Ask Slashdot: DD-WRT Upgrade To 802.11n? 196
First time accepted submitter krinderlin writes "My home network consists of a Linksys WRT54GL for WAN access and a WRT54G version 8 for a wireless bridge for my Blu-Ray and old XBox 360*. Due to a recent move and coaxial jack placements, I can't run Ethernet to the office, so I'm now looking at about 8 wireless clients at any given time. I'd like to start piecing together a network upgrade to 802.11n, but want to keep the flexibility and power of DD-WRT. So what 802.11n routers do you have with DD-WRT? What would you recommend for PCIe x1 and USB adapters? *Because $100 for a 802.11g adapter is pure insanity."
Great experience with Asus RT-N16 (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite a powerful router, I use it heavily for my VPN. It also allows you to upgrade to DD-WRT right through their interface.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320038&Tpk=asus%20rt-n16
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NO! Asus RT-N16 is not good. BUFFALO N450 rocks! (Score:2)
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I have one using Tomato, and I love it. I was a huge fan of DD-WRT, but the simplicity of Tomato won me over. It has plenty of power for me, and the UI is pretty. It handles torrents very well since it's pretty well loaded with RAM.
Having N at only 150mbps wasn't a dealbreaker for me. Wireless is just more reliable with multiple antennae.
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Indeed, I noticed that my old two-antennae router had trouble reaching my dungeon downstairs. The undeclared members of my family could only get intermittent reception. Now they can access youtube and email from this remote part of the house and I don't get so many complaints.
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Agreed. I've had my RT-N16 for about a year. It is great with DD-WRT (I guess it supports Tomato, but I haven't had a need to upgrade). I did have problems with mine overheating (not overclocked or anything), but some left over heatsink coolers from way-back and an ancient graphics-card cooling fan completely fixed the issue for me.
The RT-N16 seems to have some quality control issues, but for the price, there was nothing better when I bought mine. There may be better options now though.
Re:Asus RT-N16 with Tomato USB (Score:2)
I too have had great experience with the N16 running Tomato USB. I convinced a couple friends to get it as well, and they're also very happy. The router has tons of RAM, ROM, and CPU. My only complaint is that it's only 2.4GHz, not 5GHz dual-band. However, the only 5GHz device I've got is my work laptop, and I have a separate AP for 802.11g and not much else around me, so 5GHz isn't that big a deal right now.
There are a few advanced features of DD-WRT that Tomato USB doesn't do (at least from the GUI),
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RT-N16 all the way. I have plaster walls in my house (the kind held up by perforated metal sheets which make excellent faraday cages) and couldn't get wireless through. Got this router specifically because it had 3 removable antennae. Threw on some monster 12db antennae, loaded DD-WRT, tweaked a few settings and poof I had wireless through the whole house. The antennae I got had super long cables on them so it made finding the perfect placement easy.
WNDR3700v2 (Score:1)
This router is an absolut beast in terms of range and throughput. The DD-WRT support is terrific and the device is rather cheap.
If you do not absolutely need 450 Mbit/s, but are satisfied with 300 Mbit/s, go with the WNDR3700v2
WNDR-3700v2 (Score:5, Informative)
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I mostly agree, except I found it to have infuriating reliability issues compared to my old router, a WRT-310N. Every so often - say, once or twice a day - it'd just stop passing traffic to/from the WAN for a minute or two. No rhyme nor reason, no useful info in the control panel or logs; the traffic just went into a black hole. My 310N never, ever did this.
I eventually wound up running (and am still running) a dumb-but-works combination of the WNDR-3700v2, using its native firmware, acting purely as a wire
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WNDR3700v2 (Score:3)
Check out the WNDR3700v2 [amazon.com]. The folks doing serious research [bufferbloat.net] into home network performance have settled on this unit. Check out the prices on Amazon's refurbished stock - equivalent to what I was paying for 54GL's back in the day. I picked up a new for the office and a refurb for home.
