M and L Adventures

On May 18, 2008 the DD-WRT website announced the final release of DD-WRT v24 to the public. I haven’t had a chance to install the update or to even research all of the new features but based on the popularity of my How to Flash the WRT54GL with DD-WRT Firmware post I felt obligate to write a quick post informing everyone of this new update. You can read more about the new release at the DD-WRT website. [via Lifehacker].

Lifehacker has an interesting post on the Tomato custom router firmware. When a friend emailed me about the Lifehacker post, I first dismissed the article because when I was deciding on which firmware to flash my Linksys WRT54GL
with, I looked at Tomato but didn’t think it was as powerful as DD-WRT or OpenWRT. My interest in Tomato firmware was rekindled after reading Lifehacker’s article. The author acknowledged DD-WRT had a more robust feature set and polished admin interface. However, he said Tomato had a nicer layout, better Quality of Service (QOS) support, and better looking graphical charts than DD-WRT did. For what it is worth, the average user probably wouldn’t use the more powerful DD-WRT features anyway.

I wish I had the time/patience to re-flash my Linksys WRT54GL with Tomato just to try it out. Its very unlikely that I will because I don’t want to risk bricking my perfectly functioning DD-WRT enabled router. I also really like dd-wrt. Too bad flashing a router is a lot more complex than just installing software.

I decided to switch from DD-WRT to Tomato because it has all of the features I need. Additionally, DD-WRT has had some issues with several security vulnerabilities. While most vulnerabilities have likely been patched, finding a stable and patched new version proved complicated. Because most other sites I’ve found only describe how to flash to Tomato from the default Linksys firmware, I decided to write a tutorialabout how to switch from DD-WRT to Tomato.

Also, the Lifehacker article doesn’t mention OpenWRT (a couple of commenters do) but OpenWRT seems to be the hard-core geek’s choice. I’ve considered trying it out, but do not need all of the features. OpenWRT management system appears to be a Linux shell (i.e., command line). However, x-wrt is a method to attach a web front-end (i.e., gui).

If anyone wants to send me a Linksys WRT54GL so I can experiment with it and write more tutorials on firmware flashing, let me know and I can add it to my Amazon Wish List so you can send it to me easily.