Ask Slashdot: Best Flash-Friendly Router To Replace Aging WRT54GS?

New submitter Juggler00 writes "I have been running DD-WRT (v24-sp2) on my Linksys WRT54GS for a couple of years now. I'm now finding that the box cannot keep up with the requests/requirements I have for it--it simply does not have the MIPS/horsepower. I am turning to the collective wisdom of the Slashdot community for 2 things: what alternative firmware should I be using (DD-WRT, Tomato, OpenWRT, or something else?) and based on the answer to this question, what is the suggested router to purchase to flash? My software requirements include DynDNS client, DHCP server providing option 66, static IP assignment based on MAC, port forwarding, and basic QoS (bittorrent lowest priority). For hardware, I'm looking for GigE ports and 802.11N (5.8GHz not a requirement)."

Comments

Jedi?

[mx b]

DHCP server providing option 66

What did the Jedi ever do to your DHCP server? That seems a bit harsh.

Re:Jedi?

[Baloroth]

If this has anything to do with those stupid prequels, then this is a bad joke

Why? You can make jokes based on bad movies, especially the Star Wars prequels. Just about all they're good for.

Re:Jedi?

[Grishnakh]

You can make jokes about how bad the movies are, but you can't make jokes requiring deep knowledge of the movies themselves. Making in-jokes requiring deep knowledge of a movie is only done when you can rightfully assume the crowd you're talking to is a fan of the movie, and has seen it many times and would be very familiar with it. So in this forum, a joke involving the lines "You will never find a greater hive of scum and villainy", or "Game over man! Game over!" should go over well, because it's probably safe to assume that most people here have seen A New Hope and Aliens many times. But Making a joke around geeks/nerds involving trivia from a star wars prequel is a lot like making a joke around that same crowd involving trivia from Battlefield: Earth, as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Jedi?

[KarrdeSW]

Strange that I've modded so many posts and yet never heard of this rule. I'll be sure to take your recommendations under consideration. Would you mind writing a memo to all mods regarding this new joke-making process? Be sure to cc the rest of Slashdot.

Re:Jedi?

[thisnamestoolong]

What Star Wars prequels?

Re:Jedi?

[ericloewe]

Ignorance is sometimes a gift.

Re:Jedi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Natalie..
oh wait, this thread isnt natalie vs keira vs scarlett,
it was about hackable routers...
doh!

Re:Jedi?

[Skarecrow77]

So, if I'm following you correctly, because you think the movies were bad, that means that no jokes requiring knowledge of them should ever be made, on the assumption that because you dislike them, nobody else liked them either, and thus nobody is familiar with them?

The Prequels, for whatever opinions you may hold of their quality, SOLD TICKETS. They are among the highest grossing films of all time. Hell, Episode 1 and Episode 3 (the one which the joke in question references) both outgrossed the originals.

People saw these movies.

Your analogy falls flat on it's face right there. Battlefield earth grossed $29m worldwide. Episode 3 Grossed $848m worldwide.

Re:Jedi?

[cyberchondriac]

Eh, I really don't get the prequel bashing thing. Were the originals truly all that, in comparison? I was in in high school when the original Star Wars came out, and have a sentimental attachment to it, but in retrospect, those movies are old now and their flaws more obvious.
Have you watched the original three lately? They're not much better in comparison - except maybe episode IV. "Return of the Jedi" should have been named "Muppets in Space". The opening scenes of Jabba's lair were really silly, like muppets gone wild. Granted, Jar Jar was really annoying, but no more silly really than those short fat teddy bears on Endor, and their victory over the occupying stormtroopers just flew in the face of all credibility . (I know they're called Ewoks, but they looked like children and dwarves in really bad suits to me - which is exactly what they were).
I think, if anything, what ailed the prequels is that their plots got bogged down in dialog and complex politics; they weren't the same happy-go-lucky simple shoot-em-ups that the original three were.

Re:Jedi?

[tqk]

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Order_66
I find your lack of internet search disturbing

I nominate this for "most boring internet search EVAR!"

Fneh.

How many threads like this?

[GameboyRMH]

This is at least the second, if not the third Ask Slashdot on this subject in the last few months.

I'll make the same recommendation as before: Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH.

Re:How many threads like this?

[GameboyRMH]

Also, on firmware: OpenWRT if you want to do something really fancy or unusual, DD-WRT if you just want a feature/reliability improvement.