They have lots of RAM, a decent processor, and dual-band radios. I think it's the 54G for the new decade.
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Have you tried HomePlug instead of wifi? I find the bandwidth to be a big improvement over wifi. I can at least max out my 50Mb cable connection and no ethernet cables running through the house.
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Have you tried HomePlug instead of wifi? I find the bandwidth to be a big improvement over wifi. I can at least max out my 50Mb cable connection and no ethernet cables running through the house.
I use HomePlug in my neighborhood network. The version 2 stuff (is that 'AV'?) is really good - v1, not so much. I get about 50Mbps between a garage and the house's basement, and didn't have to dig new conduit, so totally worth the price (I think those were Netgear too). It sits behind a 40Mbps VDSL link, so plent
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I know exactly what you mean, I upgraded to the newer netgear HD 500mb kit from 100mb belkin stuff. I used to get dropped connections that could only be fixed with a restart of the hardware but that has all now more reliable (and faster).
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HomePlug is usable, but it's comparatively underpowered. Good wireless speeds are now 300-450 mbps.
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I tried homeplug for a while. It was nice and fast, compared to 2.4GHz wireless at least, but it corrupted data: about half of my large file downloads wound up corrupted. I'd download a 4GB ISO and find it didn't match the sha256sum, re-download it and it'd be okay.
Never happened on the same systems since I ditched the homeplug and just ran an ethernet cable across the ceiling to the router, so it was definitely the homeplug screwing it up. Mine are now collecting dust...
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If the homeplug nodes are on opposite sides of the breaker box your signal goes through the transformer on the pole down the street.
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ps - I use homeplug *and* WDS at the house - mainly because there are three walls and a floor between my home router and the rack where directv/PS3/xbox lives. There is a WDS node in the kitchen one floor below the my router and another one in my bedroom feeding a directv receiver. This is a fairly new house and the spousal unit won't allow me to pull wire through her walls.
Yet. ;-)
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Any chance they'll start geeking out over the WNDR4000?
It'd be fun to hack it onto mine myself, but it would also be a lot of time I don't have.
Oh, I suppose I could stop reading /.
And I suppose I would, once I bricked my router...
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Check out the WNDR3700v2 [amazon.com]. The folks doing serious research [bufferbloat.net] into home network performance have settled on this unit. Check out the prices on Amazon's refurbished stock - equivalent to what I was paying for 54GL's back in the day. I picked up a new for the office and a refurb for home.
They have lots of RAM, a decent processor, and dual-band radios. I think it's the 54G for the new decade.
Since the OP is intending to run DD-WRT on it, it doesn't really matter... but this router is a piece o' crap with the stock firmware. The external drive function has never worked properly, Netgear has known about the bug and never bothered to fix it. The drive(s) will go offline for no explicable reason and require a power cycle. If you aren't using that portion of the router, it's probably fine, but since I purchased this router for my parents house and purchased it explicitly for the extra drive connec
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Sounds just like the Linksys firmrware on the 54G.
Linksys (Score:1)
Check the list (Score:1)
Could you not just check the list here:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices [dd-wrt.com]
and go with your favourite supplier of quality hardware? Also, bear in mind that some of your connected equipment isn't and can't be N-enabled (PS3 it think from memory). Therefore, you'll want something that can gracefully handle both G and N at the same time (ideally as separately configured wireless networks).
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Because he isn't looking for a compatibility list. krinderlin said "So what 802.11n routers do you have with DD-WRT? What would you recommend for PCIe x1 and USB adapters?" Notice that he said "what ... do you have ..." not what will work with.
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Maybe because that list is full of routers that are old and not currently available from places like Best Buy and Newegg. Knowing that DD-WRT works great on a router that I cannot actually buy is pretty useless. Also, many routers have multiple versions, and DD-WRT only works on some of them. Yes, that list would have what you need, but the work needed to go though the list to find something easily available would be a LOT of work.
