DD-WRT: As good as it sounds?


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For a while I havn't felt like I have had enough control over my home network. I currently have a Virgin Media Superhub which has quite a limited feature set. I have been considering my options and quite like the look of getting a DD-WRT device however I have no experience with them, nor do I know anyone else with experience of them.

Does/has anyone here run a DD-WRT device and if so what are your thoughts/experience with them?

Thanks

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DD-WRT is a software not hardware. You install it on your device if it has support for it otherwise you are stuck with your device. What is your device model to begin with and what are the function you are looking for?

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Yeah sorry I know its SW. I meant i'm considering a supported device. Well functionality at the very least I want DynDNS, bandwidth monitoring/restricting, VPN. QoS and VLAN could also be useful.

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I've never quite understood the attraction to DD-WRT, they've got quite a slow update schedule compared to other router firmwares.

At the core it's all Linux and it's networking stack, so most of the features are shared, but I much prefer how OpenWRT does things (Quicker updates too).

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It will handle all of those. All you need is a compatible router. ASUS routers fit the bill but will burn a hole in your pocket. There are other makes which are DD-WRT compatible.

My personal experience of DD-WRT with my router was in 2011. QoS at the time was broke and it halved my WAN to LAN throughput compared to the routers stock firmware. Instead I flashed my router with a equivalent Tomato Toastman build and haven't looked back since. That's not to say that DD-WRT is bad in general, just the iteration for my router at the time felt like an alpha release

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I don't really like DD-WRT their FW isn't as fast as other options, the menu system is horrible and their feature set is lacking. their QoS is also fairly inefficient. DD-WRT is generally for me a last option if I can't get somethign else on the router, some version of Tomato preferred. 

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I've never quite understood the attraction to DD-WRT, they've got quite a slow update schedule compared to other router firmwares.

At the core it's all Linux and it's networking stack, so most of the features are shared, but I much prefer how OpenWRT does things (Quicker updates too).

 

I think DD-WRT is widespread because it just supports so damn many different routers. Their update schedule is abysmal though.

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The update schedule is kinda slow but doesn't mean stuff isn't working. For people that need more control but not crazy stuff then it's just fine. I've had DD-WRT running on routers for years and no crashing and such. Surely if I needed to tweak all the time then maybe something else would be better but in general I like my network to be setup and forget about it. In networking, you don't want to HAVE to tweak constantly to get things working the way you want them to. For me, it works just fine and never had a problem.

 

Tomato (Toastman) is also good and recommended. Faster in some cases but haven't noticed much difference lately.

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I'm in the same boat i hate my VM Super Hub... would love some b/w monitoring and dyndns.

 

It's a shame the Super Hub can't be replaced because not only does the software suck it's the worst designed unit i've ever laid my eyes on... the stand isn't removable and it's too tall to fit in most units so it's only option is to stuff it awkwardly out of the way.

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shh...don't tell anyone...

 

dd-wrt just released a firmware 06-23-2014, before that it was 05-27-2014...it seems like they are a on a monthly schedule.

 

it is buried in "other downloads" under beta.  I don't think you will find them releasing a "stable" version ever again.

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I've never understood the appeal of installing DD-WRT on home routers - what more are you trying to do at home other than DNS, DHCP, and some port forwards? The last thing I'd wanna do is complicate my home setup so it feels like I'm at work if there's some problem. I like the good old turn off\on trick to make things work at home.

 

Suppose I understand if you're running it in some production environment, but then I'd suggest buying some better hardware.

 

Personally I haven't touched it in close to 10 years, so I'm out of the loop of what it can do. But then again, there are some pretty cool home routers with enough "advanced" features to keep the average Joe happy. 

 

Each to their own.

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As Roger, I never had problem and never really saw the differences between Tomato and DD-WRT and I have used both for couple of years before I completely switched to Cisco. Anyway, as other suggested you could buy a router that have those options and a little more nowadays. What is your budget if you want to change your current router? We can probably suggest some routers instead if you are interested in that.

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I've never understood the appeal of installing DD-WRT on home routers - what more are you trying to do at home other than DNS, DHCP, and some port forwards? The last thing I'd wanna do is complicate my home setup so it feels like I'm at work if there's some problem. I like the good old turn off\on trick to make things work at home.

 

Suppose I understand if you're running it in some production environment, but then I'd suggest buying some better hardware.

 

Personally I haven't touched it in close to 10 years, so I'm out of the loop of what it can do. But then again, there are some pretty cool home routers with enough "advanced" features to keep the average Joe happy. 

