[R7000] Tomato or DD-WRT?

[bmn1]

Heyho everyone,

I recently upgrade from my N600 to a R7000 and due to privacy, nsa spying, features and performance, a open source firmware is a must have !

I am currently wondering wether I should go for Tomato or DD-WRT (Kongs)?

Is there any feature comparison somewhere? What about performance and stability?

Does Tomato support beamforming and beamforming+?
As far as I know DD-WRT doesnt have HW acceleration, what about Tomato?

My general setup is:
Modem -> R7000 -> Smartphones, xbox, htpc (torrenting, local file sharing, media server), laptop, gaming pc.

I usually have a 2,4GHz wifi for my smartphones (as 2,4GHz covers a higher distance) and 5GHz/Ethernet for htpc,xbox,laptop,gaming. I also in a very crowded apartment building with 5-10 other wifi's in range.

Looking at the download counts, DD-WRT versions usually has 1000-2000 while tomato has 20-50?

Thanks in advance

 

[microchip]

afaik, Tomato in the only open source FW that has HW accel for the R7000. I personally use XVortex on my R7000 which has given me very good experience (it too has HW accel)

 

[bmn1]

afaik, Tomato in the only open source FW that has HW accel for the R7000. I personally use XVortex on my R7000 which has given me very good experience (it too has HW accel)

Thank you, so that is one plus for Tomato over DD-WRT.

I have read a lot good things about XVortex but it is too unknown/small for me in my opinion. Can you fully trust the XVortex developers?

With DD-WRT and Tomato I have a more "trustworthy" feeling.

Anything else that Tomato has which DD-WRT might be missing or vicd versa? What about beamforming and beamforming+?

 

[microchip]

XVortex has only one main developer (from Russia, IIRC). And no, I can't say I trust him 100% but I needed something that works and offers enough options for my use case. And as I'm very familiar with ASUS routers as well, my choice was for XVortex.

I've never used Tomato myself so I can't answer your question on it... Might wanna wait for someone else to chime in

 

[microchip]

I just loaded Shibby on my R7000. There ain't any mention about Beamforming and similar on the wireless settings. CTF works as expected here

 

[RogerSC]

Of the firmware the OP mentioned, I'm currently using tomato on my R7000. I like the tomato web admin GUI, and the firmware is stable and works well for me. The wireless coverage is pretty much as good as it gets *smile*. I'm using Shibby v132, the latest version, v136 didn't work very well for me when I tried upgrading to it. So I went back to v132, and it's working well. I expect Shibby to get his arms around the problems in v136, and will be able to upgrade then.

XVortex works well, also, but I'm kind of tired of the "Black Knight" web admin GUI. Since tomato and XVortex are comparable enough with each other for my use, I'm currently tilting towards tomato, personal preference. Not a dd-wrt fan for the R7000 at the moment for a couple of reasons (IPv6 is iffy, and no CTF). I've used dd-wrt on the R7000 a lot over the last couple of years, but tomato at this point has emerged as the best for me.

It is nice to have all these firmware choices, one of the really good things about owning an R7000. Great hardware, and several choices of third-party firmware. Love it.

 

[microchip]

Of the firmware the OP mentioned, I'm currently using tomato on my R7000. I like the tomato web admin GUI, and the firmware is stable and works well for me. The wireless coverage is pretty much as good as it gets *smile*. I'm using Shibby v132, the latest version, v136 didn't work very well for me when I tried upgrading to it. So I went back to v132, and it's working well. I expect Shibby to get his arms around the problems in v136, and will be able to upgrade then.

XVortex works well, also, but I'm kind of tired of the "Black Knight" web admin GUI. Since tomato and XVortex are comparable enough with each other for my use, I'm currently tilting towards tomato, personal preference. Not a dd-wrt fan for the R7000 at the moment for a couple of reasons (IPv6 is iffy, and no CTF). I've used dd-wrt on the R7000 a lot over the last couple of years, but tomato at this point has emerged as the best for me.