Re:How many threads like this?

[JBMcB]

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo //off-topic, but relevant

Re:How many threads like this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll make the same recommendation as before: Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH.

I would no longer make that recommendation. Buffalo has silently started shipping WZR-HP-G300NH2 (version 2) models in the old WZR-HP-G300NH boxes. The G300NH2 models have a different Atheros wireless chip which does not work fine under DD-WRT, and hence with its own custom Buffalo firmware. The end result is constant wireless drop outs (BSSID is broadcasting, client shows as connected, but packets go into la-la land). I have tried two different G300NH2 routers and both have the same issue. Buffalo forum is filled with posts about this issue, and what makes it worse, is that Buffalo U.S.A Tech support has no knowledge of this router (version 2) existing, and say that product is only supported in ASIA. DD-WRT firmwares also can't be flashed into this router as it will brick them.

Disclaimer: I too have a WRT54G(L) router that needs replacement and have already began researching. Going to try Cisco Small Business WRVS4400N-RF due to the number of features it seems to have.

Re:How many threads like this?

[GameboyRMH]

The N variant has swappable antennas (which the NH doesn't) but no gigabit LAN (which the NH does).

Re:How many threads like this?

[GameboyRMH]

Good point, OpenWRT is adding support, you can build a prerelease version for it right now. I see people in the DD-WRT forums saying they've flashed their v2s but I can't find a binary for it.

Re:How many threads like this?

[drainbramage]

Well, I wasn't buffaloed.
Forgot about that.
Nice breakdown here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/13120

Re:How many threads like this?

[VGPowerlord]

I'm glad I bought mine a year ago, then... even if it did take me some time to figure out why my wireless network would randomly shut off.

Apparently the router will shut off its wireless antennas if it determines another router on a different network is broadcasting on the same channel... and the neighbors were *just* close enough and conditions would be *just* right for that to happen every few days.

Re:How many threads like this?

[skids]

Seconded. Bought one for home. Liked it so much, I had work buy one for a terminal server (via USB hub/dongles.) Running OpenWRT. DHCP, iptables, tc, iproute2, ipset, freeradius, strongswan, perl, all available as precompiled packages. Minus getting oriented on the hardware and with a bit of the config file layout, was easy to configure to do everything my old laptop-based router did, while drawing 1/5th the power and making no noise whatsoever.

Re:How many threads like this?

[GameboyRMH]

Another great feature is the plain 12v power input...what a convenient voltage for running on batteries!

Re:How many threads like this?

[Martin Blank]

DD-WRT if you just want a feature/reliability improvement.

I don't know about that. At least from the view of official builds, DD-WRT has stagnated. The last official release was more than three years ago and the last pre-SP2 release was more than two years ago.

Even the unofficial builds aren't much of an improvement to me. I was using a couple of different builds to get IPv6 functionality and while it worked, I had problems with odd setting resets or services just stopping for no clear reason. Ultimately, I decided to just go with a new DLink router because it provided the functionality that I wanted and pretty much Just Worked. No messing with scripts, no tinkering with poorly-documented settings. It just worked like it was supposed to. (Well, mostly. There's an issue where .11n connectivity breaks, but .11g still works, but that's far less irritating as there's an effective fallback that works.)

I understand the desire to have control over the firmware, as I ran OpenWRT or DD-WRT for several years. I'm also not averse to installing things of questionable stability, as I use Fedora for most of my Linux stations. I enjoyed what I was doing for a while and I learned some things on how the services worked, but it became more of a distraction where I was spending time fixing issues instead of learning other things.

Re:How many threads like this?

[Xyverz]

I have the WRVS4400N-RF ... and my experience is very very mixed with this device. I have to reboot it at least once a month, and configuring it via the web interface isn't as easy as using Cisco IOS' CLI. It also only does 2.4ghz N, so if you want the 5ghz speeds, you'll need either a seperate AP or router running in AP mode. (I actually have a WRT610N in AP mode for my 5ghz needs.)

Just my 2c worth.

Deja Vu

[dmesg0]

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/09/19/0315258/ask-slashdot-good-gigabit-80211n-home-router

Buffalo

[zbobet2012]

The buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH meets all of these requirements and ships with DD-WRT. However, as the last, very recent thread mentioned DD-WRT is not well maintained anymore. Your best bets are either TomatoUSB or straightforward OpenWRT. I prefer openwrt because it allows simple configuration of hardware taged vlans.

