finding a dynamic IP addresses and, for whatever reason, it had huge issues with facebook (havent figured that one out). Was about to return it when I read all the reviews on the firmware issues and thought I would give tomatoUSB a shot.
For what its worth I totally bricked my ASUS router doing this the 1st time … for whatever reason I forgot to UNZIP the RAR file when I uploaded the firmware and the unit was toast. Luckily it was still pretty new so the computer shop simply exchanged units.
I tried again and similar to Crystal (post 10) the upload stalled @ 99% but after resetting the WPS we had success (and of course uploading the trf file not the rar file).
Let this be a lesson! Dont forget the EVER so important step of unzipping the RAR!
#22 by Dave on July 23, 2011 - 6:01 am
Great instructions. Unfortunately the Asus Firmware Restoration Utility wouldn’t connect/upload for me. I even went so far as to hardcode my notebook’s ethernet port to 192.168.1.2. I tried tftp after a few tries and it worked well.
In WinXP command line I used (after putting router in recovery mode):
tftp -i 192.168.1.1 put e:\Downloads\tomato-K26US
B-1.28.9054MIPSR2-beta-vpn3.6\tomato-K26USB-1.28.9054MIPSR2-beta-vpn3.6.trx
Response was:
Transfer successful: 6823936 bytes in 21 seconds, 324949 bytes/s
The power light didn’t come back on. The unit just sat there, so I walked away and came back later (well over 10 mintutes). Same thing. So I unplugged and replugged and tomato booted right up.
#23 by Bicot on July 24, 2011 - 12:03 am
Hello, Just a few words to confirm that the original method listed still works. Using K26USB-1.28.9054MIPSR2 on Win 7 x64 all went fine. The infamous uploading stuck at 99% appeared so router was shut down and rest of procedure went fine. Thanks a TON as Tomato ironed out all the bugs and instabiliies I experienced with the Asus firmware. Open source rocks!!!
#24 by Nick on July 25, 2011 - 8:00 pm
Does changing the firmware from stock to tomato possibly help fix loss of connections? By brand new RT-n16 loses connection with the modem about once a day and the wi-fi goes up and down by the 15 minutes. I replaced a netgear router than went dead but worked fine until it did. The modem connected direct to a device works great. So figuring the router has the issues. Im techie enough to do this install, but don’t want to wast the time if different firmware can fix disconnect issues.
#25 by Jeff on August 9, 2011 - 12:47 am
Thanks for this hugely helpful write up. I used it to flash an ASUS RT-N12 with the NOUSB STD firmware. After about 3 hours of frustration I found this–Worked great, thank you! If the PC cannot find the IP address in step 11, unplug the router again, wait 10 seconds, re-plug. It’s all tomato goodness
#26 by Nick on August 20, 2011 - 8:12 pm
I ended up flashing it to it and the orginal write up worked with zero problems for me. (it did get stuck at 99, but as everyone mentioned that didn’t affect anything) All the problems I had for the most part vanished. No more constand drops of connections. Wired speed is great, wireless speed is still spotty raning from 2mb – 16bm. (wired connections test at 20mb 90% of time)
#27 by Kok Fong on August 30, 2011 - 9:42 pm
Great write up…I’ve successfully flashed the tomato and my Asus RT-N16 is rocking now
#28 by Ken on September 11, 2011 - 2:40 pm
Help – I have tried but the power light keeps flashing and I can not access the router? Anybody have any ideas?
#29 by Ken on September 11, 2011 - 2:54 pm
OK so I forgot to unzip the file. Is it possible to re-install after you unzip?
#30 by Ken on September 11, 2011 - 6:15 pm
Just unpacked and re downloaded the software to the router and it works fine.
#31 by Fábio Prado on September 11, 2011 - 6:48 pm
For me, it only worked by installing the latest version of the Ext build TomatoUSB via tftp. I downloaded a tftp client for windows and downloaded the firmware restoration mode of the router.
