The modern equivalent of a Linksys WRT54GL is the ASUS RT-N16. It runs OpenWrt, DD-WRT, and Tomato variants really well, does 802.11n (only one frequency) and has plenty of memory and flash storage for extra hacking. The ASUS RT-N66U is frequently advised if you want 5GHz 802.11n as well.
The other router mentioned in this article, the Linksys EA2700, doesn't seem compatible with third party firmware. And apparently the Cisco firmware is buggy, no surprise there. It is an awfully cheap Dual-Band 802.11n router, but if you can't put working software on it it's useless.
I don't understand why some major router manufacturer doesn't just sell routers pre-installed with Tomato. It's easy to use, stable, and works way better than any crap the router companies cobble together. Flashing new firmware on a stock ASUS router is too complex for ordinary consumers.
I am the owner of an ASUS RT-N16. I purchased it when my Linksys WRT-54G died after 4 years. It really is a fantastic wifi router for the reasons you list. However, if you live in an apartment complex you might find the 2.4GHz spectrum very crowded. Especially if there are others with 2.4GHz 802.11n, which uses more channels than 802.11b/g. This might make it worthwhile to purchase a 5 Ghz 802.11n router.
Definitely. There appear to be more than 30 named networks within range of my iMac. That's one reason I've wired my iMac and my fiancee's iMac with cat6; as I wrote in another comment day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5192837 :
It's also amazing how prevalent Ethernet still is, even when wireless is a competitor. The other day I left this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5052448 on HN, because in some circumstances running a cheap ethernet cable from a router to a desk, couch, or other work station can still be a real win, especially given how inexpensive even very long ethernet cables are from Monoprice.com.
They last forever, aren't subject to the level of interference wireless is, and, in many conditions, have faster data transfer speeds. Ethernet is still great.
> They last forever, aren't subject to the level of interference wireless is, and, in many conditions, have faster data transfer speeds. Ethernet is still great.
Take away "in many conditions" and replace with "always, without exception" and replace "faster" with a "at least a magnitude faster" and we are in agreement.
If you need performance and reliability (like for instance for iScsi) there is really nothing which even compares to wired ethernet.
Agreed - always use wired when possible, especially if you have gigabit-capable equipment.
Note that in most cases wireless systems are far slower than theoretical speed, but 100Mbit wired ethernet is good for 90+ in both directions simultaneously, so in most cases it'll be faster than 802.11n, and with better and more consistent latency.
Switch to 5 GHz. You'll need a new router and WiFi adapters, but they're available. You won't have quite the range, but even business locations with dozens of 2.4 GHz networks (e.g. Physician office buildings) will have 1-2 5GHz networks total, and most off the shelf consumer laptops don't support it right now so adoption will take a while.
Part of the problem with 2.4 GHz in big buildings is that it passes relatively well through building materials, so that in a large building you get a lot of noise from equipment owned by other residents.
Someone measured the difference in transmissivity for different materials at 2 and 5 GHz (http://www.ko4bb.com/Manuals/05)_GPS_Timing/E10589_Propagati...) - the difference is quite large for brick and cinder block; unfortunately, they didn't measure insulation foil, which I expect would be quite a good RF shield, especially if earthed.
So if everyone switched to 5 GHz, the interference situation might still be better than if everyone was on 2.4 GHz.
Of course, being an early adopter of 5GHz probably helps with the other problem in apartment buildings, the 'prisoners dilemma' type problem where everyone who knows how ups their transmit power because of the noise, making the problem worse for everyone else but temporarily better for them, when if everyone lowered their power, everyone would get better speeds (exactly analogous to how everyone ends up shouting when having a conversation with the person next to them at a party, when if everyone talked quietly instead communication would be more successful).
Not necessary. The 5ghz band has a lot more channels available (21 in the US), and all of those are 20mhz wide with no overlap. You would have to live in an extremely dense apartment building to start to run into interference issues.
5 GHz also effectively has a shorter range than 2.4 GHz, particularly with building materials in the way. That gives more available capacity, and even without that it's likely to be at least another year before 5 GHz becomes standard in consumer laptops, plus most people aren't going to be replacing existing equipment immediately.
If possible increase the transmit output milliwatts, to "shout over" the other signals on the same channel.
Increase the beacon period of your router/AP to the fastest it will go, usually 20 microseconds. I think this is the best solution of anything you could try.
