About a year ago I discovered DD-WRT. I got excited when I started discovering the features it promised. I read a number of different forums about how much of an improvement it was over the “stock” firmware provided by Linksys. I was also sharing the internet connection between three people and was seeing the horrible performance. So I installed it.
After installing DD-WRT, I immediately saw a huge improvement. That slowly faded as the days passed. I started having to reboot the router after a few days of it being up. I spent countless hours scrolling through various wiki entries and forums to get the configuration perfect. I wasn’t alone in my issues with DD-WRT. I noticed that a large number of people were having issues similar to mine. Many people said how they have to reboot it after a few days. Other people were having issues with the QoS configuration. The biggest problem with DD-WRT was the lack of updates. The last stable released was in mid September 2006. I kept using it though because, regardless of its shortcomings, it was a much better solution than the stock firmware.
I happened to stumble upon Tomato while looking for release notes in for DD-WRT v24 RC3 (and for whatever reason, I had no luck finding them). As I watched my internet crawl as it tried to open the next site because uTorrent was busy downloading something (despite having set up QoS, and spending countless nights tweaking it), I realized after a year I couldn’t deal with this horrible connection anymore.
Tomato installed perfectly over DD-WRT. Be sure you check out the installation guide for some important information before installing it over DD-WRT, though for me it was simply uploading the firmware. After getting back online I noticed an instant improvement on the speed. I had no idea my connection was this fast. Of course, I hadn’t setup QoS nor was downloading anything.
To me, a UI is as important as the features the software provides. While I wouldn’t turn down an application that works well and has a horrible interface, the fact that the interface was simple and clean was a huge plus for Tomato. Along with the simple user interface, it is also driven by AJAX. Unlike DD-WRT, when you change a setting it will just restart that service instead of having to do a full router reboot. Very nice when you’re downloading a file and don’t want to stop it.
Another great feature are the built in graphs and various statistics. Not something that I will be checking daily, nor is this something that would be a deal breaker, but it is definitely a nice feature.
All that aside, the best part is that it actually works and continues to work months on end. For the first time the Comcast “Powerboost” actually worked for me. I always thought I just had a poor connection from the wall to my modem. The speed difference was amazing. I setup the QoS fairly quickly and tested it. I can browse the web while downloading something via uTorrent now without it crawling. The most impressive part is that it didn’t take me all that long to setup the configuration before I experienced the huge performance difference.
This of course is just a basic comparison between both products. In my opinion, if you have DD-WRT, get rid of it. After you install Tomato you won’t look back.
Hello Boss, your opinion is correct. This TOMATO is really helpful for those who want to control the bandwith traffic.
I have a internet sharing here, suffer a lot because my housemate do a lot of online movie watching. I can’t even browse a page and the traffic is jam always.
Finally I’ve shifted from DD-WRT to TOMATO, the QOS settings solved my problem.
Thanks for sharing your professional experience here. Hope you can share more next time.
Best Wishes,
Ting (from Singapore)
I also have too many problems with DD-WRT. I will be giving Tomato a try and maybe OpenWRT also.
DD-WRT has needed reboots too often, v24 is almost a year late already, and I can’t use it’s QOS because my router quit functioning. I also have read that DD-WRT only takes code and does not give back to the community. Has no problem accepting donations though. Time to move on, permanently.
So after reading your article I flashed my router from DD-WRT to Tomato. Bandwidth increase, but I am still not seeing the same performance as I get when I directly connect my computer to the modem. I get 11mps Directly Connected and I am getting roughly 5mps through the router. Do you have any idea why this is occurring?
I also switched to Tomato after reading this article. Thank you so much. My internet speed has improved(hard to believe, because how?, but it’s true). Also the QoS seems to be working unlike DD-WRT. I also read that DD-WRT only takes and does not give. And I believe it. Good riddance to DD-WRT.
Also see
“DD-WRT - An affront to the good will of the F/OSS community” at here:
http://www.bitsum.com/about-ddwrt.htm
Dude wrote:
Glad you’re seeing the benefits I see. Never talked to anyone who went from DD-WRT to Tomato who had a bad thing to say about it.
The only gripe I have with Tomato is that I can’t do multiple SSIDs — I understand that the more ‘bloat’ you add in (esp. features like this that many don’t use) the more you hamper performance for all. We’ll see if I can find a way to add it in myself, because Tomato is simply the best firmware I’ve ever used on my WRT54G (although I haven’t tried OpenWRT yet — Kamikaze adds multi-SSID support, but the X-WRT web interface is the same as for White Russian, and I don’t feel like having to configure all that through the command line).
What’s very surprising about Tomato is that, despited being updated frequently, it is based on the 2.4.20 kernel, which was released more than 5 years ago.
Does anybody know why this is? How about all the security fixes that went in since then? DD-WRT runs the latest kernel available, in comparison.
Does anybody know why this is? How about all the security fixes that went in since then? DD-WRT runs the latest kernel available, in comparison.
Its something to do with the broadcom libs or something. Its in the FAQ.
I’ve been running dd-wrt since I don’t know when, in many configurations, but the perpetual beta state, the thousands of bugs in the bug tracker and the whims of its author have annoyed me for some time.
Tomato is what dd-wrt has wanted to be for a few years now: a simple-enough, feature-rich-enough replacement for the stock firmware. The difference is that Tomato works.
Incidentally, the throughput of my network almost *doubled* with the default Tomato settings. And I’ve tried every conceivable dd-wrt setting… now, that’s entertainment like you can’t for.
I also just recently switched from dd-wrt to Tomato, huge improvement specially on uTorrent speeds, great firmware and pretty simple to operate and configure.
Very happy and satisfied Tomato user
The problem with DD-WRT is some retarded default values. I spent some time having to reboot it every now and then, but after tweaking the configuration I obtain great speeds even with 8 wireless clients, some of them streaming/torrenting stuff.