It is nice to have all these firmware choices, one of the really good things about owning an R7000. Great hardware, and several choices of third-party firmware. Love it.

v136 is working fine for me, including CTF and IPv6. Though wifi coverage is as good as when I was on XVortex, I noticed that throughput is lower by about 15-20 Mbps for me. Tested on two smartphones, same result

on the positive side, when I was on XVortex, the "Android OS" process would keep waking up and thus drain the battery. Not by a lot, but still measurable. Now on Shibby, it's sleeping for the past 3.5 hours, which is excellent as it won't suck up the battery

 

[bmn1]

Of the firmware the OP mentioned, I'm currently using tomato on my R7000. I like the tomato web admin GUI, and the firmware is stable and works well for me. The wireless coverage is pretty much as good as it gets *smile*. I'm using Shibby v132, the latest version, v136 didn't work very well for me when I tried upgrading to it. So I went back to v132, and it's working well. I expect Shibby to get his arms around the problems in v136, and will be able to upgrade then.

XVortex works well, also, but I'm kind of tired of the "Black Knight" web admin GUI. Since tomato and XVortex are comparable enough with each other for my use, I'm currently tilting towards tomato, personal preference. Not a dd-wrt fan for the R7000 at the moment for a couple of reasons (IPv6 is iffy, and no CTF). I've used dd-wrt on the R7000 a lot over the last couple of years, but tomato at this point has emerged as the best for me.

It is nice to have all these firmware choices, one of the really good things about owning an R7000. Great hardware, and several choices of third-party firmware. Love it.

Thank you for your feedback ! Do you know if tomato offers beamforming and beamforming+ ?

Is the wifi coverage as good as with dd-wrt ?

 

[RogerSC]

Thank you for your feedback ! Do you know if tomato offers beamforming and beamforming+ ?

Is the wifi coverage as good as with dd-wrt ?

I don't know if tomato has beamforming or not, has not been an issue for me. The wireless coverage using tomato firmware is as good as that using dd-wrt firmware.

 

[bmn1]

I don't know if tomato has beamforming or not, has not been an issue for me. The wireless coverage using tomato firmware is as good as that using dd-wrt firmware.

Not for me.. I had Kong's DD-WRT for 2 days, then Tomato for 2 days, now back to Kong's DD-WRT:

Wifi coverage and throughput with Tomato is not as good for me as with Kong's DD-WRT.
I really don't know why. Tried same settings, tried all kind of different settings, tried stock settings.. sadly I can't get close to Kongs DD-WRT wifi coverage with Tomato :/

 

[microchip]

DD-WRT has a few devs that have Broadcom contacts and it probably uses a much better driver than Shibby.

 

[RogerSC]

DD-WRT uses a newer driver, they have a license that allows them to build it. Unfortunately, they don't have a CTF-type module, although I hear now and again that they're working on that...but it's been going on a long time.

Shibby's driver comes in a lump with the kernel and the proprietary Broadcom CTF module, so they don't build the wireless driver.

At any rate, microchip and I have different experiences, apparently. What I'd suggest under these circumstances is to try both dd-wrt and tomato at your place and see which works better for you. One or both of them will be fine *smile*.

 

[bmn1]

DD-WRT uses a newer driver, they have a license that allows them to build it. Unfortunately, they don't have a CTF-type module, although I hear now and again that they're working on that...but it's been going on a long time.

Shibby's driver comes in a lump with the kernel and the proprietary Broadcom CTF module, so they don't build the wireless driver.

At any rate, microchip and I have different experiences, apparently. What I'd suggest under these circumstances is to try both dd-wrt and tomato at your place and see which works better for you. One or both of them will be fine *smile*.

Thank you for your detailed answer.

I tried both and it seems like DD-WRT has the better wifi range where as Tomato might have the better throughput.