Re:Buffalo

[nschubach]

I just put Tomato on my v1.0 WRT54G router and it breathed new life into it. I had previously been running DDWRT. I'm not sure if the submitter can do "option 66" with Tomato but it has everything else.

Re:Buffalo

[Lucky75]

I recommend Gargoyle Firmware. It's based on OpenWRT.

Netgear WNDR-3700

[Microlith]

Or its newer variants. Loaded with OpenWRT, there's nothing you can't do with them. Newer variants have even more flash and RAM.

Re:Netgear WNDR-3700

[noahm]

Seconded. I've got WNDR3700 and I love it. I'm running a custom build of OpenWRT that has all the following built in to the squashfs image:

• ISC DHCPD
• ISC bind9, including slaving some authoritative zones from my master
• racoon for ipsec
• xinetd running munin-lite for metric graphing
• radvd for IPv6 router advertizement

It's really pretty impressive what you can pack in this thing. Note that I save a bunch of space by not including the web interface at all.

Re:Netgear WNDR-3700

[blair1q]

But if you get the WNDR-4000, first thing you do is update the firmware. The one I got kept toggling the wireless on and off until it snagged a patch. Pretty sure it will phone home the first time you plug it in, but check manually to see.

I don't know about other models, but this one has gotten some bad customer reviews, and NetGear are proactively responding and trying to get those reviewers to update their comments now that things are working cleaner.

Of course, if your goal is to go open-source, none of this is really a problem for you. It's a nice piece of hardware.

Re:Netgear WNDR-3700

[manaway]

Or its newer variants. Loaded with OpenWRT, there's nothing you can't do with them. Newer variants have even more flash and RAM.

Except (some of?) the newer variants, particularly the Netgear WNDR-3700 version 3 with the Broadcom chipset, do not run OpenWRT. Yet.

Look at TomatoUSB

[PhrostyMcByte]

I've been a long-time DD-WRT user, but its development seemed to stagnate. I recently put TomatoUSB on my Linksys WRT160N v1, and it is working wonderfully. The interface is much nicer, and exposes more QoS and bandwidth management features which I've found useful. Check out the TomatoUSB website for a list of routers it supports.

Re:Look at TomatoUSB

[Elbart]

tomatousb.org isn't the only place, where progress is being made. http://www.linksysinfo.org/ is another one.

ASUS RT-16N / DD-WRT

[jipis]

I recently put an RT-16N in service in my office running DD-WRT. As the the Internet sez, the stock firmwire is crap, but this thing flies while running DD-WRT.

Re:ASUS RT-16N / DD-WRT

[blackC0pter]

3rd for this router. I'm using this as a router + qos + asterisk box for the in-laws. I set them up to have all IP phones connecting to this router and then the router registering with vitelity for phone service. Great setup and saves them a lot of money compared to the bells. The router has 128MB of ram and 32MB of flash so it is one of the most powerful and has the most space for adding stuff than most other routers. I also setup a vpn connection to my house and some custom routing so I can directly access their internal subnet from my computers and diagnose if necessary.

Router is flashed with tomato and then loaded with Optware in order to install asterisk and other addons. Here are some steps to get this done. One side item, the guide for optware has you install it on an external USB drive. But I installed it directly on the /jffs partition so you don't need to add a usb drive. The router has plenty of space to add data to it so I just used this. Also, if you want to do any custom linux commands in tomato, the root os doesn't preserve state after reboot. So be sure to put all the commands you want run in the web gui under administration->scripts. Custom routing commands will need to go there since tomato is limited in the custom routing you can do with the gui (no interface routing? bah)
--Install tomato: http://tomatousb.org/tut:installing-on-asus-rt-n16
--Install optware: http://tomatousb.org/tut:optware-installation

Re:ASUS RT-16N / DD-WRT

[MoFoQ]

u mean the RT-N16?

I have several of them (using DD-WRT and one I use to experiment with debwrt [derivative of openwrt]).
And I just got another one during the Newegg Black Friday sale.

Just went through this myself

[G]

I finally landed on the Netgear WNDR3700-v2, a nice dual-band atheros box. Got two of them for wireless bridging.