Maybe play around with the DTIM interval but I'm not sure what a good number for that is; too low supposedly drains batteries of wireless devices and too high causes other problems.
Max out RTS/CTS but you may lose overall throughput but that's no loss if it suck already, in for a lamb in for a sheep.
There are other settings too most explained in the help section of the AP/router help menu. They can be obscure but fiddling with them can help your AP signal a lot.
I actually design wireless devices for a living and in my opinion, this is mostly bad advice.
The best bet it to switch to 5GHz, but that isn't practical for use with mobile devices.
Option B is to turn off the higher speed modes like 802.11n. Just try to stick with 11g. If you are still having connection problems, maybe switch down to 11b, but that will be real slow even when it works.
If you use an access point with detatchable antennas (which is actually most of them if you open the cover), then maybe replace the omni-directional antenna with a high-gain directional antenna (also known as a patch antenna). Then you'll need to point the antenna at where you sit.
Another (probably lousy) option to try (but very quick and cheap) is to move off of the commonly used WiFi channels (1, 6, 11). They are commonly used because they don't overlap with each other. So maybe try 4 or 9. The downside is that you will get interference from two commonly used channels, but the overall situation may be better than what you've got now.
I've had great success adjusting the beacon period to 20 milliseconds and using 2.4GHz.
Although I do agree with your advice about channels I often get relatives to do that as they first step in troubleshooting problems with their home wireless network.
People have all those adjustable router options they may as well try something rather than default settings. You don't have to design wireless devices for a living to fiddle with a few settings.
You say "switch to 5GHz, but that isn't practical for use with mobile devices" -- is the reasoning that the 5GHz signal doesn't penetrate the walls enough as you walk around with the device?
That is a factor as others have mentioned, but mostly I meant it is just that many mobile devices don't support 5GHz. And you can't just add a cheap USB dongle. That is starting to change though, so check the specs on your devices.
I, too, switched to the RT-N16 after my WRT54GL died unceremoniously one day. The RT-N16 is a pretty good router but I want to caution any one who, like me, was awestruck by its 128MB RAM without considering NVRAM.
The short version is that, depending on your usage, you may run out of NVRAM before RAM and may lose your settings. For reference see [1] and [2].
NVRAM should definitely be a top consideration. If you want to add any sorts of third party tools or customization to your router you will want plenty of it.
I have 32MB NVRAM to play with and that has served me well enough, but I see plenty of consumer-routers which can be "upgraded to dd-wrt" but which doesn't even have enough NVRAM to do an ipkg update.
The RT-N56U is one of the best routers I've ever used. Great transfer rates, strong signal in both bands, gigabit ports, and the management panel is pretty decent if you don't want to install Tomato.
> It runs OpenWrt, DD-WRT, and Tomato variants really well
You're sure about that? I've had an rt-n16 sitting on a shelf for over a year waiting for OpenWrt support. Your message caused me to go check their website, and all it says is:
"The Asus RT-N16 has early support in Barrier Breaker (trunk) only!"
Actually, no, I don't know anything about running OpenWrt on an RT-N16 and shouldn't have included it in my list. Sorry for the mistake! As noted by other commenters apparently it's only supported in WIP versions, details at http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/asus/rt-n16
Yes, I understand Barrier Breaker is pre-release. That is precisely why, when NelsonMinar suggested the RT-N16 runs OpenWrt "really well," I asked if he was sure.
I am uninterested in dd-wrt, which is why I didn't mention it.
BTW, if you want to help a non-geek install Tomato, the folks at EasyTomato have done great work making an accessible version of the firmware: http://www.easytomato.org/
> The modern equivalent of a Linksys WRT54GL is the ASUS RT-N16
When I was in the market for something like that one or two years back, I was recommended a specific type of Buffalo Router [1]. While I see my particular model has been superceeded by newer ones, I still thought I'd mention it because:
1. It was recommended to me by someone who had been served it extremely well by it in the past. It has now served me extremely well for years. It will probably do you good as well.
2. It's OK to support more than the top 3 vendors in the world with your money. This leads to more competition, more diversity and better products.
3. Putting stock dd-wrt or openwrt on it can be done all in browser and doesn't seem to involve brick risking procedures like bootloader updates, like I see you may have to go through for the Asus router.
