Thirdparty firmware on your home network router

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Fri Aug 30, 2013 4:16 pm

I have a Linksys wireless router that occasionally has issues with DHCP. Firmware updates from Linksys have not helped. I am now considering using something like DD-WRT.

Is anyone doing this? If so, how has it worked out for you?

If you don't know what I am talking about, here is the wikipedia page for DD-WRT...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD-WRT

Richard

Roger McDaniels · **Posted:** Fri Aug 30, 2013 5:20 pm

I had considered that, but a new wireless-n router costs $13, and I can't see any of the rest of the reasons for DD-WRT being of any use to me since I run all of my security, DHCP, translations, etc on a Cisco router and just use the wireless for access.

Now if you want the ultimate in wireless router reliability, then I do have an Aironet 340 that I just took out of service at my house. It is not the speediest thing in the world (which is why I finally turned it off), but it has been in continuous use since the 90's without any problems. I'm using another one at the office right now to send this message.

Chris Halweg · **Posted:** Fri Aug 30, 2013 8:57 pm

I've used DD-WRT on my old Linksys router. It was pretty rock solid and had more options than the standard firmware. It also had the ability to adjust the "power" settings for the antenna, so you could increase the range a bit. I hadn't used it in about 4 years until I had to use it as a backup when one of our routers at work went down. It was a bit slow, but still rock solid.

I would think with modern routers you could find one with stock firmware that does everything you need.

I just ordered this one for work. It's probably overkill for home use.
http://www.amazon.com/RT-AC66U-Dual-Ban ... ess+router

Andrew Jonell · **Joined:** Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:43 pm **Posts:** 1350

I've been running TomatoUSB on an Asus router for 2+ years now. It was super simple to set up a cron job to restart the router at 6am every morning and also to set up the print server.

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Sun Sep 01, 2013 10:08 am

The only router I've had last me longe than a year was a $20 Cisco I got out of a big cardboard closeout box at Tiger Direct. Since then I've considered them to be disposable items not worth bothering to upgrade or improve.

Roger McDaniels · **Posted:** Sun Sep 01, 2013 12:30 pm

My $20 Tiger Direct Cisco wifi router requires an occasional reboot. You must have gotten the good one.

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Sun Sep 01, 2013 5:55 pm

Karl Shultz wrote:

The only router I've had last me longe than a year was a $20 Cisco I got out of a big cardboard closeout box at Tiger Direct. Since then I've considered them to be disposable items not worth bothering to upgrade or improve.

Why would/does a major brand router fail that soon and what are the typical failure symptoms other than "just die"?

Thanks,

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Sun Sep 01, 2013 10:26 pm

I honestly don't know.

1. I had a Linksys just die on me completely. It would power up, but that was it. It was just a blue box with some blinky lights. So I...

2. Bought a D Link that had a bug in the one of the security features. I had locked it down to only allow certain MAC addresses. When this was enabled, the router would not allow MAC addresses that started with anything other than 00 to get on the network. That broke my smartphone. No fix other than to change the setting, which was fine, but it still required regular reboots. Like, weekly. I gave it to my mom.

3. A well reviewed, fairly expensive Netgear that touted itself as being "open source" in some way, but i don't remember what. Like the Linksys, it just stopped doing anything, shortly after the warranty ran out.

I should have bought half a dozen of the cheap Cisco ones. The only time I've ever rebooted that thing was a power outage.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Mon Sep 02, 2013 8:25 am

Thanks for the info. So far it has convinced me to try DDWRT. It is interesting that everyone mentions buying a new router every few years. I think I have had maybe thre different linksys routers over the past decade or so with no hardware failures. I replaced the first to get new features ( add wireless) and the second to move to a newer hardware revision in hopes that it might fix my DHCP issue.

I have always used Linksys because frankly when I look at reviews nobody seems to stand out above the rest. Each brand/model has someone who says it sucks or is great. And regarding cost, it seems that while you can find some cheap ones most routers are in the $100+ range. You have to wonder why the cheap ones (around $20) at Tiger Direct are are marked down so low. I guess I might dig out one of my older routers to use while I flash my current one, or if I can find one, buy one of the cheap ones at TD (they have a$15 net gear i might try) for sort term use.

Regarding my DHCP issues, the problem has been that if it uses the default lease time (I think in the order of weeks?) that when it come time to renew the lease that the device (pc, xbox, dvr, etc) doesn't seem to be able to find anything that will service the DHCP request. It's as if the DHCP service on the router goes to lunch and never comes back. A reboot of the router always fixes it. I have found mention of this online from many years ago. The suggestion from someone was to set a really short lease time (a few hours). That seems to work for the most part. I have zero interest in running another machine just for DHCP. I did that a few years ago when I had a server running behind my router. Now anything I have is hosted elsewhere and I like it that way.

Richard

Chris Halweg · **Posted:** Mon Sep 02, 2013 9:02 am

Richard Casto wrote:

Thanks for the info. So far it has convinced me to try DDWRT. It is interesting that everyone mentions buying a new router every few years. I think I have had maybe thre different linksys routers over the past decade or so with no hardware failures. I replaced the first to get new features ( add wireless) and the second to move to a newer hardware revision in hopes that it might fix my DHCP issue.

I have always used Linksys because frankly when I look at reviews nobody seems to stand out above the rest. Each brand/model has someone who says it sucks or is great. And regarding cost, it seems that while you can find some cheap ones most routers are in the $100+ range. You have to wonder why the cheap ones (around $20) at Tiger Direct are are marked down so low. I guess I might dig out one of my older routers to use while I flash my current one, or if I can find one, buy one of the cheap ones at TD (they have a$15 net gear i might try) for sort term use.

Regarding my DHCP issues, the problem has been that if it uses the default lease time (I think in the order of weeks?) that when it come time to renew the lease that the device (pc, xbox, dvr, etc) doesn't seem to be able to find anything that will service the DHCP request. It's as if the DHCP service on the router goes to lunch and never comes back. A reboot of the router always fixes it. I have found mention of this online from many years ago. The suggestion from someone was to set a really short lease time (a few hours). That seems to work for the most part. I have zero interest in running another machine just for DHCP. I did that a few years ago when I had a server running behind my router. Now anything I have is hosted elsewhere and I like it that way.

Richard

For one of our problematic routers at work, I just put a christmas light outlet timer on it to force a reboot in the middle of the night. It's not an elegant solution, but it works. With DD-WRT I'm pretty sure you can set the least time to a couple of years IIRC.

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