21 replies to this topic

[+Shikaka]

Hey All,

Sadly i am moving back home to live with the parents, they have a standard ADSL Max package from BT and are using the BT Hub3.

I would like to replace that with a new modem / router which is dd-wrt compatible but i have no idea what is a decent router these days i am abit out of touch with it all I want something that is under £100 if possible tbh,

Any suggestions welcome!

Cheers x

[Detection]

I am enjoying my Linksys Cisco WRT160NL running the 2nd latest release of DD-WRT and it is 100% stable (hence I haven't upgraded to the latest release)


You can get them for well under £100 on ebay

http://www.ebay.co.u...cat=0&_from=R40

[+Xenosion]

I have a WRT320N. Works absolutely perfect with DD-WRT v24-SP2. I don't ever have to reboot it nor do I ever have any problems.

[francescob]

A router+modem that is DD-WRT compatible? According to their hardware table that restricts the search to only one single model: Buffalo WBMR-HP-G300N (Lantiq AR9@333 + Atheros AR9280). If you want save a good amount of money the BT Home Hub V2B can run OpenWRT on it. The Asus DSL-N55U can't run dd-wrt or open-wrt but it's one of the best routers with modem you can find for that price, awesome hardware and rock solid firmware (much more reliable than previous Asus routers).

[+Shikaka]

Detection, on 14 February 2013 - 15:11, said:

I am enjoying my Linksys Cisco WRT160NL running the 2nd latest release of DD-WRT and it is 100% stable (hence I haven't upgraded to the latest release)


You can get them for well under £100 on ebay

http://www.ebay.co.u...cat=0&_from=R40

Hey Mate, is this the correct model? http://www.dabs.com/...WRT160NL&src=16

Cheers ill buy it for delivery Saturday if so

[Detection]

Shikaka, on 14 February 2013 - 16:38, said:

Hey Mate, is this the correct model? http://www.dabs.com/...WRT160NL&src=16

Cheers ill buy it for delivery Saturday if so

Yep, that's the one

When you first flash DD-WRT to it, there are 2 firmwares, first flash is for Linksys > DD-WRT transition, 2nd one is the full DD-WRT firmware, and any updates after that only need the main firmware flashing

[francescob]

Shikaka, on 14 February 2013 - 16:38, said:

Hey Mate, is this the correct model? http://www.dabs.com/...WRT160NL&src=16

Cheers ill buy it for delivery Saturday if so

Maybe you should consider looking at some other models too, the WRT160NL is pretty old (it came out in 2009) and the range is quite mediocre even if you replace the antennas (source: I have bought basically every Linksys model since the WRT54G).

[Detection]

francescob, on 14 February 2013 - 16:55, said:

Maybe you should consider looking at some other models too, the WRT160NL is pretty old (it came out in 2009) and the range is quite mediocre even if you replace the antennas (source: I have bought basically every Linksys model since the WRT54G).

My wifi range is superb with the stock antennas, neighbours 2 doors away can connect easily, coverage all over my house

Just used DD-WRT to boost the range / power

[francescob]

Detection, on 14 February 2013 - 16:59, said:

My wifi range is superb with the stock antennas, neighbours 2 doors away can connect easily, coverage all over my house

Just used DD-WRT to boost the range / power

A router range can be relative, the same router could cover your whole house but at the same time cover barely one room in somebody's else house, it depends on the walls, on the interference and on the country's regulations for transmit power. I had much, much better performance with other linksys models like the dual-band E3000 rather than with the WRT160NL that I found having a similar range to the older WRT160N or the WRT300N. Anyway there are websites that benchmark routers and while certainly better than the average the WRT160NL couldn't nearly match to some of the newer models (see here http://www.smallnetb...d-router-charts ). Also if you actually use the USB port having a 100mbit LAN and only a 400mhz CPU and 32mb of ram could greatly limit the samba performance when sharing drives. That Asus modem I linked has 128mb of RAM and two 600mhz+ CPUs and it literally flies (I had to glue it to the table) with samba.

