Unlocking the power of the WRT54GL(and a few other routers) with LINUX!

[remixedcat]

I'm lookin towards the AMPED WIRELESS!!! or another netgear.

 

[caleb]

I run OpenWRT on ASUS WL500GP with
- samba 3
- transmission torrent client
Its a pretty leet router to mess with cause the WRT posted here is pretty hardware limited and the firmware is the best their is for such devices IMHO.

 

[Nordic]

Would it even be worth it to run tomato usb or openWRT on my netgear 3700?

 

[technicks]

I also have an WRT54GL but like newtekie1 stated above it stops at 35MB/s.
I have a 50MB/s connection so what would be a nice upgrade?

 

[johnspack]

The Asus RT-N16 is a massive upgrade from the 54GL. I still use my 54GL, but only as a repeater now. The N16 has all gigabit ports, and with the massive amount of flash and sytem ram, I can run all kinds of extra apps under Tomato. Got a squid server going, all ip traffic is being logged, using both cifs and jfs that have been re-routed to server shares on my server. You can do so much more with it.

 

[newtekie1]

I also have an WRT54GL but like newtekie1 stated above it stops at 35MB/s.
I have a 50MB/s connection so what would be a nice upgrade?

I first switched to an E1000, the V1 is compatible with TomatoUSB. But I wanted 5GHz Wireless N, so I upgraded again to an E3000 which is also compatible with TomatoUSB.

You can get the E3000 for $50 off newegg, which is probably one of the best deals ever for such a fully featured router. I don't even think you can come close to that price with any other simultaneous dual-band router not to mention one with a USB port.

And if you are wondering what TomatoUSB is, it is basically what it sounds like, an off-shoot of the Tomato firmware that works with more routers, supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wireless N, and supports the USB ports on certain routers. The USB port allows you to do a few things with the router, including using the router as a printer server, connecting a USB drive and using the router as a NAS device or even having the router do all your downloading for you and putting the downloads on the USB attached drive.

 

[technicks]

Maybe it's a dumb question but would it not be better to have a router with antenna's on it? Regarding the wireless part.
On my WRT54GL i bought some bigger antenna's and it increased the wireless signal a bit.

 

[newtekie1]

Maybe it's a dumb question but would it not be better to have a router with antenna's on it? Regarding the wireless part.
On my WRT54GL i bought some bigger antenna's and it increased the wireless signal a bit.

I don't think they are necessary. The E1000 easily covered the same area as my WRT54GL and the WRT54GL had upgraded antennas as well. Now the E3000's 5GHz band covers even more. Yeah, the lack of external antennas are about the only draw back of the E3000, but for $50 it is still a terrific deal and with Wireless N the range is really good.

 

[remixedcat]

Maybe it's a dumb question but would it not be better to have a router with antenna's on it? Regarding the wireless part.
On my WRT54GL i bought some bigger antenna's and it increased the wireless signal a bit.

Hard to find those these days.... a lot of them are making them internal only.... dumb fad.

 

[Arrowmin]

nice

Hello everyone I am new here.

 

[sparky209]

Ive moded at least 45 wrt-54g routers of different versions..every thing from fan mods to seral
Ports...mods from sd cards to usb ports (yes it can be done) and used them for wds to weatner stations to wardriving with a gps hooked to it and even as client and repeaters including bridges..the list goes on ..iv even made a remote internet controled robot with one using an adruino board hacked into it along with an attached network cam and two cassette player motors and two old cd's used for the wheels .thanks to them being open sorce and linux embeded device theres a ton of different stuff that can be done with them and quite few different firmware images that you can load on most of them depending on the version router you have (some ver.better then others thanks to some dumb ass at linksys idea to neutering later versions) Its sad there no longer made I still have no problem in finding the wrt-54g-tm (the best ones Imo) I bought 8 of them from a t-mobel store that had them on a back shelf for the last 6 years never opened all for 20bucks. And always find them at 2nd had stores like salvation army or good will for a buck or two. Thanks to t-mobile no longer using them I guess thats where the end up .

 

[Jody James]

I just upgraded my WRT54GL 1.1 to Tomato today. Overclocking it increased throughput 20%. Want to note that I'm getting download speeds much higher than is noted a few times in this thread so don't think you have to get a different router to get speeds over 35 MB/s. This is my results afterwards: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4015996567

 

[AsRock]

I have a bunch of them here i stopped using them as they cap my connection, which is why i picked up a cheaper seconhand Netgear WNR1000 for $4 from a secondhand shop which allows me to download around 90Mbs ( 11MBs ) if the site permits which steam does 99% of the time.

I do like them but they are just to slow for todays needs.

 

[suraswami]

My trusty Wrt54gL worked fine for about 6+ yrs, started to act weird, dropping connections, had to reset router every now and then, then loaded DD-WRT on the spare WRT54G, that was working fine until recently had similar issues. Then tried the EA6300 refurb, decent router but not very good range. Now trying out Netis WF2780 AC1200 router. Has excellent range during off peak hours.

Due to about a billion wireless routers in my condo community, between 5 and 7:30 pm, all of these routers struggle, the devices sometimes timeout until I reset the router. I plan to put one of these

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704196&ignorebbr=1

along with other Powerline network adapters, hopefully my problem with stupid wifi will be solved (blame the growing media players, tablets and smart TVs).

BTW anybody here tried the Netis WF2780?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=netis+wf2780&N=-1&isNodeId=1

Recent security issue article - http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/netis-routers-leave-wide-open-backdoor/

Netis downloads say its fixed (hopefully) - http://www.netis-systems.com/en/products/Dualband-Series/905.html#.VN0xPS4mtrg

Wish it gets the custom firmware, especially DD-WRT.

 

[newtekie1]

I've switched away from the Linksys routers, as you said due to the poor signal strength. I've started using ASUS routers primarily and haven't been disappointed. Even their insanely cheap RT-N12, which regularly sells for $40 but often time I can pick it up for under $30 is damn solid running Tomato.

 

[suraswami]

yeah that RT-N12 was on sale last thanks giving at Frys for like $10 or something AR, at that time my routers were not acting up, so I returned it, I should have kept as spare.

 

[Freezer]

Still have my Wrt54gl and working like a charm.

Wondering what advantages there are with Tomato over DDWRT.

 

[Jetster]

Still have my Wrt54gl and working like a charm.

Wondering what advantages there are with Tomato over DDWRT.

None

 

[AsRock]

I believe Tomato has better monitoring ( unless sit's the other way around been a while ).

 

[vectoravtech]

I have read QOS is much better in Tomato. Myself I flashed ddwrt (to do it properly you need to flash mini then mega or Kong after) with heart bleed protection on my netgear N600 wndr2400 then got mini samba 2 setup and working on my usb stick. It's very simple just set the workgroup name then mount it and add the disconnect command before it shuts off.

The features I learned to use in ddwrt are
1. Connection watchdog (it will reboot the router if an ip you added isn't accesible)
2. Changing the wireless channel to find one that isn't congested and gives you better speed tests.

I heard allot of good things about the Asus Merlin (their own version of tomato)