 

Each to their own.

 

Well I can only talk for tomato, but I install it for the extremely efficient and fast QoS that allows p2p users for example to fully saturate the upstream without affectin gaming. Also since my current Asus black knight router was designed by idiots, I can't use the built in DDNS. As it uses the routers WAN ip for the DDNS and not the internet ip. Seeing as my ISPs inteno combo router can't be set to modem mode, so I need to use DMZ. Tomato of course supports a boatload of DDNS services and has no problem being double NATed on DMZ as it checks the actual internet ip.

 

Then there's the general better efficiency, ability to so bandwidth usage per device so you can see who or what is hogging the line.

 

Unftunately I haven't been able to, use it on the rt66, with tomato the WiFi range is significantly cut down. Making the awesome range on the rt66 pathetic and it wont even cover the whole house, as opposed to 4 of 5 bars in every corner with the original firmware.

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I've never understood the appeal of installing DD-WRT on home routers - what more are you trying to do at home other than DNS, DHCP, and some port forwards? The last thing I'd wanna do is complicate my home setup so it feels like I'm at work if there's some problem. I like the good old turn off\on trick to make things work at home.

 

Suppose I understand if you're running it in some production environment, but then I'd suggest buying some better hardware.

 

Personally I haven't touched it in close to 10 years, so I'm out of the loop of what it can do. But then again, there are some pretty cool home routers with enough "advanced" features to keep the average Joe happy. 

 

Each to their own.

 

even if you don't use any extra functionality, third party firmware runs a hell of a lot better than stock.

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I've never understood the appeal of installing DD-WRT on home routers - what more are you trying to do at home other than DNS, DHCP, and some port forwards? The last thing I'd wanna do is complicate my home setup so it feels like I'm at work if there's some problem. I like the good old turn off\on trick to make things work at home.

 

Suppose I understand if you're running it in some production environment, but then I'd suggest buying some better hardware.

 

Personally I haven't touched it in close to 10 years, so I'm out of the loop of what it can do. But then again, there are some pretty cool home routers with enough "advanced" features to keep the average Joe happy. 

 

Each to their own.

 

As we are finding out some commercial routes have some back doors in them when stuff is sent to certain ports. So that is one reason why people use this over the firmware that comes with their router.

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PPTP is a botched mess in Win 8.1. I have paid for a year of Private Internet Access and after the 8.1 update it is entirely unusable. I've tried OpenVPN, PPTP & L2TP for their service, nothing works! IPVanish installs perfectly and connects via L2TP. It is slower and disconnects frequently, failing to reconnect. Every forum says it's a Windows 8.1 issue so I am buying a router with DD-WRT to connect to my VPN and that should solve my issues. Any users using this for VPN? Having an encrypted VPN just makes good sence and is a preventitive measure.

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"Having an encrypted VPN just makes good sence and is a preventitive measure."

Sorry but don't agree, sure if your on a wifi hotspot like the airport or starbucks... But from your home internet connection, your hiding your traffic from your ISP and just giving it to some 3rd party vpn provider? What is the difference?

Other than hiding traffic your isp has said is no no, like p2p with copyrighted material, or changing your exit IP to circumvent regional blocks I really see no reason to run a vpn service from your home isp connection 24/7.

I just vpn back to my home connection when away and on possible hostile wifi network to my home network.

While I agree that the feature set, stability and just plain support from the community for 3rd party firmware vs native is reason enough to use them. I would never suggest to anyone to buy a router that does not have 3rd party support - just in case you want to try it. Having vpn support for outbound connections is not really one of the reasons I would suggest you use it. Now the inbound yeah that is great. This allows you to access your home network resources secure vs say rdp open to the public net or the web ui of your nas, etc.

BTW - PPTP is a botched mess for years, it has been deprecated for years. Why it is even an option in 8.1 is beyond me - nobody should be using it.

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Unless you live in a country that's got draconian internet filters I wouldn't bother with a VPN, kills latency which is quite important.

I investigated doing it when our government decided it was going to block everything that wasn't safe for kids, but like their plan, it went nowhere.

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While a gov blocking internet is bad I agree - change the freaking gov is a better long term solution than using vpn ;)

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I personally much prefer Tomato over DD-WRT, but both are pretty big improvements over any standard firmware.

 

Tomato is extremely fast and light, DD-WRT contains tons of features and if I'm not mistaken you can install even more.

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