DD-WRT: As good as it sounds?


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^ While I agree with you - its like talking Lamborghini's when someone is asking about what smartcar to buy ;)

Someone asking for a 5 port dumb switch, and you suggest a cisco 7k nexus ;)

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^ While I agree with you - its like talking Lamborghini's when someone is asking about what smartcar to buy ;)

Someone asking for a 5 port dumb switch, and you suggest a cisco 7k nexus ;)

 

dunno, in some cases id say the router is the Lamborghini while pfsense is more like a tractor, it can be used for everything, but not necessarily the most practical or fastest.

 

Like in the thread about connection monitoring, you showed how your pfsense operated connection got very high ping when you saturated your connection. On quality routers running tomato I've saturated both up and downstream without effect on latency, and have been able to simultaneously play games that require low ping. Heck even an old wrt54 with tomato is awesome as long as you don't require higher internet speeds.

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"On quality routers running tomato I've saturated both up and downstream without effect on latency,"

To where, I can saturate my pipe and ping times to my router are the same.. Sounds like you don't understand how tcp works. Sorry this is basic tcp and nothing to do with the router in use. Sorry if you FILL UP YOUR PIPE!! packets have to wait in line! If you want to do QoS sure you can manipulate the line..

So show me your pings to something on the internet staying the same while you fill up your download pipe.

So here is me pinging my isp gateway IP, And then downloading something that FILLS my pipe.. Connection I pay for is 50/10, as you can see 6.9MBps is a bit over the 50 I pay for 6.9 x 8 = about 55mbps

post-14624-0-18842100-1404593794.png

So lets see this magic router fix how tcp works ;) Now if I want to setup QOS and say icmp has higher priority than my download then sure I can keep that low. ICMP is a background protocol... If you setup qos to put icmp at higher priority than your download your doing it wrong ;)

Here I am downloading and the pipe is not full and have low ping times still.

post-14624-0-23769500-1404594838.png

Only so many packets can go down the pipe a second.. If its FULL, pings get slow - this is just how it works sorry doesn't matter what router you are using. This going to happen on $10K cisco router, or a $20 soho..

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The point is that tomato has quality QoS system that is extremely efficient.

 

I always set up downloads to a low priority be they p2p or large file transfers over regular web protocols, allowing me to saturate the line while still prioritizing small http requests and loads as well as gaming and VoIP.

 

Unfortunately I don't currently run tomato as they haven't released proper WiFi drivers for the rt-n66u for the open firmwares yet. So when I ran tomato on it, instead of 4/5 bars in every corner of my house, half the house I don't get any signal. I plan to try a new version  when I can disable internet for a while to test and see if they have new drivers yet.

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"The point is that tomato has quality QoS system that is extremely efficient."

That is not what you stated sorry..

I don't have to setup qos to function, pfsense has a very robust qos system or bandwidth limited if needed - way more features when it comes to qos than tomato - sorry! I personally don't have need of it, even when my pipe is full I can still surf fine - takes a couple of seconds maybe longer to bring up a page, etc But when your downloading at almost 7MBs per second - your only talking at most a ocuple of minutes of possible slower resolution of a website anyway.

I am a big fan of dd-wrt and tomato and openwrt as another - they are great products. And running on very limited hardware they are great at what they are designed too do, and that is make the most out of some decent hardware at low prices. But that is not what the makers of these devices want - they want to sell you the next one next year. They don't optimize their code, they don't fix stuff.. They sell their products to millions of users, and then move on to next model 6 months later. And your lucky if something ever gets fixed on last years model, they never add features to last years models, etc.

Sure you can put a better engine and tires on the smartcar - its still just a smart car. Not something anyone that actually wanted to network or firewall or lots of other things would actually run if they wanted to run a network. It's great for a typical home user, and the 3rd party actually allows you to use that hardware to potential.

But its not even close to a firewall distro like pfsense, ipcop, m0n0wall, smoothwall, etc. But that is not what the OP is asking about - so its really off topic.

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Yeah how old is that router? Look at the change log

http://support.asus.com/Download.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=RT-N66U+(VER.B1)&p=11&s=2

First 2013.09.11 update

Last 2014.06.27 update

Lets see how many updates you get when the next model rolls out. Hmmm lets take a look at a slightly older model, the RT-N13U

http://support.asus.com/Download.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=RT-N13U+(VER.B1)&p=11&s=2

last 2012.11.19 update

First 2011.06.23 update

What is that a bit over a year ;) Where are its security updates and new features? for example that came out for the newer versions??