WNDR3700 (Score:2)
I have seen the WNDR3700 [dd-wrt.com] recommended as being a good option. The hardware itself is relatively powerful, with a 680MHz processor, 64MiB RAM, and 8MiB flash. The 4 internal+1 external RJ-45 ports are gigabit. It costs US$120 from Newegg.com .
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hmm I wonder if the back-plain and cpu actualy can manage 4+ Gbps
The switch? Maybe. The CPU? Not a chance.
No, I haven't tested this model, but I've test-driven enough routers to know that a 680 MHz processor isn't going to route even 1 gbps.
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No, the backplane can not handle 4Gbps, however it can handle a smidge over 1Gbps sustained throughput based on the tests I ran. One thing it does not handle particularly well is ARP table exhaustion in a very short time window. Of course I was cheating to do this (http://www.ecrunch.com/listing/Spirent_Netcom_SmartBits_SMB-200_200_w__2x_Spirent_Netcom_SmartBits_ML-7710_10_1.html [ecrunch.com]). Sending random MAC and IP addresses as source and destination, at wire rate (with 4 1Gbps blades), with minimum IPG and rand
$20 USB Wireless Adapters (Score:2)
These TP-Link USB Wireless Adapters have been great for me.
G: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704046 [newegg.com]
N: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704045 [newegg.com]
Linksys E3000 (Score:1)
My Cisco/Linksys E3000 is running DD-WRT v24-sp2.
Any functionality from DD-WRT in particular? (Score:3)
So what 802.11n routers
I've ended up replacing most of my previous kit with acquired-from-eBay Apple kit. 802.11n over 5Ghz for some devices, and over 2.4Ghz for others, with fallback to 802.11g for older devices. Airport Extreme for the main routing, with some Airport Express units for the music system. I used one as a wireless bridge for the PS3 for a while, but, since switching to an old Apple TV for playback, everything's streamed fine over Wi-Fi.
Was there particular functionality you wanted, which led you to DD-WRT? Or might other routers be able to do what it is that you need?
do you have with DD-WRT?
None :)
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"Was there particular functionality you wanted, which led you to DD-WRT? Or might other routers be able to do what it is that you need?"
I've found most consumer router firmwares don't support NAT loopback, which I find pretty useful. dd-wrt does.
Re:Any functionality from DD-WRT in particular? (Score:4, Informative)
General reaction is DD-WRT is crappy these days. I don't really know.
Not only crappy but a fairly evil project as well. Closed source, deceptive project leaders, software activation.
The tomato project is much better run and does everything that DD-WRT does. I like tomato-USB but there are several other flavors.
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In that case, get one of these:
http://www.tp-link.com/simulator/tl-wr1043nd/index.htm [tp-link.com]
That's a simulator of the firmware, so you can poke around in it and see what it's capable of. Some of the naming in the firmware is a bit weird, but I speak from experience when I say that it's a very good router: I have two of them that I'm currently using as I type this. One is at a charity I volunteer with, and they haven't had any problems at all since the install, and the other is running my home network.
Of note, the
Dlink DIR-825 (Score:2)
I've been using one with ddwrt for a while, it was pretty simple to get setup and AFAIK it is fully supported.
Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH (Score:2)
I use a WZR-HP-G300NH and it has worked well for me for quite some time. I've probably had it for a good 18 months now. With DD-WRT I am limited to 130mbps instead of 300, but other than that it's rock solid.
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Or it's dual-band big brother, the AP WZR-HP-AG300H. $89.99 for the router itself at Amazon [amazon.com], oddly enough. Nice little table at the bottom comparing the Buffalo router model features as well at that link.
Supports DD-WRT out of the box and support by the manufacturer.
My ONLY complaint is that the radio on my G300NH model is a little bit weaker than my old Linksys routers, since I could boost the signal. I don't think that option works in the firmware on the
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Same here. When I actually want an AP, I'll go get something with a 5G antenna. But for wired routing including some more esoteric VPN etc, the extra flash space makes this a great box. Also note: that USB port can indeed support a hub and the usual plethora of Linux drivers, so you can use it for your RF remote, rs232 ports, whatnot. Man was I glad to retire that old whirring laptop.