Won’t change to Tomato as long as things keep working this great…
RazZziel wrote:
DD-WRT’s QoS system is horrible, atleast it was for me and everyone I ever talked to. That was my motivation to move to Tomato.
Tomato is still in developing?
or just dead?
I cant find any new update from the site.
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
koko wrote:
Latest version is 1.17, release 02/26/08.
On the main page, go to where it says “Download”
RazZziel wrote:
.
Could you be MORE specific, please. Could you share details of what exactly you changed and how, to achieve speed increase with multiple wireless client?
Just installed Tomato and it killed my router
But after connecting my computer directly to my broadband router and doing a bit of surfing I found out that with the WRT54G (V1.1) there can be a bit of port mapping problem and Tomato ends up thinking the “Internet” port is the first HUB port and the first HUB port is the “Internet port”. Basically meaning that I could access the router with a wireless connection but not from a wired connection!
Found out that I just needed to reset the NVRAM and reboot - then it all started working
Apart from the initial hour or two of wondering why I bothered I must admit I an now very pleased - my wireless connection actually works when I turn on my laptop - I used to have to mess about disabling and re-enabling until (sometimes!) I got a connection. In the end I kept a spare cable to connect to my laptop in my home office - not really the idea but at least it gave me a reliable connection.
So in summary very pleased, wireless works a treat, just be ready to swap a few cables if things go wrong but it will all work out fine in the end - good bit of software definitely an improvement on DD-WRT
where is tomato support forum or Community place?
I have just upgraded from DD-WRT sp23 vpn to Tomato v1.17 on WRT54GL.
My DD-WRT would stop serving internet once in 2 days and needed a reboot.
Upgrade was a breath, i just hope for promised stability :).
Those who were asking about Kernel 2.4 vs 2.6, if you look at the change log, Tomato roll back to older version of busybox, which proved to be stable over latest busybox with 2.6 kernel.
Needless to say, many linux based appliances (mostly routers) run older 2.4 kernel and not 2.6
Personally, I’m all for the latest and greatest, but there won’t be a huge gain of 2.6 in something as tiny as 200mhz router. From what I recall, main deferences for 2.4 vs 2.6 kernel is better support for large amounts of CPU and Memory.
thanks for this wonderful post.
Regards
Serverchief
www.serverchief.com
Good article and good job. I have a question. Have Tomato static IP assign?. I haven’t problems with my DD-WRT, but i haven’t updates and i like probe something new. Greetings.
Yes Tomato does can assign Statis IP to devices.
How about a VPN server? Otherwise I agree, tomato runs clean and looks nice. I want my VPN back though.
Hi, I also switched from ddwrt to tomato, it is a lot better.
here is a screenshot for my qos. maybe can help.
http://frederico-araujo.com/tomato-QOS.png
http://frederico-araujo.com/tomato-QOS.png
THANK YOU!
After 1,5 years of DD-WRT with some problems and HUGE limitations of my speed I managed to found this site and give a try to Tomato. With WRT54GL v1.1 and DD-WRT v23 sp2 I was able to get 22-24 mbps over cable and only 12-14 mbps over WiFi. Now I have full 25-27 mbps over WiFi! And only 80% instead of 110% load of my Linksys processor .
And I solved all my wifi crashes - all the time I had to clear the nvram and restore a good backup.
My only missing points to be trully happy: to start the OpenVPN server (I’ve copied the config from my DD-WRT setup) and to be able to pass the SSH key to the router.
With OpenVPN I have too long config (over 4096 bytes). I cut the comments and managed to reduce it to 4091 bytes byt the service do not start. Is a tested cfg that worked under DD-WRT…
And the SSH panel tels me that I have an incorrect SSH key…Hmmm- that key worked for 1,5 years under DD-WRT. Any help will be appreciated!
Well… I managed to start the OpenVPN. The problem was that I’ve cut too much and the ca.crt file was not readable - nice message in the log telling me what is the problem. In order to comply with the 4096 bytes limit I’ve splited the original dd-wrt config in 2 parts: one in init and one in wan-up. Now in init config I create the files (ca.crt, server.key and dh1024.pem) and in the wan up config file I create the openvpn.cfg fime ant the symbolic link that starts the service.
Now the OpenVPN server is working fine.
Still need some help with that SSH key that is refused by the interface
For OpenVPN how to use:
http://www.linksysinfo.org/forums/showpost.php?p=302642&postcount=3
and for firmware with OpenVPN included use
http://www.linksysinfo.org/forums/showthread.php?t=53233
I’ve used TomatoMod 1.16.1374 - Binary:
http://www.tomatomod.de/Tomato_1.16.1374VPN-SDMMC.7z
arnymars wrote:
.
Could you be MORE specific, please. Could you share details of what exactly you changed and how, to achieve speed increase with multiple wireless client?
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Router_Slowdown
I’ve only tried the first solution, which involves changing the maximum number of ports and lowering the timeouts. It seemed to have worked for me (for less than a day). I’m scared to switch to Tomato because it took so long for me to set up a router in client mode (Buffalo as main router Airlink as client). Maybe if the slowdown solutions stops working I’ll try Tomato as my main router, but for now I have everything working exactly as I want it to so I’m not going to mess with it for a theoretical gain.
I am with you on this. DD-WRT is useless when it comes to QoS. It wasted a lot of my time playing with QoS settings in DD-WRT. I love Tomato. Nice, simple user interface. It just works! Absolutely superior to DD-WRT.
@koko: support forums:
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomatofaq#but_what_about
can we use also as MESH Network NODE/AP.
it support OLSR or BATMANN routing protocol.?
regards,
magi.
