Tell us your DD-WRT experience...

[Engineering]

How good of an idea is it to rely on DD-WRT firmware to handle router security instead of it's manufacture's firmware? How reliable is this firmware? Stable?

Robust security? No malicious source code?

What are you experiences with iif you have used DD-WRT... any thoughts, comments, or concerns?

Edited August 14, 2009 by Engineering

[tain]

The security features seem solid, it is the wireless performance that I've had issues with. I'm actually considering reverting my firmware right now because DD-WRT's WLAN streaming is garbage.

BTW, please change your avatar. Animation is not allowed here. Thanks

[CoffeeFiend]

How good of an idea is it to rely on DD-WRT firmware to handle router security instead of it's manufacture's firmware?

It's a very good idea, as it gets maintained/updated a LOT better than most original firmwares, and it also has a LOT more options than the competition, with regards to security (more encryption options, radius, mac filtering, custom iptables rules, not broadcasting SSID, access via SSH instead of telnet, etc) and other features as well. By a LONG shot (I'd say non-3rd party firmwares have about 5% of the features)

How reliable is this firmware? Stable?

The firmware itself is, but that's not saying much about the hardware it runs onto which more often than not sucks.

I haven't had wireless performance or streaming issues personally. In fact, the performance with it has been quite good, especially because you can boost the power and also use "quiter" channels other firmwares wouldn't let you pick (far better SNR, so better speeds)

Either ways, I've moved to Tomato a while ago.

[Engineering]

Hmm

[tain]

Tomato looks neat, but doesn't support newer devices

[DigeratiPrime]

I use DD-WRT on my home gateway and recomend it. I did see a wireless issue on a WRT54GL in the past, verified using InSSIDer on a client, but that was many builds ago. Right now everyone should be checking their forum and using the 'SP2' pre releases. Tomato has nicer graphs, but is missing many features in comparison and isn't updated as frequently.

[CoffeeFiend]

Tomato looks neat, but doesn't support newer devices

That's a problem for sure. Then again, it's a problem with DD-WRT too, which mostly works with older Broadcom chips (and to a lesser extent, Atheros based chips and a handful of others), which are used mostly in older pre-N routers... It's slowly getting better. DD-WRT is better in some ways, like the Wiviz scan, having differently sized/featured images (mini, micro, vpn...), a better linux CLI to some extent (they vary quite a bit from one to another), etc. OpenWRT seems to be a bit more bleeding edge, but perhaps not as user friendly.

Personally, I'm more or less giving up on all of them. Even though I'm using Tomato, the hardware itself sucks. And it's very hard to find a router I want of (G and N, with *good* signal i.e. not those cheapo 2 or 3dBi rubber ducky antennas, RP-SMA connectors, plenty of flash and RAM, decently built i.e. won't overheat all the time, etc). Routerboards like this one are alright, but they're just that (no enclosure, no wifi cards, etc). So I'm going to get one of these kits soon (1/2W, 15dBi antenna, good sensitivity) which will be plugged to a computer with virtually unlimited resources (compared to any embedded device)