What is Digg?127 Comments
- TheLiberator, on 10/12/2007, -7/+209Also popular is DD-WRT, but it may be too feature rich for some who seek only simplicity.
http://dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/index.php - RuffRidr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+38Agreed. DD-WRT is very cool, and also very powerful. I've got it running on a Buffalo router and it has been rock solid for months. Turned my $50 router into a $500 router with all of the new features.
- eleven, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33Yep DD-WRT is the way to go if you're looking for the best possible router you can buy without laying down huge cash.
- christopherw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18From the Tomato site:
--quote--
Is Tomato based on Linksys' source code?
Yes. It uses the Linux kernel and most of the utilities provided in Linksys' WRT54GL source code as a starting point. Besides the visible GUI change, a lot of the code inside has also undergone extensive changes to add new features, fix problems, optimize and reduce the size.
--endquote--
Linksys' original firmware was released to the public as it was GPLed. So, I'd expect that all of these firmwares, OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato et al are all GPLed too. Which is nice. - vexter, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20Reading or googling before posting saves us from your ignorance.
- cbreaker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12It's been generally accepted that boosting signals doesn't really help all that much in most circumstances. If you go too high, you end up flooding the channel and get poor performance. And, it doesn't help anything for the data coming back from the computer.
The benefits of boosting the output power in most circumstances are tentative at best. - brasso, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12You don't need any drivers for any wireless router at all so it shouldn’t make any difference, it’s your network card that need drivers.
- jackmaninov, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Tomato uses a lot of AJAX and the result is very nice to use. You get things like automatically updating graphs and charts drawn with SVG (including a 2 second updating real-time chart).
The mechanism to edit QoS rules is very nicely implemented; as a first time QoS user I found it had good defaults and was easy to modify. You even get charts of your outbound bandwidth distribution by QoS priority.
Definitely worth a try; you'll never want to use another firmware after Tomato (provided you don't need some super advanced functionality that it may not have). - JohnyD, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11@ mrfatalistic
I bought a WRT54G only to discover that v6 is a different router entirely. It took several phone call attempts to Linkysys tech support in the Phillipines but in the end I was able to convince them that my business depended on bittorrent (I have no bussiness). Because the v6 router caches all connections for like... 48 hours or some such crap and bittorrent is connection abound I was able to send them my v6 and they sent me a v4. Unfortunaly the v4 they sent me was non-functional... and then after spending more time on the phone they sent me a replacement... which turned out to be another v6..... SO... to sum it up it took *months* to get my working v4 which now runs like a tank with DD-WRT.
Moral of the story: if you bought a v6 you CAN get it replaced with an earlier version. ;) You CANNOT take no for an answer because that is what they will tell you over and over. Send me a private message if you need more info. - BobTurtle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Grevvvvvv, you've sold me. I mean, there's no arguing with your sound logical reasoning on this issue.
- unabonger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Agreed... DD-WRT is fantastic, but this does have a nice bandwidth monitor which DD-WRT doesnt have (or at least which ever version it is that I'm running)
- sirloin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12i like dd-wrt it is cool.. the mult ssid option is really cool
the betas are a bit buggy and i lose wifi a lot.(to be expected it is beta)
But i use my wifi for an open hotspot.. let neighbors login.. it redicrets them to my homepage, where they agree to my terms and surf away.. you can do this very easily in dd-wrt.. you can do it easier in coovaAP.. i just wish coovaap supported multiple ssids without me messing with the code.(i keep screwin it up) coovaAP also has a nice software repository.. install only what you want or need.
anyway tomatoe is really nice looking, dd-wrt has everything, i use coovaAP.. and thank god linksys screwed up and went open source and had to open their firmware - brasso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I have been running tomato on my wrt54gs since one of the earliest beta versions was released, and I must say that this is the best firmware currently available and have been for some time, and yes, I have been running both hyperwrt, dd-wrt, openwrt and x-wrt earlier. They are all good, but tomato is the best in my opinion.
- G0dzzilla, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Torrents will crash DD-WRT if you don't know what you are doing. If you change your maximum connections and the timeouts for it, you will be up for months.