Don’t completely write of DD-WRT. it’s the only firmware worth considering if you have WRT54g version 5 and up.
Tomato looks good. But how do you get a captive portal with it?
I am using DD-WRT v24 STD version on Linksys WRT54G v3 and have no problems. It took some time to configure QoS but it now works as i expected. The problem with DD-WRT is that it has too many switches and configuration parametes but not enough documentation. My QoS settings are:
a) I gave Premium priority to port connected to my Skype phone and also port connected to my other Vonage phone
b) I used the following Service Priority:
gnutella - bulk
bitorrent - bulk
skypeout - premium
skypetoskype - premium
ftp - bulk
dns - express
http - express
sssl - express
c) Followed guidelines from here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Router_Slowdown
this seems to be working for me even when me or someone on the network is using torrent.
Also see this:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/10724_3649346_2
This has been a great read, Mark.
Also, I have learned from all who have commented, so thank you guys too.
I have a wrt54g v2 router with dd-wrt v23sp2. It took a lot of time and trial-and-error to tweak the [unnecessarily] countless features dd-wrt has, but for at least a year, I had been running with no problems and a great connection. Until we had our storm last night, my router’s uptime was 103 days. My v2 router happens to be one with 32mb memory (I had to run a script within dd-wrt to unlock the extra 16 - http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7065) and with 7 connections running at once, I’ve never seen the router drop below 24mb. My retired dad lives next door, and since he has access to my WEP key, 2 of my router’s connections are his
In the last 4-5 months, it has taken literally 2 MINUTES for my router to assign IP and MAC to it’s wireless connections. Rebooting did not do the trick initially (hence why I stopped trying and it’s been online for so long). I did research, and this is apparently a problem dd-wrt has…it just took my router over half a year to see it.
I will give Tomato a try tonight when I get back home.
A compliment to you and to those who commented: The reason I never tried Tomato is that I can’t stand fanboy-ism. All other sites I’ve come across that compare these two great alternatives are all to obvious about being Tomato fanboys and bashing dd-wrt (which I’ve been running very successfully for a while, thanks). Thank you all for providing objective input. Might let you know how my migration goes…from what I gather I will not be disappointed.
Thanks,
Ryan
its a darn shame that a project with roots in open source and free code has ended up as a for profit venture closed to open development… I am actively looking for alternatives to dd-wrt now and would gladly donate $1,000 US to a comparable true open source project with community development and a real tracker and svn and active forums… Who will take up the slack now? Tomato? x? I stopped watching all the other threads and versions out there after switching to dd some time ago - now it looks like my search for a reliable feature packed firmware is on again… I have to say - there are a lot of threads out there about the “greedy” nature of brainslayer - I have never seen any of it in him - I think he helped develop a great project and kept it together ona shoestring budget… a lot of people contributed that are not being acknowledged now - and he started to close off some of his code by apparently encrypting things that some belive are GPL violations.. I know nothing of this sort - I just want a open source stable alternative that we can continue using for our free wirless hotspots and community wifi projects… open-wrt looks like a winner but we love the UI options and also want to see OLSR link routing and other options for AAA management and walled gardens vs captive portals… nocat… ya know - fun stuff… what attracted us all to dd in the first place… additions of gaming software was fun to play with but I really rather fill the box with speed and management rich feature sets… stable…
any ideas?
Note, though, that Tomato will not work with V 5.0 of the Linksys WRT54g… and guess what I have? sigh…
I must be the only person to never have a problem with dd-wrt on my wrt54g (v2). I’ve been running different versions since I got my wrt54g which was right when version 2 came out. Currently, I’m running DD-WRT #22 (prefinal 3.2). Haven’t had any issues.
However, I don’t use the WiFi as I have a WRT54Gv5 acting as an AP. I also don’t use QoS. I do use quite a few port forwards, have two 360’s through uPnP, a SBS2003 box hosting exchange and a few web pages and a few Internet policies since I have kids.
Only thing I feel is missing is the bandwidth monitor. I really miss the old BEFSR41v1 and being able to capture every IP inbound and outbound and figure out what websites my kids were looking at. But nothing comes close on the new boxes.
So, since I’m not having any issues, other than the bandwidth chart, should I even bother to change over to Tomato?
@stromm
No. If everything works as it should, the only thing you’d get is a fancier web gui.
I would have to agree. For the brief time I used dd-wrt on my Revision 1 WRT54G, it seemed to have a memory leak. After less than a day I would have 600kb or memory or less available, and things would slow down. With tomato the router has been up over a week, and I’m still showing 5400KB memory free. Considering this router only has 14MB to begin with, you just cant beat that. Identical tasks seem to just work faster on tomato also.
Yes, I agree with you..I had play with dd-wrt before and then tried to play with Tomato..and you know something ?…I found throttling speed on Tomato and QoS on the tomato is wonderful.
i’m not mentioning that dd-wrt is bad,but i found tomato is bit better with simple GUI,straight forward and less fancy things.
Tomato is the best of the best, very fast GUI (Until remote web access), excellent and usefull acces restriction options, the traffic statics its very usefull and complete, ver stable firmware. I Recomend tomato for not expert net administrators.
P.D: Sorry for my english
Can anyone tell me if tomato can be used with a netgear wgr614 ver8 router.
And were can I get the procedure to flash and get it going.
Help for these details would be much appreciated.
Ta.
I’ve been a happy user (and a donator!) of Tomato firmware for months. I tried DD-WRT before that, but it’s QoS wasn’t working well at all, and the router had to be restarted to save every little change… While Tomato’s interface is AJAX magic!
