alternative router firmware.

[Berserk87]

I've been considering flashing my router with alternative firmware such as dd-wrt or tomato.

why? boredom.

I know you usually get a bit better stability and you can increase the power output a bit, but are there any huge advantages? or is there some other firmware thats better than dd-wrt or tomato?

[mistical]

What router do you have? Because not all routers are compatible with Tomato, especially 99.9% of N devices. Though with TomatoUSB (a mod of Tomato) there are some N compatible routers.

In my opinion, a lot of others tend to agree too, Tomato is a lot better than DD-WRT if your router is supported. It has been over 2 years since I've been able to use it since my router doesn't support it and it's more than likely never going to be. So I use DD-WRT instead, which I'd say is the 2nd best alternative firmware out there.

You'll also find that DD-WRT will support a huge range of routers as well as not extremely limited like the Tomato firmware, it is also a much bigger project and so forth too without going into more detail.

There are many advantages to running alternative firmware, there is really no disadvantage that comes to mind. I put DD-WRT (or Tomato) on all routers I setup for friends/family and if someone refers me to help someone to do theirs.

You gain a lot of features compared to stock firmware, as well as a more updated firmware as a lot of stock firmware is rarely even updated and sometimes has a lot of issues as it is. As you pointed out, you can increase the power output, among many other settings too, not all of which you actually need to change but could if needed too.

There are more alternatives to DD-WRT and Tomato, such as OpenWRT, I've personally never played with it, DD-WRT is the big guy here but Tomato is just as well known too.

[HawkMan]

  On 10/12/2010 at 04:13, Berserk87 said:

I've been considering flashing my router with alternative firmware such as dd-wrt or tomato.

why? boredom.

I know you usually get a bit better stability and you can increase the power output a bit, but are there any huge advantages? or is there some other firmware thats better than dd-wrt or tomato?

From your choices I would assume you're having a WRT54G something. and I would suggest going with tomato. Tomato is awesome, and it has the best damn QoS ever, I was able to set it up to download P2P data at max speed of the line, while still playing games and skyping with no lag at all.

As awesome as DD-WRT is, it's QoS setup sucks, and it doesn't work very well, and routers with far faster hardware, enabling QoS just slows the network down instead of doing what it's supposed to. If I could I would run Tomato on my WRT610Nv2, it was just a much better made firmware but, and more stable to. I'd also say tomato beats standard firmware and you should definitely switch to either of them if you have the technical knowledge and want a bit more out of your network in terms of control.

[.bin]

Can you tell us what kind of router you have? I don't want to give a recommendation if your router isn't supported.

[DexMorgan]

I'm using OpenWRT because you can install additional software for it - some torrent client, irc bnc, php server etc (not sure if tomato or dd-wrt offers that).

[Astra.Xtreme]

I just put TomatoUSB on my Asus router and it made it about 100x more stable. It no longer disconnects randomly which that router seems to be burdened with.

I had DD-WRT on my Linksys router, but it wasn't the greatest in terms of stability. Like some of the others have said, go with a flavor of Tomato if you can.

[shockz]

Using tomato on my Netgear WNR3500L N router.

Loving it, and far superior to the stock firmware in features and stability.

[offroadaaron]

  On 12/12/2010 at 09:56, HawkMan said:

From your choices I would assume you're having a WRT54G something. and I would suggest going with tomato. Tomato is awesome, and it has the best damn QoS ever, I was able to set it up to download P2P data at max speed of the line, while still playing games and skyping with no lag at all.

This really doesn't make any sense, maxing out the line and not having any lag on skype or in games just isn't possible, if you're maxing out your bandwidth then packets are going to take longer, no QoS can fix that!

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

As others have said Tomato / DDWRT is far superior to the stock firmware on the majority of routers, the firmware is actually updated too.

Some of the features i use on Tomato that the stock firmware on my Linksys / Asus router didn't offer are:

• Bandwidth logs
  
• Dynamic Dns Update
  
• Static DHCP
  
• Upnp (that actually works as it should)
  
• Qos
  
• Access restrictions
  
• SSH Server
  
• VPN Server
  

  On 12/12/2010 at 10:18, Blasius said:

Using tomato on my Netgear WNR3500L N router.

Loving it, and far superior to the stock firmware in features and stability.

Is that a custom skin? It looks great.

I'm on version 1.28 (the usb mod version) and the web ui just looks the same as always:

[shockz]

  On 12/12/2010 at 10:43, InsaneNutter said:

Is that a custom skin? It looks great.

