Spotlight on Open Source Router Platforms - Thoughts?

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• FlyingPenguin - Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - link

  In order to get adequate coverage I have three WRT54G routers in my home running DD-WRT. One is the main gateway and the other two are access points only.
  
  I have used a lot of consumer grade routers over the years myself and on client installs and found them all to be unreliable in the long term. I'd have performance issues and lockups requiring occasional reboots of the routers. Ever since switching to DD-WRT, my home routers have been ROCK stable. They have been running continuously for years without reboots. I also love the logging features.
  
  I would like to upgrade to newer 802.11N routers, but I have no idea what's ideal to run DD-WRT on, so I would love to hear more on this topic.
  
  Thx!

• PedroMenezes - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link

  This has been my setup for.... I don't know, 7 or 8 years now?!
  
  At the time I was running m0n0wall on old PC for a couple of years so instead of investing in a Soekris with m0n0wall, I decided to try out the WRT54G as a basis platform instead.
  Anyway, started out with an old 2nd hand v1 WRT54G (fabulous kit, still had the NIC mode/activity LEDs on it) and very soon after I tried different firmwares.
  Eventually I settled for DD-WRT (don't remember the version at the time).
  
  After 2 years the PSU died on me (5v 1A, stupid power rating actually) so I bought another PSU but eventually 2 years down the road the whole thing just died. I could do JTAG recovery but I never did bother so I bought a brand new WRT54GL.
  
  Since then I've been running that WRT54GL + DD-WRT (v24 preSP2 - don't remember which development build, but it was one that addressed UPnP properly, because of my Xbox) and I'm quite happy with it.
  
  I've been thinking about swapping it to a WirelessN+Gigabit router but DD-WRT support on those is a mess, so many tricks in so many models and so many variants e, so I decided to postpone it.
  
  But apart for the slow NIC ports (100Mbps) and the slow Wifi speeds (17/20Mbps is the most realistic figure), I really do love it. It has all the UPnP, Shaping, WOL, VPN, Management and Bandwidth facilities I cater for and all with rock-hard stability. I don't remember when was the last crash or reboot I had on it.
  As far as I'm concerned it's on for 4 years with no crashes or reboots, apart for reconfiguration (very rare) or power failures.
  
  I actually also want try out Tomato, as when I tried (old release) I didn't really like it, but I hear the WiFi performance is better than the DD-WRT, which is currently an issue for me.

• PedroMenezes - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link

  And... I forgot why I started writing my comment.
  
  Yes!, I defenitively want to hear more about this topic! Specially in regards to WifiN and OpenWRT/DD-WRT/Tomato/m0n0wall hardware, as these kind of routers seem to be "frozen" in the G-era :)

• maglito - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link

  Most WISPs use mikrotik, runs on PPC, X86, mips. Cheap custom hardware solutions are available at www.routerboard.com ... I run a RB750G in my home.

• eriktar - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link

  I work for an ISP with these home routers. I can confirm that most customers could not care less about the router. Stability and ease of use is the only two things they care about. We use an autoconfiguration system so that the customer is not forced to log in to the device. 70% does never log in. 10% change some settings. The settings the customers actualy do is: ESSID & encryption key, port forwarding. Less than 1% changes other settings.
  
  If you do intend to do such an comparrison test, talk to the guys at QA Cafe. See if they will lend you CD Router to do tests with. It will run through a lot of features on the routers, and see if they do follow the standards. And probe for other well known problems.
  
  You will be suprised to se how many ways DHCP can be implemented badly:
  - Only support broadcast (dont unicast for renew -> allways lose lease)
  - Never renew, allways end up with lease expire and start over with discover proccess
  - Leak layer 2 broadcast while doing discover/renew/bootup. (LAN clients ending up with WAN IP)
  - All routers with a certan firmware uses the same mac address on wan
  - Does not complete renew if the wan side is renumbered
  - Dropps or duplicates(!) (bad for multicast IPTV) packets when renewing
  - Has lower priority on DHCP than P2P traffic, so it will allways fail if you fill up your uplink
  - Does not respect lease time -> router things it has a valid ip when the lease is lost
  
  And that is just DHCP, a well known protocoll used by all devices since the dawn of the internet.

• keith_h - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link

  I used a wrt54g with Tomato for years. I originally did this for the reporting and ability to extend functionality via scripting. Running adblock and automatically updating profiles for example. It was rock solid for years but eventually the need for greater wireless performance needed to be addressed. So I moved up to N wireless and changed my routing strategy entirely.
  
  Now I run untangle on a repurposed Juniper WXC chassis and a TPLink N300 AP. I have another TPLink AP in client mode elsewhere in the house providing a connection back to the network for other wired devices. The TP Link devices were chosen because they were inexpensive and work effectively. I see no need to pay more for home use.
  
  The benefit of this arrangement is increased flexibility and security as untangle provides edge protection, AV, content filtering, spam and spyware protection, and of course ad blocking. And more besides. Use of a pico power supply has cut down on noise, heat and power consumption. Its not as quiet as the wrt54g for example but its quite acceptable. Maybe a bit extreme for home for some but it has proven a very effective solution nonetheless.