Lets get a good debate going between the 2 most popular firmware mods for these routers.
Pros?
Cons?
Crazy things you have done with these firmware versions?
*ding ding*
Discussion about
DDWRT or Tomato
I originally posted my comments on this reply thread about DD-WRT, which I was using and was very happy with at the time. I had not tried Tomato.
I recently re-installed my operating system. It had been hammering away for about 4 or 5 years and the system was really getting slow and starting to get weird stuff happening. One of my biggest beefs was that the streaming videos were very bad. Stop and go kind of bad.
I re-installed Windows and the system is running along at a great clip. However I was disappointed to find that my streaming videos were still not very streamie. Greatly improved, but just about every video still had pauses in it.
My attention turned to the router, I had read some comments on the web from people who mentioned streaming problems with DD-WRT, and pretty much ignored them thinking they probably mis-configured something.
I figured I'd risk it and flashed my WRT54G ver.2 with Tomato 1.25. I am impressed!! Videos pausing mid-stream are now mostly non-existent. I have two wired PC's and a wireless netbook, Xbox360 (wireless), and a Blackberry with wi-fi, all routing through this and its like there is no load on this router!
Last night I had Last.FM running on the Xbox360 (streaming audio), my wife was on her PC playing World of Warcraft, I was running a NetFlix movie on my PC and doing random stuff on the netbook and it all worked. It just simply worked - this was not possible with my prior setup.
I had put off trying Tomato because I was afraid to lose out on features I might be using on DD-WRT. But as it turned out the only thing I was really using was assigning static IP's, assigning lists of allowed IP's, QOS, increasing transmit power on the router, and port forwarding. All that is available in Tomato anyway.
So, bottom line, while a lot of my perceived improvements may be due to re-installing the operating system. And its also possible, but I don't think so, that I misconfigured something in DD-WRT. All I know for sure is that the switch to Tomato was a great factor in improved network performance. For the time being I wouldn't even consider going back to DD-WRT unless I had a very urgent need for one of its more exotic functions. The easy setup and no frills approach that Tomato uses, really makes it rock!
I've installed Wallwatcher on the PC to monitor the router logs, and signed up for mynetwatchmen.com to contribute attack reports. I now feel much more secure and content about my firewall.
I recently re-installed my operating system. It had been hammering away for about 4 or 5 years and the system was really getting slow and starting to get weird stuff happening. One of my biggest beefs was that the streaming videos were very bad. Stop and go kind of bad.
I re-installed Windows and the system is running along at a great clip. However I was disappointed to find that my streaming videos were still not very streamie. Greatly improved, but just about every video still had pauses in it.
My attention turned to the router, I had read some comments on the web from people who mentioned streaming problems with DD-WRT, and pretty much ignored them thinking they probably mis-configured something.
I figured I'd risk it and flashed my WRT54G ver.2 with Tomato 1.25. I am impressed!! Videos pausing mid-stream are now mostly non-existent. I have two wired PC's and a wireless netbook, Xbox360 (wireless), and a Blackberry with wi-fi, all routing through this and its like there is no load on this router!
Last night I had Last.FM running on the Xbox360 (streaming audio), my wife was on her PC playing World of Warcraft, I was running a NetFlix movie on my PC and doing random stuff on the netbook and it all worked. It just simply worked - this was not possible with my prior setup.
I had put off trying Tomato because I was afraid to lose out on features I might be using on DD-WRT. But as it turned out the only thing I was really using was assigning static IP's, assigning lists of allowed IP's, QOS, increasing transmit power on the router, and port forwarding. All that is available in Tomato anyway.
So, bottom line, while a lot of my perceived improvements may be due to re-installing the operating system. And its also possible, but I don't think so, that I misconfigured something in DD-WRT. All I know for sure is that the switch to Tomato was a great factor in improved network performance. For the time being I wouldn't even consider going back to DD-WRT unless I had a very urgent need for one of its more exotic functions. The easy setup and no frills approach that Tomato uses, really makes it rock!