I always used the direct cable connection until I got more hardware and moved to mac. I saw the benefits of a router and invested in the linksys and of course bought the s* version. I dd-wrt ‘updated’ it and noticed improvements but the frustrations stayed. Someone told me to go tomato, which I did. My uptime was a year before there was an apartment powercut, and now it’s almost a year again. It’s freakin stable, it works, managing it is easy and quick. And it’s amazing how many people have lame internet experiences while good firmware could fix most of this. I’ve upgraded all the routers from anybody that I know. And the phone calls of helping fix internet have stopped. Tomato is a gift from heaven. Use it if you can.
I’m not experienced with routers, firmware, or even much with Linux, but after reading much good on the web about the WRT54GL and Tomato, I bought the router, downloaded Tomato 1.21, installed without a glitch over the factory firmware, and am a very happy camper with the defaults.
One question though — the status shows cumulative uptime for the WAN connection, and the logs show various events when the WAN comes up, but I can’t figure out if there’s a way to log when the WAN goes *down*. It would be very helpful to me in a dispute with my local ISP! Any suggestions appreciated…
I am trying DD-WRT for the main reason that it has a bluetooth coexistence option.I tried this last night and for the first time using a bluetooth headset with my PS3 didn’t drop connections constantly. That being said, I have found that the router web gui hangs often. I have googled for a similar feature in tomato and haven’t found anything. Can any tomato user confirm whether there is such a feature?
What if developers of all these firmwares (dd-wrt, openwrt, tomato) merge them into one firmware and create different types of builds from it?
@Chirag: It’s not possible to merge these into one. And why would it be desirable?
Wow, this entry and its comments are now officially 1 year old. =]
Jeff wrote:
Yeah, really has been a year, crazy. Still one of my most popular posts. It’s probably due for an update, though there isn’t much to update.
Well since nobody responded to my inquiry, I can report that DD-WRT has been a winner for me. Bluetooth coexistence is working perfectly, QoS also works perfectly. The GUI performance issue was related to IE Beta 2. Have switched backto IE 7 and it’s working very nicely. Not having seen tomato, all I can say is that DD-WRT works well for me.
Been using dd-wrt on my wrt54gs v.1 for a couple of years along with a voip device attached to it and I haven’t had any problems whatsoever with it. For those of you who suffer from restarts or halts, you need to change the number of connections. DD-WRT is powerful you just need to read your shite.
I have been using dd-wrt for some time now and, mostly, I had no major problems with it. Ocasional lock-ups in the beta versions. I am a regular router user: firewall (with somewhat complex rules), WiFi (MAC fitering, security and Tx power) and DHCP server (again somewhat complex rules). The other unit I have as WiFi bridge. Complaints: when you upgrade you have to back up, on paper, all your settings and start configuring from scratch; relative lack of documentation; too many options and the missing hints to what they do - the names do not always give the poiter to where to look; Never been able to rebuild from scratch; Not truly open source now.
I know we have to “read our shite” as some poster suggeted but, not everybody is knowlegeable enough to be able to understand all that. Please do not take this as a flame. Is just a fact of life.
What I am looking for is: statistics (bandwidth where and how); for WAN multiple DHCP clients (I have multiple IP addresses) and routing an/or firewalling each to a separate ethernet port of the router.
It’s pretty amazing the comments have gone on this long. I figured since this article is still getting traffic, I’ll post my opinion on these firmwares, too, essentially as a flowchart for which one would suit you best.
Tomato first… I have not tried Tomato, but it prolly *is* the best if it isn’t lacking a specific feature that you need. From what I understand, the only serious features lacking are: vWLAN/VLAN, VPN, the security of a 2.6 kernel (but having 2.4 is where the speed in Tomato comes from), and right now USB support for the ASUS WL-500g Premium which I have. Other than that, it’s the fastest, simplest, prettiest, and most practical for QoS configuration.
OpenWRT second… Since I have a WL-500g Premium, I want USB support, so I am using OpenWRT. I was lucky enough to come across somebody who had already configured a firmware from SVN with the new LuCi interface for this exact router (adding USB support, opening up mem, etc.) in the #openwrt channel on FreeNode. There’s prolly a firmware posted on the OpenWRT forum, also… and that’s definitely where OpenWRT shines the most — large community and large no. of packages available. This firmware will be around longer than the shady DD-WRT for sure… so get your Linux haxing skills together already. This is the firmware most similar to Debian/Ubuntu.
DD-WRT third… I would only use this firmware if you were one of the unlucky saps who got the WRT54G versions with limited memory. DD-WRT micro is the only firmware to fit in the 2MB of memory given by these limited devices (what were they v4 & v5?). Also, if you just absolutely need something like virtual LANs, VPN, etc. and you don’t know your way around the Linux command line to well… this is the firmware for you. However, today will always be the best day to start learning Linux commands and filesystem organization if you haven’t already!!
Hello,
I guess I am the ONLY person that had problems with Tomato and not DDWRT. I bought three Linksys Wrt54GL units, suggested as the best one due to there only being two versions, both seem identical, and it has 16mb ram.
So I setup DDWRT for myself. I didn’t have any problems setting it up and VOIP and Torrents seems to work fine while everyone else was online. I setup a client with 12 users on Tomato. Had to reboot the tomato unit every single day as it would lock up. So I setup tomato on another identical linksys, checked settings. Same problem. Got on the forums, no one could figure it out.
So I switched this client to DDWRT 23 sp2 same as me. No problems ever. What I also do is have the router reboot itself every Sunday at 6am which eliminates any future problems or memory leaks. Funny how so many people want to keep their routers on for 200 days or so as if that proves anything?
So, for me, DDWRT kicked Tomatos ass. They both have their strengths as I liked Tomatos interface better AND the router wouldnt reboot after every change. So I would try both if you can afford two routers to try them out.
DD-Wrt is better because it can work on more routers (i use it on my wireless N router). I have had no problems with it whatsoever.
Hi again.
In May 2008 I switched from DD-WRT to Tomato.