[Detection]

francescob, on 14 February 2013 - 22:00, said:

A router range can be relative, the same router could cover your whole house but at the same time cover barely one room in somebody's else house, it depends on the walls, on the interference and on the country's regulations for transmit power. I had much, much better performance with other linksys models like the dual-band E3000 rather than with the WRT160NL that I found having a similar range to the older WRT160N or the WRT300N. Anyway there are websites that benchmark routers and while certainly better than the average the WRT160NL couldn't nearly match to some of the newer models (see here http://www.smallnetb...d-router-charts ). Also if you actually use the USB port having a 100mbit LAN and only a 400mhz CPU and 32mb of ram could greatly limit the samba performance when sharing drives. That Asus modem I linked has 128mb of RAM and two 600mhz+ CPUs and it literally flies (I had to glue it to the table) with samba.

I have a Samba share set up via the USB port and I get the full 100mbps (10MB/s) read/write to the drive via LAN, burst speeds upto 15MB/s, I only have wireless G laptop so can't test if it can perform any faster atm

Of course there are going to be better routers, but OP wanted a router for under £100 and some feedback from someone who owns one.

For a typical house full of devices, it manages extremely well, I have all 4 LAN ports wired to different devices, I have 5 wireless devices connected with around 3-4 connected at any one time and its fine

If you have experience with a better router at a similar price then by all means, advise away

[+Shikaka]

I dont think that WRT160NL actually has ADSL build in, meaning i would need to user a separate modem to connect to the internet yea?

[Detection]

Shikaka, on 14 February 2013 - 22:16, said:

I dont think that WRT160NL actually has ADSL build in, meaning i would need to user a separate modem to connect to the internet yea?

Yep, I have: Phoneline > Openreach Modem > WRT160NL > Devices

Not sure I've seen any DD-WRT ADSL Modem/Routers

[richardsim7]

Xenosion, on 14 February 2013 - 15:21, said:

I have a WRT320N. Works absolutely perfect with DD-WRT v24-SP2. I don't ever have to reboot it nor do I ever have any problems.

+1

[+Brando212]

as the person in post 4 pointed out, it looks like this is what you're gonna want http://www.amazon.co...60880600&sr=8-1

[francescob]

Detection, on 14 February 2013 - 22:09, said:

I have a Samba share set up via the USB port and I get the full 100mbps (10MB/s) read/write to the drive via LAN, burst speeds upto 15MB/s, I only have wireless G laptop so can't test if it can perform any faster atm

USB2 can go much faster than that, I managed to get full speed only from 600mhz devices mostly because samba is very CPU intensive.

Detection, on 14 February 2013 - 22:09, said:

Of course there are going to be better routers, but OP wanted a router for under £100 and some feedback from someone who owns one.

For a typical house full of devices, it manages extremely well, I have all 4 LAN ports wired to different devices, I have 5 wireless devices connected with around 3-4 connected at any one time and its fine

If you have experience with a better router at a similar price then by all means, advise away

There are hundreds of routers that can run DD-WRT/OpenWRT very reliably nowadays so it's just a question on what you actually want from one, for example I bought a router for OpenWRT a couple weeks ago to use as 3g router, I paid it 25€ (TP-Link 3420) yet it never freezed or had to be restarted (and the wifi range is actually decent). Some have lots of ram, some have fast CPUs, some have multiple USBs, some have 3 antennas or can go up to 1W of transmission power, there's as lot to choose from.

Shikaka, on 14 February 2013 - 22:16, said:

I dont think that WRT160NL actually has ADSL build in, meaning i would need to user a separate modem to connect to the internet yea?

As I previously wrote in my post there is literally one (1) modem+router that can run DD-WRT. The reason is that DSL drivers are proprietary and usually their source code is never released so DD-WRT and OpenWRT developers have a very hard time getting those to work. If you don't mind running OpenWRT instead you can find the BT Home Hub V2B (it has to be the B revision) with the modem, wifi 802.11n and USB: it's very cheap and very reliable.