What's new

Which routers?

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

jim trudel

Regular Contributor
Hi,

I'm looking for a router which it is compatible with openwrt, ddwrt and tomato, is it possible?

And at least as powerful and stable as R7800 netgear is.
Thanks

Envoyé de mon SM-G960W en utilisant Tapatalk
 
tomato is dead. ddwrt is way behind. i'd suggest doing your own research on openwrt.org, it's all there.
 
And at least as powerful and stable as R7800 netgear is.

Hard to beat it's WiFi performance in consumer market. Very good Qualcomm router for OpenWrt. DD-WRT folks are jumping ships one by one after key people switched to OpenWrt development. Tomato is not dead, but router choices are limited. I wish I could run Tomato on RT-AC86U, for example.
 
Hard to beat it's WiFi performance in consumer market. Very good Qualcomm router for OpenWrt. DD-WRT folks are jumping ships one by one after key people switched to OpenWrt development. Tomato is not dead, but router choices are limited. I wish I could run Tomato on RT-AC86U, for example.
Brainslayer has new build every week almost :)

Envoyé de mon SM-G960W en utilisant Tapatalk
 
Brainslayer has new build every week almost :)

I personally stopped using such projects with weekly updates. You understand no one has 250 different router models to test all those builds, they are automatically generated, use at your own risk kind of deal. I don't want to play this game anymore, had some bad experience in the past. I believe it will be much better if DD-WRT, OpenWrt, Tomato, etc. developers select 20 best supported routers and focus on specific hardware. Otherwise it's a mix and match guessing game with no guaranteed results whatsoever.
 
I personally stopped using such projects with weekly updates. You understand no one has 250 different router models to test all those builds, they are automatically generated, use at your own risk kind of deal. I don't want to play this game anymore, had some bad experience in the past. I believe it will be much better if DD-WRT, OpenWrt, Tomato, etc. developers select 20 best supported routers and focus on specific hardware. Otherwise it's a mix and match guessing game with no guaranteed results whatsoever.
I understand but dont need to upgrade the build every time, every week.


Envoyé de mon SM-G960W en utilisant Tapatalk
 
I understand but dont need to upgrade the build every time, every week.

You don't need to, but you also don't know if the version you plan to upgrade to will be working properly. OpenWrt is the only one I had no major issues with, but I also have the least experience with (used for educational purposes mainly) and on popular model routers. Tomato and DD-WRT were trial and error approach (I used both for years). One version works properly, another has LAN ports issues, third one breaks WAN, on the forth your Wireless Bridge stops working, etc. If your hardware is not something in the top 20 popular router models and you rely on "it's on the supported list" only, you go to forums, read what other people say, flash and pray it's all good.
 
etc. If your hardware is not something in the top 20 popular router models and you rely on "it's on the supported list" only, you go to forums, read what other people say, flash and pray it's all good.

Mine is r7800 so it is pretty well supported by dd wrt.

With Asus, I guess Merlin is the way to go like voxel with netgear... both firmwares are really like the oem + some additions?



Envoyé de mon SM-G960W en utilisant Tapatalk
 
With Asus, I guess Merlin is the way to go like voxel with netgear... both firmwares are really like the oem + some additions?

With R7800 you have better chances of success, popular hardware. If something is broken you'll know quickly, many users in forums. Voxel's and Merlin offer the best hardware compatibility, made for specific models only. Both went a long way in development, you may not need anything extra. I haven't looked in details Voxel's lately, but with latest Merlin (backed up by talented script developers) it's actually hard to find something missing. In this case there is much less need to look at OpenWrt, Tomato, DD-WRT, etc.
 
With R7800 you have better chances of success, popular hardware. If something is broken you'll know quickly, many users in forums. Voxel's and Merlin offer the best hardware compatibility, made for specific models only. Both went a long way in development, you may not need anything extra. I haven't looked in details Voxel's lately, but with latest Merlin (backed up by talented script developers) it's actually hard to find something missing. In this case there is much less need to look at OpenWrt, Tomato, DD-WRT, etc.
So according to you, best asus router quality price to use with merlin (openvpn, qos )

With good specs like R7800?
Thanks

Envoyé de mon SM-G960W en utilisant Tapatalk
 
tomato is dead. ddwrt is way behind. i'd suggest doing your own research on openwrt.org, it's all there.
you do not consider competitors from the competitor's site. When i was checking litespeed i looked for independent websites that benched and did tests. Not that litespeed is less credible to show a bench against their competitors, i mean might not be a lie but the first rule of finding a product is to not consider shallow blogs that use SEO to get to the top and competitor blog reviews.

DD-WRT is still alive and kicking, however i do prefer openWRT because of its much wider support for devices. Its not always great compared to DDWRT especially when you have multiple variations of the same model. A zyxel router i have i only managed to get zboot on not openwrt because its a different variation despite the same CPU. Some companies base their firmware on openWRT. DD-WRT only recently became open source while openWRT was always open sourced.


If you're going for a router that can support openWRT, some models are better suited than others. First find out what models support them well and find one with the features and architecture you like.
So according to you, best asus router quality price to use with merlin (openvpn, qos )

With good specs like R7800?
Thanks

Envoyé de mon SM-G960W en utilisant Tapatalk
Depends on speed. ASUS router with rmerlin firmware is great for both QoS and VPN. RMerlin added features that you would find in configurable routers not that you cant do the same on openWRT. So Rmerlin's firmware is up there for consideration too as its sure to work on any asus routers they official launch firmware for. Unlike tp link asus routers have far fewer variations, they'll likely release a new model instead which is one way to cash in on more profits rather than releasing the same model with different hardware( dlink and tp link are guilty of this)
Netgear is a mixed bag. Some of their hardware can be reliable but most arent anymore. They can even screw up a simple modem but i have installed openWRT on it.

Testing netgear's hardware, their modem boasts the lowest speeds and least reliability (3 months for a restart) so i figured that i'd just use an older one that i bought which was used with my ISP back when i had VDSL and turned the netgear into an openWRT device for me to run as a mini server. It has no USB ports either. Pricing for netgear's routers is worse than asus as well.
 
So according to you, best asus router quality price to use with merlin (openvpn, qos )

You don't have much of a choice. The best Asuswrt-Merlin supported router is RT-AX88U (from $270). The firmware contains closed source components though, not under Merlin's control. Some SNB members reported weak 2.4GHz band with the latest WiFi drivers: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/wi-fi-signal-strength-rt-ac86u-v-rt-ax88u.61856/. It's hard to recommend a consumer product nowadays, they are all made cheaper and cheaper with less attention to details and less quality control. I call all consumer routers "disposable". Just get something not very expensive for you that matches your current or near future needs, use it until it lasts or until you like it, dispose it after and get a new one. There is no "investment" in a consumer router, there is no future proofing with AX router, there is no universal "best" solution.
 
Last edited:

Latest threads

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top