Why not ethernet over power line? (Score:2)
Ethernet over powerline is slow (Score:2)
It depends a lot on the wiring in the house, so the system is sensitive in that way. The wiring in my house is good, though.
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This works well for me as well. The DLink adapters I got can only do 10mbs, though. It's only an issue when I want to transfer large amounts of data to a network share that isn't in the same room.
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Tomato (Score:5, Informative)
DD-WRT development is basically dead. There hasn't been an update on their homepage in over a year.
There are unofficial builds in the forums, but even those are at this point old. For example, the "Recommended" version for Broadcom-based devices still includes an ANCIENT release of inadyn that doesn't work with most dynamic DNS providers at this point (nearly all implemented SSL security which breaks with older inadyn.)
Tomato/TomatoUSB are the way to go at this point. (Tomato itself isn't updated much either - TomatoUSB has improved support even for non-USB devices.)
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Another vote for TomatoUSB over DD-WRT - open source and very feature rich. The Asus RT-N16 runs great on Tomato - that's what I use and love it but like mentioned above it's only single band.
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Still kickin (Score:2)
DD-WRT is not dead but the developers work in the strangest of ways and can't be coaxed toward sanity. If you browse the file directories on the server (many links in the DD-WRT forums) then you can find updated beta builds. The beta builds that we forum moderators recommend is getting old but that is because the newer builds have several major bugs, but you're free to run any build you want.
Just look at the DD-WRT Trac for proof that it's still being developed.
http://svn.dd-wrt.com/timeline [dd-wrt.com]
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I have to agree. I bought a Linksys E4200, and while it more or less works in DD-WRT with some manual config edits and in very specific configurations (only 2.4GHz N, only 10MHz channels, and only on the default channel numbers), it has dozens of bugs. OpenDNS updates don't work, I had to write my own fix for loopback operation, the router has to be rebooted daily to prevent wireless drop-off, etc...
None of these bugs ever seem to get fixed, but instead I see the couple developers who do write code fixing l
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Well, in that case - whatever development effort is remaining is being executed very poorly.
Deficiencies in older releases aren't being corrected, while new releases introduce new bugs - sounds like if it isn't dead, it's poorly developed.
inadyn in the recommended release is multiple versions old and fails on many services now. But instead of fixing the old bugs, they're just creating new ones and not touching the known-broken stuff? Last I checked, DD-WRT was including inadyn 1.6 - that was last released
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Too late - I already switched to Tomato, everything just plain works better.
Seriously? From 2004 to 2011 to update inadyn?
And, of course - what bugs get included with updating to that release compared with the ancient "recommended" release for Broadcom devices?
I went through great lengths to make inadyn print more useful log info - it's kind of stupid that DD-WRT's default error reportings for inadyn cause it to report success when a failure occurs. Verbose logging showed that the server was rejecting req
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I have had a lot of problem with dd-wrt running on a WRT160N-v3, N was dropping about every hours, I tried dozens of build for more than a year before switching to TomatoUSB.
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I can add that my E3000 runs flawlessly in ABGN mode, no problem with 2.4GHZ and 5GHz, support USB drive sharing, etc.
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Why did its development stop? Did no one take over it?
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Because dd-wrt wanted to take the project closed. Not necessarily closed source, but effectively so with some deliberate barriers to discourage folks getting into the code and making their own customizations. This drove away both users and potential contributers. Big surprise, that.
Everyone has gone over to open-wrt because it is... well, open.
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I'm using dd-wrt because it supports having multiple wireless lans on a single router, each with their own ssid and encryption. Last time I checked Tomato doesn't support that, but your post made me look at open-wrt and it does [openwrt.org]. Thank you.
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I got the impression that Tomato does not support dual-band N routers.
