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.