I've installed Wallwatcher on the PC to monitor the router logs, and signed up for mynetwatchmen.com to contribute attack reports. I now feel much more secure and content about my firewall.
I use Tomato here. I have only had one issue in the past two years, with the DNS server, but I'm not sure if that was the firmware's fault.
I use the WRT54GL, by the way.
I use the WRT54GL, by the way.
I'm a fan of Tomato; I've had a few hiccups when changing settings, but over all it's stable and quite useful.
I like Tomato over DDWRT for 2 reasons. I had a lot of trouble getting wireless networking configured on DDWRT and I didn't like the information that DDWRT shows on the main screen when you access the router (192.168.1.1). It seemed like it was telling people too much about my network. I have V1.1 of the router.
From what I've heard, tomato is more user-friendly while containing most of the important features that dd-wrt offers. The main draw back of tomato is the limited number of routers it is available for, dd-wrt has a much larger compatibility list.
However, tomato supports some of the most popular routers, like Linksys' WRT54GL and Buffalo's WHR-HP-G54, which makes up somewhat for the limited selection.
However, tomato supports some of the most popular routers, like Linksys' WRT54GL and Buffalo's WHR-HP-G54, which makes up somewhat for the limited selection.
I'd really like to see photos of that.
What do you use it for?
I had an airport express on a road trip installed in my car to play tunes to my head deck from my laptop. I also used my iPod touch or iPhone to control iTunes running on my macbook.
What do you use it for?
I had an airport express on a road trip installed in my car to play tunes to my head deck from my laptop. I also used my iPod touch or iPhone to control iTunes running on my macbook.
Ha! I was just about to post the same thing. I use mine as a repeater, to boost those weak signals into my Local Denny's where I hang out. Instead of doing all my Social Media stuff from home, I throw the laptop in the car and get out where the people are!
My setup is truly ghetto. I have an inverter that plugs into the cig lighter, and I plug my massive wall wart into that and set the thing on the dashboard. :)
While I'm on the subject, I suspect there's a lot of waste in this system. Anyone know how easy it would be to knock together a cable to get 12v straight from the lighter and into the WRT54G? I've done some half-assed searches for something like this and turned up nothing.
My setup is truly ghetto. I have an inverter that plugs into the cig lighter, and I plug my massive wall wart into that and set the thing on the dashboard. :)
While I'm on the subject, I suspect there's a lot of waste in this system. Anyone know how easy it would be to knock together a cable to get 12v straight from the lighter and into the WRT54G? I've done some half-assed searches for something like this and turned up nothing.
I used to use DD-WRT a good bit for both personal and work related use, but to me, the more recent versions of DD-WRT seem buggier and less stable. Because of this, I have switched to Tomato at my house and have been very happy with it.
The answer is simple, for a better performing router that is basically just like the stock router go with tomato..
If you need features that DD-WRT offers that are not offered on tomato go with DD-WRT
I have used both extensively on a ton of different routers and have had great results always with Tomato, DD-WRT has its ups and downs but most of that is /was due to the nature of the beast and or various builds of the firmware.. Tomato has a much more limited list of compatible hardware, but tends to run far faster/better on the supported hardware.
If you need features that DD-WRT offers that are not offered on tomato go with DD-WRT
I have used both extensively on a ton of different routers and have had great results always with Tomato, DD-WRT has its ups and downs but most of that is /was due to the nature of the beast and or various builds of the firmware.. Tomato has a much more limited list of compatible hardware, but tends to run far faster/better on the supported hardware.
I had DD-WRT on my WRT54GL, but after the an upgrade in February to get bandwidth monitoring, I started seeing weird issues like Youtube vids not playing longer than 30 seconds, among other strange things. I flashed to Tomato and haven't looked back. All my weird problems cleared up and everything is running beautifully.