#32 by Dan on September 23, 2011 - 12:28 pm
Easy. Go to the administration tab, firmware upgrade, and point it to the tomato file. Check the box that says to erase NVRAM or reset to default, and click upgrade. When you upgrade, it will flash and then reboot into tomato. In order to install tomato on my rt-n16 I first flashed it with dd-wrt and then tomato, and didn’t have to mess with the firmware recovery or tftp
#33 by Eats Wombats on October 19, 2011 - 8:28 am
I had set the router to work on the 192.168.3 subnet as it’s behind a (3G wireless) gateway router, as is a Netgear router (on the .2 subnet).
Used a netbook running Ubuntu with tftp to flash mine. Took the precaution of reverting to 192.168.1 subnet but didn’t get an IP address when the router was ready to be reflashed (I MIGHT have forgotten to reset the DHCP range). Manually setting an IP of 192.168.1.2 worked ok. Reverted router IP to 192.168.3.1 (and adjusted DHCP range) afterwards. No problems.
#34 by Eats Wombats on October 19, 2011 - 8:37 am
BTW, I made sure that the WAN port was disconnected when doing the flashing. That could screw things up when behind another router (I know my Netgear switches to a 10.0.0.1 address if there’s a collision on the default address).
No reason in principle it couldn’t be flashed with a non-default address, but why take a chance?
#35 by online casino united states on November 3, 2011 - 10:38 am
Very interesting I must say! I did not think about the subject that way.
#36 by DAG on November 16, 2011 - 6:09 pm
I bought RT N-16 wireless router for its specs. Using it with WIN7 Ultimate operating system and connecting to Verizon dsl. ASUS tech support is very good, their documentation is in many languages but with limited helpful information, Documentation states URL for the router is 192.168.1.1, this is not correct it is 198.162.2.1.
Verizon is very poor. With help of ASUS support managed to access using both direct wire, and wirelessly. Verizon do not support ASUS, and tech support could only suggest using “DHCP”, which is not a type option, and pushing hard to sign up for expensive “premium” tech support (with no indication they have people who know ASUS routers). Could not say what type of isp services was being provided (e.g. PPPoE, dynamic, static etc.) One ‘Tech’ suggested Dynamic, the next Static.
Have several times managed to access internet, but it is not reliable, often dropping. I suspect this may be due to conflicts between ASUS expected connection protocol and Verizon actual.
The main reason for this post is to provide correct URL address 192.168.2.1
#37 by DAG on November 16, 2011 - 6:15 pm
OOPs The correct URL [192.168.2.1] is on last line, earlier value is a typo
#38 by BigGayAl on November 29, 2011 - 8:27 am
Thanks. Worked with no problems. I’m glad I found this page after going through hundreds of useless, confusing forums and wikis.
#39 by Boozer on December 2, 2011 - 8:50 pm
I was halfway through the firmware update when my cat walked on my powerstrip and shut everything down. Ive gone back through the process numerous times and everything seems to work but when i pull up 192.168.1.1 its a blank page but the tomato icon is next to the ip…..it also seems to hang on system recovery succeeds! Please wait for system reboot….tia
#40 by Kernel Sanders on December 12, 2011 - 6:45 pm
The most features you can get are from the shibby version of tomato.
Enter into your web address, ” tomato.groov.pl/index.php?dir=K26%2Fbuild5x-083V “.
Control f search for ” tomato-K26USB-1.28.RT5x-MIPSR2-083V-AIO.trx “.
Right click and “save target as” in internet explorer or right click and “save link as” in firefox.
#41 by duFo on March 3, 2012 - 12:50 pm
Hi, I have same problem with two RT-N16,
It just can’t boot.
I have toastman tomato build: tomato-K26USB-NVRAM60K-1.28.7495.2MIPSR2-Toastman-RT-VPN.trx
If i turn on router, LED’s just blink for 2 seconds and thats all. Restore button and WPS button doesn’t work.
I used this toastmat build for 2 weeks WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS. But now…
I’m greatful for every help
#42 by Vitamin D on April 2, 2012 - 12:44 pm
salutations from over the sea. informative post I will return for more.
#43 by Prime on April 11, 2012 - 2:01 am
@duFo
You bricked your routers using the NVRAM60K builds, these are for Linksys routers only.
You may be able to use a serial cable to repair, research this on the DD-WRT website/forum.