Now fairly impressed that the 15U that first updates in 2012, has an update in 2014 -- notice "2. Patched IPv6 user interface from Merlin's build."

Give your shiny new model a year, maybe a year and half when the new line comes out they pretty much forget all about last years model. Lets see how many new features or fixes happen ;)

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Recent Asus routers run the Asuswrt firmware. It is a unified firwmare with the same code base for all of their supported routers. This allows updates for one device to easily be applied to all supported devices. Asus moved some of their older routers to this firmware, which is why they are still getting updates.

 

Switching to third party firmware can decrease the performance of your router. If your router lacks in features, stability, security, etc then third party firmware becomes a good option.

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dd-wrt ran great on my old linksys routers (WRT54G and WRN300 IIRC), but I recently tried a Netgear (WNDR4500) which wasn't fully supported, beta firmwares - and when they say that its true. 100Mbit cap WAN connection and didn't handle VLANs like it was supposed to. I tried a few different coders builds I found on their FTP site and all were buggy, like having to reset the router and wait 2 min for bootup every time you make a config change. Good thing the restore to stock option worked.

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Here I corrected this for you ;)

"Switching to third party firmware can decrease  increase the performance of your router. If your router lacks in features, stability, security, etc then third party firmware becomes a good option."

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Here I corrected this for you ;)

"Switching to third party firmware can decrease  increase the performance of your router. If your router lacks in features, stability, security, etc then third party firmware becomes a good option."

Networking performance increases from third party firmware are very rare because wireless drivers are closed source and the third party firmware generally has to resuse the same binary from the orginal firmware.

 

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/31164-lots-more-features-lots-less-performance-netgear-wnr3500l-with-dd-wrt-reviewed

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performance is not always about the wireless connection rate.. Or what 1 client sees -- but if you look at those numbers the numbers are higher for the dd-wrt at the 2 close locations,..  And great benchmarks - 2 power settings, when one of the big things with the dd-wrt firmware is the ability to set the power output.  While the native allows you to what?  But there is a huge range between 71 and 251 to tweak the settings.

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"On quality routers running tomato I've saturated both up and downstream without effect on latency,"

To where, I can saturate my pipe and ping times to my router are the same.. Sounds like you don't understand how tcp works. Sorry this is basic tcp and nothing to do with the router in use. Sorry if you FILL UP YOUR PIPE!! packets have to wait in line! If you want to do QoS sure you can manipulate the line..

So show me your pings to something on the internet staying the same while you fill up your download pipe.

So here is me pinging my isp gateway IP, And then downloading something that FILLS my pipe.. Connection I pay for is 50/10, as you can see 6.9MBps is a bit over the 50 I pay for 6.9 x 8 = about 55mbps

attachicon.gifpingtimes.png

So lets see this magic router fix how tcp works ;) Now if I want to setup QOS and say icmp has higher priority than my download then sure I can keep that low. ICMP is a background protocol... If you setup qos to put icmp at higher priority than your download your doing it wrong ;)

Here I am downloading and the pipe is not full and have low ping times still.

attachicon.gifpipenotfull.png

Only so many packets can go down the pipe a second.. If its FULL, pings get slow - this is just how it works sorry doesn't matter what router you are using. This going to happen on $10K cisco router, or a $20 soho..

 

Perhaps he was exaggerating slighty when he said he could max his pipe 'without effect on latency'. I have never enabled QoS on my Tomato flashed router and when I saturate my downstream (120Mbit <=> 15MB/s) it has a small affect on latency and no affect on web browsing for me or anyone else on the network.

 

post-121192-0-79850200-1404860514.jpg

 

post-121192-0-85408900-1404860521.jpg

 

I agree with you that third party firmware doesn't defy networking principles however for me it is far more efficient than the clunky, mediocre Belkin stock firmware which my router came with where I couldn't reach the router config menu until I hit the kill switch on my pipe busting downloads.

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  • 3 months later...

I would go with OpenWRT compatible device

Most routers that are compatible with DD-WRT are also compatible with OpenWRT - the issue is more in terms of what backend features you need/want as to which is more suitable for your needs.

 

However, oddly enough, my need for either DD-WRT or OpenWRT was obviated by both ISP changes and a router upgrade.

 

The ISP change (Comcast) is their adoption of IPv6 companywide (not just for their residential customers, but their entire backend as well).

 

The router change was swapping out my Netgear WNR3500v1 for the WNDR3700v4 - which supports IPv6 and DHCPv6 out of the box.

 

Result - the smart TVs (two currently) have the 5 GHz N band to themselves (for streaming and Internet usage), while common wireless uses either G or 2.4 GHz N.

