DD-WRT for those with flaky routers
 

or routers that aren't flaky, and you want to juice them up..

i'm not sure if this is the right forum.. please move the post if not!

google search DD-WRT and read about it.. I installed a "standard" build of it into my WRT310N router and played with the nat settings (set my connections to 4096 and set time out to 90 seconds, from defaults of 512 and 3600 seconds), this means my router won't "die" on me anymore after having lots of people connect.

the DD WRT build supports alot of different routers now. you can do some neat stuff like changing the amout of power being pumped into the wireless signal

An off-topic conversation for sure.

DD-WRT has been around for quite a long time now and is an excellent firmware hack for many routers. I don't use it since I want a bit faster response time for various tasks but you can grab the new $30 Asus router and have a field day with it. It does brick routers easily though.

I used the DD-WRT firmware for 3 different WRT54G linksys routers and it was nice however I never experienced a 'noticeable' difference between stock linksys firmware. I hope anyone else that tries it has better luck.

I used it for awhile. Ended up switching to Tomato firmware and haven't looked back.

Too bad it doesn't support the compact version of the linksys routers (which I have) :(

IMO, the real time network traffic graphs alone make DD-WRT worthwhile. I hear great stuff about Tomato as well, but haven't tried it yet. The first time I tried DD-WRT a year or so ago, it was causing some weird issues with DHCP refresh from my ISP that would essentially break my internet connection until the router was power-cycled. I recently replaced my old Linksys WRT54G with I think the GS model that has much more memory (16MBs), and loaded DD-WRT on it. Since then, I haven't had a single issue related to the firmware. It works great and the advanced routing options and QoS are great if you have use for them. Being able to increase the Max Ports that the router can use is really nice. Seeing how many active connections are being used and what IPs are using them is good. The automatic logging is good as well. And, I like that you can add as many port range forwards as you want. I don't think most of this stuff exists in the default Linksys firmware. I am sure Tomato probably has all of these features as well.

The new Linksys firmware is actually really nice, and most people probably wouldn't have much need to make the switch to another brand of firmware like this. But, for the people who do have a need, there are some really nice options out there. Also, in reply to the statement about it being easy to brick a router with DD-WRT, that may have been true in the past, but it isn't nearly as true now. I am sure it is still possible to do, but they have quite a bit of ways to get out of major mess-ups. I missed a step in the install the first time, and thought I had hosed the whole thing, but luckily there was a fairly simple backout plan with quite a few options in case any of the steps failed. It all depends on the model of router you are using, but even with what might seem like a bricked router, many of them can support sending firmware via FTP or other ways even if the current firmware on the router is hosed up.

There is also a compact (micro) version of DD-WRT that does support most Linksys routers with low memory. I wouldn't personally recommend it though, because that is the version that I had DHCP issues with in the past. I think the Micro version is basically the same thing with some of the fat trimmed, but I can't say for sure if they just fixed the DHCP issue for all versions, or if it was something that the full version was able to resolve for me.

LifeHacker did a couple of posts not too long ago going over the cool stuff in both DD-WRT [ Article ] and Tomato [ Article ].

Well, I just went out and bought a new dlink router and it has all of the options the DD-WRT added to my old WRT54G so I am happy. I also had that issue with the router dropping its ip that the modem issued to it. It comes with the territory of using the newer linksys routers. They put less memory in them (if my memory serves me correctly) because of dd-wrt and tomato.

Yeah. I'm not sure if there's any truth to the matter, but... When Cisco bought Linksys, this is when they started releasing models with less memory. Some suggested that Linksys was cutting into Cisco's higher end router sales. By decreasing the available ram on the Linksys routers, opensource firmware had to trim features, thus adding value back to the higher end routers.

Of course there was outrage, so Cisco now makes another Linksys router with more memory (search Amazon for 'Linksys-Cisco WRT54GL Wireless-G Broadband Router (Compatible with Linux)'). But you're going to pay a bit more for it vs the routers with less memory.