DD-WRT vs Tomato: Clear choice?
While I spend much of my time helping others keep their wireless infrastructure up and running at full capacity, I like many doctors who often do not take time to tend to their own health needs, seem to neglect my own. So, a couple of weeks ago after a month or more of wireless issues, I decided to tend to my patient.
My first chore was to determine whether the faulting device was the WAP or the clients. So, I updated the clients’ drivers. That helped, but did not solve the connected but no WAN/LAN access. So, I then turned my attentions to the WAP. In my case, this was a Linksys WRT54G v2 running in AP mode on my network while running a very out of date version or Hyperwrt. I decided that another 3rd party firmware solution was in order. Since I have not been following the development of 3 party firmware, research was the way to go. My research, led me to one known and one newcomer solution: DD-WRT and Tomato.
I started my journey with DD-WRT. The flash went OK using the mini and then the full version. Here is my impression after a week of using it:
- Feature rich- DD-WRT has more features than either other that I’ve seen. In fact, this is good news and bad news. The good news is that if you have a need for the features and if you are very secure in your networking skills, then this may be a good choice for you. If you are not as networking savvy or don’t need the feature set offered, then either leave the default settings or try another solution.
- Interface slow- In my week-long experience, I found that all those features came at a price– GUI response. Pages seem to be sluggish to load and just did not feel very responsive. While that did not seem to translate into wireless performance, it was still a little annoying.
- Slow to acknowledge clients- I did not research the issue too much, but wireless clients did not seem to grab an IP as fast as with other solutions. Not a critical issue, but worth noting.
- Reboots required- It seemed that every little configuration change required a router reboot. That is very annoying when you have constant wireless traffic from clients that must stop for you to simply change a minor setting.
Next, I tried Tomato. Here is what I found:
- The Ajax- The GUI in tomato is very slick and has an Ajax look and feel. That will certainly appeal to those who are looking for a GUI that is pretty. Speaking of pretty…
- Charts/Graphs- The bandwidth monitor creates nice, clean graphs. Those are not only nice to look at, they are useful as well. Since I have not been running Tomato long, my graphs are flat. That’ll soon be changing.
- Not as many features- Tomato, does not have many of the hard core goodies as does DD-WRT. However, I have found that it does have the core feature set that most average SOHO and family users will need. It certainly surpasses those found in the stock firmware.
- Navigation- While many report that they found navigating Tomato was easier that other firmware, including the stock Linksys solution, I found the opposite. Call it old school, but I can’t seem to find the things that I am looking for where I am looking for them. And when I do find them, I don’t remember where. That, however, may be a function of the operator rather the firmware.
So, where do I stand? For most users looking for a solid, third party solution to their Linux based wireless device, I’d recommend Tomato unless you need more functionality than it offers and know how to utilize those extras.
Purchase a Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Router
Kiana Tom
28 Nov, 2007
Hi…I Googled for linksys wireless router ip address, but found your page about vs Tomato: Clear choice? | Wright Consulting…and have to say thanks. nice read.
Kevin
29 Nov, 2007
Thanks, I hope that you found it useful.
fenerli
7 Apr, 2008
Kevin, “Kiana” is a bot, they take some keywords, page title, and generic “nice read” style comments with the intent of advertising their site
Anyway, I will truthfully say this is a nice read and helped convince me to try Tomato. Had a look at the Tomato site and bandwidth monitoring graphs and QoS management seems much better than that of DD-WRT.
Kevin
8 Apr, 2008
Glad you found it useful. Good to see that I’m not talking to myself, even if some of the audience is bots
.
Chuck Morton
11 Apr, 2008
I have to agree with your comments about navigating the Tomato interface. I, too, found myself having some difficulty finding things where I expected them to be. However, I think it’s just a matter of becoming familiar with the new interface; a learning curve, that’s all.
Considering the better performance I’ve experienced over stock firmware, the learning experience is well worth it if it means staying with Tomato.
Very nice read that helped me make up my mind.
C.M.
Kevin
11 Apr, 2008
Great. Glad that I was helpful!
cj
9 Jun, 2008
nice article
mb
20 Jun, 2008
Can you boost the transmit power with tomato?
Wright PC Consulting, LLC
20 Jun, 2008
Yes. Here is a screenshot: http://wrightpcconsulting.com/blog/images/tomatopower.gif
Erp
12 Jul, 2008
Can I overclock my WRT54GL with Tomato, just like in DD-WRT?
Marcel
9 Oct, 2008
Of course, you can “overclock” your router with TOMATO – Transmit Power mW (range: 1 – 251; default is: 42 from Linksys) Don’t overclock transmit power more then 100, until you have good cooling system
Mike
16 Oct, 2008
I’m thinking the previous question about overclocking related to the physical processor speed, and not the wireless transmit power..
dd-wrt allows you to increase (via the admin page) the router’s chip speed. Many people play with this setting to increase the transaction speed inside the router (with a better heatsink on the router’s chip, mind you..)
As for your comment about not going over a mw power of 100 – cooling doesn’t always cover you, as the wireless chip in most linksys/buffalo routers are only designed with a max non-death power of 120 – Even with a heatsink, etc, that isn’t going to stop the chip from frying due to the new setting. Just because the firmware allows it, doesn’t mean the item can handle it, from an electrical standpoint, rather than heat
Derek
19 Nov, 2008
Thanks for the writeup. I have tomato installed, but was going to try DD-WRT. Not going to bother anymore.
Wright PC Consulting, LLC
30 Nov, 2008
Thanks! Glad it was helpful.
Daniel Kelly
2 Oct, 2009
Nice post. I have been using DD-WRT for a few years now and I like it a lot. I never thought of those few drawbacks that you mentioned, but they ring true.
Never tried Tomato, I always thought it looked ugly at first glance and I knew it didn’t have as many features so I went with DD-WRT. I just wrote a post myself on DD-WRT, and I’ll be doing another one soon hopefully with a lot of screenshots and stuff like that.
You are right, the router does have to reboot an awful lot. You’d think since it’s based on Linux it would just restart a service or something.
Thanks,
Dan
Dude
2 Nov, 2009
I just installed Tomato and it worked flawlessly. I am happy with more options than the Linksys Firmware, which I never really liked.
The GUI is better than Linksys, the layout is stretched vertically and it’s just a bit odd. Still it is navigable, sorta like File Manager, kinda.
I am also using inSSIDer to verify the wireless signal.