And Tomato does not have a VPN support like DD-WRT ... It's beautiful to get access to your network from work without having to have a PC running. - ozziegt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Can you elaborate why? I am really interesting in trying this over DD-WRT
- noisebleed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9@JohnyD: were the hours you spent yelling at Filipino call center people worth the $15 extra you could have spent on the GL (the one that has the same specs as the earlier models) in the first place?
- Terc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I particularly like this:
From their FAQ
"I found this script... Do I need to use it to get around the connections limit, the "5 day timeout," etc.?
Unless it's specifically for Tomato, probably not. The popular one floating around with several "echo xxx > xxx" lines is for an older version of HyperWRT and not necessary in Tomato.
The default maximum connections in Tomato is 2048. The default established timeout value (the infamous "5 day" value) is 4 hours. You can change these values in Advanced/Conntrack if you like."
Someone finally did it, built in a fix and way to manage the timeout. THANKS! - GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8How's the BitTorrent performance? Does it routinely shut ports that have too much bandwith, like my current firmware? I cannot leave a damn listening port the same for more then a half hour.
- brasso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I have been running heavy bittorrent traffic without rebooting either my router or computer for 14 days now, so yes, it works very well thank you. ;)
The best thing however is the excellent QoS feature keep other activates than bittorrent responsive even when both my upload and download is pretty much all sucked up. - Terc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8If a vpn client was built in, or made optional, I'd change from my 2.5 year long (and 2 year uptime) Hyperwrt + Thibor install, that interface is great, and I'm looking for an option other than openwrt for a vpn solution.
- ericnmu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Apart from the hundreds of tiny improvements that add up, the big difference is QoS.
- ericnmu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9How is it superior? I have thousands of connections open on my WRT54GL, and it is flawless. I've had over 70+ days uptime, before I had to unplug it to move it.
I can't think of one thing my my tomato router doesn't do that I want it to do.
And the power consumption is a pretty big deal. I'd rather spend extra powering a HTPC than a router. - ericnmu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8http://www.bitsum.com/openwiking/owbase/ow.asp?WRT54G5%5FCFE
http://www.scorpiontek.org/portal/content/view/27/36
google - luchid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Arghhhh can't install this on a v.5 WRT54G. Ughhh i hate you Linksys for crippling your products!
BTW: Does anyone know of an alternative firmwarefor v.5? The latest official one -although an improvement- is seriously lacking. - gregh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Your problem is not too much bandwidth, but the limit of maximum connections (512) and the timeout associated with them (5 days) on the default linksys firmware. Any recent aftermarket firmware will allow you to change these values. On tomato, the maximum connection limit is 2048, and on dd-wrt the max is 4096. I keep my dd-wrt router set to 4096 and 120 seconds. It has been stable without loss of service for over 3 months.
- jackmaninov, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Updating to a custom firmware will solve all your problems with high numbers of connections. Tomato will even show you how many connections are being tracked and you can tweak the time-out settings for them.
- brasso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Mostly because it’s very fast, stable and have a superior QoS function. The GUI is very nice too, but that’s just a bonus.
I have played around with DD-WRT as well, but after a few weeks of tweaking and flashing new versions I got feed up with the all the bugs, reboots and sluggish performance so I changed back to thibors hyperwrt and it worked fine. x-wrt is also a nice alternative, but it’s not as mature as tomato yet and the QoS isn't as good.
Of course this is only my experience, since quite a few people run DD-WRT I guess it works well for them, but it sure wasn’t good enough for me. - brasso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5gregh: Tomatoes upper limit is 10240 connections, 2048 is just the default value.
- jono181, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I've tried all the replacement firmwares for the WRT54G series out there and this is by far the most superior.
- frofro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I think it has the best interface out of all custom firmware I've tried. It's very easy to use without sacrificing customization. With regards to performance and reliability, I've had no problems with it.
- cgruber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'm running this on my home network. It's very lightweight and stable firmware. I run my WRT54G as a layer 2 extension (meaning it's doesn't do NAT) to my Fortigate 60. I get much better performance by not putting the NAT load on the WRT54G and letting my Fortigate do the packet mangling.
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Most people don't need 70% of that stuff, and all it does is create instability for them.
- Ub3rg33k, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8The big question is : can you boost wireless power output with Tomato as you can with DD-WRT? I've skimmed over the site and don't see it mentioned.
