DD-WRT Routers - Which one should I choose?

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › DD-WRT Routers - Which one should I choose?

gijamesjr

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#148728 29-Jun-2014 08:05

Hi everyone,

I'm new here but thought this would be a good place to leverage of others experience.

Question : I want to get myself a DD-WRT router, which one (make/model) should I get?

These are a few things I want to accomplish.

- extend wireless coverage in my house
- usage/traffic monitoring (per computer/mac address statistics)
- write traffic to a log file on remote device

Things I'm concerned about

$$$$$ haha, ok I don't really wanna spend too much, just want something that will do the job ok

I'll chuck in a few routers I'm looking at and see what you guys think

Cisco Linksys E1200 N300 - DD-WRT v24-sp2 (05/27/13)
Cisco Linksys WRT610N - DD-WRT v24-sp2 MEGA 7.5MB edition (03/25/13)

What do you guys think? Any other recommendations? Cons for either of these two routers? Can I get better for less $?

What kinds of other 'working' setups does anyone else have out there? I really want to be able to see what 'data used per computer', write this to a file on say a file server, even try setup nagios monitoring later on, but I'll start with a router first that can offer me the functionality first without setting me back to much

Cheers :)

RunningMan

8960 posts

Uber Geek

#1076383 29-Jun-2014 08:33

What sort of throughput does it need to handle?

gijamesjr

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1076387 29-Jun-2014 08:40

Hi RunningMan,

Not overly concerned with throughput at the moment, but wirelessly if I can get anything approaching .G in the house I'm fine.

Dualband only mildly appeals to me as a nice optional extra sitting there for later.

Thanks.

RunningMan

8960 posts

Uber Geek

#1076393 29-Jun-2014 09:09

Throughput to the outside world? Are you sitting on a 5Mb/s DSL connection, or a 130Mb/s cable?

gijamesjr

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1076396 29-Jun-2014 09:35

Hi RunningMan

~10Mbps I think last I checked so my sync not setting the world on fire.

michaelt

425 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1076408 29-Jun-2014 10:13

Absolute cheapest option - Buy a used Vodafone/Huawei HG556a from trademe (~$10), install open wrt on it (dd wrt isn't supported) - http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/huawei/hg556a . You'll lose the ADSL and VoIP ports, but DD WRT routers don't have that anyway. Specs are actually pretty good.

Dratsab

3946 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1076412 29-Jun-2014 10:25

If you're in Wellington I have an HG556a you can grab off me for nothing.

gijamesjr

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1076435 29-Jun-2014 11:30

michaelt: Absolute cheapest option - Buy a used Vodafone/Huawei HG556a from trademe (~$10), install open wrt on it (dd wrt isn't supported) - http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/huawei/hg556a . You'll lose the ADSL and VoIP ports, but DD WRT routers don't have that anyway. Specs are actually pretty good.

Hey Michael,

Cheers for that, seems like an interesting avenue to go down.

Have u set one up? I'll check this out to see if it can do the traffic/usage monitoring I'm looking for :)

Thanks

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

gijamesjr

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1076449 29-Jun-2014 11:30

Dratsab: If you're in Wellington I have an HG556a you can grab off me for nothing.

Thanks Dratsab,

Unfortunately I'm in Auckland :(

Cheers though :)

michaelt

425 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1076455 29-Jun-2014 11:42

gijamesjr:
michaelt: Absolute cheapest option - Buy a used Vodafone/Huawei HG556a from trademe (~$10), install open wrt on it (dd wrt isn't supported) - http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/huawei/hg556a . You'll lose the ADSL and VoIP ports, but DD WRT routers don't have that anyway. Specs are actually pretty good.

Hey Michael,

Cheers for that, seems like an interesting avenue to go down.