For me wifi range is more important atm (atleast to cover all rooms in the apartment, which wasn't possible with Tomato).

 

[GeorgiaHill]

Heyho everyone,

I recently upgrade from my N600 to a R7000 and due to privacy, nsa spying, features and performance, a open source firmware is a must have !

I am currently wondering wether I should go for Tomato or DD-WRT (Kongs)?

Is there any feature comparison somewhere? What about performance and stability?

Does Tomato support beamforming and beamforming+?
As far as I know DD-WRT doesnt have HW acceleration, what about Tomato?

My general setup is:
Modem -> R7000 -> Smartphones, xbox, htpc (torrenting, local file sharing, media server), laptop, gaming pc.

I usually have a 2,4GHz wifi for my smartphones (as 2,4GHz covers a higher distance) and 5GHz/Ethernet for htpc,xbox,laptop,gaming. I also in a very crowded apartment building with 5-10 other wifi's in range.

Looking at the download counts, DD-WRT versions usually has 1000-2000 while tomato has 20-50?

Thanks in advance

Try tomato firmware. I've installed it on my asus with this guide http://www.routerstop.com/tomato-router-setup/ for near 10 minutes...But I heard dd wrt is more popular but have a bigger size

 

[harmfuljays]

Kong's DD-WRT highly recommended for the R7000. I've had issues with the Implicit and Explicit beamforming on these builds in the past but its been the clients I am running. A little bit of tweaking and a lot of research fixed the issue.

 

[Clark Griswald]

During the past 2 1/2 years, my network consisted of two R7000s (main router and AP). I installed XVortex fw onto both, and had great coverage for both bands 2.4 and 5. This setup worked well in my home environment with Family utilizing Apple, Android, Windows devices. For the past two weeks, I am using the R7000s as APs now with an RT-AC88U as my main router. I introduced the 88U, in order to assist in the heavy traffic times of my environment, since the 88U has a faster cpu (1.4 vs 1) and double the RAM.

 

[L&LD]

For the past two weeks, I am using the R7000s as APs now with an RT-AC88U as my main router. I introduced the 88U, in order to assist in the heavy traffic times of my environment, since the 88U has a faster cpu (1.4 vs 1) and double the RAM.

And what improvement or differences have you observed?

 

[Clark Griswald]

The three most obvious observations between the R7000 and RT-AC88U:
1. The 88U runs approximately 40F hotter, than the 7000. (7000 140F & 88 180F)
A) Fortunately I read Merlin's post that the temperature was normal for asus. I placed a fan in
my media closet, which drops the temperature down to 140F (low use) to 160F (high use)
2. The 88's 5Ghz range is significantly smaller than the 7000, when placed in same spot.
3. Most Importantly, The Wife no longer complains of lan/wan "slow downs", when there is heavy
usage by Family, since switching to 88U as main.

 

[reddice]

I used stock for months. Then I used Kong DD-WRT for a few months after. It worked okay but I got tired of updating it every week when it broke something that was working fine before. Example is a wireless speed test I would get the full 60 down 5 up speed then after a update it would drop down to half of that. Then a few days later it after another firmware update it was back to full speed just to break again in the next firmware update.

I then found Advanced Tomato which is based on Shibby Tomato build and I find that it is the best looking and performing of them all. The firmware is updated at least once a month or longer and if you have problems you can easily find the downgraded firmware on the site. Try doing that with Kong DD-WRT which he stupidly just removes the old firmware and you have to play a game of Where's Waldo to actually find another site hosting the older downgraded firmware. I had enough. After flashing to Advanced Tomato I never looked back at Stock or DD-WRT.

 

[reddice]

Wifi coverage and throughput with Tomato is not as good for me as with Kong's DD-WRT.

Try going into Advanced settings, wireless and change the Transmit Power to 0 which is the hardware default on the 2.4ghz and 5ghz networks. When I did that I got stronger signal than Kong DD-WRT gave me.