I run a custom build, so I'm not sure, but I was able to change the skin via Administration > Color Scheme pull down > USB Blue

[Berserk87]

I have a dlink 615, and I ended up flashing dd-wrt a couple hours after posting this after realizing tomato dosn't support my router.

Now that my router has real QoS, I've set my 360 as express priority.

[HawkMan]

  On 12/12/2010 at 10:39, offroadaaron said:

This really doesn't make any sense, maxing out the line and not having any lag on skype or in games just isn't possible, if you're maxing out your bandwidth then packets are going to take longer, no QoS can fix that!

Not really since incoming packets are pretty much never the problem, what causes lag is the router gettingclogged up in the out stream by the P2P apps. and QoS fixes that, QoS doesn't do anything (usefull) to the down stream.

[offroadaaron]

  On 13/12/2010 at 08:30, HawkMan said:

Not really since incoming packets are pretty much never the problem

Are you being 100% serious?

  On 13/12/2010 at 08:30, HawkMan said:

what causes lag is the router gettingclogged up in the out stream by the P2P apps. and QoS fixes that, QoS doesn't do anything (usefull) to the down stream.

Why don't you just try the following:

Max out the downstream and you try pinging something before the download and during and then make your conclusion.

Yes you do have control of your upstream I'll agree on that and you can try and push certain packets/protocols through before others to make things quicker but your downstream if maxed out will still make the connection laggy and if it doesn't then you're not maxing out your connection.

[HawkMan]

  On 13/12/2010 at 14:23, offroadaaron said:

Are you being 100% serious?

Why don't you just try the following:

Max out the downstream and you try pinging something before the download and during and then make your conclusion.

Yes you do have control of your upstream I'll agree on that and you can try and push certain packets/protocols through before others to make things quicker but your downstream if maxed out will still make the connection laggy and if it doesn't then you're not maxing out your connection.

What part of "I have done this, and it worked wonderfully and i have EXPERIENCE that this works" this you NOT understand ?

what did you think I meant by saying I did it anyway, that I was making things up ?

an dno mostly it is the upstream that clogs your connection, the downstream handles itself very well, the problem is that the upstream is a lot smaller and easily gets clogged in the router when you have p2p running. and the upstream is needed even to receive packets. so by properly configuring the upstream and put the P2P in bulk and gaming, VoIP and other important bits in the highest priority, you can manage to fully utilize your donw bandwidth, while at the same time game online lag free.

If you don't believe me, get a WRT54GL that supports tomato and set up a proper QoS on it, and see for yourself. as I said, I miss the QoS fro my WRT54 greatly, and my far superior 610N despite faster CPU and more memory and faster networks just isn't able to handle the traffic nearly as well as the 54 with Tomato and a beautifull QoS setup.

[spudtrooper]

I dropped dd-wrt and went with Tomato on my Linksys e2k and i am VERY happy with performance/features/functionality. Tomato USB is pure win. DD-WRT seems like the developers hit the wall and don't really care to work on the project (can't blame them) - Tomato USB is more public development/open which in the end is a good thing - not relying on Brainslayer or Eko for all your fixes :)

I have 3 e2ks running WDS mesh to deliver 80211n to both floors of my house as well as to my office which is above the detached garage. Stable & fast.

[HawkMan]

Oh cool, I didn't know there was a new/separate build of tomato called tomato USB, and I see it supports my WRT610Nv2....

I'm coming home, finally stability and speed will be back, finally I can make use of the faster hardware instead of having it clogged up in the unstable messy slow crap that is DD-WRT which only saving grace is that it offers from feature default firmware don't.

[Travelar]

I ran DD-WRT for years, until I discovered Tomato. I'm a huge fan of Tomato, but would go back to DD-WRT if Tomato wasn't an option.

Tomato run a bit faster and has a number of features not available in the stock firmware. This makes it worthwhile for me.

[Jen Smith]

Definitely a fan of the Tomato firmware myself (Buffalo WHR-HP-G54) Much much better than the stock firmware. Fast, very flexible, and rock solid reliable. Mine has an uptime for a few months now, have never had to reset it, no wifi dropouts, nothing. I especially love the QoS system, I can prioritize "regular" web traffic and online gaming over P2P traffic, etc etc. Can also adjust the antenna power as well; my router is in the basement and I used to have a few dead spots on the 2nd floor, not any more. Overall throughput performance seems better as well over the stock firmware, even with heavy traffic the unit's CPU doesn't break a sweat, think the highest it's gotten was about 5% CPU usage.