third party firmwares

[dukeofurl]

I'm a little behind the times, and thinking of getting a WRT54GL, and would immediately update it to a third party firmware (e.g. DD-WRT or Tomato, etc), but I'm looking for some kind of comparison to show which one is best, hopefully for WIRED (since that's what I use most), but also for wireless.

Anybody know something like that or similar?

thanks

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Victek Tomato worked well for me whle I had one.

 

[dukeofurl]

I have an existing router that has DD-WRT on it, and it seems to work well, but I read somewhere that it has lost it's edge, that Tomato is now better.

 

[somms]

I have an existing router that has DD-WRT on it, and it seems to work well, but I read somewhere that it has lost it's edge, that Tomato is now better.

I can agree with this. I was a long time DD-WRT build user with OpenVPN support and now have switched over to Shibby's Tomato which really outshines current DD-WRT builds. ASUS RT-N66U runs Tomato flawlessly for me whereas DD-WRT still offers no solid OpenVPN support for this router!

 

[dukeofurl]

Hmm. I don't have any experience with Tomato, but I guess I will soon. I'm looking forward to the VPN support, that's something that I've wanted for a while but didn't have all the hardware.

 

[dukeofurl]

how does the VPN support in Tomato work? Do you set up a dynamic DNS thing first, and then VPN to that name?

 

[occamsrazor]

I second Shibby's build of the Tomato firmware, it's the best Tomato version so far in my opinion.
I wouldn't bother getting a WRT54GL. It's getting rather old now. I'd buy a current model that is well supported by third party firmwares. Personally I have the Linksys E3000 and am very happy with it.

 

[somms]

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/31743-bye-bye-40-mhz-mode-in-24-ghz-part-1

Another plus w/third-party firmware, you can force 40MHz bandwidth mode whereas stock firmware wants to default down to 20MHz! Not to mention that I can select to operate on ALL avail channels, not just the few (usually congested) wireless channels via stock!

 

[dukeofurl]

I saw somewhere that the WRT54GL has 8 MB of flash ram, where the other models only have 4. I think I would want the 8.