This is my feedback after 1,5 years of using DD-WRT and 6 months of Tomato - on WRT54GL 1.1
First of all: I am using both versions with OpenVPN - this is the reason why I erased the original Linksys firmware.
DD-WRT - almost monthly crashed. Backups not recognized. Low speed over Wi-Fi (I am using a MacBook and an Acer laptop). Very good speed of DHCP.
More than 10 times forced to clear the NVRAM and start over the config.
Cause - power resets that really kill the config
Tomato.
Upgrade from Mod 1.16 to 1.19 - less than 10 minutes, “plug and play: 
Wi-Fi speed reported by netlimiter is 2,7 MB/s. Amazing
Never lost the config. In fact, the uptime can reach years if my power system stays up for years :))
Low speed of DHCP - some problems allocating IP to the MacBook. All solved with forum help.
OpenVPN - so stable that I forgot how to configure it - in case that Tomato lose the config
After 2 years, I can conclude that for my type of router the best firmware is Tomato: I got stability and speed.
I’m not a techie. It has taken me several hours to figure out how to get DD-WRT to do what I want it to do, for my applications and network to work. The DD-WRT documentation is bad. It is outdated, disorganized, hard to find what you need. But, the router itself seems to work fine (I do not use torrents which are one of the things that many people say will make routers not work properly).
If I switched to Tomato everything would look different and it would take many hours again to get the right ports opened and everything set up. Tomato is probably better if you are starting from stock firmware or have problems with torrents. But if you already have some familiarity with DD-WRT and it is generally working for you, I wouldn’t switch in the hopes of a speed increase unless you think there are real signs of a problem with your current network.
Right now I’m running Tomato RAF 1.22.8011 (AKA VicTek Mod) with TCP Vegas enabled and its running great. I’ve always experienced DD-WRT to be laggy, and a hassle to deal with. I love how Tomato’s GUI runs fast on my Linksys WRT54GL v1.1. I’d go with Tomato if your router supports it.
Also have to agree with most of you, the GUI is really fast and looks great. But after switching from dd-wrt to tomato, I had huge trouble with WDS speeds for some reason. Even though both routers worked as they were supposed to, it seemed that my computer always connected to the host router resulting in very poor speeds. After several of hours, I had to change back to dd-wrt which works fine.
I myself am a big fan of openwrt.
firmware for asus wl-500gp v2? i want to replace DD-WRT v24-sp2 (12/17/08) mega - build 11218M NEWD Eko
I’ve been using DD-WRT for quite some years and decided to give Tomato a try after reading the reactions of users on this blog. Prior to my reading this article, I noticed a tremendous slowdown in my internet connections. And in search of an alternative firmware, I eventually ended up here.
I must say the improvement on DD-WRT is enormous (its fast, stable and simple to configure). I love the QoS on Tomato. One can actually improve the quality of connections unlike DD-WRT. I just couldn’t see any improvement after setting QoS on DD-WRT. I don’t want to sound ungrateful to DD-WRT after using for years but it must be said that Tomato improve my productivity level.
I’m still learning of the goodies of Tomato… so I hope to stay here as long as I’m encouraged by Tomato - providing good quality alternative firmware for my WRT54GL routers.
Hello,
I want to know more how I can load and use Tomato Firmware for my ADI SBC250 (IXP425 platform) board.
I am using Ikarus and just thinking to shift to DD-WRT and fortunate to go through this article.
How to load new images into ADI SBC250 boards and get going with Tomato?
Any help in this regard please??
Regards
Amarendra
SARVANI TELECOM
HYDERABAD INDIA
Email: ceo.sarvanitelecom@gmail.com
Venkat wrote:
Dear Venkat,
I am looking for help to load tomato into ADI SBC250 IXP425 board.
Can you please help me??
AMARENDRA
919490493245
ceo.sarvanitelecom@gmail.com
Hyderabad
I am trying to set up 3 identical WRT54GL routers daisy chained with WDS. After messing with DD-WRT for several days, I finally gave up. WDS would work until one of the routers rebooted (a common dd-wrt experience) and then would not work again until all three routers were restarted. In the dd-wrt forums I found that this is a known problem with no good resolution. So I tried Tomato. WDS worked on the first try and any of the routers can be restarted and the whole chain comes back up by itself.
My recommendation for anyone using WDS is to NOT use dd-wrt. Tomato is the first alternative that I’ve tried, but since it installed and WDS works flawlessly I will be sticking with Tomato.
George Treisner wrote:
Your post made me laugh! All this week I’ve been fighting getting WDS with WPA/AES to work with DD-WRT on 2 separate wireless networks using 6 WRT54GL routers. My experience mirrors yours, I’ve wasted a full week messing with DD-WRT and WDS not reconnecting after rebooting a router. I tried no less than 10 verions of DD-WRT. Friday afternoon I switched to Tomato and BOOM! it worked right away and I can reboot any of the routers in any order and Tomato’s WDS will reconnect. I LOVE IT!
Can you use this to turn transmit power up on the buffalos?
Is it possible to upgrade or switch from DD-WRT to Tomato without having to go back to the original firmware first?
I’m currently running DD-WRT on a LinkSys WRT54GL and think its about time that I try out Tomato. Any suggestions?
I had upgrade my WRT54GL from DDWRT to Tomato… its a look like great feature… thanks to DDWRT.. for all
But i cant find an DHCP Forwarder menu? Am I miss something or Tomato didnt support DHCP Forwarder ?
Even though it’s 1 1/2 years from the first post, I’ll still leave a comment.
I have a Buffalo router (and a WDS access point), and have been running Tomato on the router for most of two years. Incredibly stable, even through three s/w upgrades. However, that’s not the reason I really like Tomato! Let me explain.