So far I've flashed DD-WRT and OpenWRT without any trouble at all. Though I've historically used WW-DRT and Tomato I'm still torn on which will be permanent. Tomato isn't an option with these due to them not being Broadcom based. I'm leaning strongly to OpenWRT as it seems to be the most mature and flexible of the two.

Asus makes a good one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I have become a fan of the Asus RT-N16. VERY fast, TONS of RAM, USB ports for expansion, runs TomatoUSB and DD-WRT. These have been dead on reliable so far (I have one personally, and we use 4 for remote offices at work). The only negative I can say is that the LED's are extremely bright. You won't need a night-light in your living room with one of these, that's for sure.

I prefer hardware that's designed to be flashed

[matty619]

Like an Alix Board and run pfSense on it, with the available packages, there are likely few network related tasks you'll find that pfSense 2.0 on Alix hardware cannot handle. You can also put in whatever wireless card you want, but I prefer to run a dedicated AP. Used Cisco Aironets can be found on Ebay for under $100 and are rock solid.

eBay

[acoustix]

Just go to eBay and buy some used enterprise equipment dirt cheap. Cisco 2600 (2611 or 2621) or 2800 series routers will do what you want and have the horse power and code base for your needs. There are some good bargains to be had.

I guess they probably won't support DynDNS, but everything else should be covered.

Linksys E3000

[chis101]

I've been very happy with TomatoUSB on the E3000. Only $60 refurb, or $70 new from NewEgg ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124419 ). Simultaneous 2.4/5GHZ g/n, USB port for NAS/Printer, 64MB RAM, gigabit switch. Only has 8MB flash though, if you were planning on storing lots of programs on it (you would want to put those on a USB flash drive anyway, so I don't think internal flash really matters)

RT-N16 also runs Tomato

[LanMan04]

This is what I run at home, and it works awesome (although I use Tomato).

Also supports sharing an NTFS or NFS drive to the network via a USB2.0 port.

This subject has been beaten to death

[funkboy]

1: go read smallnetbuilder and decide for yourself.

2: Mikrotik probably has something you'd be happy with for not a lot of money.

pfSense + WRT54GS

[iMouse]

You could always set the WRT54GS as a wireless bridge and use pfSense 2.0 on the backend for all of the firewall, DHCP, QoS, RADIUS, etc.

You won't be upgrading to 802.11n support or GigE on the wireless end, but you could certainly use an old PC with GigE NICs in pfSense on the backend.

I currently have an old Dell Dimension 2400 configured with pfsense 2.0 and two WRT54G v.2.2 APs with Tomato in bridged mode and have no performance complaints (other than maybe the 54Mbps limitation of the actual AP)

netgear n600 (wndr3800)

[Oo.et.oO]

is still top of the charts in most regards at smallnetbuilder at reasonable price point and open-firmware compatible

n750 is a bit faster but way more $$. now someone find me one with good external antenna connectors!

Re:netgear n600 (wndr3800)

[loxosceles]

wndr3700 or 3800.

They are atheros based, so there's the issue of occasional wireless drop-outs that may be fixed in openwrt snapshots (check svn changelog for late November '11), but that's a lot better than the wndr4500 and other broadcom SOC devices that are proprietary and difficult to reverse engineer.

Also, the wndr3700 is hard to brick, and easy to tftp to. There are similar atheros-based devices like the buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh (2.4GHz-only) and ag300nh (2.4 + 5 GHz), but they're harder to flash and maybe have quality control problems on transmit power (some people complain).

Re:netgear n600 (wndr3800)

[loxosceles]

Oops, the dual band buffalo is wzr-hp-ag300h, not -nh.

Atheros:
Netgear wndr3700v1: 8MB flash, 64MB ram
Netgear wndr3700v2: 16MB flash, 64MB ram
Netgear wndr3800: 16MB flash, 128MB ram
Buffalo wzr-hp-g300nh: 32MB flash, 64MB ram (more chance of a lemon than the netgear wndr series)
Buffalo wzr-hp-ag300h: 32MB flash, 128MB ram

Broadcom
Netgear wndr4000: 8MB flash 64MB ram (BCM4718 ?)
Netgear wndr4500: 128MB flash 128MB ram (BCM4706 ?)
Linksys/Cisco e3000: 8MB flash 64MB ram (BCM4718 ?)
Linksys/Cisco e4200: 16MB flash 64MB ram (BCM4718 ?)