After running DD-WRT on a WRT54GL for years I tried the RT-N16 and got terrible network throughout over WiFi even within 5-15ft. Maybe the issue has been solved in the last few months but I was very disappointed.
Oh woah, seriously? I use Tomato and it seems like the default is 17, no wonder I've been having some issues with range. I just thought it was because my neighbors were setting up more wifi routers. Will try that out, thanks!
The one thing I'm worried about though is whether that setting of 63 is worse for shorter distances. From my limited experience with building a simple radio transmitter/receiver and amplifiers, if your received signal is too strong it'll just saturate and turn to crap, and as it happens my bedroom is right next to the room with the router in it, so boosting the signal might screw up reception on my phone. But at least now I know that there's room to play around here, thanks for letting me know!
I just bought and re-flashed an ASUS RT-N16 with TomatoUSB (Shibby fork) last week and it is a great router. For me it has great stability and range. I had previously used Tomato on an older router and liked it so I stuck with it. You can use the ASUS recovery mode software to directly flash with custom firmware images. My understanding is that because it has this special recovery mode it is virtually un-brickable.
Thank you for the info - do you know if there's an ADSL modem that's good for DD-WRT these days? Last I looked (yeeeaaaars ago) there were only two models, long since out of production, and they didn't seem to be going in that direction anymore.
Still seems to be very little. You can get some boxes that convert adsl to ethernet (ATM over ethernet or whatever standard your country uses) that basically have no config and connect those to a router.
I used to do this until something happened at my ISP and my router can no longer authenticate against my ISP's PPPoE server. Now I have my modem providing NAT and DHCP, and my router is just a dumb access point. The only problem is my modem has an externally accessible administration page running on port 4567, and telnet on port 1111 that I can't turn off, even when all remote management configuration options are turned off. I've had to set up a cronscript to attempt to telnet into the thing continuously, and if successful it will kill the httpd server and telnet daemon.
It's absolutely ridiculous how insecure home network equipment is.
UPnP is the one that gives me concern. User programs can punch holes in your firewall without you knowing about it. Now you have a port open on your firewall... pointed at someone's computer without your knowledge. UPnP goes off - if you want that port open, let's talk about it, little software thingy.
Yeah, I'm running in bridged mode, it works great. I used to run it like your current setup, but now I can finally run the Tomato router as my main one, and QoS is just too amazing to pass up on...
I haven't seen a modem (from a telecom) that isn't a router in the past 5 years. Most ship wireless router/modems to their customers these days as standard.
Cable companies might still ship modems (they did the last time I had cable internet, but that was probably 8 years ago).
That coupled with a router/wireless ap running tomato or the like should work well from what I understand. I, however, never have used DSL so I'm not an expert.
After having several crappy modem/router/wifi things from ISPs, I've taken to buying routers independently. Usually less than $50 (if anything, since you can reuse them), and always less of a pain.
There's nothing to return, I get DD-WRT instead of whatever garbage they're running, and usually measurably faster in both internet speed (usually lower latency) and wifi speed. In particular, I've never had a bundled device get within 50% of what 802.11n is capable of, especially when you have 4 or more devices. All my dedicated routers have done just fine.
Many of the DSL routers can be put in bridge mode. I run an Asus RT-N16 as my router connected up to the "modem" (now in bridge mode) provided by my DSL provider.
Interestingly I found the N16 stock firmware to have the best QoS of any router I've used. It requires no configuration and always seemed to work great. DD-WRT's QoS, on the other hand, can require significant effort to configure correctly.
Hmm, I've used QoS in Tomato for years. The early versions of Tomato had a very simple QoS build. The latest Toastman builds have some 30+ rules. All versions seem to work OK for me. But I'm sure it depends on traffic and would be hard to debug if it did fail.
Consumer routers are a low margin product. Vendors want to do as little work as possible, so they ship mostly the software provided by the silicon vendor.
The other router mentioned in this article, the Linksys EA2700, doesn't seem compatible with third party firmware. And apparently the Cisco firmware is buggy, no surprise there. It is an awfully cheap Dual-Band 802.11n router, but if you can't put working software on it it's useless.
I don't understand why some major router manufacturer doesn't just sell routers pre-installed with Tomato. It's easy to use, stable, and works way better than any crap the router companies cobble together. Flashing new firmware on a stock ASUS router is too complex for ordinary consumers.