I have run FreeBSD (and the occasional Linux) servers for at least 15 years, in order that I could have DNS and DHCP support for my internal network, and for mail and web servers. When I switched to Rogers (i.e. cable from a DSL wholesaler), I gave up my static IP addresses, and my easy ability to run servers. Migrating mail was simple - I switched my domain to Google, and for free they act as my e-mail server (and fabulous SPAM filter). Then I needed to look after my e-mail lists (a bunch of mailman lists) and my web server. Those I just put on one of the many Linux shared servers available out there for a few bucks a month. That still left DNS and DHCP for my internal network (a few media servers, a bittorent client, laptop, automation control computer, family computers, etc) - and I wanted to turn off the servers to save power and relax instead of running a network.
Tomato to the rescue. You may notice that there are MAC address, IP address AND host name fields on the static DHCP configuration page. Whadya know! Whether the DHCP server is on or off, those IP addresses get mapped to the host names, and this thing runs beautifully as a local DNS server. Just point internal name resolver clients to the Tomato router, and set Tomato to act as a DNS forwarder,and it will first look in its DHCP/IP address and hostname table for the name you asked for.
Result, Tomato nicely replaced my internal DHCP and DNS servers, and is configurable enough for my purposes. Cool.
And to beat that, I can ssh into it from wherever I want, with DSA certs. I was even able to have multiple static addresses on it when I bothered to use them.
This has been an interesting thread. Here’s another .02 …
The only other alternative ‘home router’ firmware I’ve used is DD-WRT, having been working with it for less than a year. I have not experienced crashing or memory leaks reported here by other postrs, and am currently on a ‘bleeding edge’ build at the house, but have V24 SP1 installed at several other locations. I’ve loaded DD-WRT on a variety of LinkSys and Buffalo routers.
My primary use for DD-WRT is as an SSH server, so I can securely access remote sites. I VNC mostly to ‘doze environments via an SSH tunnel. Saves a lot of driving, and keeps me from having to install a dedicated ‘nix box on site.
At the house, had for some years been on a WRT54GS v2, recently went to a -TM model as (besides not being memory-crippled as many modern LinkSys models) it supported multiple BSSID’s. (do an nvram show|grep wl0_corerev, if you get 9 or better you can do real mac-based multiple SSID’s)
I am most interested in running multiple SSID’s with multiple AP’s (i.e., having a simultaneous public & private side), and while this must be possible with DD-WRT, I am alas at this point not enough of a ‘nix head to get that going. Multiple SSID’s are no problem, but it’s extending that to the other devices (all tethered), keeping the public side from seeing the private side but not vice versca, and having any of the devices be able to hand out an IP from the primary router for either vlan (and corresponding subnet) where I’m having trouble.
I do like the look of Tomato’s GUI, but have a feeling if I really knew what I was doing would be performing most of my configuration via shell sessions anyway. This also applies to DD-WRT; while it does seem to offer more, the GUI can be somewhat overwhelming, the price to pay for making so much available. No matter what the gui, I’d much prefer to type or paste into a shell than click.
It would seem that Tomato is more a ‘1-man-show’, while DD-WRT is more a community effort (though spearheaded & still mostly controlled by one person). I can’t fault folks for trying to make money, so don’t mind that DD-WRT has a store and premium support. They still freely release their main product to the world.
Using DD-WRT’s gui from a v24 SP2 build on a spare -TM model, Tomato v1.23 loaded perfectly, though I did have to reset due to the password problem mentioned in the install faq.
All-in-all, I will definitely keep an eye on Tomato. If it supported multiple SSID’s, I’d more quickly consider moving away from DD-WRT.
I`m planning to use the Wireless Repeater functionality of DD-WRT. Does Tomato support this functionality?
For the record I too have dd-wrt v23sp2 & v24 installed on about 10 Buffalo and FON routers forming a wifi cloud at work and a FON here at home and there have been no issues over the last 2 years.
The only thing that seems to temporarily overwhelm it is when the students start running bit torrent from their laptops. The cabled routers handle it fine but not the ones connected by WDS.
What I really need is a method to deploy settings automagically without having to log into each router individually. A common one is adding/removing a MAC to the block list.
I installed DD-WRT mega v24 SP1 and after that my router started to reboot very often and also the settings lost, for some reason everything gets reset. I used DD-wrt older versions for 2 years and tomato also in another router. But now I am with tomato alone
In my opinion both are good firmware but I tomato doesnt have dropouts as DD-wrt
alex wrote:
I’m using dd-wrt for my repeater bridge and it works fine. I just acquired a linksys gl with tomato, and couldn’t find that function.
Maybe I missed it, but I looked pretty thoroughly. The setup in dd-wrt is actually pretty simple and works fine for what I want it to do, i.e., wirelessly link up lan 1 with remote lan2 so that each client could link up either wireless (if configure with wireless adapters) or wired at each local lan. If someone else has been able to configure using Tomato, please post.
Sounds like you had a problem with your other users using P2P. Controlling UDP and TCP timeouts & max connections clears that up pretty quickly. Not sure what Wikis you were poring through, but they were the wrong ones. Haven’t rebooted or power cycled my v23 DD-WRT in ages… and QoS works without issues.
I think Tomato is probably better firmware for the less technically inclined, though.
Whelp, several days later… I’m a Tomato convert.
I made the mistake of moving from v23 to v24 sp1 because I needed improvements in a couple of areas due to recent changes in traffic patterns on my network (self-imposed
), and neither feature improved.
In fact, the UPnP display broke (some say the daemon even dies randomly). The feature itself still worked, sorta, but I could only verify this by looking at the page source (so someone screwed up the .js on the page basically and never noticed). QoS still failed to properly prioritize traffic at times and I was having difficulty actually *seeing* what it was doing because the logs were hosed and not updating. The rule granularity was a joke, and the config screen was still buggy.
