[clue] open source router firmwares

Jim Ockers ockers at ockers.net
Sat Mar 2 12:06:35 MST 2013


Hi Mike,

I've used both OpenWRT and dd-wrt.  The OpenWRT was very customizeable 
and we used it to make a custom ARM firmware for a networked industrial 
device.  This was a high power ARM5 system with 600MHz CPU, 16MB flash, 
and 64MB of RAM, so we had a lot of room to add custom software & 
functionality.  The firmware I built wound up being about 8.5MB in size.

I also had an old Linksys router that for some reason quit working the 
way I expected (I don't remember what the problem was, but it had to do 
with wireless & authentication I think).  Before I threw it away I 
checked if it was on the openwrt/ddwrt compatibility lists, and I 
decided to try putting dd-wrt on it and see if it started working again.

It did.  Everything worked perfectly again.  I was REALLY impressed with 
dd-wrt.  It was amazing how much functionality and how many features 
they crammed into something like 2MB of flash. dd-wrt seemed like it was 
100x more powerful than the old Linksys firmware.  I highly recommend 
it.  Given the hardware limitations of my router there isn't a lot of 
room to tinker with it like I did with OpenWRT, but the software 
out-of-the-box was powerful & flexible enough to do whatever I needed 
without my having to rebuild it.

Give it a try, you'll probably like it.

Jim

--
Jim Ockers, P.E., P.Eng. (ockers at ockers.net)
Contact info: http://www.ockers.net/

On 3/2/13 6:42 AM, Mike Bean wrote:
> Brief question.  I burned out another router it seems, but before I 
> toss it in the garbage, I thought I'd try out one of the FOSS router 
> firmwares.  Thought I'd ask if anyone has experience with them and 
> could make any recommendations what gets the like, what doesn't?  Just 
> based on the 2 min research it looks like ddwrt's probably the way to 
> go, but I'd be interested in other options if there are better ones.
>
> Mike
>
>
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