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On the hardware side, I'm using an Asus RT-N16 which has 128MB ram and runs at 480MHz, but some people overclock it. It's cheap and I bought it because it seems to be a favourite of Tomato developers so has some of the best support. Asus has a better model, but if I was to upgrade I just might go for Mikrotik. Like maybe one of their low end combos like this one with PoE, and wireless built in. I'm not really familiar with their proprietary OS though, called RouterOS, but some people say it's the best. They also sell their circuit boards, interfaces, and cases, separately so you can make your own custom setup.
Tomato is good. Plain simple yet powerful. I'm using it on my WRT54.
Will try Padavan or Pandorabox on Xiaomi this weekend. How is signal performance on Padavan @giang? As good as using stock?
Those are ancient! Gotta love them though. I've got one that I'm using outside to make a wireless link to the cottage, and of course it's running Tomato. Been chugging away out there for a long time now.
Hahah! Indeed.. ancient firmware for ancient WRT, but both running rock solid without crash. Those used WRT54 still cost like new TP-Link or DLINK here at local store though..
My RT n16 with shibby tomato is one of my favourite pieces of kit since 2012.
Currently out of service because it (probably) has one of ASUS's infamous cheapo input filter capacitors. Looks swollen to me.
I've just never gotten any soldering experience to replace it myself.
If I was buying in 2015, I'd definitely take a look at Tomato's compatibility list for options before going with an atheros tplink unit+openwrt.
This.
This. $15 on Aliexpress with free shipping. 8MB flash, 64 RAM, and 1 usb. Good signal, too
Couldn't you router masters put up a raspberry pi 2 and use it as a router?
Or is there some special hardware you need for routers?
Why a raspberry pi?
I use a 1043ND fro my primary router (1Gbps), and a Xiaomi Mini as a repeater (used n as a client and 5ghz as the new ssid)
More memory?
For? atm I am very happy with 64 :P
EDIT 1: And real ethernet :P
You need 2 ethernet ports for a router. I'm not sure that adding a USB/Ethernet adapter is fast or good.
its crazy they still sell that crap. its slow, only features that are relavent and usable are the external antennas. it does have more ram, but too slow... my overclocked dual cpu 1.2ghz router is perfect
Im running tomato now on a old linksys router i have. seems to work ok so far. easy to flash just flash through dd-wrt.
raspberry cost a bit after u buy all the accessories and crap you need for whatever your trying to build. im not a big fan of dlink. atm - just netgear, asus, tplink, ubiquiti.
Be careful with third party firmware if you have some of the faster internet packages (100 Mbps+). A lot of them don't support hardware acceleration (Tomato, DD-WRT, OpenWRT) and are unable to keep up with higher speeds on the older router models (Asus RT-N16, and older).
I ended up switching to Merlin since it supports hardware acceleration which is pretty much required for higher speeds on older router models. The CPUs are too slow to handle that much with only software.
Old CPUs did not have any hardware acceleration of complex things such as NAT to begin with, and newer CPUs will handle 100 Mbit just fine even without using it. With the newer ones you may run into performance problems as you (try to) approach 500-1000 Mbit WAN-to-LAN speeds.
Or just use (more) IPv6, no NAT there, so very little computational load on the router compared to IPv4!
The Asus RT-N16 had some level of NAT acceleration when using Merlin. I was capped around 90 Mbps with Tomato and when I flashed to Merlin I was able to hit over 100 Mbps no problem. I used it for a while before purchasing something a bit more modern (Nighthawk r7000).
I doubt that's an issue. How many here have 100Mbps on their home network? From what I read, about 5Mbps is about average.
My router can handle 170Mbps pretty good
I would have assumed it was a lot higher than that. And here I am waiting for them to finish their upgrades that bring it to 125 in a week. /firstworldproblems
221 before I moved out into the sticks.
Most broadband connections are of course in big cities - that's where the population is. Rural connections are generally much lower but they don't pull down the average much because of the relatively low number. Even in the light of that, the average is still 5Mbps. People who have something like 100 or over are in an extremely small and privledged group. The ISP Review writes:
i'm using old WRT54G v2 + ddwrt = running smoothly
Merlin works great with asus haven't really done benchmarks and I hate the ui.
You got a 8gb ram version. Still OK but download some torrents and it still start to get kooky.
What's up with buffalo my last one one was the whr-hp-g54 with amplified radio really nice. Too bad it's outdated now.
I've use OpenWrt router for about a year, from my experience, if you want to modify your router easily with lot of repository then i'll suggest OpenWrt, and if for just personal use then Gargoyle still based from OpenWrt but already installed many features such as OpenVPN Client/Server, Bandwidth throttle/limit, etc, also i didnt find bug on their stable release, but didnt yet tried DD-WRT
Marketing BS. No amplifier is going to increase any range except for transmission. What's the point in being able to dominate the neighbourhood to areas from which you can't receive? Hint, none. Marketing and technology is always a bad mix. Reminds me of the days when we had CB idiots with a linear. For those that arnt versed in radio technology, let me just say that I deliberately turn down the transmission power on my old router, and I've got someone down the block who is using my signal just fine without getting dropped packets.
did you mean 8mb rom? it's 4mb rom and used only for personal router. never have any problem with torrent. i assume all high pps application will increase cpu usage, but hey it's cheap router just add some feature with custom firmware
cmiiw
If you have some server cycles to spare, you can also run a router in a virtual machine. One advantage is that you can try out different router software before choosing one to install in real hardware.
There are security risks to doing it this way. There are other complications, too. How do you update the server if the virtual router that it runs is shutdown? For testing purposes, you can run it solely on the local LAN at first, avoiding any connection to the public Internet.
Wrong info.
Versions 1 to 4 all have 16MB RAM and 4MB Flash memory. It's version 5 and above that one wants to avoid since they have 8MB/2MB. Well, perhaps also version 1 because of its power requirement.
Indeed a good choice. That one was similar to v1.1 but with an improved transmitter and better CPU. In fact I've heard that some of those, although being locked to 16MB actually have 32MB if you check the board, and it is possible to release that.