Edit : nevermind, it does. Had to go hunting to figure that one out though. If I were the guys working on Tomato, that would be the first feature I had listed (bolded and highlighted). - akilleen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Actually I just upgraded to Tomato from the default Linksys firmware, and all my settings stayed the same except for my forwarded ports.
- cbreaker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5For VPN, I use OpenVPN on DD-WRT. You need a 4MB device to use it, though - the newer ones are only 2MB. You can find 54G compatible units with 4MB from a handful of vendors, including Motorola.
OpenVPN works, it's secure with certificate based security, and it's pretty quick, too. I make site-to-site VPN connections with other DD-WRT's and I use it for my own VPN from on the road.
Note that with any VPN system the encryption can take a considerable amount of CPU time. My Motorola unit isn't fast enough to really handle a lot of VPN traffic all at once but it's pretty good none the less. The later model (v3) linksys units have a faster CPU that is more overclockable then my Motorola. - sk545, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Tomato_Firmware#Features
- brendanc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4There is a mini dd-wrt firmware I believe, but your best bet is probably getting the WRT54GL which uses the old specs for ram/flash sizes. That will allow you to run any firmware you want.
- vexter, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6If you want to build your own wireless router then check out pfsense or m0n0wall.. These allow you to insert a compatable(only) wireless network card and create your own wireless network. You can have separate public and private wireless networks. DMZ zones. Authentication. TONS of features. And the biggest plus is obscurity. Its not near as popular as the DDwrt setup. Their are some unfixed exploits for DDWRT floating around if you know were to look.
- Brutis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I run tomato currently for the past 2 months and its been solid, although wireless is iffy for some reason, my wii doesnt like it
- ericnmu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Yes, you will loose your current settings. You're replacing (not upgrading) the firmware, there is no way to save your previous firmware settings, though you can back them up in case you decide to revert back.
- malice8691, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I bought my wrt54g about 6 months ago. At the time when I was researching firmware Openwrt was the fastest one and was built for performance. That is what I have been using and it works great.
- cbreaker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I have a Motorola WR850G running DD-WRT for about a year now. I use it as a VPN concentrator, wireless access point, and general NAT router with custom iptabels rules.
I have heavily used Bittorrent through it - I have a 15Mbit/2Mbit connection from Cox communications. With the link completely saturated with Bittorrent, utilizing the full 15Mbit with sometimes as many as 1000 connections and VPN traffic, the router's CPU utilization is around 90% (the Motorola's CPU isn't as fast as many of the Linksys units) and I've never once had the unit crash.
So, maybe your particular model has a hardware problem, or isn't completely compatible. Who knows. But, it works fine on my little tiny Motorola box I paid $30 for, and has for a year. Only time it's rebooted is when I lose power. - koick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Wha? Come on dude. All free!:
OS X: http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html
Win+Linux: http://www.7-zip.org/download.html - EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The micro builds of DD-WRT now support the WRT54G v5. http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices
- hsafeer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I switched over to Tomato , before that i was using DD-WRT /HyperWRT/ And basic .. I found Tomato to be the best, very slick interface and good use of SVG / Kind of like a next gen web interface for Linksys Routers
- flygirl62, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Sorry, but I can't resist asking. If you don't have a PC running at home, what on your network do you access?
- perry753, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Visit DD-WRT forums and wiki... p2p problems are a COMMON problem and very easy to fix.
gl - thescorpion420, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4wow its amazing how far my humble little website reaches, lol
- silphium, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The near real-time graphics are more than just eye candy. You can click on a slice of the pie chart (representing a QoS service class's % of traffic) and Tomato will list the corresponding IP's and ports. It's more than just a new interface on HyperWRT's QoS. Performance is slightly faster than either HyperWRT or DD-WRT when using QoS.
- B-o-K, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well, when I installed DD-WRT it needed to reboot multiple times for too many minor changes... Tomato does not - mine's up since the last release more than a month ago.
Pirate2Pirate and Torrent-files are no problem at all, though I give them the lowest priority using QOS.
And don't forget: the whole web-interface is a breeze!
So keep hitting the search-engines to find my very tiny review of this firmware way back in September! Also dugg then ;-) -
Show 51 - 100 of 122 discussions
Digg is coming to a city (and computer) near you! Check out all the details on our 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is