DD-WRT Worth a Try?

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I bricked my original WRT54g v2, and never got around to jtagging it to revive it. This one was of the very first routers to support the DD-WRT. But since that, i've loaded it on about a dozen different routers successfully.

 

If the goal is to try a 3rd party firmware, choose a router that has a straight forward install process, for example:

The process for loading DD-Wrt on my Airlink DIR-300 devices required installing a custom bootloader, and a plethora of time-sensitive commands. I found these devices to be less stable than my WRT54g and WDR3600, also having inferior hardware.

While the process of loading to my WDR3600 IIRC, was as simple as downloading the firmware and loading it from the TP-Link upgrade software.

 

Also, DDWRT is not the only player: currently I have mixed 3rd party firmware environment: Tomato, OpenWRT, DDwrt all working in unison.

 

1. Go with a device that is well-supported -> usually this means the install is as simple as selecting the firmware image from the native-firmware's own upgrade software.

2. Be aware of hardware constraints: usb ports, storage memory and system memory available -> as there are different versions of DDWRT with more features if the device has the storage capacity.