Same here.
DDWRT is very stable.
still running 24/7 after 1 year and three months
DDWRT is very stable.
still running 24/7 after 1 year and three months
I did the same on my old WRT54GL, Tomato is just prettier and seems to run better.
I have been dissapointed with DD-WRT lately. The v24 Pre-SP2 builds are hit or miss which is annoying if you're sharing the router with non-geeky family or friends.
I now have a WRT310N so no Tomato for me :-(
I have been dissapointed with DD-WRT lately. The v24 Pre-SP2 builds are hit or miss which is annoying if you're sharing the router with non-geeky family or friends.
I now have a WRT310N so no Tomato for me :-(
Using DD-WRT and its rock solid, we have been deploying these at work to create a permanent VPN tunnel to the office of home users using DD-WRT, Tomato just couldnt meet our needs.
I cant say one is better than the other really though, its a situational and needs based preference IMO, If you need less features, and are a less advanced user, or simply have no desire to mess with settings, use Tomato. If you want something with more features and supporting a wider range of hardware, grab DD-WRT
I cant say one is better than the other really though, its a situational and needs based preference IMO, If you need less features, and are a less advanced user, or simply have no desire to mess with settings, use Tomato. If you want something with more features and supporting a wider range of hardware, grab DD-WRT
I use tomato. I am a computer networking major, and I believe that tomato, despite being less customizable than DDWRT is a better choice for a big reason. I felt that the GUI in DDWRT was just information overload for me. Too much information on each of the pages, and the GUI felt clunky, and very utilitarian.
Tomato here. Been running it for ages. I like its feature set and it gets it done with no fuss. Once set up, it has been truly set it and forget it. (WRT54G v2 btw)
does anyone know why you can't install tomato on a netgear router? their page doesn't mention that brand at all. :(
Stability, and lots of features. I'm pretty sure that bridging and WDS aren't supported in the official firmware. There's detailed logging, so you can track how much bandwidth you're using, and Tomato has some slick real-time usage graphs features. There are plenty of other features as well, many of which are really only useful for enterprise-type usage.
With the enhanced features, you have a $50 device that does things you otherwise have to spend hundreds of dollars to do. Even if you never use any of those features, you still get the peace of mind that your router will be rock solid and never need to reboot (unlike many other consumer-grade routers).
With the enhanced features, you have a $50 device that does things you otherwise have to spend hundreds of dollars to do. Even if you never use any of those features, you still get the peace of mind that your router will be rock solid and never need to reboot (unlike many other consumer-grade routers).
I've been using DD-WRT on a WRT54G v8 for the past couple of weeks and I'm not finding it to be very stable. It constantly needs to be reset every day or two.
This data is stored in the RAM, volatile memory. This means that when your router reboots, that data is lost. There are however ways to get past this issue (save to flash mem, save to remote location, backup the data in .gz at flash/reboot, then restore.
In other words, I suspect your router to reboot every couple of days so the data is lost.
In other words, I suspect your router to reboot every couple of days so the data is lost.
You were right - I found where it Tomato tells it to save the log info in RAM. Based on other things I've read, I think the RAM fills up and flushes rather than reboots every few days. How do I save this info on my PC? It allows to save the history, but it's expecting a server location/share, not a directory on my PC (that is always on).
I had DD-WRT and I lost a lot of bandwidth mysteriously. Like 16mb/s down from 30mb/s. Switched to Tomato and the problem was fixed. Really like the simplicity and bandwidth monitoring, and admin features like IP and MAC blocking. Makes having an unlocked router in the city somewhat entertaining in an evil way. Tomato for the win
Tomato saved my life, the default Linksys Firmware crashed my Connection every single day and I had to reset my SBS 2003 server for internet and Push, since I installed tomato No more problems ... still working like hell after 7 months
Not sure about the CPU overclock, but Tomato does let you change teh xmit power.
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