Have u set one up? I'll check this out to see if it can do the traffic/usage monitoring I'm looking for :)

Thanks

Not yet. Bought one from trademe intending to do this (was planning to set it up as an Asterisk VoIP server), but managed to buy a used Fritz!Box that does what I want and adds DECT support (although it's not quite as flexible for routing). Also bought a used E3200 from trademe (supports DD WRT but only with 2.4GHz wifi, supports Tomato with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz) that I'm currently using as a wireless access point and gigabit switch only. The main downsides with the HG556a are that it's 100Mbps ethernet only and 2.4GHz wireless only and we get quite a bit of interference from neighbours wifi, 2.4GHz cordless phones, 2.4GHz video senders, microwaves, etc.

Anyway, still have that project on the back burner. Thinking about using a basic ADSL modem in half-bridge mode (probably my old Dynalink RTA1320E), use the E3200 as a router running Tomato, the HG556a as an Asterisk server and the Fritz!Box as a DECT and analog ATA for the phones.

For traffic/usage monitoring, Tomato might be preferable to either DD or Open WRT.

scottr

262 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1076524 29-Jun-2014 14:07

5ghz in my experience has always been flaky to get going on dd-wrt/openwrt. Are you using the dd-wrt stable or one of the newer beta builds? Have you looked at openwrt directly (or gargoyle)? You might have more luck with those...

re: RTA1320e, I've run one of those half-bridged to my openwrt router for almost 5 years now. It's quite reliable, except in summer when it gets quite hot and ventilation isn't the best (i.e. stashed behind the couch).

michaelt

425 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1076544 29-Jun-2014 15:01

scottr: 5ghz in my experience has always been flaky to get going on dd-wrt/openwrt. Are you using the dd-wrt stable or one of the newer beta builds? Have you looked at openwrt directly (or gargoyle)? You might have more luck with those...

re: RTA1320e, I've run one of those half-bridged to my openwrt router for almost 5 years now. It's quite reliable, except in summer when it gets quite hot and ventilation isn't the best (i.e. stashed behind the couch).

At the moment I'm still using stock firmware. Done a fair bit of searching and it seems there is no dd wrt support for the 5GHz band on the E3200, but apparently it works fine in Shibby's Tomato USB mod. Will play around with that at some point, as I'm not happy with the printer sharing on the stock firmware.

gijamesjr

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1076546 29-Jun-2014 15:05

Hi michaelt,

Cheers, I'll look into Tomato, I'm quite interesting in setting up the traffic/usage monitoring within the household and getting a nagios setup going.

@scott, I'm looking at this Cisco Linksys WRT610N - DD-WRT v24-sp2 MEGA 7.5MB edition (03/25/13). What do you think?.

scottr

262 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1076569 29-Jun-2014 15:26

Hi, haven't had any experience with that router but did consider getting an earlier version of it before i got my wndr-3700. I've tried that dd-wrt version a while back, you might be able to find newer betas in the dd-wrt forums if you want to try something a bit more up to date.

Problem I've found is that once you flash with one alt firmware, you start trying a whole bunch of others until you find one you like :)

PANiCnz

990 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1077324 30-Jun-2014 20:41

michaelt:
Bought one from trademe intending to do this (was planning to set it up as an Asterisk VoIP server)

Out of curiosity why would you want to run Asterisk on a HG556a if you lose the VoIP ports? Am I missing something here? aka what makes this device more suitable than any other device?

michaelt

425 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1077385 30-Jun-2014 21:49

PANiCnz:
michaelt:
Bought one from trademe intending to do this (was planning to set it up as an Asterisk VoIP server)

Out of curiosity why would you want to run Asterisk on a HG556a if you lose the VoIP ports? Am I missing something here? aka what makes this device more suitable than any other device?

I had a couple of 2-port VoIP ATA's, however I wanted to set up a system with 3 extensions. The idea was to setup Asterisk on the HG556a, connect that to my VoIP numbers and connect 2 ATA's to it to create a system 2ith 4 extensions. However, I ended up buying a used Fritz!Box which has 2 extension ports, a built-in DECT base station and allows SIP extensions as well so no longer need that.

And there's nothing that makes the HG556a more suitable than anything else except that it's cheap and has decent specs (16MB ROM, 64MB RAM, 300Mbps 802.11n, 3 USB ports, a half-decent CPU). Nothing spectacular about it, but I haven't found anything comparable for the $5.50 mine cost me on trademe.