Add Linux power to wireless routers with advanced tips and tricks for DD-WRT

This was a nicely researched and well organized article on one of my favorite topics. I have an Asus rt-n16u router that I flashed with dd-wrt about a year ago and installed optware on an inexpensive 8GB usb stick.

It's a very powerful combination, and it's wonderful to be able to administer this router securely over a remote ssh connection with effectively the full power of a Linux machine.

I'm just now getting ready to upgrade to the Asus rt-n66u (b/g/n/a). That box has lots more resources but also carries a price tag. It's fairly new, but it is listed on the dd-wrt compatibility list. Wish me luck.

Whoa, Carla!

I looked into DD-WRT and Tomato a few years ago, but found they wouldn't work on my cheesy (but fairly fast) Belkin router.

Now -- I have another cheesy but fairly fast Belkin router, but it apparently has a Broadcom chip, 8mb of flash and 64 mb or ram.

May be time to go for the gusto...

I installed DD-WRT onto a Linksys/Cisco E1000 router a few months ago. It was pretty easy, and works well except for dropping the connection after a few days (I have it set up as a wireless bridge). The real time-consumer, however, was finding a compatible router to run DD-WRT on. I wanted to get something cheap off Ebay, and it was a real struggle finding something that would run it. There's a huge list of hardware on DD-WRT's site that shows what is and isn't compatible, and many times specific hardware versions will be compatible while others won't be, so you have to be very careful. Of course, much of the stuff sold on Ebay just happens to be the hardware revision that isn't compatible. Many sellers don't post that info, so you have to ask them for it (it's written on the mfgr label on the bottom), or else you'll likely end up with something that won't work. Buying something brand-new from the store isn't a good idea either because frequently it's the later versions that aren't compatible, not the older ones, as the mfgrs cut corners, either reducing memory or doing something else that the DD-WRT team isn't able to workaround.