The ciscos from what I've read are very picky about nvram size.

Tp-link Wr1043nd

[s4nt]

Meets all requirements from the OP.
runs openwrt and dd-wrt
4x gigE
wireless N (no 5GHZ tough)
USB port
CPU Atheros AR9132@400MHz
RAM 32MB
FLASH 8MB

http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?model=TL-WR1043ND

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr1043nd

Re:Use a PC

[schnikies79]

and spend 10x as much for electricity to it. No thanks.

Apple Airport Extreme

[Wingsy]

I've used several routers in the recent past, and every single one of them would bog down to around 100-300kbps when I had a couple hundred peers connected in a torrent. Then I got an Apple Airport Extreme and now I get my full bandwidth of 15mbps with the same load. That sold me.

Re:Apple Airport Extreme

[MikeDataLink]

I second this. I have 50/50 Fios and tried every stupid Linksys, Dlink, Buffalo and other router you could find and they all wound up crashing constantly under a load.

I finally got an Apple Airport Extreme and I can use my full 50mb with zero crashes. IT JUST WORKS. That's Apple for you.

Re:Apple Airport Extreme

[brianerst]

I have an Airport Extreme (Generation 3) which is supposed to have Gigabit ethernet ports but they never worked - they always connected at 100mbps. I tried everything I could think of - updated firmware, changed network card, changed to Cat6 cable to no avail.

I just got Comcast Digital Voice service which comes with a required SMC cable modem with a built Gigabit router. Plugged it in and gigabit ethernet suddenly worked - it was literally plug and play.

(I have a big Cisco gigabit switch in the basement, so everything else was running at gigabit speeds, but anything going thru the Airport router was 100mbps.)

There are literally dozens of complaints on the Apple support forums about this sort of thing and they are never resolved, so I'm less impressed with the Extreme.

Re:MIPS/horsepower?

[tomherbst]

The only thing done in hardware is generally the LAN switching. All bridging to/from WIFI and all traffic to/from the Internet (WAN port) is via a software path. The technology exists so it could be done in hardware, it just isn't necessary because the software path is fast enough.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

If you have some old hardware...

[sco_robinso]

If you have an old PC sitting around, why not use one of the excellent software-based routers out there? pfsense is one of the most popular (given it's BSD based), there's also IPCop, ClarkCounty, etc. There's even some free commercial options like Astaro, who's home-license only limits you to 50 internal IPs (plenty for most people, even by today's standards).

I use Astaro, and used to use pfsense. You get all of the features of a high end enterprise router, basically for free. The only obvious limitation is no built-in wireless, so you just hang an AP off an interface. Astaro offers their software as a VM appliance as well, so then you virtualize it if you so chose (as I do on ESXi 5).

I've used DD-WRT quite a bit, and I'd still personally prefer Astaro or pfsense.

While we're on the subject - ADSL?

[jimicus]

Can someone explain why ADSL (and for that matter PPPoA) support in F/OSS firmware tends to be so patchy?

Flash

[Dan East]

What did the Jedi ever do to your DHCP server? That seems a bit harsh.

Furthermore, everyone knows Flash is on the way out. I'd skip the Flash-Friendly routers and go straight to an HTML5-Friendly router.

DreamPlug

[nickovs]

While it's a bit more targeted at the "server" market rather than "router" market, the DreamPlug does all that you want. It has dual gigabit ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n, a 1.2GHz ARM processor (with a decent crypto co-processor that can handle full duplex gigabit VPN encryption), USB2 and eSATA ports for adding discs, an external SD card port and 4GB of flash inside for the FS. It even has both analogue and SP/DIF audio out in case you want to stream music into your server cupboard. It's very low power too (typically about 10 watts).

Routerboard

[weegiekev]

I've used Mikrotik Routerboards for years and have been very happy with them. They're very flexible, relatively cheap, and I've not had any issues with reliability. I don't think they run anything like DD-WRT, but their supplied OS is very powerful. Has ssh login for admin and a Cisco IOS like interface.

The following RB435G should fit your needs:

3 x GigE ports
3 x miniPCI slots for wireless (R52nM for 802.11n)
DynDNS Updates: [Yes]
DHCP Sever with Option 66: [Yes]
Static IP based on MAC: [Yes]
Port forwarding: [Yes]
QoS support: [Yes]