Which WRT54g firmware is the best?

[edmicman]

I've got a spare WRT54G around that I want to try and flash the firmware, mostly to get a more stable connection and handle torrent stuff better. Some statistics stuff would be cool, too. So what the best/suggested firmware update out there for this router? I've heard of DD-WRT and Tomato, and it sounds like DD-WRT is the big one most people go with? Is there something else I should be looking at? Thanks for any info!

 

[LuDaCriS66]

DD-WRT is the more well known one and has the most features but Tomato is the better of the two IMO. It may have fewer features but the functional QoS alone on Tomato far outweighs the features that DD-WRT has that 90% of people probably won't use.

Also, you want to make sure your WRT54G even supports the new firmware.

If it's version 5 to 6, it can only support the micro version of DD-WRT. Versions 4 and below can support the full versions of DD-WRT, Tomato, and other firmware.

 

[n0cmonkey]

What type of comparisons do you want?

OpenWRT is the best one I've used.

 

[edmicman]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
What type of comparisons do you want?

OpenWRT is the best one I've used.

I dunno....a rundown of features of the different popular ones? Mostly I've heard that the 3rd party firmwares offer better stability, especially when using bittorrent, and also the QoS stuff. The possibility of some logging or bandwidth reporting sounds cool, too. I'm just not up on why I should go with one vs another....is there a clear cut winner? What are the differences say between the 3 mentioned here, DD-WRT, Tomato, and OpenWRT?

 

[JackMDS]

If someone needs a specific feature than the ""Best"" is whatever has the feature.

The fact that a firmware package have a lot of feature that one does not need does not make it best, worse, or anything.

If few firmwares have the same needed features.

My preference is.

Hyperwrt_G_Thibor15c http://www.thibor.co.uk/

DD-WRT

Tomato.

The Entry Level Routers are actually minicomputers and the firmware is like the OS.

You do not want firmware that can do thing that you do not need, it is like using bloated OS.

As for heavy p2p! No firmware really helps very much, it is the puny Router's computers can not handle it.

When people ask for better firmware handling p2p it like saying, I am an avid gamer, what OS should I use to play games well with my ""state of the art"" Celeron 45OMHz computer, and 64MB RAM.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

I'm using VoIP at my house on Roadrunner cable (7meg/384k) and would like to implement some kind of QoS so that my voice traffic is not affect by either downloading or uploading. I find that if I'm sending an email with attachments, the phone call is affected during the upload. My wife has even mentioned bad quality while I've been maxing out my download speeds. I don't do any P2P, but would like to not have to worry about the phone ringing while downloading a game demo at 850KB/s.

I'll give Tomato a shot since I really don't need any other features. Need to check which version my WRT54g is also.

 

[SoulAssassin]

Any of them better with WDS? I still haven't gotten around to hooking that up. I have a WRT54G v2 running DD-WRT and a Buffalo router still sitting in the box.

 

[Check]

I'm using DD-WRT on my 54gl due to the fact that Tomato has some of the worst documentation I have ever seen for 3rd party software. If you have a decent amount of networking know how, you should be able to get it to do whatever you want. I don't know all that much about networking so I went DD-WRT.

 

[Pulsar]

dd-wrt has QOS services that work perfectly with games and voip. In addition, you can overclock the router to help a bit with torrenting and you can also increase the transmit power to improve range.

I'm not saying Tomato can't do it - I've been running dd-wrt for the last 3 or 4 days and found it painless to install, easy to configure, and so far it runs quite well. dd-wrt also supports dynamic dns services like no-ip dyndns and others so you don't have to run a client on your computer - the router handles it.

 

[Kelemvor]

DD-WRT is what I use. I put it on specifically because I use VOIP. I haven't tested it with a full blown torrent downloading session while making a call yet but it should work.