After downloading a dev build and getting more bugs… I was done.
I really only need traffic shaping, UPnP, and a few basic firewall tools and logs. DD-WRT, for these purposes, was bloated & buggy and I wasn’t seeing improvement in later builds. Sure if you’re a CLI geek, I’m sure everything is just peachy. But I’m done with using a hack.
Tomato’s been much more robust & solid for me, and the QoS is absolutely wonderful.
Would love to try Tomato But I’m using WRT54G v7.2 & currently dd-wrt is only one that supports it.
Has anyone successfully migrated to Tomato from dd-wrt having WRT54G v7.2 or any other model which has 8mb ram & 2mb flash?
I know tomato site says it will not work on v5 and above but just wondering if someone has made ‘micro’ version ?
After 2.5 year with DD-WRT switched to Tomato. Higher P2P speeds, less router CPU usage. Exellent !
I tried dd-wrt, but it was just not stable. The only thing I miss in Tomato is IPv6 support, but otherwise it works well with my Thinkpad T42p laptop.
I too had been running dd-wrt 24sp1 on a couple of WRT54Gs for about a year, and I had them scheduled to reboot once a day, which seemed to help keep them stable.
When they work, they work fine, except for a very “jerky” data transfer behavior seen when performing bandwidth speed tests. My WRT54G now running Tomato 1.23 has no such issue (nor do any of my Apple Airports), so there is something funky going on with dd-wrt.
Love the UI, and all the stuff I need is there - Direct SSH, DynDNS, HTTPS remote access, QoS, WOL (better implementation than dd-wrt IMO), and more. Hope the guy doesn’t start charging, as it seems most others eventually do.
Love Tomato!
Tomato is a lean, mean, speed machine! I very rarely have to reboot with Tomato on my Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 (which I bought 2 years ago to immediately flash it to Tomato) and the wired and wireless both are flawless and have been since day one. I’ve used DD-WRT before and it’s “so-so” but Tomato is the clear winner in the open source firmware world.
If you haven’t donated any money to the Tomato developer, please do so because it’s a wonderful piece of work that deserves support!
Awesome post and the comments have been really helpful in answering some questions about it.
Also loving the site, just about to tweet the site to all my followers.
I used dd wrt once I hated it. I was using tomato before it was even called tomato, I forgot the name of the the firmware. hyperwrt is pretty stable likewise.
dd wrt is too bloated. Maybe you people should install the micro, the micro code is stripped down. the big one is just too bloated, no on needs all of the features.
Tomato rocks yes I agree. I been using it over for 3 years and my wrt54g hasn’t missed a beat.
Thanks for the article. I have switched to Tomato and will not look back! Had DD-WRT for about four days and was beginning to see problems. DD-WRT seemed to slow down over time even after tweaking things like the timeouts and had to be rebooted eventually to clear the problems. The DD-WRT interface is “perty” but ineffective since half the time you put in some value and it just disappears when you click save/apply. This with the latest v24 SP1. The deal breaker for me was that I have a 20Mbps/2Mbps connect speed that has a real downlink speed of about 17.5 Mbps. DD-WRT could not keep up with Qos enabled. With Qos enabled, the fastest DD-WRT could handle was 12.8 Mbps. Disable Qos and it’d go up to 17.5 like it should. DD-WRT on my WRT54G 2.2 router obviously maxed out at 12.8 Mbps and I don’t even think Qos was working. Now with Tomato, there is a slight slowdown but it can handle just over 16 Mbps with Qos on and I can see that Qos is actually working. Being someone who must download a lot of files for my work, taking a 12.8/17.5 hit is too much. With Tomato, 16/17.5 is acceptable, especially with Qos active.
I am trying to check out how useful the Qos is in the Tomato implementation. I like to test these scenarios to ensure the Qos really works just as it should and not just some fancy GUI with overheads.
Can one of you GURUs help me chalk out few test cases where I can really see the Qos in action? example how do I see KAZA, BITTORRENT, FILE UPLOADS etc to pick up steam in throughput with Qos enabled? Any/every help is much appreciated!!
regards
roy
There’s different ways to filter content for QoS in Tomato. I use a couple just in case people visit and obviously don’t use the ports that I do. Just look through the available options. Obviously some of them are redundant, but that’s ok, since none of them work perfect, and if the user encrypts their data like in utorrent tomato won’t be able to filter it. just remember that using the port is the easiest / best solution. You can then check out the bandwidth monitors to ensure your traffic is being sorted correctly. Also, make sure to enable TCP vegas (keeps uploads from choking your bandwidth.
I’ve been using tomato for a long time, but I’m thinking about switching to ddwrt for some other applications I have. I want VPN and ad serving / hotspot abilities in some other locations, so I’ll give it a go. For normal / super home users tomato is probably the best since it seems like the QoS settings are much more configurable. Especially if you share with room mates etc.
Is it possible to switch from DDWRT to Tomato? I haven’t been able to find an easy to follow guide.
Thanks in Advance!
inconspicuous wrote:
Just flash it using the DDWRT GUI and reset all settings to default.
Make sure Tomato supports your router though, it’s supported hardware is much smaller than DDWRT’s.
Hello, is there a way to put something like “Captive portal” on Tomato FW?
If someone could answer these questions, I’d be eternally grateful.
1. I have a new Asus WL 520GU router and want to flash Tomato. Can I do this directly or do I have to install DD-WRT first?
2. What version of Tomato is the best (most stable)? I mainly want USB printer support. Is it Tomato_1_25_ND.7z ?
3. A link to install instructions would be great.
Thanks in advance.