Or am I wrong?
Consider building your own (Score:2)
WRT600N (Score:2)
I have one of these, been running DD-WRT since late on day 1, no issues. Dual band, dual radio abgn. Might be getting difficult to find, but the high end Linksys routers are a fairly safe bet, and the DD-WRT wiki will answer your questions.
Don't. (Score:2)
Not DD-WRT but... (Score:2)
Look at Ubiquiti and Ruckus. Both are doing really interesting stuff.
The 200 Mbs adapters work surprisingly well (Score:2)
Not in the sense that you'll ever actually see 200 Mbs, but that they work in some harsh environments. I can get 6 Mbs over 400 ft of buried ROMEX electrical cord between my parents house and garage which is full of electric motors and spliced lines. I expect the upcoming generation of 1Gb G.hn adapters would hit 10-15 Mbs real world. Not bad at all.
In my house with its 1960's wiring, iperf is showing a consistent 44 Mbs.
Switch to MikroTik/RouterBoard (Score:2)
I have been using dd-wrt/tomato for years and I agree with some of the other posters, that development is nearly at a standstill.
IMHO, you should switch to a different platform - MikroTik!
The software is *way* more powerful than dd-wrt, has been more stable and performed exceptionally for me. I must admit, there is a bit of a learning curve but there is a lot of guides out there now and they have added a windows-based GUI, as well as significantly improved their web interface, so most basic stuff is point
MoCA. (Score:2)
Seriously, if you have coaxial jacks, get MoCA bridges. They're awesome.
A mixed recommendation: WNDR3300 (Score:2)
DD-WRT is very stable on my Netgear WNDR3300, but the CPU reaches 100% usage at relatively low throughput. See here [dd-wrt.com] for some benchmarks recorded by another user.
I'm looking to get a better router and to OpenWRT in the near future. (The amount of writable flash on my router is too small to have a usable OpenWRT install with a JFFS2 partition.)
an upgrade to an 1800s house with 3 floors. (Score:2)
4 x ENCORE ENUWI-2XN42 USB 2.0 Wireless N300 Adapter, 2dBi [newegg.com]
Those were the most recent purchases I made to upgrade an old 1800's house where the owner preferred no holes to be drilled to run wire. I believe I left a wrt54gn on the third floor for a multifunction printer that could not utilize a wireless device. Both routers were equipped with dd-wrt. The Encore adapters work very nicely.
OpenWRT + Buffalo Router (Score:3)
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Plus dd-wrt is a bit "closed". They seem to deliberately go out of their way to make it difficult even for experienced developers to package up their own custom firmware. (If I don't qualify that, someone will reply with a red herring case why newbies shouldn't hack router firmware... and in such an extreme example, I agree).
Supposedly open source projects shouldn't go out of their way to keep people from modifying the source. This hurts not just the users, but it drives away potential new contributers. Whi
HOWTO DD-WRT on Netgear WNDR3700 (Score:2)
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OT: auto-link Re:HOWTO DD-WRT on Netgear WNDR3700 (Score:2)
Probably, the tokenizer doesn't recognize (http://www.google.com) because of the lack of space between the paren and the ( http://www.google.com/ [google.com] )
IF you want flexibility and faster.... (Score:2)
Ditch DD-WRT.
I use ipCop that gives me 80X of what DD-WRT can and a pair of dedicated ap's. works far better than any consumer router running DD-WRT and delivers more "flexibility".