 

Wired connections are gigabit as long as the ports at the hardware (non-router end) are.  (All ports - LAN and WAN - are gigabit at the router end.)

 

I'm using one older router as a extender/switch between the Netgear and my Tivo Premiere (the Premiere has a mere 100 mbps connection) until I can find a proper AP that will work with the Netgear

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I would go with OpenWRT compatible device

 

My ISP provided me with an OpenWRT powered multimodem after the old one died in lightning this summer... its horrible, and buggy, can't enable UPnP, due to firmware bugs. And the whole firmware in general is a mess to navigate and set up. And it can't even be set up as a plain bridge in all that complexity.

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DD-WRT is ok....pfsense though is as good as it sounds.

 

I'm not sure how you turn the letters of pfsense into a quality measure, but anyway, that like comparing apples and raw ingredients for a full dinner, bring your own cooker.

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To your openwrt issues hawkman, what version is on it? Do they have it locked where you can not update the firmware? or add packages? It is some version of they created for their device? What is the actual hardware it is on? Putting 3rd party firmware devices that have modem functions is very tricky business and you don't see much support for this.

What is a multimodem? ;) A Gateway? - modem and router in one device? Yeah they always suck ;) From the ISP even more likely to blow chunks..

I think what he was trying to say with "pfsense is as good as it sounds" is that it works, and does what it says it does, etc. It has its own little issues, especially if your running on the current development version vs stable.

Its not really the raw ingredients like something http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ would be.. You can install it to pretty much anything that runs freebsd, be it appliance type device, old PC/Server hardware or even VM, etc. They even do now sell ready to rock hardware with pfsense on it already. http://store.pfsense.org/appliances/

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What is a multimodem? ;) A Gateway? - modem and router in one device? Yeah they always suck ;) From the ISP even more likely to blow chunks..

 

 

On kind of a side note, this unit is what Brighthouse is using for their 90Mbit and up product, it's actually pretty good, and has a decent UI that is customer accessable. Reminds me of the DLink/Asus products with N900/Dual Band Wifi. http://www.arrisi.com/products/product.asp?id=687

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DD-WRT drove me nuts when I tried it out, went to pfSense and haven't looked back... DD-WRT I had way too many hardware issues due to bad driver support for wifi cards or broad com / atheros chips

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To your openwrt issues hawkman, what version is on it? Do they have it locked where you can not update the firmware? or add packages? It is some version of they created for their device? What is the actual hardware it is on? Putting 3rd party firmware devices that have modem functions is very tricky business and you don't see much support for this.

What is a multimodem? ;) A Gateway? - modem and router in one device? Yeah they always suck ;) From the ISP even more likely to blow chunks..

I think what he was trying to say with "pfsense is as good as it sounds" is that it works, and does what it says it does, etc. It has its own little issues, especially if your running on the current development version vs stable.

Its not really the raw ingredients like something http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ would be.. You can install it to pretty much anything that runs freebsd, be it appliance type device, old PC/Server hardware or even VM, etc. They even do now sell ready to rock hardware with pfsense on it already. http://store.pfsense.org/appliances/

 

Powered by LuCI Trunk (inteno-1.0.56) OpenWrt Attitude Adjustment 12.09.1 And Engineered By Inteno.

 

And actually, the hardware on this 301 is pretty damn good, but the outdated OpenWRT (I gave them a link describing the UPnP bug and how they can fix it with a command, they instead said they wanted to bridge it, could and... well).  it used to be open, then at some point they lowed admin services, didn't help if I reset either, meh, oversize id have fixed the UPnP issue melt, they also locked down dns so it ignores the dns servers I set.. gah. Super annoying since I use unblock-us dns and it doesn't play well with my Asus black knights in double nat. Probably since UPnP doesn't work and you can't set DMZ on it... so while it works I get ###### speed and issues with latency and drops.

 

With my black knights as only APs it works great, outside of the dns and UPnP issues and port forwarding is annoying and takes a long time to actually activate.

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I'm using DD-WRT on a NetGear WNDR3700 v2 router, my goal in loading that was a bridge for some other devices in another room. It exposes a ton of options and capabilities, but it can be a real pain to configure at times. It takes time to learn the options and to research what they actually do because the documentation can be rather limited.

 

Last night I got the router configured and working, then a few hours later it wasn't anymore. Instead of pulling an IP from my primary router (NetGear R6250 w/ stock firmware) it started using an IP of 1.1.1.1 and nothing was hitting the internet anymore.

 

It's cool to see what your router is capable of, but it appears it can be incredibly fickle at times.

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