Ken
Ken wrote:
I have no idea whether Tomato supports your Asus router. But anyway:
1. No, don’t install DD-WRT. Tomato has nothing to do with DD-WRT. Install Tomato directly.
2. The latest stable version is the most stable version. Don’t pick a specific version - pick the latest stable version (at the time of writing, I’m not sure which that is).
3. The Tomato web site has ample installation instructions. But basically, you select “Upgrade Firmware” in the web administration GUI, and pick Tomato instead of an upgraded Asus firmware.
Have used Tomato as a main router giving internet to a large mesh, works very well QOS and always stable. Used to use DDWRT on hospots but ditched it in flavor of openwrt. DDWRT is just not reliable . I would like to see chilli on tomato but otherwise its excellent.
I hope in the past 2.5 years you’ve learned that uTorrent has it’s own QoS settings and it’s silly to use a router to help your bandwith “issues” when it comes to P2P.
Your post left me thinking. I’ve been using DD-WRT for a couple of years now, but whenever my roommate opens a P2P application, my connection drops to a crawl. I will certainly be giving Tomato a try one of these days. Worst that could happen is that I don’t like it and go back to DD-WRT. I will save the config, just in case
Ken wrote:
List of compatible routers and modifications of Tomato FW can be found on
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Tomato_%28firmware%29
The Linksys has worked great for me - I’ve had it for a few years now.
Me wrote:
I’m not quite sure but I think QoS in routers and uTorrent have different results especially if you shared your connection with others, it’s just like putting the limiter on different authority, if you use uTorrent QoS it will affect only the speed in your computers alone so if others who shares the same connections as yours tries to browse while you’re downloading torrent it might still get traffic jam. But if you use QoS in router, it will also regulate the bandwidth with others user who pass through the router.
I have been using DD-WRT because I use my WRT54G routers as wireless repeaters. I ran into a problem flashing DD-WRT on one of them and got corrupted memory. The router would take the original Linksys firmware, but DD-WRT would not flash successfully. One of the moderators on the DD-WRT forum got rude and insulting when I dared to say there was a bug in DD-WRT.
Nothing I did would erase the corrupted memory, until I tried Tomato 1.25 Tomato has a setting to do a complete erase of NVRAM. It worked!! I would still be using Tomato if it had a real Repeater Bridge mode (non-WDS). DD-WRT is the only show in town if you wanna convert your routers to range extenders. But if Tomato someday adds a repeater mode I will switch for sure.
yumagah wrote:
There are several ways to erase all of NVRAM. There is the 30-30-30 reset as well as ssh into the router and executing:
mtd erase nvram;reboot
See the following article
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Factory_Defaults
Gargoyle firmware is the best!
www.gargoyle-router.com/
I have tried DD-WRT V24 pre sp2 on my Linksys WRT54GL v1.1.
Not all features were working, most notably, PPPoE connection. So I tried DD-WRT v23. More stable and much more snappier under load than v24, but my peak transfer was 1.89 MB/s… Far from my usual 3.5 - 4.5 peak with the old router.
I instlaled Tomato and everything just works. I love the stats, and it’s very snappy under load. Transfer rate is back where it should be.
Tomato rulz!
I tried DD-WRT for my WRT54G ver. 2.2 Linksys router since I was really having some issues with the wireless signal, and not to mention that my ISP usually have a feature that boosts the speed of your internet at a specific time of the day from 10PM - 10AM the following day. The stock firmware of Linksys didn’t allow me to automatically set that up since it does happen on a regular basis. I had to manually enter the GUI and restart the PPPoE session.
DD-WRT:
I had issues with the memory going low. My sister loves to video stream. I know it is just a matter of settings, but DD-WRT’s GUI is a nightmare… I am not a noob when it comes to configuring routers as I used to do it for a living in a technical support center. But the GUI really has features that would require you to up the learning curve. With DD-WRT, it only had the option (even using the new preSP2 build, 10064) to reboot the router at a certain time of the day. That didn’t do as I found it to cumbersome as the router had to practially go off and bingo, wait for a few seconds, and if you are using a wireless connection and doing a lot of things on the web, that can be a pain in the butt. QoS also has a very confusing GUI. And not to mention very confusing builds. I like one that will remain stable… Not so much buggy…
Tomato Firmware:
Worked solidly at the very beginning. The router has a lot of memory also left for other things like monitoring the bandwidth usage, QoS is a breeze. I can now limit my sister’s usage as I upload a lot of stuff to the web. The firmware although takes time to be updated,based on its feedback, it is stable and I have seen a lot of people very happy on juicing with Tomato. I am a happy camper. The wireless incidentally is more responsive now. And I get quality signal without upping the transmission (currently set at default of 42mW), unlike with DD-WRT… Was set at 50-70mW and I still get a fluctuating quality on the wireless. More power to Tomato… Nice post by the way…
Mikos
Tomato is for noobs.
DD-WRT works on WAY more routers and that’s why there are more builds.
DD-WRTs new web makes finding the build you need very easy.
DD-WRT has far more versatility, way more options, dd-wrts 2MB micro build has more options then Tomato.
Try loading a “mini” build on your router if memory is going low.
ok which one have billing system built in with it ! dd-wrt or tomato any one can advice me ?
I wasn’t sold on Tomato at first but I am coming around.
Hello All
After flashing Tomato firmware, I have dd-wrt 24sp2, I had local network and dhcp (Network and Wireless) but could not get internet connection (WAN). What you think could be the problem?
Thanks
i just put dd-wrt on my linksys wrt54g v8 and came across this was thinking about going to tomato but it wont work on my router so i guess dd-wrt does have one thing over tomato just for working on v5 and up.
and since yumagah said tomato does not have a repeater mode in it i think ill stay with dd-wrt since thats what im using it for.
DD-WRT is not perfect, but its feature set is far more extensive than that of Tomato. I’m sticking with DD-WRT.