Real 802.11n at 5 ghz is where your performance gains are, avoid the Fake 802.11n routers or ap's that are not dual band with 5ghz. I bought a decent pair of dual band N ap's and a tiny mini-itx based PC that had 3 networks ports, this was 2X the price of a consumer grade real N router but it's far more powerful, flexible an
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to the surprise of even the haters... (Score:2)
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I'm gonna try and get hourly/daily/monthly totals and identify which port is which tonight... then get some absurdly popular
Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH (Score:2)
It lacks 5GHz 802.11n, though. There might be something new in the same line that has it, though, I guess.
what about Homeplug? (Score:2)
Not a answer to your question per se, but I ran into a very similar problem when I moved to a new apartment 2 years ago. Rather than upgrade everything to 802.11n (and suffer the whole issue of too many wireless cooks in the pot as everyone now has their own access point) I got two Homeplug v2 adapters and moved my router to my office. Cable modem connects to my coax, which is then plugged into a Homeplug. The 2nd Homeplug then goes to the WAN interface on my house router. Works like a charm and I can still
ASUS RT-N66U (Score:2)
Single best WRT54G hack ever... (Score:2)
A little off-topic, but...
If you have a WRT54G (the original, stackable version), and/or a BEFSR41 (same case style, no wireless), get a fan like an old 486 or socket 5/socket 7 Pentium heatsink fan, and 4 plastic motherboard standoffs.
The part of the standoffs that stick up through a motherboard are the part that'll go into the fan's screw holes.
The other end of the standoffs has a broad flange and a part below that that hooks into the mounting holes on the case.
Saw off that part under the flange, leaving
La Fonera (Score:2)
www.fon.com - It uses its own version of dd-wrt, but you can just use the regular one.
Good things: the work they did over the original dd-wrt, usb port, torrent out of box, etc.
Bad things: no 5gz, ethernet is 100mpbs.
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Confirmed for not paying attention.
He already knows they support 802.11n, he's asking which router is the best one.
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+1 for this. OpenWRT is better if you want to do some serious fancy stuff, but if you're not doing anything exotic DD-WRT will do the job and is more convenient. Just keep in mind this model has a problem getting a gigabit link on the WAN port with DD-WRT, probably not a problem for most applications but keep it in mind.
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It's practically impossible to get a Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH in this day and age. They are now selling the WZR-HP-G300NH2, even though the box says its just the NH. There is no DD-WRT support to speak of for the NH2, last I checked. But if you use the professional firmware, you can fix the broken NAT Loopback (or lack thereof)
Just go into the “Administration” menu and the “Commands” submenu. Save the text string below as a “Firewall command.” In other words, paste the co
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+1 on this one.
We've been using the Buffalo modified version of DD-WRT for a few months now. It replaced a Linksys E3k that was continually dropping connections. Overall, we're pretty happy with it (QoS, DHCP, etc). I'll definitely check on the link speed, although it is connected to DSL modem that can't do gigabit anyway. :)
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I have a cable tv line that isn't being used anymore (2fl office to basement). It's completely disconnected from the cable company. Do I need to have this live with the CableCo or can I run it over the currently unused cable?
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OK, if you're renting I can understand the reluctance to actually pull the cable everywhere.
But IMO, finding creative ways of getting the cable all the places you want is a fun exercise and a great way to learn about the nooks and crannies of your house. Also an excuse to get fish tape, a cable stapler, nifty plumb-bob things and especially a fishing reel/dart gun combination dingus.
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I like using my crossbow for this. Although I do get some funny looks when I bring it in to work. :)
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The dart guns are especially fun. Think of a spring loaded gun that has a fishing reel on it. It shoots about 200 ft, then you can draw it in making cats go nuts. :)
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Sadly, your reason for "jest" is less disturbing than your second to last reason. Easy solution: show your landlord your "christian bookmarks" ... see, even god loves the innertubes ;-)
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Sometimes the news is not in the article but in the comments, actually scratch that slashdot is all about the comments.
Home networking is always of some interest to most of us, and a round up of whats available good reliable / unreliable of currently available gear makes for interesting (and mostly reliable) reading on slashdot.
Where else will you get this kind of update on what's current and what matters rather than the consumer view point which is just going to cover it lets me connect to my isp and did
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Somebody didn't take notice that this is in the "Ask Slashdot" section, i.e., the section specifically designed for "...someone asking for advice and opinions....".
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TL-WR1043ND is Great! (Score:2)
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