2013 Q1 firmware round-up/comparison please

[Ozpa]

Hello everyone!

I've just ordered and payed for my RT-N66U, hopefully arriving this work week. I would like to ask if anyone could make a comparison of all available and most viable firmwares for this router. From what I've read there's Tomato, DD-WRT and the official one from Asus.

My network is really small (2-3 PCs at home) but with heavy P2P usage at times. My old Linksys WRT54G 7.2 barely copes with all the traffic (although after compromising on the settings it works... kind of) so I decided to go all out and just invest in a future-proof router. WiFi speed isn't that important as those who will be using it will mostly just do browsing/youtube and rare&small file downloads. What I really need is a strong QoS that would let me play online games without a big hit on my ping/delay while hammering the connection in the background at 80-90% of my max speeds.

Thank you in advance and can't wait to get my new toy delivered this week

 

[KevTech]

Tomato has the best QoS from what I have seen.

 

[Ozpa]

Oh, one more thing. Can you simply change firmwares from/to each other freely? From official to Tomato, from Tomato to DD-WRT, from DD-WRT to whatver, from whatever to etc. etc.

 

[burtal]

yes, you can change the fw as you please, but you should read before doing it as every fw has its quirks upon installing.
any way my advice is , in case that your router comes with old CFE bootloader to update it. follow the steps here http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=8259

ddwrt is not quite ready from what i have read, did not tried it yet but here are some reference
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Asus_RT-N66U

Note that this fist page is not always updated and you should search the threads for the latest info.....but you have some time to research until your new toy arrives

 

[joegreat]

From what I've read there's Tomato, DD-WRT and the official one from Asus.

Hi,

You overlooked the most important FW for your new router: Asuswrt-Merlin!

As the name says: It's near to ASUSwrt, but has significant addons/updates as described on the Asuswrt-Merlin Wiki.

I would not recommend DD-WRT (although I am coming from DD-WRT on my Netgear router) as it's too early (beta) stadium to be used in productive environments.

So you choices are
- Asuswrt (the basic choice coming from the vendor, with some weaknesses)
- Asuswrt-Merlin (the better Asuswrt - without the weaknesses and with some nice add-ons)
- Tomato (the original source for Asuswrt , with some new and very interesting features, but not fully inline with Asuswrt anymore)
- DD-WRT (if you are patient - and crazy - enough to install again, and again and to wait for stabilization).

As you can see from my footer: I recommend strongly Asuswrt-Merlin!

With kind regards
Josip

 

[Ozpa]

yes, you can change the fw as you please, but you should read before doing it as every fw has its quirks upon installing.
any way my advice is , in case that your router comes with old CFE bootloader to update it. follow the steps here http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=8259

ddwrt is not quite ready from what i have read, did not tried it yet but here are some reference
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Asus_RT-N66U

Note that this fist page is not always updated and you should search the threads for the latest info.....but you have some time to research until your new toy arrives

Oh thanks man, I've read their forums and from what I hear the 'best' DD-WRT versions are the modded ones called 'Fractal' and 'Kong'.

 

[Ozpa]

Hi,

You overlooked the most important FW for your new router: Asuswrt-Merlin!

As the name says: It's near to ASUSwrt, but has significant addons/updates as described on the Asuswrt-Merlin Wiki.

I would not recommend DD-WRT (although I am coming from DD-WRT on my Netgear router) as it's too early (beta) stadium to be used in productive environments.

So you choices are
- Asuswrt (the basic choice coming from the vendor, with some weaknesses)
- Asuswrt-Merlin (the better Asuswrt - without the weaknesses and with some nice add-ons)
- Tomato (the original source for Asuswrt , with some new and very interesting features, but not fully inline with Asuswrt anymore)
- DD-WRT (if you are patient - and crazy - enough to install again, and again and to wait for stabilization).

As you can see from my footer: I recommend strongly Asuswrt-Merlin!

With kind regards
Josip

Thanks a lot, very appreciated. One question on the Asuswrt-Merlin - is the newest version = best? Or is there an established/older 'best' version I should get specifically?

 

[got_milk]

Thanks a lot, very appreciated. One question on the Asuswrt-Merlin - is the newest version = best? Or is there an established/older 'best' version I should get specifically?

RMerlin is very good at making sure his releases are ready for public consumption so I would definitely suggest using the newest version available. Keep in mind though that QoS is no different from standard Asuswrt (which isn't really all that good in comparison to what Tomato offers you) - but that'll be up to you to see what works for you, as Tomato's QoS is much more complicated to configure.

 

[joegreat]

One question on the Asuswrt-Merlin - is the newest version = best? Or is there an established/older 'best' version I should get specifically?

Hi,

Yep, always go for the newest Merlin version - unless there are issues in Asus Original Firmware, which may effect you - but this will be discussed in the newest Merlin Firmware Thread.

One of this (few) issues was/is the Xbox WLAN problem, which seams to be worse in the latest Firmware version. But in the next one Asus did some fixing around it, and we will see...

With kind regards
Joe